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2.25.05
Who Ordered Lampoon Service?
-- OR --
Retched Record Promotion
Call me Nostradumbass. In the last issue of this column, I predicted, "we'll soon see ads created by the young and tech savvy for their favorite brands featuring personalized content and intended for distribution to their close friends." Although I do believe this scenario will come to reality at some point, it appears that its evolutionary ancestor on the viral marketing timeline has already come into being. Call it Viro Ewreckedus.

Here's the story: the week before Valentine's Day, a bunch of typical time-wasters began forwarding links to a short film and it soon became the viral Web hit du jour. The gross-out spot shows an amorous couple getting frisky in a hotel room as (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, a cheesy gusher from the early 90s by Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, plays on the clock radio. As Romeo fumbles with his lady's bra, a waiter busts in with a room service meal. A moment or two of confusion regarding who ordered room service follows. Then, for no apparent reason, the white-jacketed waiter begins puking. Also for no apparent reason, the couple remains stationary on the bed as the vomiting valet continues spewing what looks like malted milk all over them. As his regurgitation subsides, he proclaims to the chunk adorned chick, "I did it for you." She proceeds to throw her arms around him, forsaking her old lover for the grotey galant.

The makers of this nauseating creation invited viewers to return to the site on Valentine's Day to learn just who the mystery room service ordering culprit was. As reported on ad industry blog site, Adrants, and perpetuated throughout the ad industry gossip mill, "Bryan Adams revealed he was behind the disgusting Who Ordered Room Service viral video in which a waiter enters a hotel room and pukes all over a knecking [sic] couple enjoying some love on the bed. Yup, Adams' new album is called Room Service and somehow he thought the relationship between puking and promoting an album was a good thing." Evidently, Adrants and its fellow suckers fell for the sequel which pegs the twisted film as an ad for Bryan Adams's album Room Service, released in September 2004. The updated film site also links to the official Bryan Adams site, the Amazon product page for the album, and another video short in which excerpts from an interview with Adams are used to "answer" questions -- Daily Show style -- like, "You often get car sickness?" and "Do you have an iPod?"

Of course, as anyone with an ounce of healthy skepticism could easily decipher, the less-than-skillful and hardly-humorous send-up was not a viral spot for a Bryan Adams album, but merely the mediocre handiwork of "Frank Lesser and Jason Woliner, amateur filmmakers from New York," according to a 2/23 GlobeandMail.com article.

As if even necessary, Tyson Parker, a spokesman for Universal Music Canada was quoted in the story as stating, "Not by any stretch of the imagination has the ad been endorsed by Bryan [Adams] or his management company." Duh.

Simply mulling over the film's content and the alleged advertiser would have prevented Adrants and possibly its ad world brethren from mistaking the sick short for a sanctioned viral marketing effort. Instead, as blog posters and the like are wont to do, they dashed off a quick commentary accompanied by a few hyperlinks and off the mythical message went, only to be seized by similarly hot-headed Web community scenesters.

Besides the film's blatantly inappropriate concept, low production quality (too low even to capture that hip retro look), and the use of a 14-year-oldie to promote a "new" album, perhaps the biggest giveaway that this was a ham-handed hoax is the fact that the album Room Service was released months before the phony film hit the viral circuit. Viral marketing, a.k.a. word-of-mouth campaigns, are intended to build buzz around something before it's marketed to a wide audience and often before it's available for purchase; if this were truly an ad for the album it would have hit the Web days if not weeks or months before the record release date, which was last September.

Rather than self-reflecting, the ad industry rumor mongers have resorted to blaming the hoax ad for its potential impact on future legitimate viral ad/short film campaigns. As posted on Adland on 2/23, "Just like in the case of the recent VW suicide bomber ad [see last week's Lowbrow Lowdown coverage], which was a spec ad, not intended for bigtime webfame, these "fake" or unintended virals hurt the entire business of viral advertising….The spread of fake virals - which to the end viewer looks exactly the same as a real viral - ends up threatening the integrity of everything else. Especially when even industry commentators fall for them. I don't blame the adbloggers for that - I do blame the creators of viral ad campaigns and their need to be secretive."

Boo fuckin' hoo.

What a surprise: the advertising industry wants its cake and eat it to. "We want to foster a Web environment that embraces viral marketing campaigns. We want people to pass around our branded entertainment, comment on it, have fun with it. We want them to be involved. But they'd better not screw things up by actually taking any real control!"

The fact is that if it weren't for everyday people creating Web content for their own amusement and passing it around till it becomes a viral phenomenon, the advertising industry wouldn't have been able to adopt it in the first place. Now, despite the long organic history of word-of-mouth, the agency pundits are pissed that the people who developed it in the first place are taking it to a new level by spoofing the ad industry's imitation of it. Well, too bad. They'll just have to eat their lumps.

Cuts like a knife, don't it?



The Revolution Will Be Self-aggrandized
-- OR --
Orange You Sorry
Contrary to today's media malarkey, it takes more than viral email campaigns, websites and blog posts to foment a revolution. It takes living, breathing bodies. But don't tell that to Washington DC's Rock Creek Creative.

