Last night Kathleen and I watched the latest episode of The Apprentice that we had recorded on our TiVo. The program originally aired on Monday, but we just freed up enough time to watch it.
During this program, GE aired one of its ads in its One Second Theater series. These ads are designed to get Digital Video Recorder users to stop and study the ads closely. What GE did was to embed 5 to 10 screens of information in an otherwise typical 30-second ad for their Ecomagination initiative.
I saw that there was something different about this ad from the first couple of frames that appeared. I started watching the ad at standard speed and saw a series of flashes. I rewound the ad and watched in slow motion, eventually dropping down to frame-by-frame viewing. At that point, Kathleen said I was a “tool of the media,” which is a term I use to describe myself, so I wasn’t offended.
I think this type of creativity is going to get TiVo users attention, at least in the short term. I’ll certainly be looking for more of these ads during programs that we record from NBC.
Technorati Tags: One Second Theater, The Apprentice, TiVo, GE, NBC.