Category: Marketing

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When I attended the University of Kansas in the late 1970’s, a friend who was an actor got a small role in the Peter Shaffer play Equus. Equus had several nude scenes in it and he was looking forward to blowing the minds of the people in Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence was playing its own role here instead of a university town with a mostly cosmopolitan population, it was taking on the the role of a small Kansas town rife with closed minds about nudity. I also was taking a course in Modern Theater. The professor encouraged his students to see the play because he thought it would blow our minds. Using almost the exact words as my friend. Hmm.

Blowing the minds of the audience was very much a part of the purpose of this play. To ensure that the damage done to our minds was not so severe, there were warnings about the nudity in the play so everyone who entered the theater was prepared for the genital reveal which , at least to my mind, spoiled the whole shock value of having nudity in the play. I was waiting for it.

Then, the type of person who would wander into a student play at a University is just not your typical small town Kansan. They would be more academic, more cosmopolitan, and more open to nudity in the theater. By 1979, even in Kansas, most people who followed the arts already had seen their fair of nudity before Equus exposed them to some more. But how do you get them into theater to see the nudity? Oh, yeah, why don’t we create a little controversy and, lo and behold, it worked, the controversy brought people into the show.

This is what I think happened with Bad Bunny’s Half-time performance. It was meant to provoke a certain segment of the population. It successfully provoked them. They lost their minds as they do and started demanding all kinds of things which cause the Media to follow the controversy. This created a demand to see the show. It was a genius marketing ploy — hyping the first Spanish language performer at the Super Bowl. The buzz was great, a lot of people watched it because most people had no idea who Bad Bunny was or what they were about to see. The television advertisers got their audience, so the money they paid was well spent.

Everybody is happy — particularly, I imagine, Bad Bunny who got a lot of free press and millions of potential new customers for his music. For the vast majority of people, though, it was a meaningless experience in a life filled with meaningless experiences. But no one’s minds were seriously blown here. It will hardly be a memory in a year or two.

But you have to give credit to the the organizers of the show, they certainly showed they knew what they are doing. If you got something to sell, I certainly would recommend them. Buzz is their middle name.

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One of the most remarkable accomplishments of modern marketing is the one the Rich have pulled on the American Middle Class. They have managed to make Americans more afraid of taxing wealthy people in the unlikely event that these members of the Middle Class become billionaires than the much more likely event that they will need, at some point in their life, available social services that will help them weather a financial storm.

It is peculiarly American trait which turns its full power against the Poor for being poor and fuels fear in the Middle Class that if they tax too much the whole money machine we have come to depend upon will come crashing down around them and, then, everybody will be poor. Is that what you want? Everyone being poor. How this message continues to attract believers is beyond me but lets face it, it somehow continues to hold a large segment of the American population in it’s thrall.

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Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman have a new movie out called the Roses. In the movie, there is a scene where Cumberbatch’s character gives Coleman’s character a food she is allergic to and then refuses to give her her epipen when she reacts until she signs their divorce papers. Apparently the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation is upset because depriving someone of their epipen while having an allergic reaction just isn’t funny. This seems like another mountain out of a mole hill situation. The movie is a satire on how divorce proceedings get out of hand and the terrible things that people might do to gain an advantage.

The movie wasn’t endorsing murder by epipen as much as pointing out the potentially horrible things a desperate person might do who finds themselves in a messy divorce. Withholding an epipen to someone who needs it to fits nicely into one of those potential horrible things. There are thousands of ways this might be done. Would it be any funnier if he was holding a gun to her head?

And I am pretty sure I have seen it before in movies and in television without comment. It is in fact an ingenious way to murder someone. Why then has the Natasha Allergy Foundation got their panties in a twist over this is a bit of mystery until I read that the movie had lukewarm reviews and weak box office.

Then the light bulb went off over my head, this is just a PR trick to get the movie into the headlines. Nobody is really mad at all. Now I have no proof whatsoever regarding my speculation but it is the only thing that makes sense. It is a movie after all, a movie where people do outrageous things, depriving a person having an allergic reaction of their epipen is outrageous and wrong but it also fits right into the movie being made.

I am betting there is no there there but kudos to the movie’s marketing department for keeping it in the headlines.

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I don’t know who the genius behind the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ads is but surely this person deserves a raise. They created a significant amout of buzz. A lot of people are talking about it. Hell, the ad might being getting more buzz than Donald Trump the king of manipulating the media for buzz.

The ad is both ambiguous enough for American Eagle to continue to use it and controversial enough for people to debate the true meaning. Even if American Eagle is force to withdraw it at some point, they got their money’s worth. Being a strictly Levi’s guy myself and not much of a shopper, I now learned all about American Eagle — a brand of jeans that I knew nothing about before I saw Sweeney struggling to pull up her pair of “good” jeans.