Archive for the 'Media' Category

Blogs have become cultural beacons, sculpting public opinion and the whole of the landscape. I have come to love the blogosphere. What’s not to love? Quick, easy, hilarious rants on current events, news, celebrity, anything and everything. It makes me laugh. It makes us all laugh. I’m a big fan, yet it drives me nuts when people put a greater emphasis on being funny rather than thoughtful. And the funnies are getting all of the credit.

Take Perez Hilton, self proclaimed Queen of all Media: his blog has made him rich and famous. There’s even a TV version of his “work” on VH1. He is a well-regarded, highly-quoted source regularly featured in other media. Why? Because he concocts funny word mashups and indiscriminately draws cocaine debris under the nostrils of celebrities, celebutants and celebutards? I laugh. But is it intelligent or thoughtful?

Not a whiff of either.

His counterparts are no exception. D-Listed, Pink is the New Blog, What Would Tyler Durden Do? –examples of cheap and hysterical hilarity, a lot of vulgarities and bathroom humor about stars and starlets…the writers are very funny, but do they have the chops to become real comedic writers with a day-to-day gig? Most of the humor is easy to come by (raunchy sex jokes that occur to the average 12-year-old boy); these bloggers are brave enough to boldly voice their inner tween. Where the rest of us would blush at the thought of quipping like that with even our closest and dearest, they in fact take the, yep you guessed it, plunger.

The newsiest is The Huffington Post, a digital version of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. The content is there, the points are on and the contributing writers are some of the biggest uh names in the game (is it bad to shamefully plug myself in my own blog?), but it is not meant to serve as primary news source but more a way to buttress your information on an hourly basis. It says so up there in the fine print.

Wonkette.com, a famous offering about D.C. gossip, honestly describes itself as a, “blend of gossip, satire and things the author makes up.” Similarly, its parent, Gawker, is known for the same in a New York market. The problem is, people look to these sites as honest news sources instead of ha-ha jabs at anything plus everything.

And everyone is guilty these days. We’re all adapting blog speak (see Diablo Cody please) and abbreviated language that was once reserved for quickly jotting down messages via IM has made its way into the daily vernacular.

Remember Cingular’s enormously popular ad? The mom reprimands the daughter for texting too much. The daughter responds in text / IM code. It was only funny because we all got it. OMG people, WTF is going on?

Being tuned in does not make any of us educated while simple-minded and raunchy cynicism doe not make you a comedian and maintaining a blog does not make you a writer… In the end we are reading bloggers.

Oh yeah, and the most important point of today’s rant is this: Abbreviating words doesn’t make you original, just kind of annoying, except when it comes to me, obv. Duh.

Misguided teen queen Jamie Lynn Spears appeared last night on ABC’s new show, Miss Guided. In dictionaries all across America, the entries for irony just exploded.

The “second” Spears (gee, we need a spare) played a troubled teen debating between going to college or sticking around for a boyfriend. For those of you shacking up in Saddam’s old spiderhole, Jamie Lynn just made the decision to have a baby and take some time off from her acting career.

Is this life imitating art or the other way around?

Her sabbatical is treating her well - things have never been better for SpearsSpare! By taking time off, she meant taking time to get even more famous. Though her pregnancy goes against Nickelodeon’s wholesome image, ratings for her show, Zoey 101 have soared. And the hype around her appearance on Miss Guided… well, I’m even talking about it. (Shame on me, I know.)

Who’s to blame! Let’s go with Juno. Jamie Lynn’s publicists are not idiots, and we know the Spears clan has a knack for drawing attention (self-promotion is too generous). They saw the amniotic fluid on the wall after Juno went big and so they said “Here’s a way to make JLS super known.” Quietly dealing with the situation back home on the Bayou wouldn’t work for this management. Instead they SOLD the story to OK! magazine for seven figures. A nation of kids now considers her the real life Juno McGuff. Except, instead of being the cheese to someone’s macaroni, Jamie Lynn is the Easy Mac for the college kid on a budget (no offense meant to Easy Mac).

In my last post on celebrity babies, I intentionally barely touched on this. There’s just something unsettling about babies having babies. I’m old school, but there’s a way to handle very public scandals that, while acknowledging mistakes, deals with the repercussions soberly. It reflects strong character and just happens to be the healthy way to live a life. It’s a personal opinion, and the public, at least in the long term, appreciates it more than a naked parade around the town square.

