Commercials in Your Dreams? Coming soon to a Nap Near You
According to advertising industry experts, the sleep barrier – that seven to eight hours in the day the average consumer’s mind is made inaccessible to ads by its natural resting cycle – is about to be broken as newly innovated technology promises to effectively deliver product placements within a dozing brain. Reportedly, the savvy consumer of the future will have the opportunity to forgo having to pay high monthly internet, cable and satellite television bills by electing to have a device no bigger than a creamy, chocolaty Cadbury Egg inserted into their cerebral cortex, which once activated by REM sleep signal induction from the pons in their brain, will begin to imbue their dreams with positive subliminal imagery of certain commercial products.
But how can a company be sure this new technology really works? Judging from the results of several trial studies, the future looks bright for the next frontier in advertising, as can be concluded from the testimony of some of its test subjects:
“I was dreaming of having sex with my sister, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but then all of a sudden I looked down and my penis was inside that new cordon bleu sandwich from Jack in the Box. It filled me with this really warm sensation, and although I couldn’t taste it with my penis, I knew just from touching it that it was delicious,” noted one subject.
Another subject reported, “I dreamt that I gave birth to a litter of rat babies which immediately started attacking my leg, chewing it to the bone with their sharp little teeth. I was terrified. But then I went to CompUSA, bought a new Mac, got online with my new AOL account, went to shop.com, which has just about everything you’re looking for at prices that are impossible to beat, and bought a new leg and the new U2 album while I was at it.”
Indeed, this new technology appears to be a “dream come true” for advertisers, but does it spell an imminent end for more traditional ads? Not so, says one insider:
“No way will dream ads outmode other forms of advertising. Did TV ads put an end to billboards? Of course they didn’t, so don’t expect them to disappear now, much less expect Tony Soprano to stop stuffing his face full of Krispy Kremes and McDonalds in every episode of The Sopranos while conducting two minute conversations with his cronies parked smack dab in front of an Office Max or Burger King any time soon.”
The insider then added, “And that incentive for free cable and internet service will probably disappear after enough people sign on. I mean after all, what are they going to do about it?”