Monday, March 13, 2006

Welcome to Productainment

Advertising is really going to the dogs. According to this NYTimes article, Proctor and Gamble is developing a series of eight commercials around a family of dogs to be featured in a mock sit(and then stay)com.

The spots will be on Nick at Nite and feature advertising breaks for P&G's Febreze product. In some ways this is a more honest form of communicating with consumers because at least the product placement here is obviously funding the creation of the content, which is more upfront than movies and TV shows placing products everywhere.

So forget the 5 a.m. infomercial or getting American Idol judges to sip your beverage. Get some funny writers and hire a few has-been actors (try Eric Roberts and Tanya Roberts) and try productainment instead.

I'm also thinking that TiVo must develop technology so that users can't skip commercials like this. Perhaps they could insert their own commercials that couldn't be fast-forwarded through, and give this service away for free.

By John Gartner at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

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