Deep Down, Are We Pretty Shallow? Lessons Learned from the Susan Boyle phenomenon — or not…

BACKGROUND

Susan Boyle might put me out of a job – and I couldn’t be more delighted.

In case you were in a coma, Susan Boyle is an unprepossessing Scottish woman with a voice so beautiful it will literally make you weep — and she’s become the biggest thing since sliced bread via YouTube over the past five days. Her glorious performance of  the tremendously challenging ballad “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables on an episode of  Britain’s Got Talent has amassed nearly 13 million hits.

Back the 21st Century P.T. (that’s Pre-Twitter), it would have been the job of a professional communicator, likely of the publicist variety, to hype this woman — to remake her as a more suitable brand by spiffing up her image and promoting her to any and all media outlets.

Instead, one of the things remarkably talented woman has demonstrated — again– the power of social media and how effective the public itself can be in terms of calling attention to something or someone in whom they are interested. Instead via YouTube as well as discussion on Facebook, Twittter and FriendFeed, the woman has – via viral marketing that she herself did not set into motion – become a superstar.

Heck, she’s even generating press for Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher because they tweeted about HER performance.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

What it is about her that appeals is that she is (or at least seems) genuine. In this era of people who are Photoshopped and Botoxed to the point of near waxworkdom, this woman looks like an honest-to-goodness 47 -year-old lady. So strong is the expectation that our female talents now must be young, size two lovelies that one wonders if Janis Joplin– an off-kilter beauty with a killer voice — would be able to have a career today.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Perhaps the scariest thing of all is that she has revealed the ugliness in our society’s current attitudes about beauty and talent. Screen goddess Ava Gardner once joked “Deep down, I’m pretty shallow” – what a pity that this may have been revealed as the current dominant mindset for humanity.

Watching the audience’s initial mocking reaction to her demonstrates that. And it makes her victory all the more powerful in this era of narcissistic twit(terer)s.

And it makes me particularly worried about the world my daughter will inherit -  if the response of MTV’s bloggers can be taken as typical- that they could react to her talent in the following callow manner:

It wasn’t until this morning that I got wind of the Susan Boyle craze. Along with the rest of you cynics out there, I have to admit that I was too quick to judge and giggle before she opened her mouth. Not to follow the crowd, but she seriously gave me goose bumps and watery eyes. (I discovered that closing your eyes to her bushy brows and just allowing yourself to hear her voice is the trick.)Her talent is undeniable, regardless of her cat collection and homely frock.

Perhaps there is a future in public relations: Teaching narrow-minded narcissists how to relate as people. Perhaps?

“Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Friends!” Viral Marketing for True Blood

Sometimes, if done well, a viral marketing campaign can build real anticipation for the product that it represents. The online websites and ARGs (alternate reality games) for J. J. Abrams-related projects like Lost and Cloverfield are especially complex and intriguing. [Please note that these are only a few links to those ARGs, provided by TV Squad and IGN.com respectively because each campaign involves quite a few sites.]

Combine them with The Dark Knight viral campaign and you have some prime examples of how the technique has been taken to near artform.

But It’s a tricky balance because sometimes the viral campaign turns out to be much better than the actual product that it represents (I’m looking at you The Blair Witch Project.

(And you might want to look at a really good article from Salon.com about the marketing of that film which has a different take on the phenomenon of viral marketing.)

What is Viral Marketing?

For anyone who doesn’t know about viral marketing, it is a word-of-mouth strategy that moves much more rapidly due to the speed of technology- spreads as fast as germs if not faster. Wikipedia, though admittedly not the most reliable source, has a very good explanation of the phenomenon:

“Viral marketing…refer[s] to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses….Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily…. [It] may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.”

Why It Works

It’s a very clever way to reach out to people because usually good viral marketing involves some sort of mystery or riddle that piques a person’s curiosity. Once intrigued, people will eagerly hunt down further information.

Often communities spring up around the more detailed ARG’s – sometimes people band together trying to find hidden clues and solutions.

Other times friends come together to try to crack the puzzle. But it is a technique that gets people invested — and talking about the campaign and the film/tv show/product that it is trying to promote.

True Blood: The Show

As many rabid Six Feet Under fans already undoubtedly know, its mastermind Alan Ball is back with a new HBO series set in the American South just after “Undead Americans” have revealed their existence.

True Blood is based on the smart, funny and sometimes sexy Southern Vampire novels authored by Charlaine Harris. They are fun and offer satisfying twists on the lore of the supernatural and the south.

True Blood: The Viral Marketing Campaign

The viral campaign focuses on “Tru Blood” the synthetic Japanese-created blood-substitute that allowed vampires to reveal their existence among the humans.

There’s a website here for that particular (fictitious) product.

And according to Cynthia Littleton at Variety.com, the folks behind the show even took out a full page ad in Daily Variety about vampires drinking responsibly: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Friends.”

There’s also BloodCopy, a site supposedly covering the vampire revelation and integration into the general populace. It has video, textual and pictorial elements as well as a skype connection I haven’t yet tried….

Does It Work?

Is this intriguing?

For me, the answer is yes but I was already inclined to watch True Blood by virtue of the fact I love Alan Ball, I loved the books on which the show is based and I’m generally willing to give anything HBO develops a chance- they’ve had an excellent track record in terms of producing quality dramas.

But what about you?

Do viral sites such as these get your blood racing? Do they make you more eager to see something like True Blood or are they merely a fun distraction? Are they helping you hone in on a signal or are they just more bothersome noise?

[A special thanks to Ironic for motivating me to write this post with a comment he left on this blog in relation to the difference between splogs and ARGs. He's a wise man. Though he's not posting on this, he's posting some intriguing, thought-provoking and well-written stuff. Go see his blog HERE.]