Friday, March 13, 2009
Today in class when we summarized the movie about what is "cool" it was very enlightening to me. I really enjoyed watching the movie because it was almost a shock factor as well as a, WOW what the heck that is soo smart! I really enjoyed how they shot the footage of the MTV marketing reps and how they literally go into a teenagers bedroom and pick it apart. How fascinating and weird at the same time. I really do believe that teenagers are very impressionable and willing to be accepted in any way or form. I just really wonder when the media will have nothing else to market. To where we are at the point of no return and there are no more values or morals. What is next after that? I guess we will be like Rome and fall.
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I was hoping you'd turn up in class, Trisha. We had a discussion on whether the motivation of advertisers was altruistic or cynical, in regards to social causes (i.e. Red or pink ribbon sponsorship, efforts to reign in sweatshop labor, environmental conscience and such). I hoped that you would be there, I wanted to hear you say something on that topic. I answered the question by saying that the motivation was purely, patently cynical. The advertisers, and by that I mean the corporate sponsors of advertising campaigns, have one and a single driving force behind all efforts to assuage the consumer's guilt, and that is the maximization of the profit stream. The main channel in the profit stream may be generated by sales of a good or a product. But by exhibition of the brand, by the embrace of a cause or issue as anchors, the trusty friend metaphor from advertising's earliest days is repackaged. This means that HP may not mean much besides computers. But if you see the HP logo on a pallet of famine-relief rice, or get named as giving a golf tournaments' proceeds to foundation x that will use it for AIDS research, well, an emotional bond will form between the corporate image and the individual. Now how quantifiable that is in dollars, I don't know. But it works, and that is the ultimate value-adding revenue stream. I don't buy the argument made by some corporations that they want to help heal the planet, or other nonsense. But it makes sense to target these alternate pathways to profit as a way to get around people's inattention to standard advertising ad-fatigue.
ReplyDeleteMTV is so good and i thought they had the right idea. That stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest bit to me it is just smart. I like how they find the influential teens and get them to sport their brand and find out what they like. I think these people are so good at what they do and I'm happy for them I don't really see anything negative about any of that. I wish I was the one who came up with it thats my only negative thought.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was fascinating as well. But when you think about it really does make sense. I mean teenagers are not producing their own things. So in order to get in the mind of what they want or like they need to get in the minds of the teenager. Sometimes I have noticed people say things that they want in interviews instead of how they actually are. By going to their bedroom they have living proof about what is going on.
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