Roller Rollerton, Advertising Executive

One of the many methods by which I like to impress people is by explaining how I could do their jobs better than they do it. So this one is for you, television ad executives.

DVRs (aka Tivo) are destroying the television ad industry. The are so pervasive now that most of our kids will grow up totally missing out on the rites of passage we adults know as Scheig-Engel, Yellow-Key Auto Insurance, or Becky, Queen of Carpet.

But what I may call a rite of passage to fewer brain cells, Angela Bower calls her bread and butter. The Angela Bowers of the world are going to have to change their game if they expect to pay for ex-Cardinals to vacuum their curtains. Fortunately for them, I have the solution.

The problem with commercials and Tivo is that when I fast-forward all I see is a dog and then a garden and then a bar of soap and then a doctor who might be prescribing Burger King. I have no idea what's going on and by the time my brain has the chance to try to put the pieces together I've hit play just in time to see Doogie pause in reflection before completing the episode's journal entry.

The secret to beating Tivo is pervasive branding. In every commercial, for the whole commercial. The next Coca-cola commercial? A bunch of kids dancing in front of a huge COCA-COLA sign! The next Depends commercial? A bunch of kids dancing in front of a huge DEPENDS sign. You may be fast forwarding it, someone else watching in real-time, but the brand gets implanted in your brain. And the next thing you know, you're at the store buying Coke and Depends.

Some companies are already hip to this notion (their ad execs probably hang out in the same T.G.I.Friday's I hang out at every Friday). Their actors may not be in front of a big company logo, but Apple's signature Mac vs. PC commercials are recognizable at high speed (and I'll stop to watch those if they're new). Sonic drive-in also has the repeatable two-guys-at-the-drive-thru plot that embeds the brand in your brain even if you're just passing by.

So there you have it. DVRs may be changing the game, but you as the ad exec just have to adapt your game along with it. It's like when the telephone was invented. That changed history. So what did we do? We got voicemail.

We got voicemail.