ROCS Blog: 2014

Friday, December 12, 2014

Pop Culture Impacts Issues

You may think it wonderful that LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt on the court before he played a basketball game.⁽¹⁾ You may think he did the wrong thing. Or you may have agreed with his sentiment but found the garment unfashionable.

Whatever you thought qualitatively of James' gesture, one thing you couldn't do was not think about it.

The Cavaliers forward's brand offers more than just standout athletic abilities. His commercials, gold medals, O'Brien Trophies, and, yes, talent-taking-to-South-Beach have given him notoriety that stretches beyond his primary profession.

James and other NBA players wore their shirts to bring attention to an issue. This one specifically involved an incident of allegedly improper policing practices. Some St. Louis Rams players made their own controversial gestures referencing a similar situation. ⁽²⁾

As content marketing plays go, these initiatives don't involve substantial creativity. They do, however, demonstrate that pop culture can drive discussion of an issue.

News coverage may initially alert one to a controversy. Once aware, a consumer can turn to his or her preferred online or traditional media sources to gather further information. However, not everyone is a news geek (and I use that term affectionately - some of my best friends are news geeks, at least judging from their Facebook posts). To truly keep an issue top-of-mind with a broader cross-section of the population, it helps to have push from entertainers, whether they be athletes, movie stars, musicians, or whatever we classify Jon Stewart as.

Today's interconnected world lends itself to widely distributed discussion. You can get your co-workers' perspectives at the office coffee pot. You can talk about it with your father on a drive to the airport, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Or you can discuss it online with Facebook friends, or Bono's fan club, or some other dude who commented on the news story you Googled after you saw LeBron's pre-game wardrobe.

Did John Lennon's bed-ins for peace meaningfully impact the anti-Vietnam War campaign? Did Rambo: First Blood Part II call attention to POW-MIA issues? Did Shaq's performance in Kazaam help convince Los Angeles officials to use eminent domain to clear space for a new basketball arena?⁽³⁾

One cannot precisely measure Q-score-to-issue-advocacy correlation. The actions of those with the power to effect such decisions suggest they see some cause-and-effect, however. When the Benghazi incident happened, officials initially assigned a generous portion of the blame to a motion picture.⁽⁴⁾ The CIA smuggled Russian-language versions of Dr. Zhivago into the Soviet Union.⁽⁵⁾ A recent Electronic Frontier Foundation anti-surveillance campaign featured like-minded celebrities appearing on video to encourage the public to take political action.⁽⁶⁾

This last example leads me to my reason for creating this blog post. There is no doubt that pop culture can, at the very least, create debate about an issue. Its capabilities may even include substantially influencing that debate. Sometimes the issue pays pop culture back, too. The Lennon estate still sells lots of Give Peace A Chance gobbledygook, I bet. Maybe POW advocates still watch Stallone movies as well.

I've got a movie in development called I Am Douglass. Its plot revolves around the same surveillance issues the EFF campaign addresses. Could the film be the next vehicle for fomenting discussion, no matter what side of the issue you occupy? The evidence says that's a real possibility.

I Am Douglass online sites :

Website

http://iamdouglass.com

Facebook

http://Facebook.com/iamdouglass

Twitter

http://Twitter.com/iamdouglass

Google Plus

https://google.com/+Iamdouglassmovie

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/IAmDouglass.

Zazzle

http://Zazzle.com/iamdouglass

Rush Olson has spent two decades making movie-like creative products for companies, sports teams, broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Nolan Feeney, “LeBron James Wears ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirt During Warm-Ups,” Time. http://time.com/3624684/lebron-james-i-cant-breathe-eric-garner/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽²⁾ Chris Strauss, “Five St. Louis Rams players took a stand for something bigger than Ferguson,” USA Today. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/st-louis-rams-ferguson-tavon-austin-hands-up-dont-shoot (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽³⁾ Tibby Rothman, “Los Angeles Corporate Welfare: Ritz-Carlton and AEG ,” LA Weekly. http://www.laweekly.com/2009-10-08/news/los-angeles-corporate-welfare-ritz-carlton-and-aeg/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁴⁾ “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 9/14/2012 ,” White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-9142012 (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁵⁾ Luke Harding, “How MI6 helped CIA to bring Doctor Zhivago in from cold for Russians,” The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/10/mi6-cia-doctor-zhivago-banned-boris-pasternak (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁶⁾ Steven Nelson, “Actor John Cusack Says 'Democracy Itself Is Dead' With NSA Surveillance,” USA Today. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/10/23/john-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead?s_cid=rss%3Awashington-whispers%3Ajohn-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead (accessed 12/11/14)

