I went to see the Jimmy Awards, which is the live Broadway awards show for promising young talent from musical theater clubs in high schools across the country. It was devised by and put on by the Nederlander Organization, a Broadway theater production company that owns a bunch of theaters on Broadway in New York, and similar theaters in cities across the country. I'm told many of them go on to successful acting careers singing in Broadway musicals.
In the middle of this awards show where high school kids are costumed and performing show tunes from famous Broadway musicals live, competing for the awards, the kids were forced to shill for Disney during an approximately 10-minute-long live advertisement where they rattled off the history of Disney's Broadway musicals and raved about their success. But this show, the Jimmy Awards, is supposed to be for these high school musical theater performers, and is something they'll remember fondly all their lives, so it seems kind of cynical to force them to perform a lengthy promo for Disney's Broadway musicals (listing off the entire catalog one-by-one in chronological order, and mentioning that Disney got a 99-year lease on a newly constructed or renovated theater on Broadway, yadda yadda.) right smack in the middle of the show where they're competing for a coveted prize and hoping to be discovered for their dream of a successful musical theater career on Broadway.
I overheard several people complaining about the inappropriateness of this lengthy Disney promo as I was exiting the theater, and it seemed, from what I could tell, that it generally left a bad taste in the mouths of many of the audience members. And actually, before the show started, they showed a list of the donors who made the show possible projected up on a screen, and then they showed Disney and some other group as "Super Sponsors", or "Mega Donors" or some such title. The Nederlander Organization, who created this awards show, named the "Jimmy Awards" after their now deceased founder James M. Nederlander, and put on by them in one of their Broadway theaters, was in the middle of the list of the regular, run of the mill, sponsors. But Disney not only insists upon being listed separately from everyone else, but in way larger lettering and with some special title, and on top of that they insist that the kids competing in the awards show perform this big, long, extremely detailed advertisement for Disney musicals when it's supposed to be the contestants' evening and show, and they're already nervous about performing and competing and making their dreams come true and so forth.
Oh well: maybe it took the contestants' minds off their nervousness and demonstrated how well they could remember lines, or read from a teleprompter live in stage in front of an audience, or whatever skills they're trying to show that they possess that would make them into big Broadway musical stars of the future. But I thought, based upon the reactions of those audience members around me at the show and exiting afterwards, this big promo Disney forced the kids to perform largely backfired on them. Not that it will keep anyone from going to the Disney musicals I'd guess, but still, advertising and promos are supposed to generate interest and good feelings and so forth, and this may have done the opposite. Still, though, everyone seemed to notice and remember it, so it did accomplish probably the biggest goal of advertising/promos: making everyone remember. But after making the contestants work for them performing a prolonged promo, did Disney pay them anything for doing it? Generally people who promote products are paid for their services, and if these kids weren't, after such an extended advertisement, that would be inappropriate indeed.
There was a dandruff shampoo ad campaign when I was a kid that showed someone scratching his head, and people around him would look suspicious or disgusted, especially women, and the announcer said: "That little itch could mean you have dandruff." I hated that ad campaign because it was coercive, and it made everyone self-conscious about scratching their heads all the time, but I still remember it. (During a recent World Cup soccer match, the commentator said Mexico's playing left the Germans scratching their heads, and I said: "That little itch could mean they have dandruff.) I especially have never wanted to buy Head & Shoulders shampoo because I found it distasteful, and I always remembered it was Head & Shoulders; although I don't have dandruff, so maybe that's a bigger reason I've never bought it, and if I did have dandruff, maybe I would buy it.
