Today, General Electric, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive and PepsiCo are probably contemplating dull, wonky Prodigy chat zones and World Wide Web home pages where consumers can download product ingredients, annual reports, and bitmaps from ad campaigns. But advertising works by sneaking your commercial into a show your target market is watching … Online advertising needs a 21st-century Uncle Miltie who can captivate the wired masses with amusing shtick while shamelessly hyping the sponsor who paid for it all. Adam Curry, meet Jack Benny.
Predictor: Clark, Chris
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Chris Clark, a public relations consultant for GCI Group in New York, writes:”Today, General Electric, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive and PepsiCo are probably contemplating dull, wonky Prodigy chat zones and World Wide Web home pages where consumers can download product ingredients, annual reports, and bitmaps from ad campaigns. But advertising works by sneaking your commercial into a show your target market is watching … By the late 1950s, advertisers finally understood the mechanics of the video medium, and television sponsorships mutated into the 30-second vignettes we tolerate today. Online advertising needs a 21st-century Uncle Miltie who can captivate the wired masses with amusing shtick while shamelessly hyping the sponsor who paid for it all. Adam Curry, meet Jack Benny.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Advertising/PR
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/clark.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney