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ATTENTION | Todd Krieger

Paris, David Blaine and How Far We Have to Go

June 9, 2007 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

It's a bit intimidating/humbling to be going for this walk in Young Noah's shoes - but as he checks in on his ancestors I'll see if I can't move the ball the least bit forward. I was mulling over what to discuss in the past few days and the one thing that has been driving me absolute batshit crazy is the David Blaine NBA ads which point out a series of problems with how corporate marketers deliver messages, and then the Paris Hilton nonsense (I live in LA so it is necessary for me to dabble in the booming craft of celebutantistm). And in the end they both speak to the same thing - which are opposite sides of the same coin - where marketers are and where consumers are and how on Earth we, as digital pros need to take heed of that if we are to bridge that gap.

But first my bit of vitriol for the genius behind the David Blaine playoff ads.

First there's the astonishing bit of me-tooism that is so obvious as to be painful. You can see the marketing meeting that took place after those brilliant Don Cheadle NFL Playoff ads aired, which began in 2002.

MARKETING DIRECTOR OF THE NFL: Did you see those ads? Did you? We need something like that.

MARKETING MANAGER OF THE NFL: On it.

Cut to some FIVE YEARS LATER (even Cheadle's later efforts of doing the NFL Ads failed to live up to his earlier brilliance) and we get David F'ing Blaine, delivering some crap message about Magic in the most tired, lame-ass monotone voice it calls to mind Tex Avery's wondrous creation Droopy. And this is important for a few reasons, the NBA ads have featured stars that that were no longer in the playoffs which when you're trying to entice viewers isn't necessarily the best strategy. The guy they select to do his best Don Cheadle, the guy they decide to give mass dollars to is David Blaine, who is so over as to not even really merit the blog inches I'm giving him. And third it shows the NBA's inability to capitalize on what was fresh in the Playoffs which was Baron Davis of the Golden State Warriors and for the moment - King James.

So point the first - the corporate marketer can be SLOW, LATE and OUT OF TOUCH.

Now Paris. Believe me I don't really deal with the Hilton bit too much. I once was in a bar with her and her sister Nikki at about the time her 15 minutes began and I literally felt my brain being sucked out of my head. But it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what you think- Paris coverage is off-the-hook. The madness outside of her home when she was under house-arrest for the day was a media orgy totally out-of-sync with the actual course of events. (A young woman got a DUI and then violated her probation). A panel was convened to discuss the whole matter on Larry King Live, and the news of her court date and re-incarceration were trumpeted on news crawls. And what does this say about our culture - that Paris is where it's at. The nexis of Celebrity, Money, Fame with not simply very little but actually ZERO substance behind it.

So here we have the very nearly opposite of the corporate marketer. The consumer is hyper-aware mercurial, and wholly interested in flash for flash' sake.

It's not quite as tidy an equation as I'd like but this is blogging so forgive if it is not perfectly thought out. We as professionals interested in delivering messages that resonate sit squarely in the middle - it is our challenge to get the marketer up to speed and not creating me-too campaigns 5 years too late and to interest the consumer in more than the pretty pictures and the viral vid du jour but something with a little teeth behind it.

The first bit - dealing with the client is the easier of the two, but ignoring where their head is at while we blog, twitter, and flickr ourselves to death would be unwise.

And the second bit, the Paris thing, is more a state-of-the union in that her incarceration really is what the peeps seem to be fixated on. How do you deliver a message of any heft when the person you're talking to has shown themselves either constitutionally incapable or philosophically disinclined?

-Todd

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COMMENTS

1Charles Edward Frith

Great post -

Re Paris: And what does this say about our culture ?

Well, on any level US culture has become obsessed with any message that takes the mind of the ailments such as obesity, widespread unhappiness matched with unprecedented wealth and unconscionable wars fought for cheap gas plus the infinite and never ending war on terror. Celebrities are as Warhol said about Coca Cola, the same for Presidents and public.

Its not just the US too so this isn't America bashing from what for me is a country that has some very admirable characteristics and a brilliant history. But as long as its all about wardrobe malfunctions, Anna Nicole Smith or Paris while slaughter takes place outside, then its fair to say that there is a deeper malaise than just celebrity obsession. That's just the symptom.

Wealth worship seems to be a good place for a good pruning. There are other ways to be richer.

June 9, 2007

2justin

I actually think the David Blaine commercials are indicative of a larger problem with the NBA's marketing - one that Bill SImmons oftens touches on: the league's fear of associating itself with black culture.

A few years ago, in (over)reaction to off-the-court troubles of many of it's (black) stars, which provoked concerns about its image, the NBA made an obvious shift in its advertising/marketing and stopped using hip hop (which - and I'm not even willing to argue on this point - is the ONLY appropriate soundtrack for basketball highlights) in its ads, in favor of Frank Sinatra (last year's ludicrous choice) and assorted classic rock. The Blaine ads are merely the latest step in this absurd direction.

Simmons refers to this as the NBA struggling with marketing a largely black sport to a largely white audience, but I think the problem has more to do with the league worrying about its image and less to do with drawing in viewers. I mean, plenty of white people listen to hip hop, and people are much more likely (I know I'm assuming a bit here) to watch the playoffs or finals based on what teams are playing than on the latest NBA commercials. For a mainstream, widely-viewed sport like the NBA, marketing is merely supplemental to the product itself - the sport is the message.

Many in the media have written about the hypocrisy of the overreaction to NBA brawls (and the racial implication of words like "thugs"), while accepting fighting in baseball (a predominantly white sport) or hockey (ditto) as part of the game and, at times, even glorifying the violence. The problem is bigger than just the NBA and their marketing.

Hip Hop has arguably been the largest cultural export of this country over the last twenty years, and one that carries with it a certain swagger and toughness that makes some people uncomfortable. The NBA is a predominantly black sport, featuring the best basketball players on earth, who, sometimes, like plenty of other athletes, will come to blows, and this apparently makes some people uncomfortable.

Maybe it's O.K. to feel uncomfortable every now and then - it forces us to take things as they really are and (hopefully) figure out what it is we're so afraid of. I find nothing wrong with David Stern (the NBA commissioner) instituting a dress code for the league as a means of establishing more professionalism, but can't we do that AND keep the hip hop in there? I mean, a little swagger can be a good thing.

June 9, 2007