Grand Designs

The modern ad in Britain is under attack. A recent BBC4 documentary The Rise and Fall of the Ad Man recalled a golden age when programs interrupted dramatic commercials rather than the other way around. Manchester’s The Guardian piled on with a recent blog asserting that “modern ads are rubbish.”

Hold on now. Advertising Age reports that viewers in the U.K. are poised to watch their first prime-time “themed” ad break. Channel 4 invited marketers with a bent for design to buy space next month during its top-rated show “Grand Designs.” The program features people building new homes from scratch as they pursue their architectural dreams. The design theme will continue through the ads. “The themed break creates value for advertisers,” says Mike Parker, Channel 4’s head of strategic sales. “People watch commercials in a different way and are more likely to stick with it."

Marketers have been challenged to innovate in an era when viewers with DVRs zap through commercials. Channel 4 researchers are looking forward to what they find out during their “Grand Designs" experiment. But the Brits aren’t the only ones tinkering with their model. The president of TimeWarner Global Media Group, John Partilla, suggests he and his team are working with Turner networks on themed breaks of their own. So viewers who tune in for an evening of comedy might be laughing through the breaks too.