That respect/goodwill counts when trying to make a career in the public sphere.

A wise man named Jack Handy once said, “To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.” These wise words remind me of the Spears clan. Their lives are primetime dramas, except there are no ratings, nothing but shame gained, and at the end of the third trimester, Jamie Lynn really will have a baby, G-d love her. Sometimes bad publicity is just bad publicity.

We all know the saying “Do as I say, not as I do.” But what happens when instead you preach “Do as I say, because if not I’ll climb down my insanely high horse and nail you to the courthouse door”? Well, you get the Elliot Spitzer story. Scratch that, the Spitzer Catastrophe.

While some are using this as an excuse to reargue the Clinton impeachment – “See? Slick Willy deserved to hang!” (which a lot of us know as “a vast rightwing conspiracy turned a BJ into a national catastrophe, yet it’s OK to lie about WMDs?”) – all that does is miss the evident point.

Facing a blood-seeking Republican Congress, Clinton lived to see the end of his presidency; Spitzie on the other hand was forced to resign within days of being found otu. Is it because one committed adultery while the other spent an estimated 80 Gs on prostitutes? Maybe. Or the real difference is, we think, Branding.

Sidebar: $80,000, wow, what were those women doing that made it worth $4500 a pop? I really can’t figure it out! If they haven’t started a how-to book, they’re need an agent. “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” there’s the title.

I’m back…. Politicians, like all public figures, consumer products, or corporations, are brands. They each use publicity and marketing to craft an image in the public consciousness. Clinton felt our pain cause he was one of us. He scarfed Big Macs, took an occasional toke, chased a little skirt. Was a dude!

But Spitzer, he was so much better than all of us, or at least that’s what he portended. The man used a shield of incorruptibility and a sword of integrity to smote those too morally weak to obey the law. He went after pillars or conmen of Wall Street (not to mention a few prostitution rings…I tell you undercover research must be mad fun) while glaring with open contempt down at those who failed to meet his standards. If your image is holier-than-thou Mr. Clean, you better make sure there’s truth in advertising.

When building a brand, you’ve got to leave room for human error, which is always inevitable as the absolute law of the universe. People make mistakes. PR and marketing strategies need to be flexible enough to allow for gaffes, lapses, peccadilloes, and, what the hay, even the occasional scandal.

It’s not what he did, right, but the hypocrisy that was immediately associated with the actions he pulled. Those nighttime activities conflicted with his brand and messaging. Were his actions that horrible? I don’t think so. But he was so buried in his own rhetoric that he had no choice but to step down before he was laughed down!

Want proof? Take Louisiana Senator and prostitute-lover David Vitter. After his recreational habits were outed by Larry Flynt, Vitter plum apologized. The verdict is not in on Vitter’s Hoegate, but it’s worth noting how, yep, he’s still there. While Vitter might have disappointed his constituents, nothing close to outrage followed.

So the lesson: Don’t let the messaging outstrip reality. And if you see a copy of “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” get it before the prurients protest it off the shelves. Cause according to a former high-ranking public official it’s worth the price.

Babies are us?

As someone who studies the zeitgeist maybea bit too much, I’m always looking for something “black.” It changes each season… For a while everyone talked about pink but gay is pretty boring these days. Then orange was okay. And my personal favorite was: Black is the new black! Now it seems BABIES are so in. See them inside Juno, see them within Nickelodeon shows, see them on every magazine covers, and now they pop up Friday night on Gilmore Girls’ Amy Palladino’s new Fox vehicle, “Return to Jezebel James,” where girl makes sister have baby. Then weeks later at Tribeca Festival when Fey hires a “Baby Mama” (Amy Poehler, no less) to do it for cash.

And may we speak about Angelina Jolie, Gwen Stefani, Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, and maybe even you? Even one of the Kates is pregnant–who knows which one. Besides all being A-list actresses, these are all pregnant A-listers–except you. And the only thing better then being a Real Hot actress in Hollywood is being a pregnant Talk About in Hollywood.

The media worship such stories. They are the easiest news pegs known to man. The country is headed into economic recession (let’s just say IN an economic recession), we’re in a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet Jennifer Lopez is getting paid $6 million for exclusive photos of her babies? I mean, she’s married to a skeleton!

