NEW YORK — As media-savvy young audiences build ever stronger resistance to conventional advertising, brave scientists in our entertainment laboratories are developing powerful new strains of commercial messages.
There is, at present, no cure for conditions such as cognitive rejection -- "zoning out," in laymen's terms -- but with the billions of dollars being poured into ad budgets, there at least is hope of a breakthrough that could enable marketers to connect with their target demographic.
On the front lines of this quest:
* A pitch for "How She Move," an urban dance movie that opened Friday, was woven into an MTV reality series about teenage girls preparing for a Sweet 16 party.
* A "mockumentary" about a quartet of self-deluded musicians was launched on music channel VH1 in service of the "Rock Band" video game.
* Digitized supermodels vied for a contract with Ford Models in a computer-generated virtual world.
* Young fashion designers backed by Target Corp. became the subjects of a series of mini-dramas.
These ideas all emerged lately from the workshops of MTV Networks, which, like most of its entertainment-industry rivals, is increasingly trying to help its advertisers find fresh ways to keep viewers engaged during the commercial "pods" between its shows and, through so-called integrated marketing, within the shows themselves. They also frequently involve shows, movies or games developed at other divisions of MTV parent Viacom Inc.
"The 30-second commercial is not dead, but it's dying a slow death," said Frank Zazza, head of consultancy iTVX and the marketer who famously placed Reese's Pieces candy in the path of Steven Spielberg's lovable alien, E.T.
Integrated marketing is a high enough priority at Viacom for Chief Executive Philippe P. Dauman to have mentioned it more than once in recent talks with Wall Street analysts as an important source of revenue growth.
All audiences are getting used to consuming media in new ways -- on computers and cellphones and via video-on-demand, for example -- but it's particularly true of people in the 12 to 24 age group, said John Shea, executive vice president for integrated marketing at MTVN Music & Logo Group, which, besides MTV and VH1, includes the country music channel CMT and the gay-themed channel Logo.
