The Lessons of Lonelygirl

I haven't followed this saga, but from a distance, there is something about it that reminds me of Pattern Recognition, the novel by William Gibson: Video snippets uploaded to the Internet. A community devoted to figuring out their source and meaning. A deep exploration into the marketing implications of it all. (However, in the Gibson novel, there is murder and mayhem and the characters are much more intriguing than the folks involved with this.)

Hey Rex,
I forgot that book, but now that you bring it up, it's exactly right! If I remember right, the premise was that these kinds of releases and events never got to the point of being revealed as marketing ploys. Could that be the lesson for companies? It's ok, as long as you don't get caught and can spin this out? Would be the wrong lesson, I think, since unless you're really good, hoaxes tend to be outed.

How about if you were to integrate your brand into the hoax? If you were to play with the idea or real or fake? It might not be able to go on for as long as LG, but it's being done already and will continiue to be a tactic used by marketers.

Take a look at this by Sega

http://www.beta-7.com/blog

And this for Audi

http://www.argn.com/archive/000229audis_art_of_the_arg.php

Rex: I just today bought a copy of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Thank you very much for pointing t\o it.

There are many things that I admire about the Lonelygirl15 project. But there are sinister aspects that I think are dangerous.

Let this be a lesson to those who "believe" in online personas. Online = Unknown. You cannot trust anyone online, for it is so easy to fake an online identity for deceptive and even criminal purposes.

There is much to learn about viral marketing here.

We also see how the occult is moving more blatantly into the marketing mix.

Performing from a written script is an old idea, the performer and marketers both are smart enough to bring an old idea through videotaping and making it successful viral ad campaign.
-Paul

The jury is still out on whether this LG15 marketing ploy is "successful". It has succeeded in getting attention on MSM television prime time news. That is a major accomplishment.

But it has also succeeded in repulsing and annoying many YouTubers, who are uploading hostile and mocking videos.

Negative publicity is NOT better than no publicity at all. The fastest way to kill a mediocre product is to hype it with massive advertising. This gets more consumers to try it, they hate it, they boycott it, they spread the bad buzz, then you're dead. Untouchable. A self-parody at best.

Having said that, LG15 marketing is brilliant as far as using intrigue, symbols, rumors, mystery, and secret lore. Too bad the agenda is sinister.

Deceiving your audience, posing as a confessional video diarist teen, when you're just a scripted tool of a Hollywood marketing company, this is not a business model for stable and secure product promotion.

Still, to stand out from the rest of the YouTubers is a major accomplishment. Yet, she may pass back into obscurity due to backlash of the YouTube community who wants either:

(1) upfront disclosure that you're theatrical (Lisa Nova is good example of an actress doing Saturday Night Live type skits -- also see The Revver Interns video at Revver) or

(2) a real, authentic person telling the personal truths of their actual life.

Hollywood was built on tricking people. How many times have I been watching a movie with my wife and blurted out, "That could never happen!" or "How can he play a 16-year-old high school student?" and she says, "Suspension of disbelief!" Lonelygirl15 was entertainment, most of us knew it or suspected it, but as most of the comments noted, "Who cares? We enjoyed it." Bush tricked us about WMD and WE STARTED A WAR! (And it's been great entertainment in some respects, as sad as that is.) For some reason, people want to suspend disbelief, and then the trick becomes their reality. I bet if lonelygirl15 the movie comes out, a lot of people will go see it. Because most of the time we don't know if what we see, hear and read is real or not. And for most people, it just doesn't matter any more.

Dan Cook: you are, sadly, so correct. But with Hellywood, we know upfront that it's illusion, except in those murky idiotic "docudramas" and "based on a true story" where the truth is "not dramatic enough" or whatever the producers claim.

Truth, fact, and reality have been demoted in our PoMo world.

Politicians can lie about weapons of mass destruction, and send thousands to die for no reason, and the leader is not impeached, or tarred and feathered and run out of town.

Every soldier dies in vain anyway, because the rogue political regimes and religious thought control continue across the world, no matter what any troops do.

There are plenty of people who are angry at LG15 for being deceptive by not informing viewers that it was fiction.

The blogosphere reacted violently against Fictional Character blogs, and now the videosphere is reacting angrily against Fictional Character video, where viewers are being deceived.

Yet, many don't understand the difference between The Office or Seinfeld and LG15. What critical thinking skills are being taught in school? Any?

As the editor of the Skeptic said recently, we're not born with the scientific method in our brains. We must train ourselves and our children to question, debate, investigate, and analyze.

By nature, we humans are superstitious and gullible.

With all the con artists, malware, cyber-vandals, sexual predators, and other deceptive dangers on the internet, we really don't need any blogs or videos where You Are NOT Who You Say You Are.