In the story, Ralphie desperately wants a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring (in addition to a Red Rider air rifle) and when he finally gets it, he uses it to decode a message from the Little Orphan Annie radio broadast. After feverishly working the decoder, he reveals the message: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” With that a dejected Ralphie mutters “A crummy commerical? Sonavabitch.”

All of which got me thinking. While scripted stupidity(see post above) may work in reality TV, it won’t work in the selling environment. At least not anymore. Consumers don’t want to(or have to) listen to inane selling pitches or tired adspeak. They want to be a part of interesting, on-going conversations that just happen to be about a brand. Conversations that can live and thrive in a Tv spot, a podcast, text message or whatever. Like the brand conversations created around brands like Tazo tea, Mini Cooper or Vitamin Water. These kind of conversations are smart, creative and, more important, they give people something cool to talk about, especially to each other.

So my midnight (more or less) impression was that brands in 2007 will be defined less by the ads created for them, and more by the conversations created around them.

Tuni, I don’t know if your tongue was in your cheek as you wrote your comment. Just know my tongue was certainly in my cheek when I made this post.

But there are some harsh realities we must all deal with these days, i.e. Toyotathon did end yesterday. Sorry.

On a side note, I was forced to watch MTV the other night (yes, forced), I think that the show was called ‘Dismissed’. Nothing defines ‘unreal TV’ more than scripted reality TV.