The power of pervasion
Last October I blogged about NBC’s use of “fusion marketing” with the show My Own Worst Enemy.
Are they at it again? A recent episode of the NBC show 30 Rock revolved around a mini-microwave, “The FunCooker“…
…and then a week later in some webvertising I saw an ad for this-
-the iWave cube, a tissue-box sized microwave.
I couldn’t help but wonder if there was another fusion marketing approach afoot.
Marketing is both ubiquitous and stealthy, and in this mashed-up and pervasive environment, any piece of communication in any medium could be a marketing effort. I find this simultaneously intriguing and disquieting.
Pervasive, cross-context marketing is producing some creative and thought-provoking experiences (the recent Skittles/Twitter (Skwitter?) campaign, for one). And it can be fun to spot marketing easter eggs–I felt a little thrill of potential discovery about the two microwaves.
At the same time, this lack of clarity about whether any particular piece of communication is company-sponsored or not adds another level of opacity to an already Filo-dough-like world of layered information. Will bionic critical thinking skills become the new common sense?
Related posts:
Interacting With Advertising
Collateral Damage
Crossover Hit