A sort of funny part of the story is that this deal was contingent on the magazine’s promise to stop referring to the actress/singer/dancer/mother as J.Lo. For 6 million they can call your ass anything they want, you know, bitch?

Breathe deep, Richard.

J.Lo (waiting for my cut) is not al. Lots of stars are making bank off babies—and sometimes it’s just news wealth (”keeping me out there”). See, “stars” like Kidman, after eight bombs in a row, need something to keep her alive in the tabs. All the celebrities do it, from X-tina to Nicole Ritchie, who is undoubtedly the ugliest person to ever a People magazine with a, ahem, glow.

You know what, we’re all guilty. Everyone watches for showings. The Oscars was more about the baby bumps than clothes; the awards were a second point—the dresses hardly one. Instead of ogling the jewels or hair, the focus was on what’s sticking ut. I’m still not quite sure what the glow of pregnancy looks like, but I’m sure Hollywood stylists are busy trying to develop a spray-on version.

Then there’s Kate Hudson, who would be an extra if it were not for her Mom. She’s not pregnant but talks about it a lot—meaning the fact she isn’t. And on that note: DId anyone see “Fool’s Gold? Which is the better story?

Lisa Marie Presley. No one cared about her when she was Elvis’ daughter (he’s been dead 21 years) and yet she needed to announce she’s pregnant because a tabloid said it was that or she’s fat! Chubby is sinful when you have no career.

Th one real trendsetter in all this is Ms. Jolie. The Brangelina adopts and even conceives their own – a serious double threat. The J-Pitts traded in their entourage for a FAMTEROUGE (like it?) and have only reached greater heights of notoriety with the brood.

Brava/o!

Ah, yes. The news story. Pregnancy is confirmed with an announcement from a publicist or with a bump premier at a high-end baby store or a home that’s prearranged for baby comings. Here they feign indignation about invasion of privacy. We wonder why they didn’t just shop online!

So while they keep us guessing, coyly wearing flowing frocks while issuing non-denial denials—a thread you Punks hear here all the time—they get the word out, faces on covers, doctor appointments scrutinized like Zapruder. They ensure their careers as celebrities endure regardless of their “work.” And if you’re not sold, ask yourself… Can you name the two movies that J.Lo (”Jennifer”) was in during 2007? How about her TWO released albums? But you know the saga of her twins, doncha. Kinda smart…kinda Punk. Now all she has to do is something artful—or she can keep having kids?

Final analysis is in: Overdoing it is the new black.

Marketing spend is supposed to be the bellwether for the economy. When the economy is weak, marketing budgets are the first to go. So alarm bells rang a week or so ago when automaker Hyundai announced it might pull out of advertising on the Super Bowl. But then, thankfully I guess, they relented and decided to spend the cash anyway.

The $2.7million it costs to run a 30-second spot on this year’s Bowl sure is a lot of money to spend on a single airing when tough times are just around the corner. But, on the other hand, the SB is also about the last big advertising game in town and pretty much the only chance every year to make a big brand statement that sizable numbers of people will see, and maybe even talk about. Nowhere else is there opportunity for such a shared experience and so advertisers will spend huge bucks to be part of the water cooler conversation about it.

So Madison Ave and Wall Street breathed a joint sigh of relief when Hyundai decided to play along after all. Maybe we’re not about to dive headlong into recession after all! Maybe consumerism will save the day! Maybe we can spend our way out of this thing!

Not so fast. If past recessions are anything to go by, marketing spend will take a hit as it is the least painful way to cut costs. Of course, the hope is that this might not be like past recessions. Since the last one, which began in mid 2001, spend has started to shift to media that can be better measured, so making it easier to justify marketing spend to those holding the purse strings. This time around, for instance, 7.5% of all spend is on Internet advertising, where results can be easily correlated to cost.

But, compared to the money spent on broadcast campaign, this ain’t big dough. So while digital media might not suffer as much, and might actually benefit from a stinky economy, as money is shifted into it from less measurable media, big budget brand-building campaigns that don’t translate into short-term sales almost certainly will be cut. And because these make up a much bigger part of the pie the overall pie will get smaller. And a smaller pie, even when covered with whipped cream, just isn’t as satisfying.

The good thing about recessions of course, is that tighter budgets force smarter thinking and favor brave marketing based on creative approaches.

So, to end on a positive note I say pie be damned! Bring it on. Let’s think, not spend, our way out of this recession.