Life's A Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

Show me what you got

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Advertising is funny, right? Any kind of advertising. Food that looks good can be gross, clothes that look great can…also be gross, Ashton Kutcher can run around taking photos of models at a party as much as he likes, but I still have no idea what the pictures from the Nikon COOLPIX look like, or whether the camera will be easy to use. (But it will get me to parties with MODELS!!) I ripped a Heineken ad off the back cover of – I think it was Time Out New York – last week because I liked the photo for its total ridiculousness. It features a cute blurry girl pulling a cute in-focus guy (HOLDING A HEINEKEN) up from his seat and says things like “Give yourself a good name” (??) and, “There are no innocent bystanders.” (???), and then there’s randomly a Heineken beer-bottle label on the top right corner (is this couple meant to be IN THE BEER?). Even if this ad does inspire me to order a Heineken the next time I’m at a bar, which I’m sure it will not, no amount of halter-topped girls and white-V-necked-guys are going to make me actually like the taste of Heineken. It would seem that the best way to advertise Heineken would be to let me taste Heineken*. Or in this case, to change the taste of Heineken a la Domino’s. As reported by the Huffington Post:

Executives have said that the chain decided to start overhauling its
recipes more than 18 months ago after mounting criticism from focus
groups and on social media sites. And it boldly admitted in a series of
documentary-style spots that under its old recipe, customers complained
its crust tasted like cardboard and its sauce was reminiscent of
ketchup.

The company
began promoting its new pie, which has a new sauce and cheese
combination and herb- and garlic-flavored crust, in December. That
helped the company’s profit climb to $23.6 million, or 41 cents per
share, for the three months that ended Jan. 3.

Two of the most successful products, if we can call Google a “product,” on the market today created television ads that simply show viewers All The Things Their Product Can Actually Do. Remember the fun dancing silhouettes from the first iPod commercials back in the day?

Well, huh: I’ve bought a lot of iPods, and I still can’t dance like that. But let’s take a gander at the iPhone commercials that are currently on the air:

If you get an iPhone, you can actually do those things. Actually, the iPhone commercials are especially amazing because not only do they promote the devices themselves (I want to spend American Dollars on one every time I see a commercial, but we’ve talked about me still being on my Verizon Family Plan in this space before, right?). So not only do these commercials make people who don’t have iPhones want to buy iPhones, but they (presumably) make people who already have iPhones want to buy these great apps for their iPhones.

I digress, as usual. My point is that iPhone commercials, and now a Google commercial, as we saw during the Superbowl, are just showing us how we can use their products rather than trying to trick us, I mean sell us, with clever advertising.
 

Those damn :52 seconds still give me chills ((lame)), and it’s just someone using Google! What was the last thing I Googled – oh, here we go: “Gay Bunnies New York Times Magazine.” I’m not sure how that’s going to get me to a church in Paris, but there it is.

Someone using Google sells Google. Someone using an iPhone sells iPhones. We don’t even see the people using them! They could look like us, they could not look like us; they could be hot, they could be not even a little bit hot. Why then, I wonder, do concert presenters not use video clips of actual performances to sell actual performances?

I went to see Thomas Ades (piano), Anthony Marwood (violin), and Steven Isserlis (cello) at Carnegie Hall on March 19th. Full program here. My friend works with Ades and invited me, and I had a fantastic time. I’m not going to review the concert for you, because you certainly don’t need me for that, but I love Ades’ music, generally, and also love seeing things in Zankel Hall, generally. Even loving Ades and loving Zankel, though, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the concert if I wasn’t personally invited. That said, if Carnegie (or, insert presenter _here_) had posted a video clip from soundcheck on YouTube or their website, and linked to it on Twitter, I probably would have bought a ticket. I realize artists don’t want rehearsal or soundcheck footage of themselves living on the internet forever, but surely presenters and musicians can reach a compromise. Perhaps yanking the footage off the web just before the concert would satisfy everyone. If presenters truly think that audiences will want to see what they’re putting on stage, they should show us a clip, even if it’s the day-of. Not YouTube footage of the artist doing some other program somewhere else, but an actual clip of what we can expect to see that evening.  iPhones, Google, and Thomas Ades are so much cooler than a graphic designer could possible make them, and to reference another genius marketing campaign:

[Cue Billy Crudup voiceover]
Flip Camera: $200
Marketing Assistant to film rehearsal and upload video: one hour’s worth of $36K/year
YouTube: Free
Twitter: Free
Having a video of Thomas Ades and Anthony Marwood spread all over the interwebz: Priceless.

*Please note I have no Great Problem with Heineken. I just needed a way to get to Domino’s.

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