Digital Celebrity

I just read a note by my favorite British comedian Russell Brand. He wrote about Jade Goody (UK Big Brother reality star) who recently passed away from cancer. Russell made a really interesting point: "Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth and this is the first generation where it has been democratically distributed by the most lowbrow of phenomenon - reality television" - this made me think about brands and how we continue to define celebrity from the dictionaries of the older generations.

If you are a gaming brand, you should be aware of Yahtzee - a video game reviewer who reaches 1 million + views on his youtube videogame reviews. Almost EVERY time!

Carls Jr. used Paris Hilton to connect with young males off line, but I wonder if they ever considered using Tia Tequila online? She had over 4 million friends on myspace and over 16 million page views BEFORE VH1 gave her a reality show, or "Molls" whose hilarious blog receives over 50,000 page views a week?

WWTDD.COM (What would Tyler Durden Do) is a celebrity blog written from the perspective of my favorite Fight Club Alpha Male. Massively trafficked site that is constantly mentioned on TMZ and KROQ's nationally syndicated radio program.

It's not just reality TV that has democratized celebrity, its the digital world too.

These "democratic celebrities" seem to be missed by most and I think it's a big mistake. The attached video is Weezers Pork and Beans where Weezer incorporates Youtubes best into their music video. With nearly 18 million page views I wonder if they aren't helping rewrite dictionaries.

Movie trailer revolution coming soon

The attached video was part of The Exorcist film premier in the early 1970's. What I think is so progressive was the shift from showing a standard 30 second film trailer IN viewers homes to bringing the viewer into the experience FROM their home. I wonder if their idea wasn't inspired by Roone Arledge of ABC sports? Hmmm.

In the 1960's NCAA Football games were really problematic for a fledgling ABC sports. Most fans only cared about their own schools team, so if a popular team lost...the next game would inevitably have poor ratings. Enter Roone Arledge who stated "Television has done a great job bringing the game to the viewer - now we are going to bring the viewer to the game!" 

Camera's shifted from pan shots of the field, to pre-shot film of the campus, stadium, town and fans. Roone once said "We must orient the viewer, by allowing him to know how many people are watching the game with him, If the game is in Corvallis, Oregon...we need the viewer to know how mad the town is about football." 

This methodology was used later to increase female viewership of Olympics programming by telling the athletes story. Childhood, struggles, parents, siblings, etc...And again to increase viewership in boxing - almost every big fight today includes back stories - all for the purpose of multiplying the number of "entry points of attraction" to the event. It just seems to work.

The Exorcist EXPERIENCE became pop culture by doing this. It even showed up as a major story on the evening news. At the film premier fake ambulances were parked on the curb outside of the theatre further stoking the belief that if you missed this film, you would have missed out on an experience that everyone was talking about. Personally, it would have reminded me of not getting picked on the soccer team - standing alone, watching a crowd have fun.

I applaud the JACKASS film trailer that premiered a few years back, the movie trailer did not show 1 clip of the film, but instead turned a night vision camera on an audience that was laughing its ass off. Just like Roone preached, they brought the film to the viewer. 

Certain emotions can create "emotional contagions" (laughter, sadness and anger) - the phenomenon that happens when we laugh simply because others are laughing...oddly, followed by asking "what's so funny?" 

Film trailers have been beyond lazy and now with the window between theater and DVD release narrowing, they will need a revolution, lest we see the end of theaters in our near future.