Is it Real or is it Marketing?

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published July 30, 1999]

One of the most significant lessons of the "information age" is the almighty bond between the message and the medium — it doesn't matter which comes first, just that they complement one another effectively.

Some concepts will not catch on, regardless of the marketing dollars put behind them or the catchy commercials, slogans and ad campaigns employed to feed them to the public. During college, I lived in Baltimore, a blue collar city with a great deal of crime and the highest rate of teen pregnancy and high school failure in the nation at the time. Some Urban Renewal marketeer thought it might be wise to try and turn the city's image around to a more positive one (a pregnant teenage dropout awaiting conjugal visits with her incarcerated crack dealer boyfriend isn't the best mascot to draw tourist dollars).

The slogan "The City that Reads" was adopted and emblazoned on billboards, park benches and bus stop alcoves all over the city. On one such park bench I noticed that some astute social critic had unwittingly hammered home the irony of this forced attempt to intellectualize their fair city by spray painting the letter "B" in front of the word "reads"... sound it out, you'll get it.

On the other hand, and this is where we come in, there are countless great ideas out there just waiting for a brilliant marketing strategy to deliver them in all their glory to the pointing and clicking public. A testament to the effectiveness of good advertising is the fact that some ideas catch on and gain a life of their own while the product they were conceived to push fades into obsolescence (we've all been there and done that but I still don't know a living soul who drinks Mountain Dew).

A great example of medium/message convergence is The Blair Witch Project (www.blairwitch.com). If you haven't heard about this movie yet, it might be time to move out of that aluminum siding shack on the mountain. I started following the trajectory of this phenomenon almost a month ago, solely on the internet, long before I heard a mention of it anywhere else.

The marketing of this film (in theaters Friday July 30th) has been an absolute media onslaught and yet the cult following it's currently enjoying is comprised mostly by people who haven't even seen it yet, but have read some of the many gushing reviews calling it the scariest and most anticipated film ever (paraphrased), seen the "documentary" on the Sci Fi channel and surfed the eerie web site gathering "facts" and history on this myth-in-the-making.

A normally media-savvy friend even tried to convince me the other day that the Sci Fi channel's hour-long commercial for the film was "real", when the credits clearly mark it as nothing more than a glorified preview. But that's exactly what is so genius about the approach that this movie has taken. The "is it real or is it marketing" strategy is one that will only work until we become wise to it, but it's a great ride while the thrill of newness lasts.