Do the new realties of media require marketers to advertise their advertising?

How do you feel about the fact that Janet Jackson’s boob was the most replayed/reviewed moment in TiVo’s history? You should feel pretty good, not so much for the content itself, but for what it was telling us.

Let’s face it, art reflects life or, in this case, Jackson and Timberlake’s antics were essentially mirrors of a debauched public that evidently doesn’t get its fill of nudity, sexual explicitness and innuendo from Hollywood, the Web, the local magazine vendor, MTV… I could go on, but I won’t, as I digress.

Every time TiVo comes out with a new piece of data, Madison Avenue should be setting up one of those timesuck meetings in the aging Mahogany-filled conference rooms to discuss the short- to long-term implications of another nugget of insight, which up until now had never been remotely available to them.

Instead, they either dismiss the TiVo phenomenon and fall back on the crutch of the slower-than-expected adoption of PVRs (wasn’t this once the case with cable -- don’t answer that) or submit to a transparent round of lip service about the death of the same 30-second spot that pays their salaries.

To fully grasp the PVR Tipping Point that is coming, one simply has to cast one’s attention to a man called Atkins. Whether he passed away overweight or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that fast food chains (sorry, quick-service restaurants) like McDonalds and Subway now have Atkins or low-carb menus and specifically-ommissioned advertising to address this market. Supermarkets have entire sections dedicated to this audience. CPG giants have created new lines of food products and redesigned packaging to call attention to a diet regime that has taken the country by storm.

But here’s the thing: The Atkins diet itself is decades old. Somehow, something tipped this time around. In fact, when Slim Fast came out with its own low-carb products, I knew Atkins was beaming down on us like the Cheshire Cat on Ecstasy.

Furthermore, the Atkins Diet is essentially a fad. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how a low-carb life can be sustained indefinitely, despite the fact that we lived for millions of years as cavemen existing purely on protein.

What then, are the implications of living in a TiVo world? For starters, it is incumbent upon us, as well as those that pay our salaries, to be giving serious thought to figuring out how best to evolve and guide this process as it continues to mature and gain momentum. Anything less would be tantamount to stakeholder negligence.

On-demand think-tanks need to be set up and funded by the likes of companies like P&G, as opposed to embarrassing themselves by jumping on the Super Bowl toilet paper bandwagon. Solutions need to be developed to help creatives craft and fine-tune their messages to adapt to their new surroundings.

Here are some ideas that draw on such implications:

• Being last or first in any advertising pod is paramount to increasing the chance of being seen. Are media buyers factoring this into the equation?

• Following on from this thought, expect to see a change in the final five to 10 seconds of the already threatened 30-second. The ability to reinforce and sustain a key selling point, brand impression, tagline and/or URL is going to be critical to a) getting the consumer to hit the eight-second action replay button three to four times and/or b) giving the advertiser its money’s worth.

• Advertisers may have to figure out ways of “advertising their advertisements” -- I know that sounds crazy, but I didn’t write the book on this mess, I just tell the story. In other words, using tactics such as TiVo showcases -- as well as other marketing touchpoints including packaging, print and, yes, even online -- marketers will need to work harder to get people’s consideration of their attention. This clearly doesn’t work for all brands, but it’s a shot in the arm for the advertisers that are known for their creativity and/or the ones who create specific commercials that are part of a process, experience or solution consumers will possibly look forward to, anticipate or be incentivized to seek out. Examples: “Terry Tate is back. Watch him burst back onto the scene on Thursday night during the Friends Finale”, or Mitsubishi sending out a note to its opt-in lists to inform them that the next SeeWhatHappens commercial will air on Sunday during NASCAR. While these examples are somewhat contrived and could be seen as short-term fixes to long-term problems, they are, nevertheless, experiments that could reveal profound insights.

In many respects, this learning is no different to the interactive world. We are currently doing very little to raise our collective games in the creative arena. We’re either too far on the extreme of response-based advertising or paddling in the polar-opposite camp of plonking TV ads online. We’ve neglected the creative community and, in so doing, abandoned a rather constipated Golden Goose.

I am constantly reminded of the anecdote of the first TV commercials, which looked like repurposed radio ads. I’ll expand on this thought in coming weeks, but for now, let’s acknowledge that in order to fully embrace the potential and implications of a new medium, we need to first do our collective due diligence to determine its role, its capabilities and how consumers relate, react and interact with it in the first place.