Evil Genius: Big Bird Campaign Spoof Ad Gets Free Airplay
By Dave Armon, President, Critical Mention
The Obama campaign didn’t need to place a media buy to see TV airings of its new Big Bird satire ad spike today. News coverage containing the spot began at 5:14 a.m. ET on CNN’s “Early Start.” By 7:09, ABC’s Good Morning America had aired the ad, followed by CBS and NBC. It wasn’t until 10:05 that the commercial appeared on Fox News.
By the time this post was penned, shortly before 5:30 p.m. ET, there had been more than 60 airings of the spot during news programming – some of them full, 30-second runs and others edited portions.
For those who didn’t see the spoof, here’s the Big Bird connection:
“Bernie Madoff. Ken Lay. Dennis Kozlowski: Criminals. Gluttons of greed. And the evil genius who towered over them? Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” the ad says in a voice over.
We’ll keep watching to see whether this ad actually gets placed as a buy – versus its current status as a viral Internet video and free placement within TV newscasts.
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As this ad has backfired, free placement is suddeny not as desirable for team Obama!
As of 8:40 am ET today, all or a portion of this spot had aired inside 240 TV newscasts. No, we haven’t spotted any paid placements yet. — DA