Program scripts from week of October 13, 2013
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Chasing Youth
What are the kids doing? That is the most often asked question in your life if you are A: a parent or B: an advertising executive. For the parent the question is usually about whether little Johnny is eating dirt again or where Suzy and boyfriend have suddenly disappeared to. If you’re in advertising the hope is that if you can keep up with what younger folks are doing you will be successful in your chosen line of work.
Those two groups usually have one other thing in common. They get the answer to that question wrong more often than they like.
Sticking to the media side of the equation the biggest problem is that not only are younger media consumers hard to predict under the best of circumstances but also that we are living in a time period where they can change more quickly and move in more directions than ever before.
Facebook and Twitter are rapidly disappearing in the media rear view for many younger consumers. Oh they’re still there but it’s no longer THE place to be. Which means that by the time the media establishment has cranked up its machinery the target has moved again. Expectations are different, needs are different. Plus if you’re in the advertising sales end of the business you need to remember that a lot of this generation actively uses software to block your ads.
Here’s another place that the media is struggling. A new longitudinal study done by the folks at Pew shows that the youngest consumers spend less time with the news than their elders do. The post retirement generation spends over 80 minutes a day with the news. The sub-30 generation is right around 46 minutes. I wonder how much of that disparity is covered by the difference in media between the two generations. If you’re getting your news mostly online you can scan through to what you want much more efficiently than waiting on radio or TV to deliver it. My problem is that the media tends to focus on the lower time spent viewing rather figuring out to better serve that demographic in the time available. Solve that question and you just might see growth.
The one thing that is guaranteed in this pursuit of youth is that there will continue to be as many or more misses than hits.
But then any parent could tell you that.
Never forget the goal of advertising is to separate you the consumer from your money. In the long run that is its purpose in life. The short run may include things like changing your mind or convincing you of a certain point but in the long run they are there to get your money in exchange for some product or service that you probably don’t need.
So what do the folks at GEICO think when they find out that one of their ads has become a problem at schools across the nation. First we have to sort through all the various GEICO ads. The insurance company still amazes me because they are running so many different campaigns all at the same time. My bet is you know the spot. It involves the phrase “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike” and the problem phrase itself “Hump DAAAAAAY!”. That’s right, the GEICO camel spot.
Beyond the fact that it’s annoying, no wait, it’s BECAUSE it’s annoying that it’s a problem. I will admit that I have a soft spot for this ad. It pleases me deep down in that 9 year old boy part of my personality.
The problem seems to be with, well, 9 year old boys. A lot of schools are banning that phrase. I have no doubt that many Middle Schools and Junior Highs are disrupted every Wednesday when the boys break out their best camel imitations at the top of their lungs. Funny once, maybe twice. By the end of the day, following hour after hour of it, I’m quite certain that many teachers and school administrators are ready to slam their heads into the wall.
Which brings me back to the folks at GEICO. You can’t REALLY be happy that your advertising is seen as a big enough disruption of the education system that it’s actively being banned. How do you react when one of your ads has gone viral, has become a catchword in the culture?
My bet?
They’re laughing all the way to the bank.
Why do you go to the movies? That’s a serious question, by the way. Why do you go to the movies? I love the movies but why? I love the epic quality of stories told on the big screen. I love the relief from reality that the movies have always offered. When I watch a movie I can be a superhero or even just a regular hero. I can explore far parts of this world or leave this world entirely and explore other times and places. Along the way I can be challenged, I can be amused, I can be moved. I go to the movies because no other media can tell those stories in quite the same way. Some other media do some parts of storytelling better and some parts worse. I love movies for what they do well.
So let me ask you this - do you go to the movies to learn history? If you answered yes I want you to seriously re-consider that answer. The movies are about storytelling. Consequently accurately representing historical events comes at best a distant second and more than likely a distant third, fourth or fifth. Now at this point someone is going to say “What about documentaries?”. Well let me ask another question and be honest. In the last 10 years how often have you gone to the movies, meaning gone out to a theater because the essence of the theater experience, and watched a documentary? If you’re like most Americans that’s probably what, once? So that’s not really a significant part of the average movie goers experience.
I know when I go in that if the movie is “based on actual events” there’s going to be a certain percentage of the story that gets shuffled, edited or flat out dropped to advance the movie storytelling. For example you don’t want to bring up last year’s movie “Argo” in Canada. The movie focused on the rescue of some of the hostages held by Iran in 1979. What’s upset the Canadians? Simple, in real life they played an important part, a major part in that rescue. You’ll never know it by watching the movie, because it got edited out. This comes up now because folks are upset with some artistic license employed in the telling of the new Tom Hanks movie “Captain Phillips”.
Here’s what I wish the bottom line could be. I wish the movies would drop the whole “based on actual events”. Be inspired by real life, tell the story that relates the important parts of the history, use the wonderful storytelling tools at your disposal and do that.
Then the rest of us can stop fact checking and just sit back and enjoy the movies.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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