The missing half of The Persuaders

Advertising and Imagery is going to be very, very interesting.

It's already weird enough being the only student without a "Communications" anywhere in my major or minor declaration. I was hoping for another Women's Studies student but I think I lucked out. Whatever. Gonna black sheep all up in this.

We've just watched The Persuaders, which, thanks to the magic of public television, you can watch for free online. It's been a long time since I took any psychology or sociology classes (credits that are now languishing at the bottom of my transcript under "general electives"), and I can't remember the last time I had to hear about "subliminal advertising" or similarly overplayed concepts.

YO DAWG, COKE IS IN IT TO WIN IT

...In fact, it's been pretty damn easy in the last ten years to pretend like advertising doesn't exist. Consumers are getting savvier, and becoming increasingly more jaded--seeing Coke cups on the American Idol's judges' table inspired a whole slew of disinterested articles on the transparency of product placement.* We've also gained greater control over what we're exposed to--DVRs allow us to skip through the obnoxious Ford placement and straight to Randy Jackson's obnoxious commentary.

It's easy for me to say that the Coke cups and the odd segments on affordable SUVs don't bother me, because I can ostensibly see them for what they are: clumsy attempts at manipulation.

But a cynical lizard brain is really only scratching the surface here. The Persuaders was released in 2004. That's one year before YouTube and Pandora Radio, and three years before Hulu. Netflix wouldn't begin their online streaming model until 2007--just in time for the release of the first iPhone! And, just to add insult to injury, the two most popular browsers in the world have offered easy-to-install ad blockers for quite a while now.

What I'm saying is that it's only been ten years, and it already feels like half the documentary is missing. There have been unprecedented technological advances and trends (don't even get me started on the history of digital piracy), all of which have put more and more power into the hands of the individual. Supposedly.

Marketers have been thinking well on their feet. Desperate to cash in on the mysterious phenomenon of "going viral," a few corporations have quite literally taken viral concepts and thrown money at them. McDonald's actually hired a YouTube channel, Bad Lip Reading, for a national ad campaign. I saw one of their commercials during the Seahawks/49ers game tonight (go 'hawks), and I did the unthinkable: I actually hit rewind on the DVR to see it again.

Go on and watch it. I'll wait.


Now, what makes the concept of viral marketing interesting is where to draw the line between a carefully-tailored commercial and simply a "video gone viral."

GoldieBlox, a startup toy company, hit it big with a video featuring a parody of the Beastie Boys song "Girls." While GoldieBlox insists it's just a fun parody, the Beastie Boys argue it is in fact a clever advertisement, and have challenged the toy company's invocation of Fair Use--but not before over 8 million people watched the "parody."

If our jaded lizard brains can't tell the difference between a clever YouTube our aunt shared on Facebook and a long-form advertisement, then there may be hope for marketers after all. Viral videos could in fact be the new iteration of product placement.

*(You can buy the American Idol Coke cups on eBay, btw. I'm not sure if that's what Coke had in mind. And if you want to see what the Internet considers the worst example of product placement in the last three years, here it is.)