This bit of “non-news” news is part of the marketing by the ad agency. Same with the Cheerios commercial.
• Create up a nice ad with a little edge, a tease, a little morsel. This is the bait.
• Wait for the “fish” to bite. Harvest any anger over the commercials from social media (Twitter, Reddit, etc).
• Create tsk-tsk PR news releases to feed to the MSM. “Can you believe how hateful some people are about a family/singing/puppies/apple pie”. It does not matter that it is one whack-a-doodle in his Mom’s basement posting the hate.
• Local news runs the PR releases as a story, mentioning the product, but of course!
• These “news stories” feed back into social media sites, talk radio as call-in subject-bait, etc. Product is mentioned yet again. People go to YouTube to watch the commercials.
Now that’s what you call an ad buy worth its weight in gold. It’s all advertising. It’s not real. Don’t be played.
So we should buy their product to prove we weren’t played? Huh?