Ads, ads everywhere!

Consider this an incomplete tirade as I'm not going to take the time to target our crass consumerism around the holiday period. Instead, I'm focussing on the "viral" nature of advertising and what may or may not be considered effective. Dove has effectively used Youtube, as have many others. At least in many cases you can watch or look at something and know immediately it is an ad. Sometimes though, they are a little sneakier. Take "Will it blend?" for example. This is a site where a guy regularly puts things in the blender to answer the age-old question "Will it blend?". While it might have been simply entertainment, and it can be entertaining, there are enough links to information about the brand of blender for me to feel pretty comfortable that this is all meant to drum-up business. Still, if you make something interesting/entertaining/stupid enough that people feel the need to blog about it, watch it, or whatever then maybe you're just an advertising genius and we should bow down before you and buy six copies of your latest product (one for all of our friends) and get all excited about the new model coming out in '07. ;) That, or maybe we should just watch it, enjoy it, but take it (like everything) with a grain of salt.