don't be duped. the advertising companies have realized that the 30 second spot where they say "buy this product, it's the best one, it will do great things for you" is dead. No one buys the rhetoric anymore. (Compare that to 40-50 years ago when our culture was such that most people would say "really? That's the best one? Oh I'll have to be sure to buy that." I remember my grandparents being very trusting like that. It seems so naive now, but that's how advertising worked several decades ago.)
These days, given how skeptical we have gotten, and how quickly we change the channel / look away from the billboard, now the advertising companies are trying to figure out what technique is the new best way to get people to buy / get truly interested in/ be loyal to the object of their advertising campaign. Some are working hard at the product placement angle: so if viewers are going to change the channels when the commercials come on during The Apprentice, we'll make the product a major part of the show.... we'll get the viewer to imagine how they might sell this product in the streets of New York or design and event promoting the product... and then the idea goes, that viewer will be more likely to think -- hey I want that / I want to buy that when they are in the store. (Do you really think Trump + "the executives" cares about a badly-done party in a NYC bar to promote _X_? Hell no! It's the 20 minutes of screen time that _X_ gets while following around the group planning that party that matters.) Or Survivor... imagine being in a jungle for 23 days... you haven't had anything to eat besides some boiled snails. And then, all of a sudden you work your ass of and win a contest by a fraction of a second, and WOW for your reward you get a Coke and a Snickers !!! Man, wouldn't that taste good! Hey, I can go to the store across the street and get a Coke and a Snickers myself, right now, man that would taste good... yum, let me go buy that.... There are many other approaches -- I'm sure you see them everywhere, too. The text message / internet survey contest. The cool billboard with "no" ad that just has the URL to go to a website -- 16 zillion of them, all giving tiny clues, but none tying directly to an obvious product. Crazy MySpace promotions. I can see a push and pull between the advertising creatives and the corporate executives -- where the creatives are saying, hey, there's this cool new way to get to people, let's try this, and the conservative fearful executives are saying: why should we pay you to play on MySpace or to put up a zillion billboards that don't even have our product's name on it??? But as the fears of these executives subside, we will be seeing more and more and more and more of this kind of all-inclusive, 'secret' advertising. Infiltrating the "independent film" scene is just one more part of their 'try everything to find the next big hit' approach. I've seen film festivals that are all about getting indie filmmakers to create "short films" for major corporations like BMW and Nike and Dock Martin and American Express. The corporation gives the filmmaker $20,000 (or $5,000 or $50,000) -- which seems like a HUGE budget to us artists trying to make work on $0 or $500, but which is a total steal for a corporation use to paying _much_ more than that for a 30 second commercial. The terms of the deal is different every time, but it can be / is frequently like this: filmmaker gets to make "any film they want", with a plot and characters, and a cute / cool / action-packed story. (right —"any film they want". How about a film with characters who are gay or have lefty politics or ____? ) Frequently the product of the campaign does NOT have to be in the commercial (although I see filmmakers putting the product in anyway, just out of 'love' / appreciation for getting such a 'huge' budget for their 'artistic' work). Then the corporation looks cool to the indie film world for 'supporting the arts' -- and buzz spreads via word of mouth and the internet about how cool this thing is. The finished films are put on the corporation website with a lot of dressing to make the whole project seem like its about filmmaking / the arts // like it's a film festival or something. Tons of traffic is driven to the site by all the cool buzz.... and oh, while you are at the site, hey, you know, like, check out the shoes. And when you are in the show store and are trying to figure out which shoe is cooler... well, you know. Sometimes specific filmmakers are hired to make a film, other times there's an open contest held, and anyone can submit a film, which serves to create even more buzz. Again, the contest isn't usually a contest for an ad (although sometimes it is) -- it's an "independent film contest"... but at the root, the entire thing is an advertising campaign. I think it's confusing for people -- definitely blurring the line between art and adverting. And hey, many of us do work for major corporations, and many of us do make commercials for a living. Of course, that's a valid choice, and can be very creative... but at least in those cases you know you are working in advertising and you know you are making a commercial. You can put as much effort into the advertising that you want -- or not. You can take that money home and use it to make your own work. It gets weird to me when people are signing up for these campaign contests without realizing what's going on -- what the bottom line purpose of these things is. It seems like people's personal creative process and art-making is getting eaten alive by the advertising machines — and we don't even quite realize what's going on. Just check out "We Are the Media" and see how many "hey dudes, look at this coool contest" promos are listed. What in the world does that have to do with the idea of _we_ being the media? That's like We Are Getting Courted by 'the Man' to Make Media / Aren't We Cool / We Have Arrived. I think this solicitation by L'Oreal and Current TV is exactly one of these advertising campaign infiltrations. It's a major corporation realizing that just putting a perfectly gorgeous airbrushed face in slow-mo over a white background with amazing lighting doesn't really convince people of anything anymore. Every cosmetic and hair product 30-second spot is doing exactly the same thing -- so instead.... use some feminist rhetoric, mix in the embracing of the indie film / videoblogging world, add a bit of 'everyday-people' aesthetics -- in a kind of anti-perfection = _real_ = you can trust us... and wa-la, a whole new advertising craze is born. And we fall for it like my grandparents fell for the "our toilet cleaner works better than anyone else's" of 50 years ago. It's sad that the advertising world might be all over videoblogging before the general public is. (That didn't happen to text blogging.) It's sad that this personal creativity explosion is getting eat alive this fast. I don't want everyday people to spend their time making short films that corporations are using to look cool. I want everyday people to make new work, different than the masses, unusual and perfect in its own way, that expresses what is truly on people's minds and in people's hearts. I want to be blown away by people I don't know expressing themselves in ways I could never image. That's why it's upsetting to me to see people copying this media that's designed to sell products and sell ideas and sell the rise and profit of major corporations that are not acting in the best interest of _people_, but instead are solely designed to maximize profits for their shareholders, no matter what the cost to the environment or to their workers or to public health. Those corporations want to take over the imagination of the vlogosphere... and they are. Do we want to fall for that? jen jenSimmons http://www.jensimmons.com On May 15, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Josh Wolf wrote: > Hey everyone, Current TV is currently working with L'Oreal, a > cosmetics company, to solicit videomakers to profile women whom they > know who are "women of worth." (http://www.current.tv/studio/create/ > vcam_loreal_wow.html) - I'm curious how the vidoblogging community > feels about an ad campagin sponsored by a cosmetics company to > profile women who are working to improve the world they live in? > > Obviously a series of PSA's giving these women credit for the work > they are doing would be a good thing, but, is the fact that this > thing is being underwritten by a cosmetics company and considered an > advertisement by Current diminish the redeeming quality the project > might otherwise have? > > What do you think? > > Josh ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Home is just a click away. 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