Comcast’s New Remote Control Now Advertises Comcast-Distributed Kids Movie

Hey kids, isn’t vertical integration awesome? Thanks to Comcast’s acquisition of NBC/Universal, the cable giant can now use its latest high-tech remote control to advertise its feature films directly to your living room! Let’s all cheer for cross-promotional, cross-platform, market-targeted, gibberish-spouting synergy!!

Last week, Comcast boasted on its corporate blog that users of its new voice-enabled remote controls could speak “Minionese,” the hilariously family friendly and profitable language spoken by the Minions in the upcoming film release The Minions, distributed by Universal.

Say something in Minionese into the remote and it speaks back to you in Minionese, along with taking you to various pieces of content curated by Comcast to promote The Minions, opening July 10 in a theater full of kids you’ll want to avoid if you enjoy your sanity.

The idea of turning your remote control — for which Comcast customers pay a pretty penny each month — into a de facto toy that is then being used to advertise a movie with a kid-centric audience didn’t exactly win over Josh Golin, Associate Director at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

“It’s extremely disappointing that Comcast is already using its voice-enabled remotes to manipulate kids,” Golin tells Consumerist. “Young children, the film’s target audience, won’t understand that this is just a ploy to get them to want to see the movie and buy Minions merchandise. It’s bad enough to target young children with clearly delineated commercials, but to use technology to wow kids and mask the fact that you are, in fact, advertising is deceptive, unfair, and unethical.”

[via IBtimes.com]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist