• by Andrew Wilson , November 29, 2007

In an effort to separate Chevy from the crowd of advertisers at this year’s World Series on Fox, the creative minds over at GM Planworks used, well — the crowd. Chevy rolled out new ads in which eager fans appeared to be holding signs with video ads for the Chevy Malibu. These crowd shots were conceived for the brought-to-you-by segment of the broadcasts as a better way to catch viewers’ attention than the standard logo overlay. The live crowd shots weren’t actually live, though. The ads were pre-produced with a group of 50 or so “fans” posed in Fenway Park and Coors Field well before the games, and then slipped into the live broadcast at the appropriate moments. Whether or not many viewers were fooled by the “plausibly live” ads is debatable; what’s not debatable is that nearly everyone who watched the World Series noticed them.