Studio Turns High School Graduation Into Marketing Stunt, Nobody Cares
The Wall Street Journal looks at how an unfortunately named marketing agency called the Intelligence Group tried to promote recent bomb "I Love You, Beth Cooper" with a viral video on YouTube. (Can we just once and for all ban anyone who works in advertising from accessing YouTube?) They paid the valedictorian of a Los Angeles high school $1,800 to "spontaneously" blurt out a secret crush during her speech, and they hired someone to film the speech in a faux-homemade style to post online.
The clip never caught on, though, with only about 2,000 hits, and the movie crashed and burned. The officials at the high school had no idea there was a business transaction involved in the ceremony, and they weren't too happy to learn of it from the WSJ:
The stunt did succeed in outraging officials at Hamilton High and the Los Angeles Unified School District, who were horrified when informed by a reporter that a movie company had essentially planted a paid advertisement in the midst of a graduation ceremony.
Hamilton High Assistant Principal Roberta Mailman says neither she nor anyone from the school was contacted for permission — either for the stunt itself or for filming it. Before learning of the payment, she says, "I thought it was a great speech."
School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry says she is unsure whether the episode violated any policy, but adds that Ms. Mejia's diploma is safe. In a statement, Local District Superintendent Michelle King wrote: "Obviously, this is not condoned by the District. It's unfortunate."
Hey, $1800 isn't too bad for a college freshman starting her first year at MIT, so we don't begrudge the student her money. But what's next, o Intelligence Group? How about you wire a baby to deliver an E-Trade pitch at his baptism? Or maybe bribe some pallbearers to "drop" a casket during a funeral! We think you were on the right track with hijacking a big life event ceremony to sell crap; we just don't think you were aiming low enough.
"Fellow Graduates, Before We Greet The Future, a Word From My Sponsor " [Wall Street Journal]
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Comments:
I'd rather watch Manos, hands of fate on repeat for a month than the worthless drivel that is Beth Cooper.
LOVE the "Play them off keyboard cat" tag!!!!!!!!
It kind of shows that the valedictorian is a savvy businesswoman.
The secret crush is a LIE.
@veg-o-matic: Nebraska should have denied him enrollment. Unless you guys wanted a hepatitis outbreak.
I have a crush on the girl in that picture.
Not really.
Dear marketers: A video is not "viral" because you call it "viral." It's viral if people actually want to watch it.
This whole stunt reminds me of that MTV Movie Awards skit where Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. beat the hell out of Jack Black for a 'viral' video promoting Tropic Thunder. Except it didn't suck.
I wish there was a transcript of exactly what was said. I'm curious but not nearly interested enough to go searching YouTube for it.
@AngryK9: My crush is known to the state of California, and because of it I can't go within 500 feet of her.
JUST KIDDING its 1000 feet
Couldn't they just have put a billboard ad on the side of Hayden's massive skull?
The officials at the school are probably outraged because they didn't think of a way to whore the event first.
This is really small potatoes compared to the captive customer rip off that is the whole Senior Pictures/Prom Pictures racket. My son just graduated in May and on principle , he refused to let himself be charged money to submit a photograph to the school annual.The school system has an exclusive deal with Lifetouch Photography and a package of pics costs over $600. You can get the same pictures in the same poses in the same clothes IN THE SAME STORE at the mall for $30 (JC Penney).But you can't submit the pics made anywhere but Lifetouch without paying $$$.
The school officials are hypocritical bastards for criticizing this girl. I wish she had held out for more.
It really is amazing what people will do for money. If Fox was smart they would have hired someone to proclaim their love for someone in the pews during a eulogy. "And, even though my father beat me mercilessly as a child, I stand here today to say - father, I forgive you. And...I just can't let this opportunity slip away - Mrs. Martin, my father's caregiver, I LOVE YOU!"
It would have had a much better chance of going viral, no?
@hhkim515: Dude! Think about what you're saying! That movie just about KILLED Joel and the robots, and they only had to watch it once!
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Lately I've been feeling every other post should just end with that clip.
@Laura Northrup: Now, now, now...we COULD sit here all day and argue about whether or not this video is truly viral OR, and hear me out on this, we play Hungry Hungry Hippos, get some pizza, and watch a good movie, like Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
Oh, who am I kidding. Let's make fun of the stupid movie company, congratulate the now $1,800 richer girl for whoring herself out to corporate America THEN play Hungry Hungry Hippos, get some pizza, and watch Paul Blart.
@Chris Walters: I've been feeling the Consumerist's July mission is to show us all the ways the world is like Idiocracy!
my softball coach in high school (who was also a teacher, and loved by almost everyone) had a friend who worked for a local restaurant. every year my coach asked the valedictorian to profess their love for said restaurant in their speech in exchange for a massive stack of free coupons, and no one ever did it.
but when I graduated I slipped it into my speech as an anecdote, openly admitting what I was getting out of the deal. people thought it was funny, and my whole softball team got a giant meal catered to the gym after the last practice of the season, and I took a bunch of friends out for lunch with my stack of coupons. It's not so bad being a sellout.
I like how it's acceptable for the schools to accept cash to install soda vending machines and fast food kiosks, but god forbid a girl (GOING TO MIT MIND YOU) gets shit for a minor harmless gag that got her 1800 bucks which will probably come in handy as a poor freshman next month.
And to be viral I think it has to not be a completely obvious marketing scheme or commercial. I assume viral refers to virus in some sense, maybe in that you never see how bad it really is or think it's not bad and it spreads like wildfire because of it's creativity, and then it turns out that you've been exposed to real evil and you die (or buy a slap chop)
No kidding. "OUTRAGE AND ATTITUDE!!! What, that's just our new Coke scoreboard. What's your problem?"
