I’ve been becoming more and more aware of just how much the internet, television, and just about everything in our lives, relates back to marketing. I’ve thought I’ve become aware enough to understand most of what I see… But this one kind of caught me by surprise.
I watch 24 and House. They are two of my favorite television shows. They are both on Fox. Recently, there have been these little 8 second commercials with a 3D taxi driver. My initial reaction was, “what the heck”. I wondered if Fox was generating hype for a new show. But that didn’t really make sense.
I kept seeing them over the course of the next 2 weeks. I couldn’t figure it out, until tonight, when I did some quick research. It turns out that Oleg the Taxi Driver is a series of shorts that Fox has inserted into the commercial sequence to try to get more people to watch the other commercials. I’m not sure if it’s having that effect, but it is causing me to take note of them.
It’s interesting though that television has gotten to the point of finding new ways to market the marketing… I’m trying to imagine what this could be like on the web… Things like Google putting search results in between ads. Or perhaps it’s more sly… Something we wouldn’t even see coming.
In any case, that’s what was on my mind.