News that the Churchill Insurance dog (“Ohh, yess!”) is going to muscle his way onto the stage in no less than 22 pantomimes this Christmas will no doubt be greeted by howls and even whimpers from many quarters.

Bringing such a seemingly unsubtle commercial tie-in, reportedly worth in excess of £100,000 into theatres, particularly for family orientated shows like pantos, is sure to make a lot of people feel very uneasy.

But this is the reality already facing TV and online in the digital age as the audience becomes more savvy at ignoring/skipping through the sponsors messages that make things possible. It’s very interesting to see the theatre industry get in there first while the broadcast regulators worry about how to relax their laws.

It may not be pretty, but developing and creating characters for ads that then take on a wider life of their own is only a reverse twist from Disney or Star Wars characters helping shift McDonalds burgers. The new patrons of the arts are the nodding cuddly toys.

As long as the audience are sufficiently media literate they should be able to take this kind of thing for what it is (something that helps keep their ticket price down for starters). And that’s a good argument for actively teaching such literacy in schools, particular in an age of Wikipedia ‘facts’ and fanatical websites on health/religion/football being absorbed by otherwise impressionable minds.

Although it feels a bit brutal to have sponsored characters leading the “oh no he’s not”s in festive stage shows, this new era of highly creative advertising delivery actually shows how far our collective cultural intelligence has had to come in a digital era. A previous generation simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend the message, but today an insurance company can make money from putting a dog into a panto without having to plaster their name everywhere. Somewhere that’s actually quite subtle.