Thursday’s The Colbert Report began with a congratulatory anniversary card containing a couple small bills. At the close of the segment, Stephen Colbert mentioned that the dollars had some writing on it: “The Colbert Show. Mon – Thurs 11:30p. Comedy Central.”
Unlike his Wikiality stunt a few months back — in which he instructed listeners to go post factually innacurate information about the elephant population on Wikipedia — there was no clear directive here. However, I wonder how many viewers took out their wallets during the commercial break and wrote those same words on their own money? Does that translate into millions of free ads?
Assume it all happens like that. Colbert may have not had that in mind (probably didn’t). It could also have been deliberate but perhaps intentionally curtailed to avoid legal liability (after all, it is technically illegal to write on currency). More to the point, if thousands of bills start showing up as an ad for the program, what does that say about (a) the power of popular television, (b) the compliance of viewers, and (c) the level of threat the show may be perceived to hold for Republicans? I occasionally see a reference to wheresgeorge.com, so maybe this sort of offline Web 2.0 viral marketing ploy has some traction in the future.
