In 19982 Ridley Scott dared to look into the future, seeing a world of over consumption, decay and ruin. You could say he had a bit of a gothic Gotham outlook. All his colors were muted, it was perpetually raining, and fiery smoke stacks littered Los Angeles 2019.

That movie is as captivating to me today, as it was in 1982. Prophetic would be a word I would use to describe it. Like Aldous Huxleys “A Brave New World” or Orwells “1984″, Blade Runner did not see the future as a happy playground; rather, Ridley portrayed the future on his observations of rampant consumerism and excess.

Thus I find it amusing to see a vision of Scotts come to fruition. No, the industrial sky is not burning over L.A. Japan has not taken over, although China is closing that gap, and we’re still at least ten years from when we worry about Androids dreaming of electric sheep.

The dream that did come to reality is one of the most epic images of the Blade Runner movie. The giant sky blimps floating through the air, P.A.’s blaring “Let’s go to the Off-World!” Moving images floating, eerily through the night. The imagery was amazing. The future manifestation of interruption marketing, always on, always cramming its message into your ear drums.

There I was, twenty six years later, driving down the West Side Highway, headed north. I came around a bend, and traffic almost came to a standstill. It wasn’t your usual traffic snarl. There weren’t even that many cars on the highway. Off to the right, a bright video sign prompted me of cheap storage space, the lights almost blinding. This too was not enough to make New Yorkers slow their commute.

My eyes crawled the night, off into the distant inky dark, beyond the George Washington Bridge. A glowing orb, floating like a monolithic monitor over Times Square, cast rays of light down the Hudson River, into my window. Like a lemming, I pumped the breaks, and began to wallow in its sun like glow.

Like all others on that highway, we were creeping down the road, until a point of awareness broke the trance, and all carried on. I reached that point of a reality snap. Suddenly I was aware that floating up, way up in the dark night was a Giants NFL game being pumped across Northern New Jersey… An NFL Game.

It wasn’t a glorious “Off-world” ad, mesmerizing me with chants to “go to the colonies”. It was the New York offensive line, and I was witness to these football giants, come night-time titans.

DirectTV, in a brilliant stroke of genius, has been flying their video blimp over cities that’ve had their NFL games blacked out due to cable operator and licensing disputes. They could of just followed major events, but choose an absolutely perfect stance for their brand.

The floating blimp boarders ‘rule breaker’, broadcasting blacked out games for free. The high in the sky message alludes to heavenly thoughts, other worldly benefits from above. Quite simply, it touches every level of cool, and might just be one of the last great acts of interruption marketing.

While this isn’t new, it is still a welcome site, and a beautiful graduation of technology, media, marketing and branding. This is the sort of thing the future is made of. It runs counter to Al Reis rules of convergence; it defies the normality of what was. It is a distant rumble of the digital storm to come, a calling to all digital savants…