Remembering products without commercials

I started my day (like usual) by going to hulu and watching last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And shows on hulu always begin with "The following program is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by _____." But this time it said "...with NO commercial interruption by VISA." Excellent! And that got me thinking (and blogging) that VISA chose to not waste my time with ineffective, throwaway commercials, but rather just proposed the slogan "Let's go commercial-free." Is this not admirable? But with a giant company like VISA, they are taking little risk that they won't be remembered. Similar to how Radiohead took little risk in letting the buyer choose the price of their most recent album "In Rainbows". I doubt that other companies (like Fred Savage Sausage) would have the cohones to waste their advertising dollars on a 10 second uncommercial. But long commercials don't always work either. In fact, I saw the full frickin' trailer for Taken for about 2 weeks straight and I still had absolutely no urge to see Liam Neeson's "very particular set of skills".

Obviously, no commercials has been done before in some capacity. I remember some sponsors constantly on screen during the World Cup, for example. And they usually brag "without commercial interruption by ____". But what if more and more TV shows started going "commercial-free" or with purely product placement. Would it still be special? Will they reach a point where they overdo it and we actually don't even notice the companies that are making our lives commercial-free? I doubt we will ever get that far, but I still find it interesting to talk about... and I'm talking because VISA didn't show me a commercial this morning.

By the way, for those of you who didn't see Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer last week, I highly recommend watching it.