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Every so often the comic strip Zippy the Pinhead depicts the title character wandering around chanting the same phrase throughout three or four panels. The humor in these strips “is to be found simply in th’ sensual pleasure of wordplay,” as creator Bill Griffith wrote in a tongue-in-cheek six-lesson series on “Understanding Zippy”.

The power of repetition was reinforced for me when, during a recent lethargic weekend, I caught up with a few television shows on Hulu.com, a service that makes episodes from a variety of series available online. Each episode comes with three breaks for commercials. Typically these breaks are between 15 and 30 seconds long, and feature a single sponsor’s ad.

Three 15- to 30-second breaks are just enough to imprint a sponsor’s message without the interruptions feeling truly intrusive. And through repeated viewings (usually of the same commercial), the messages stick quite effectively.

I sat through a commercial for a Taco Bell product – the Cheesy Beefy Melt – several times. Whether, as Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World, “sixty two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth” is debatable (I didn’t watch THAT many commercials). But I will say they make a man hungry.

Now, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve been to a Taco Bell during the last 40 years. But Taco Bell’s 15-second spot, which features the 1982 Modern English hit “Melt With You” as well as some rather stunning visuals, had its desired effect.

Cheesy Beefy Melt!
Cheesy Beefy Melt!
Cheesy Beefy Melt!

Granted, single commercial sponsorships are nothing new. Their legacy stretches back to the earliest days of television and radio, whether in the form of Texaco Star Theater or Esso’s underwriting of the Groucho Marx radio series Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. But the Web’s ability to link from site to site, and message to message, has breathed new life into single sponsorships.

If there is a flaw to the Taco Bell spot – and what would be the fun of mentioning it if there weren’t at least one? – it’s that the ad lacks a call for additional engagement with consumers. Viewers watching Hulu.com are already online, meaning unlike when they are watching TV they don’t need to switch mediums to log onto a Web site. Would it really have been so difficult to drum up a three-second screen with a link to additional content?

It’s not as though this content doesn’t already exist. Taco Bell has a link to a page that promotes a “cheesy love letter” (http://www.tacobell.com/cheesyloveletter/). This is most likely a leftover Valentine’s Day promotion, but as love knows no month, it could still be relevant.

So bully for Taco Bell’s willingness to extract a fair price, namely the imprinting of its commercials in return for content I want. But a raspberry to the chain for not making the most of the interactive medium.

A side, personal note: The Zippy the Pinhead strip is an acquired taste, and readers lacking the patience for Dada-inspired comics may be frustrated by it. But it is also one of the most beautifully drawn strips in syndication, and creator Griffith occasionally incorporates depictions of Americana, including a variety of roadside attractions, into it. (Click here for examples: http://www.zippythepinhead.com/pages/aaroadsidetour.html).

Throughout the years, the strip has featured railway car diners, such as midtown Manhattan’s Cheyenne Diner, which a) provided me with an awful lot of late-night coffee and b) closed for good this past weekend. The Cheyenne never had a frequent-diner program, nor did it promote itself through any media newer than the neon “Cheyenne” that stretched vertically from its roof. The diner held my loyalty simply by being an affordable place with an affable staff that served up better-than-average food and allowed me to sit in its booths frantically scribbling notes in newspaper margins. Many of those notes became columns.

Sic transit gloria heartburn.

Cheesy Beefy Melt!
Cheesy Beefy Melt!
Cheesy Beefy Melt!

To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com