Buy Or Don’t Buy

Hey guys, you know MacGruber, right? The intermittently-funny recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live where Will Forte plays an incompetent version of MacGyver?

Wouldn’t those be great to turn into ads? Like, if the reason MacGruber was so incompetent was because he liked this one product so much! You could write that, make Will Forte be in it, and then air it during SNL, so people wouldn’t suspect that it was an ad! Product integration? More like ‘product inte-GREAT-tion!’

You could also air it during the Super Bowl! It’s that good!

I’m aware that this is what all TV advertisements used to be like. I’m also aware that because of advertising I can watch TV for free, instead of having to pay an odd ‘licence fee.’ But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t like having to constantly wonder, “Is this an ad? Is this an ad?” And, in the end, I don’t think it’s a good road for advertisers to go down either. Yes, people tune out things they know are ads - but if your response to that is to disguise your ads as content, then people are eventually going to start tuning out everything.

[PS: I tested this post, and found out that when you play a Hulu clip it makes you watch an ad first. Zing-sauce.]