Accidental media

Like many thousands of other people with a weblog this season, I posted a short piece about the fabulous christmas display created by Carson Williams a couple weeks back. I also tossed in some information about the song/album/band that I thought might be useful. End of story? Not quite!

As many people know, Miller is now running a large snippet of a much cleaner version of the video as their holiday advertisement for Miller Lite. I saw it on Christmas eve during one of the early NFL games and from what I gather, it's being run quite often. Cool beans! I'm sure Mr. Williams and Trans-Siberian Orchestra were both well compensated.

I'd really love to know what this has done for TSO sales. Wizards in Winter appeals to a wide age group (even my Mom loves that track). I know of several purchases of The Lost Christmas Eve inspired just by this infrequently read writer. Multiply by thousands, toss in the wide readership of Snopes and the word of mouth multiplier being added by Miller... I'm guessing this will be a killer sales season.

The lesson here is one of omission. A different label might have freaked out (oh my, we're not profiting from this somehow) and sued Carson Williams. All the follow up attention created by a fan with a neat idea would have been lost (or worse, turned into negative publicity).