General Electric and BBDO are launching GE's "One-Second Theater" ad campaign, showing humorous scenes from commercials re-edited for digital video recorders, MP3 players and the internet, writes the NY Times (via paidContent). The move underscores how giant marketers are seeking new ways to reach consumers. The multimillion-dollar campaign broke today.

The campaign includes "commercials within commercials" (ads with embedded material that only shows up frame by frame on DVRs); podcasts purporting to be from the animals featured in the ads; a microsite for the campaign, including examples of how the embedded ads work and a schedule of NBC shows where the ads are appearing; and the imaginary biography on MySpace of Elli, a dancing elephant that stars in some of GE's "One-Second Theater" commercials.

"We're harkening back to an old idea, in combination with new technology," said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer for the North American operations of BBDO, part of the Omnicom Group. Decades ago, GE and BBDO created a half-hour weekly television series, "General Electric Theater," which appeared on CBS from February 1953 to September 1962, and the host for all but the first year was an actor named Ronald Reagan.

GE is among major marketers devoting a growing part of ad budgets to new media. For example, Adidas has started releasing a series of short films by directors like Roman Coppola that can be watched on handheld devices or websites like ifilm.com, video.google.com and youtube.com and can be downloaded from the Apple Computer iTunes store (itunes.com).