Frequent readers of WebSlog (both of you) might recall an entry from back in June about an infomercial being developed by Bart Durham, a Nashville attorney.

Flipping around a couple of nights ago, I caught “Coach Foster Fights Back,” a serialized dramatization of a personal injury trial fought and won by Durham. The show runs in one- or two-minute segments wherever Bart can buy time cheap and drives viewers to the firm’s website to view more clips or catch up on previous ones.

The story line is pretty straight forward. The acting is somewhere between Univision novellas and Lifetime made-for-tv movies. One can imagine that the various characters in the serial will be broadly drawn characitures ... the earnest doctor reporting the paralyzation of the title character following a collision with a truck. The re-po man with the heart of gold but a job to do. The fresh-faced young lawyer in to protect a working man's rights against the heartless juggernaut of the truck drivers insurnace company and lawyers.

It’s a local adaptation of a national spate of serialized long-form TV commercials that BMW, NBC and others have been dabbling in. Call it Infomercials for the TiVo generation. I haven’t seen a huge amount of local chatter on Coach Foster but I’ll bet this goes over huge for Durham in generating new business.

On a larger scale, tactics like this can call as ad people up short.

It's no secret that we hipster adkrafters often (over)regard what we do as part art and part science. And with that regard comes, at times, an overinflated belief in the mid- to long-term social impact of what we do. The fact is that we work on campaigns that speak to a buyer in the language he aspires to speak and hopefully sell some stuff in the process. Not every consumer uses the same words or understands the words the same way we do.

There's a reason that personal trial lawyer spots often start out with the question "Have you been hurt in an auto accident?" It's simple. It's direct. And it rings straight through to the poor schmuck who lays carpet all day and has no health insurance. "You work hard," the spot tells us. "You got hurt. And now, your employer wants to get this matter behind him, probably screwing you in the process."

I throw out my back loading brochures into my car and a) my insurance pays for my treatment, b) my company goes out of its way to help me recover, including, possible, covering my out-of-pocket. They do it to lessen their liability but also because it's the right thing to do.

Now, if I blow out my knees laying carpet for Major Homebuilders Amalgamated, Inc. and I can't work anymore, what am I going to do? Can't get Social Security yet. Don't have long-term disability insurance. SOmeone's going to pay. And then I see the Coach Foster thing on TV.

What do you in the WebSlog Army think I'm going to do? What would you do?