I was just gonna say I wonder how many Coke scoreboards and vending machines you can see in the gym background during the speech
@Keavy_Rain: I would not have any qualms about taking the money from a company as stupid as that. As they say, a fool and their money are soon parted.
Seriously, is nothing sacred? Umm...nevermind. I know the answer.
There was a time when a graduation was considered a time to be classy, polite, and respectful, not a time to shamelessly advertise a product. A graduation is an accomplishment to students and should be treated as a meaningful event, not something where marketers say, "For a bit of cash, we can get some cheap advertising." And I'm not just talking about this one time; there's been many times this has happened at graduations.
@Megalomania: That's fine, but I would have asked for a whole hell of alot more than $1800 from a studio that obviously could have afforded it.
I mean they wasted all that money on Hayden whosits anyway.
Ms. Ethically-challenged MIT-bound valedictorian isn't so smart after all, eh??!?
Does this count as blame the OP?
@G.O.B.: Come on!: Oh, he was never enrolled. Just shuffled around campus from one staged "real" event to another.
And for hepatitis, well we've always got Chi Omega for that.
Ba-Zing!
haha, local references.. ahh.
I love how Madison Avenue assumes that, because some videos have "gone viral," that they can just produce a viral video at will.
The truth is, it's not that easy. A great many factors ... many of them intangible and not necessarily reproducible ... lie behind what makes a video "go viral." You can't just decide to create "a viral video" and expect that it will explode across the Internet just because you produced it and uploaded it to Youtube.
They do this, of course, because it's much cheaper to launch a "viral video" that propagates itself around the world, than it is to pay for advertising on TV, radio, in newspapers & magazines, etc. That it has worked a time or two in the past just creates a (false) belief that it can happen every time, without fail, so an ad campaign can be launched "on the cheap."
The truth is that — in nearly all cases — a quality marketing campaign costs money. Period. There's no way around it. Trying to get away cheap is just foolish, when a multi-million dollar film production is on the line.
And for that matter ... why even have an expensive marketing campaign at all? If you want people to beat down the doors to get in to see your movie, there's a simple way to make that happen. And that's to make a quality movie which is so compelling that — yes! — people beat down the doors to get in and see it.
Marketing campaigns, in short, are a poor substitute for quality. It's much better to spend the money in the production phase, and make something worth seeing, rather than blow a wad on advertising trying get people to come and see something that's not good enough to compel them to come in on its own.
One last point to my rant: Viral videos are not news. Why, over the past week, have we been treated to saturated mass-media coverage of a single viral video of a wedding? It's not news! With an economy in the sewer, Washington in vapor-lock over healthcare, Wall Street falling all over itself making excuses for its stupidity, politicians doing utterly inane things like fleeing the country to see their paramors or resigning out of the blue for no identifiable reason, companies laying off workers by the thousand in order to dilute the cost of labor, the possibility of an H1-N1 pandemic, and so many other things happening in the world which ARE, in fact, truly "news" ... WHY so much attention to a wedding video? How is this even justifiable, by any measure?
(Pssst ... I know why it happens. It happens because journalists are lazy. It's easy to show a "viral video" and report how many hits it's had, and even to interview the people in it. It's much harder, on the other hand, to get off their butts and investigate stuff like corruption.)
@Snarkysnake: I always hoped Lifetouch would end up in those Worst Company contests. I supposed you don't get to know their brand of crap until you have a kid in one of their monopoly run school systems.
@Snarkysnake: Wow, that's crazy. My high school didn't have a contract with anybody, and I can't believe schools are even allowed to do that!
I just have to jump in here and defend the movie, because I liked it. I openly admit that I am known for being easy to please in the theater. However, the characters were likable and i dunno, it kept me entertained for a couple hours. And it did have a message that's hard to disagree with--specifically, "you should have the confidence to admit your crush, because you never know what might happen."
Life changing movie? Not really. But no worse than most other movies out there.
I'm glad you put "Nobody Cares" in the title. Seriously, nobody cares.
That was the Swine Flu of viral videos.
@Snarkysnake: if i'd had to pay to be in a yearbook i wouldn't have ever had a picture in one. the school i went to, it was part of the school's budget from fundraisers. made it fair for all the kids, regardless of income.
not that i couldn't have afforded it after i started working at a burger place, but it would have felt like a severe waste of money to me
What the hell does this have to do with consumers? It sounds more like this should be posted on a site for the mentally handicapped where they can say 'dayum that is retarded! r. e. t. a. r. d. e. d!' The movie, not the post. The stunt is kinda durrr too.
@gaberussell: The second camera and the perfect audio when they put microphones on the loudspeakers...although I have to admit, for my son's holiday pageant I did a 2 camera shoot and wired the auditorium with microphones (although we were going to try to sell the videos as a fundraiser for the school...not trying to sell movie tickets). The video description on YouTube was just "Too perfect" for it to be some average joe recording his cousin's video.
On the plus side, the video now has over 16,000 hits!
I bet the movie wouldn't have bombed so bad if the Hayden girl had actually shown something during her "nude" scene. Well, at least I would have had sat through it.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): What does that mean, "play them off". I don't know what that means, to "play them off". F*ck it. We'll do it live. We'll do it live! F*cking thing suxs!
;)
@trujunglist: Viral implies that it's taken on some kind of underground or inside joke nature. The ShamWow remix and the WTF Blanket are both supreme examples.
Well that shows me. And here I thought all this time that NBC's takeover of my alma mater for that Tommy Lee *|PROFANITY|* was the bottom of the barrel.
Touché, student-salesperson.