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sophiaserpentiaThe other day i posted this link to a video of the Mooninite guys refusing to talk to the press about anything other than haircuts. There's a lot to learn from this, not from what they're saying but from what this event represents on several levels.
The first is the nature of advertising in the future. The 'paid spot' in media presentations -- commercials during TV programs and ads in magazines and newspapers and on billboards, and that sort of thing -- is becoming a thing of the past. They'll still be there in abundance, of course, but mostly as reinforcement more than anything else. The thing is, they just aren't effective anymore; we go around them on TiVo and simply ignore them when we can.
What advertisers want now is to embed their message into the viral information networks of the internet, into the culture itself, so that you cannot have a cultural experience or interchange without receiving a paid advertising message. They've already been doing product placements in movies, TV shows, and video games for some time now. And now, i've seen the future and the future is 'guerrila marketing.'
See, for advertisers the holy grail is getting their product widely seen as 'cool.'
In fact, i've been pondering the nature of what it means for a person or thing to be 'cool' or 'not cool' for quite a while, and i keep coming back to the relationship between popular culture and advertising. Most attempts to brand a product as cool are just darn predictable: a cartoon character with sunglasses and a leather jacket telling kids to buy a particular brand of cereal, that sort of thing. Every now and then, though, an advertiser hits paydirt and product awareness takes on a life of its own. When this happens, the promoter just has to sit back and watch consumers gleefully do their product placement for them. If people are posting in Myspace and YouTube and Livejournal about how great and cool they think a product is, their work is done.
By that measure, the success of this Mooninite thing in Boston is immeasurable.
The other thing i saw in that video was the first stirrings of a new form of dissent against the news media. I don't know if it was a genuine display of youthful rebellion or whether it was a contrived attempt to simulate youth rebellion (i kinda lean towards the latter) but either way i sense a large and growing current of discontent and distrust among young people for the mass news media.
And who can frickin' blame them? The news media are polished, professional manipulators and liars. Anyone who has ever been to an event -- especially a protest -- and then watched news coverage of the event afterwards knows what i mean. They've been spouting crap for years, and in the name of "getting both sides of a story" have been lending credence to discredited ideas that otherwise would have died out years ago, like Intelligent Design and global warming doubt. The news media rely on the fiction that they are without agenda, when a critical examination of their viewpoint shows a distinct tendency to reinforce the corporatist, classist, white supremacist agenda.
The thing is, nothing happens very far from a blog these days. People who witness or experience events firsthand are writing in their blogs about it -- or, even more impressively, posting cellphone video of it -- and this news spreads virally. Speaking from direct experience brings a dimension of meaning lost in accounts by the news media. The Mooninite guys didn't need sympathetic coverage by the news media (you can clearly hear threats from reporters of unfavorable coverage if they didn't take the conference 'more seriously,' by which they meant, going along with the reporters' script) because they knew every kid with a Myspace was going to post a link to the video -- and that THIS form of information exchange is what really counts these days.
There is always a place for objective coverage, but we are finally balancing this out with a much needed infusion of subjectivity. (For the record, i wouldn't want only subjective news to spread either, but we've really needed this.)
The first is the nature of advertising in the future. The 'paid spot' in media presentations -- commercials during TV programs and ads in magazines and newspapers and on billboards, and that sort of thing -- is becoming a thing of the past. They'll still be there in abundance, of course, but mostly as reinforcement more than anything else. The thing is, they just aren't effective anymore; we go around them on TiVo and simply ignore them when we can.
What advertisers want now is to embed their message into the viral information networks of the internet, into the culture itself, so that you cannot have a cultural experience or interchange without receiving a paid advertising message. They've already been doing product placements in movies, TV shows, and video games for some time now. And now, i've seen the future and the future is 'guerrila marketing.'
See, for advertisers the holy grail is getting their product widely seen as 'cool.'
In fact, i've been pondering the nature of what it means for a person or thing to be 'cool' or 'not cool' for quite a while, and i keep coming back to the relationship between popular culture and advertising. Most attempts to brand a product as cool are just darn predictable: a cartoon character with sunglasses and a leather jacket telling kids to buy a particular brand of cereal, that sort of thing. Every now and then, though, an advertiser hits paydirt and product awareness takes on a life of its own. When this happens, the promoter just has to sit back and watch consumers gleefully do their product placement for them. If people are posting in Myspace and YouTube and Livejournal about how great and cool they think a product is, their work is done.
By that measure, the success of this Mooninite thing in Boston is immeasurable.
The other thing i saw in that video was the first stirrings of a new form of dissent against the news media. I don't know if it was a genuine display of youthful rebellion or whether it was a contrived attempt to simulate youth rebellion (i kinda lean towards the latter) but either way i sense a large and growing current of discontent and distrust among young people for the mass news media.
And who can frickin' blame them? The news media are polished, professional manipulators and liars. Anyone who has ever been to an event -- especially a protest -- and then watched news coverage of the event afterwards knows what i mean. They've been spouting crap for years, and in the name of "getting both sides of a story" have been lending credence to discredited ideas that otherwise would have died out years ago, like Intelligent Design and global warming doubt. The news media rely on the fiction that they are without agenda, when a critical examination of their viewpoint shows a distinct tendency to reinforce the corporatist, classist, white supremacist agenda.
The thing is, nothing happens very far from a blog these days. People who witness or experience events firsthand are writing in their blogs about it -- or, even more impressively, posting cellphone video of it -- and this news spreads virally. Speaking from direct experience brings a dimension of meaning lost in accounts by the news media. The Mooninite guys didn't need sympathetic coverage by the news media (you can clearly hear threats from reporters of unfavorable coverage if they didn't take the conference 'more seriously,' by which they meant, going along with the reporters' script) because they knew every kid with a Myspace was going to post a link to the video -- and that THIS form of information exchange is what really counts these days.
There is always a place for objective coverage, but we are finally balancing this out with a much needed infusion of subjectivity. (For the record, i wouldn't want only subjective news to spread either, but we've really needed this.)
