A modest proposal

After yet another round of familiar, boring commercials during  this past weekend's NFL playoffs, I was once again struck by the inability of both corporations and their ad agencies to move beyond the dead, zombified concept of showing the same commercial over and over and over during a show, to the point where the unfortunate viewer sometimes will see the identical spot three, four, even five times within a given half hour.

I say again: This is no different than telling the same joke repeatedly and expecting the audience to laugh with every rendition as if they'd just heard it for the first time.

And when the joke is bad to begin with, why, you're really taking your product down to a place you don't want it to go in your prospective customer's psyche.

But enough whining, joe — how about offering something positive instead of more of the same old refrain?

OK.

Here's my suggestion: Instead of spending millions of dollars to create a car commercial where some vehicle pulls an airplane or a train — true, this is a situation most of us run into every now and again — why not take the money and dole it out to people who'll create commercials so cheaply that each one need air only once before heading to its YouTube channel?

No, I'm not advocating a contest like a number of brands have already done, to supplement their main advertising thrust; rather, I'm saying junk the main event and go with the alternatives.

Because the current model died when YouTube was born.