Fakes, snakes and flakes

Hi,

On October 30, 1938, mass panic broke out across America and people hid in their cellars or jammed the roads leading out of towns and cities, trying the escape an attack from Martians. The stampede was set off by a radio play staged by Orson Welles. The production took the form of simulated news broadcasts with sound effects. Nearly 70 years later Lonelygirl15 is posting video on YouTube, slices of her life as a 16 year old which have shot her to the second most popular channel on the video blogsite, with 2.3 million viewings and 24,000 subscribers. Investigative journalists and online snoops smelled a rat and uncovered a Hollywood scam by a group of filmmakers who now claim to have invented “a new art form… [that will] usher in an era of interactive storytelling where the line between 'fan' and 'star' has been removed". Fakes. The online world is full of them. It is a viral marketing technique to spread your message far and wide by creating what purports to be reality footage of something amazing that will be passed on by the unsuspecting. Eventually, like the Blair Witch Project, all is revealed, and the marketers congratulate themselves on another successful scam. “Fooled you again,” they say. I have friends in the digital marketing industry who produce neatly packaged fakes for big brands. Can a brand afford to lie like that? How many times can a medium reveal itself to be a snakepit of simulated truth (aka lies) and not infect its image indelibly with the image of the snakeoil salesman and the porn site spammer. No, you can’t trust anything you see or hear on the Net.

PS. Americans are especially susceptible. 15% of them believe the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood film set. And 20% of them believed The X Files was a documentary. And nearly a majority of them voted for an actor for President. (That’s right. George W. is really B-Grade actor Tolson Holmes from Jacksonville, Missouri, playing the President in a worldwide production called The End of Civilisation As We Know It.)

Cheers!

Michael Kiely

Email responses:

Morning Michael

Your emails are tops.

I'm currently working as a speech writer in the public sector, but hail from a fairly traditional marketing/advertising background...so your 'thought for the day' is a good way for me to stay plugged in to what's happening out on the street, in a way that my job often doesn't provide me the scope or time to do.

Marketing commentary, social commentary, WHATEVER - your words are looked forward to and enjoyed!

Cheers
Caitlin