So more than 60 years after their original broadcasts, audiences in 2015 watched Dean in episodes of "Campbell Soundstage," heralded as "presented for your enjoyment by Campbell's soups"; "General Electric Theater"; "Kraft Television Theatre," which ended with the announcer Ed Herlihy encouraging recipe-seekers to "just send a postcard" to Kraft at "Box 1718, Chicago 77, Illinois"; "Robert Montgomery Presents," also billed as "The Johnson's Wax Program"; "Philco Television Playhouse"; "United States Steel Hour," and "Westinghouse Studio One Summer Theatre." (The DVDs include episodes of "Armstrong Circle Theater," "Hallmark Hall of Fame" and "Lux Video Theatre.")
Now it's unlikely that anyone who watched the episode of "Campbell Soundstage" on TCM ran out and bought a case of Campbell's soups, even if he or she noticed the images of the Campbell's Kids festooning the closing credits. And it would be hard for even the most ardent Dean fan today to thank Lux or Philco for believing in him early in his career.
Still, the long afterlife for the episodes is a reminder of how marketers -- and consumers -- benefited back in the day from an advertising model that was discarded after being outdated. Among the other pluses: the ability to reduce interruptions by embedding paid pitches into the plots of programs, and increasing the memorability of ad messages by having cast members deliver commercials. Also, sponsored shows, with their branded, "Brought to you by" benevolence, typically had fewer commercials and fewer commercial breaks. And you never knew what might happen when commercials were delivered live, as seen in the video below.
Considering the difficulties confronting Madison Avenue because of technologies like ad skipping -- the new TiVo Bolt, for instance, lets owners avoid entire commercial breaks -- and ad blocking, it's no surprise that some strategies from the Golden Age are being revisited and re-evaluated.
On the theory that it's hard to block ads when they're part of a program, brands will be woven into the plots of the six episodes of a series on USA Network, starring the former adman Donny Deutsch (pictured at top), that will premiere Nov. 10. Viewers of "Donny!" will see Deutsch turn to the camera, break the fourth wall and tout sponsors' products such as Hak's barbecue sauce and Purity vodka; in one episode, he'll clean his home with a Dyson vacuum.
Some advertisers are trying out sponsorships, among them Sysco, with a series on Food Network, "Chopped: Impossible," that incorporates a chef who's a Sysco brand spokesman. Others are boomeranging to the "Brought to you by" era, such as General Electric, which is co-developing a new cable series, "Breakthrough,">