I Tivo'd tonight's episode and started watching it a little on the late side. So when I got to the Hanso Foundation commercial, I was able to watch it frame by frame. I noticed in one of the frames, in tiny letters, 'paid for by Sprite.' That's the reason that the web site listed at the end of the commercial is 'subLYMONal.com' -- Sprite is supposedly 'lymon' flavored... they paid for the commercial time... and they must have sponsored the sublymonal.com site and possibly the Hanso foundation site as well.
Also, when you call the Hanso foundation telephone number, they've done a good job of creating hold music that sounds like you're listening to a radio station. One of the things playing in the hold music loop is a Sprite commercial.
I have mixed feelings about all this.
On the positive side, the LOST producers and the ABC ad sales people have created an interesting extension of the LOST experience that uses the web and 800-numbers and have gotten an advertiser to pay for some or all of it. So in that sense, I applaud Sprite and their agency for being willing to be a part of something groundbreaking like this.
Also a positive (mostly): Baked into all this is a clever strategy for defeating Tivo and other DVR technologies which allow viewers to skip over commercials. Now that I know that there are going to be fake spots integrated into the LOST commercial breaks which may contain information that will enhance my understanding of the series, I'll be less likely to blithely fast forward through all the commercials in the future. So again, I think Sprite, their agency, the ABC ad sales folks, and the producers are playing with the TV medium and potentially influencing the way we will watch TVand the way advertising will work in the future. That's interesting. I like the idea that this series, which takes risks and pushes the boundaries of the TV medium in its storytelling, is taking risks and pushing boundaries in its behavior as a commercial entity.
On the flip side, though, I think it cheapens the LOST mythology to integrate a real product into the extended system of content (series, fake commercials, web sites, 877-number) which comprises the story world of the show. I'm no expert but I'm sure there are ways of integrating a product and its advertising message with a piece of entertainment content which are more respectful of the content. Not to sound Solomonic, but if Sprite truly cared about LOST, wouldn't it want to avoid sullying the purity of the mythology and story world by creating a conceptual connection to sugar water?
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