The Uncommercial

Layers of Irony are Locking Us in

I just watched an episode of The Colbert Report with heavy, heavy brand integration into the content. Product placement is as old as media, so this is no surprise, but the way the brand is positioned seems a bit fresh and edgy. Combining scatological humor and the brand name, Colbert makes his audience feel like he’s subverting his advertiser by connecting it with low-brow humor.

He’s not.

What he is doing is getting the brand message to his audience, associating himself with the brand, and letting his humor (which is what his audience values him for in any case) rub off on the brand. It’s exactly what the brand wants.

This is the “uncommercial”, and it has become the dominant type of advertising in the 21st century. It feels and looks like subversion, but it isn’t. In fact, what it does is subvert subversion itself.

It does this in many ways.

Firstly, speaking about the irony of this kind of advertising makes people look decidedly uncool. I imagine many people have already stopped reading this post, shaking their head, dismissing me as someone who just doesn’t get it.

Secondly, it makes even talking about this subversiveness difficult. Every additional layer of irony in any form of communication makes it harder to analyze, and even harder to communicate that analysis to another person.

Finally, it makes the brand seem somehow edgy, hip, different than the other evil mega-brands. This gives the brand in question an added element of cool, making it even more desirable—and, by contrast, people who dislike this tactic become extremely uncool.

It’s an old tactic, and I’m not the first to point it out. As native advertising grows, and as social media becomes the glue to integrate ad campaigns across platforms and screens, and as media itself becomes more fractured, the uncommercial will become more common.