Advertainment

Saturday, July 26, 2003

The Restaurant is a new ?reality? show on NBC.  I put reality in quotes because I didn?t realize reality was scripted.  It is very apparent that Mitsubishi, Coors and American Express are all sponsors of this show.  Throughout the 60-minute show these 3 companies happened to work themselves into casual conversation.

Shameless, scripted moments:

1. A guy is standing in line to interview for a job at the restaurant when Rocco, the owner, pulls up in his new Mitsubishi Endeavor.  The guy basically says, ?That?s how you get girls, you can?t lose when your name is Rocco and you drive a Mitsubishi.?

2. Rocco gives an extended speech on how his staff should go out of their way to get anything a customer wants.  If they want a frozen drink and the bartender says we don?t have a blender ? go buy one.  He randomly, or not so randomly, asks someone what he wants.  He conveniently says, ?A beer?.  He then picks out a woman and says don?t come back unless you have Coors for everyone.  They proceed to play a game of quarters and drink the Coors.

3. As the restaurant is getting close to opening, a woman approaches Rocco to tell him about all the invoices to be paid.  Rocco says, ?Call Amex, we have OPEN they can handle it?. 

4. Finally, or at least of the ones I caught, the beer delivery guy shows up from Coors.  He spends several minutes trying to track down the bar manager so he can deliver the beer.  The Coors truck gets several nice shots.

My intelligence was insulted.  I expect to be interrupted with ads hundreds of times a day but don?t try to be coy about it.  I essentially watched a 60-minute ad for these 3 companies.  The true commercials were for these companies and the show itself was an ad for these companies.  If I wanted to watch an infomercial I would stay awake until 2:00am. 

Be prepared for more and more of this type of advertising.  It is already happening in movies and has happened some on television but you can expect to see plenty of it this fall on television.

Update: I just found this article which validates everything I discussed.