Saturday, November 15, 2014

If Facebook Doesn't Do It, Users Will

Facebook friends, I admit it. I am guilty. The big F in the sky has now decided to punish me for my transgressions and I will accept its decision. Actually, I don't really have much choice.

What did I do wrong? I told you to buy a t-shirt.

I perpetrated the offense on a commercial page I manage for the movie project I Am Douglass. The film-in-development has a Zazzle store, so I would occasionally post about one of the offerings with a suggestion to purchase it. Folks who had “liked” the I Am Douglass Facebook page might have seen the post pop up in their news feeds, along with our script quotes and behind-the-scenes photos. They may never see the shirts again, and not because the garments shrink after they’re washed.

This week, Facebook’s blog informed us that company page posts that "solely push people to buy a product”⁽¹⁾ will be filtered from likers’ news feeds. Accordingly, “pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.”⁽²⁾ So they apparently don’t like my t-shirt solicitations (although, admittedly, their blog post did not cite my efforts specifically).

Some may view the change as a Facebook money grab designed to “force” advertisers to buy more paid placements.⁽³⁾ The FB statement claims “this change is about giving people the best Facebook experience possible.”⁽⁴⁾ While I am always willing to embrace a good conspiracy theory (note the I Am Douglass thriller above), I believe the Zuckerbergians on this one.

The ads Facebook does sell depend on eyeballs seeing them (and, ideally, fingers pushing mouse buttons or touch screens to click on them). Overly salesy ads that are a lot less interesting than what Justin Bieber just posted on Twitter drive people away from the platform. It’s always worked that way on every platform that mixed advertising with content. When I worked for TV stations, we used to joke that the programming was there to fill the time between the commercials. We knew, however, that we needed to balance our ad-to-content ratio or viewers would tune out. In addition, when creating our own advertisements for programming, we knew we had to make them interesting because people don’t pay attention to boring spots.

Will Facebook unravel my future t-shirt posts? I do try to make them interesting. Surely slogans like “Surveillance State Running Team” or “The NSA is Reading This Shirt” entice viewers more than, say, “Download this app to get a vague idea of your credit score.”

Whatever Menlo Park decides, though, I am ok with it. Content marketing is, and always has been, about engaging content. Facebook knows that, and its research has revealed what kinds of posts cause its users to make their yuck faces. If I provide crummy posts, readers will ignore them anyway, the same way they do terrible TV spots. In this case, their platform is just saving them the trouble.

So, come to think of it, I don't just accept Facebook's new policy. I embrace it. I run my own creative shop. As a professional content creator, I'd like to think that my putting in just a little more time will result in non-salesy posts that will skate by FB's algorithms or proofreaders.

The rest of the world will just have to hire someone who can do that. Come to think of it, they could hire me. Oh, wait, did that last sentence doom me to the Facebook sin bin, despite coming at the end of an otherwise academically rigorous post? Well, if it did, tell your friends they can find this post on my LinkedIn profile, hosted by a more business-oriented social media network.

And they can follow some links to buy a shirt while they're there.

Dang, I did it again. Please don’t hold it against me, Facebook.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports. He is also spearheading an ambitious film project called “I Am Douglass.”

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾“News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed,” facebook.com. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/ (accessed November 15, 2014)

⁽²⁾ IBID.

