Big Bad ChadBig Bad Chad

NOON -- Alltel's Chad has more friends than you do.

More MySpace friends anyway. More than 3,600.

If Geico's caveman commercials spawned a TV series, what will Hollywood do with Alltel's trendy cool-guy pitchman, Chad?

I'm just curious. The cavemen weren't particularly funny, but someone in desperate need of an idea took a liking to them. The Chad from Alltel spots are also a miss, but it wouldn't shock me in the least to see Chad handing out Oscars or greeting heads of state, given how perversely integrated advertising is becoming with everything else.

The Alltel Chad campaign has hatched enough elaborate online gimmicks to show that clearly lots of effort is going into making insufferably smug Chad as ubiquitous as that irksome "Can you hear me now?" guy from Verizon.

If MySpace statistics are an indicator of anything but time truly wasted, Chad's future is very bright, even if his TV spots are a bore.

— Phil Harvey, Barely Managing Editor, Light Reading