The public relations strategy and brand identity design firm slipped into a state of deluded grandeur recently, and before they awoke from their boastful dream, published a press release to commemorate it. As reported on 2/14 on Ukrainian news site, Ukrainska Pravda, Rock Creek Creative put out a 2/8 press release entitled, "Washington Area Communications Firm Reveals Role in Ukrainian Election" stating that the company "helped develop the communications strategy, branding and de facto policy Web site of the Orange Revolution." Evidently, the RCC spin deemed the de facto policy site -- www.ukraineineurope.com -- as "the virtual freedom plaza for the democracy movement."

Actually, the site was not created for the recent revolution, but instead built for a "Ukraine in Europe and the World" conference held in February 2004 by the Friends of Ukraine Network. As featured on its company site, RCC counts the US-Taiwan Business Council, The World Bank and The Global Fairness Initiative (chaired by Bill Clinton) among its clients.

According to the Ukrainska Pravda article, the RCC propaganda also featured a quote from the firm's principal, Scott Johnson: "While we have been involved in many international projects during our 19-year history, we have never before been so directly involved in a campaign that so strengthened democracy in a country."

The folks at Ukrainska Pravda ain't buyin' it. In fact, the story refers to the Ukraine in Europe site as "little-known." In fact, the only mention of the Orange Revolution on the site is in on a page linking to other news sites to visit for "Continuous Updates on Ukraine's Orange Revolution." It's also worth noting that the site lists the keynote panelist of the first Ukraine in Europe conference panel, "Reforming Ukraine: How Are We Doing?" as none other than the recently ousted Putin puppet himself, Viktor Yanukovych. Not exactly revolutionary.

Even Serhiy Yevtushenko, the acting director of one of the Ukraine in Europe organizers, the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Integration, was appalled by the outrageous PR pronouncement. In the story he calls the press release "an unabashed advertisement for the firm, an improper and unethical approach to business by RCC towards its partners."

Not surprising, it didn't take long before the RCC felt it necessary to revisit its cocksure declaration. The day after unleashing its initial press statement, a subsequent release stated, "By designing the official website and contributing to the communications strategy for the conference, Rock Creek helped raise the profile of Ukraine's issues internationally…. It was one of many contributions to an atmosphere of change in Ukraine."

Let's disregard the fact that it was the fed-up people of the Ukraine who fueled the revolution, not some poorly-updated website. Not only did RCC take its graphic design job way too seriously, it managed to commit a major public- and media-relations faux-pas. As a firm that counts public relations among its consulting services, and one whose website notes it is "critically important" that an organization's identity "reflects the core strategy and values that drive the organization," this brazen move could prove to alienate RCC's clients as it has some Ukrainians.

Anyway, RCC oughtta be ashamed of themselves, tainting a perfectly good revolution with propaganda!



Art Imitates Hype
-- OR --
7500 Sheets to the Wind
As if its natural beauty in the midst of a concrete jungle weren't enough of an attraction, evidently it takes the addition of thousands of orange-stained pillowcases to attract visitors to Central Park. But whether they dig the temporary art installation or not, some are just grateful that the garish Gates is ad-free.

David Dunlap is among the relieved. In his 2/17 New York Times piece, he writes, "At a time when the civic realm is blanketed with corporate promotion, from lampposts to landmarks, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have shown that it is possible to hang 1,067,330 square feet of nylon in the heart of Manhattan - almost 50 acres of potential display space - without a slogan, trademark or logo."

The flap-happy fogies fronted the estimated $21 million cost of their 16-day flag fest, entitled "The Gates." Although there were no interested underwriters for the installation according to the Times piece, Christo and Jeanne-Claude had ruled-out sponsorship of their latest artistic assault. Still, even Dunlap admits that the tangerine totems are, in essence, one giant ad for their kooky creators. The writer posits that its sponsor-free status is perhaps "one of the greatest gifts of 'The Gates' to New York City."

Wow, what a prize! It's kinda like saying, "Well, my sidewalk may be covered in dog shit, but at least Spuds Mackenzie didn't drop it there."

The story goes on to mention other public art projects around the city that are encumbered by sponsor insignia. Apparently, we can infer that ad-free public art is more worthy of appreciation, and commercially-corrupted public art must therefore be less so.

The Gates may be unfettered by logos, but its superiority to sponsored art projects is obviously debatable. If anything, this art invasion -- and the hullabaloo surrounding it -- exhibits a common human response which is a required ingredient for brand marketing success. Simply, if people are told something is important or special or a once-in-a-lifetime event, they'll flock in droves to see it no matter what it is.

Take the lemmings who forced themselves outside to join their fellow followers of fashion during a frigid February to experience The Gates. All it took to coax them across town, across the country or the globe was for some dolts to christen a bunch of orange flags "art." In other words, because people convinced them it's good and will add meaning to their lives, they bought into the idea. If that ain't the secret to branding, that is, convincing people to literally buy into an idea that they may not even like otherwise just because it's emblazoned with the right logo, I don't know what is.

You know, I've always thought it was the lane-closing that slowed traffic during road construction. And all this time it was those idiots slowing down to contemplate the rows of bright orange pylons.


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