⁽³⁾ Kelly Fiveash, “Zuck: Yo, admen! You wanna flog your brands on Facebook? PAY UP or LEAVE,” The Register.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/15/facebook_news_feed_promotional_page_posts/ (Accessed November 15, 2014)

⁽⁴⁾ “News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed,” facebook.com. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/ (accessed November 15, 2014)

Friday, September 12, 2014

Subversiveness and Marketing a Movie

Sometimes a marketing situation calls for something subversive – a device to rouse passions of which entrenched powers wouldn't approve.

We're not talking palace-coup-level undermining of authority. Fomenting some unrest probably should do it.

A guy named Douglass recently found himself in need of a good plot. Okay, he actually already had, I like to think, a decent plot. Douglass is a character in a movie I hope to make called I Am Douglass. The script has plenty of intrigue, but we felt like the marketing needed some.

We began marketing the concept of the film before acquiring all the resources to make it. Our team adopted that approach to attract attention from actors and investors while showing them we took the off-screen side of the business seriously. We also knew that any buzz we could create now would benefit the film once it got to market.

We got off to a reasonable start. We staked out Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Vine emplacements. Friends and family provided some initial followers and we built up enough content to create an air of viability and a possibility of stickiness. Now we need to reach the next level and maybe something a little inflammatory can do it.

The movie's story revolves around two guys desperate to get somewhere safe enough to reveal explosive information they have discovered about government surveillance abuse. Many people already believe that security forces worldwide have engaged in improper spying and it really ticks them off. Ticked off people do emotional stuff like contributing to Indiegogo campaigns and buying t-shirts that say "The NSA is reading this shirt" (yeah, we have those for sale). Our target market might also like to see a movie made that would draw more attention to the subject. We've got to try to get viral with these folks.

We already put a bit of mystery into the campaign. IAmDouglass.com features a fake front page made to look like Douglass has already sent some incriminating tweets. Our first video tends toward the conspiratorial. Those, however, are self-promotional. For the anti-surveillance audience to pass around content it needs to both entertain and help them make their arguments. Our solution? Subversive cartoons.

Surveillance Lad is a superhero and a do-gooder. He helps people by watching them and helping them when he sights something amiss. In the first cartoon, he notices Mrs. Tomlinson has left the sugar out of her lemonade. He picked up on the omission while watching her via her computer's webcam. He helpfully orders her some sweetener. He deletes a teenager's ill-advised Facebook post, keeps a college student from illegally downloading music, alerts a wife about her husband's infidelity, and performs other similarly handy functions.

My 7-year old niece read a line for one of the videos. She said, "I don't want him doing that." The videos try to really cut to the bottom line : even with the best of intentions, pervasive surveillance can seem creepy. The seven videos get progressively creepier the deeper we get into the series. There's also the subtle message that no matter what level of security clearance they have, people with normal human flaws run spying installations. They aren't superheroes.

We will position the pieces as if we have uncovered a lame government PSA campaign like the ads promoting Obamacare. You know, where some 50-something suit said, "Oh yeah, the kids will love this!" Imagine if the NSA wanted to show people the ways their work could benefit the average person.

The videos will run on YouTube with support from Vine. We'll promote them however we can think of. That includes your Facebook page if you share them (thanks in advance). I've even starting creating virtual graffiti by commenting on as many surveillance news stories as I can and adding our hashtag #iamdouglass.

This issue cuts across party lines. Everybody has somebody they don't want getting into their junk. No conservative wants Dianne Feinstein listening to his phone calls and no liberal wants Dick Cheney reading her emails. So, Republicans - imagine Surveillance Lad is Nancy Pelosi. Democrats - imagine he's a Koch Brother. Koch Brothers - imagine he's anybody you want and that a huge investment in making I Am Douglass could stop him.

Come to think of it, you could maybe use a little radicalization yourself. You'll enjoy that same feeling of hellyeah you did when you came home with that tattoo your dad expressly told you not to get. Post a comment with the hashtag #iamdouglass someplace conspicuous. Don't paint it on something you don't own, but if you've got a spare barn facing a highway, why not use that extra can of paint to stick it to the man? Share a video, favorite a tweet, and if you have a friend who's a conspiracy theorist, send her our way.

Are we sufficiently inflammatory? Are we sufficiently funny? Are we Douglass? We will find out.