Keith Line

I watch American Idol. Mostly, I hate it, I think to the dismay of my friends and family. I watch it because I never get to see my wife and we can just sit and watch it together, even though we are usually working. While I watch the show, I definitely do so through veiled glasses. I watch for the marketing, the promotion and the fluff.

The finale this year (2009) was unbelievable in terms of scope. There were huge acts and it obviously was a massively expensive undertaking. The Black Eyed Peas, Kiss and countless others. There was glitz. There was style. There was so much happening that it made my head hurt.

With all of the glam, was it even worth it? Was it memorable aside from a judge flashing her undies, a bikini-clad singer, a staged crying event that went further than they even wanted and many awkward performances by the past contestants? Was there real substance to it? Now, people like different music and that is not what I mean to debate in this article. I personally liked some of the singers. I felt they could be successful and provide the world with substantive and exciting music in the future.

The reason that I do not enjoy this type of show is that, in my opinion, it is marketing for marketing’s sake. It is sort of how Paris Hilton is famous for being famous. Rather then showing us a particular fad on any particular episode, the show is inundating us with multiple fads all at once. Some of them stick, some of them fall off. But the sheer magnitude of the fad fodder will be profitable for them. The general public is easily swayed by massive glitz. The money it takes to provide said glitz is also massive. This glitz begets more glitz, which begets even more glitz. All of this glitz turns into money by the original “glitzers” because products are purchased - iTunes downloads, CDs, posters, cars, soft-drinks, to name a few.

American Idol is a business venture. Their goal is to make money - a lot of money. Now, there is nothing wrong with this. If they can make money by telling us what to buy, and we do it, then it’s our fault, not theirs.

I work from home. I watch my daughter all day, aside from the rare instances when I have an in-person meeting or if she has play-time with one of her friends. She is two years old now and I wanted to comment a bit on the time that we have spent together in public.

We go on “adventures” each day, regardless of my mood or work-load. I take us to lunch and we go walking around some place like a store, the library, the park, etc. I feel like we both need it for our personal development. I can be reclusive sometimes and this helps me feel in touch with the world. I want my daughter to be stimulated by the world, not just what she might see on television or even what I alone can share with her. The hope of my wife and I is that our daughter is well-rounded and can make decisions for herself based on informed opinions of the world.

Sometimes, when we are on an adventure, we are treated as some sort of a novelty. We often get things said to us such as “Out with daddy today? That’s nice…” or “Mommy busy?”. Sometimes when my daughter is being hyper, as most two-year old children are, people give me a look as if I can’t handle it because I am just her father. I could be reading into that, but I don’t think so. My wife has seen it from afar and agrees with me.

There are many work at home mom websites and things geared to the same. Marketing materials from the big baby supply companies are entirely geared towards women. I cannot remember the last time I saw something that came in marketing to both parents or fathers. Not withstanding the fact that women have been subjugated and compartmentalized for many years, I had hoped that when we had our daughter, things would be more balanced. This might be for a number of reasons that go beyond the scope of this article.

When it comes down to it, I probably am feeling a small amount of what women have dealt with for years in the workplace and beyond. I have worked with and for people that thought our female counterparts were just attempts to fill quotas or that the work they did was “cute”. It is just crazy.

Let’s not discount motherhood on any level and in no way do I feel that working at home mothers (and mothers and fathers in general) are nothing but amazing. I do hope that my daughter can look beyond the role-playing that is such a huge part of our lives. She is free to make the decisions that will truly make her happy, whatever they may be.

This is nothing more than a simple nod to other fathers who do the same…

“Do you want your MTV?”

This was asked of a group of us when I was about 12 years old.

We all said “Sure!”

Then the guy in the car said, “Tell your parents to get cable then!”

We did exactly that. I remember seeing those first music videos. They were magic. Music and video - what a simple concept that has done so much for the careers of artists all over the world. It was moderately subversive and underground in it’s day. The same videos over and over again would play until a new one came out and then that got added to the rotation list. We would watch it late into the night and talk about them at school. It was a beautiful thing really.

After a while, so many videos were available that we could pick and choose, so market-segmented shows came out. They crammed certain genres into half hour and one hour shows and showed the appropriate videos. But then something happened…

It must have become apparent to someone that certain segments were watched more than others. Then it must have become apparent to someone which of those segments could be advanced with synergistic marketing. Product placement (including the MTV brand) was everywhere. Artists were pushed through that were strictly talentless marketing efforts. Boy bands were created every day. Artists were pigeon holed into their demographic and if they didn’t fit, they were and still are, pushed off. MTV has taken product placement and self promotion to a level that is unmatched in terms of scope and ridiculousness. From this, a culture of music was cultivated that, in my opinion, is unparalleled even today.

However, this culture has been co-opted in a manner that is hard to believe. There has been a joke for years about there being no music on MTV. It’s not really a joke though, is it? It’s simply the truth. There are reality shows about dating, reality shows about living in an apartment somewhere, there are shows about music, but there is not much actual music.

It just makes me sad that this happens and I wonder what we can do to bring some quality back into this channel. Not that MTV is the only channel or organization that does this type of thing. It just happens to be an iconic symbol that I wonder if it is worth saving?

Today there are some fascinating articles in the news that relate directly to a previous article I wrote entitled The Marketing of “Revolution”. The news story in question relate to the naming of the current Influenza outbreak of The Swine Flu.

The Swine Flu gets it’s name because it is a virus that originated or traveled through pigs at some point, hence the “swine” reference. This is fairly common knowledge to anyone that has followed the news in the past week. There also appears to be some human and bird virus in there as well, but it’s a bit hard to say People Swine Bird Flu, I guess.

At first there were calls to rename it because of religious sensitivities to the term. Apparently the thought here is that those opposed to eating pork do not want to name their viruses after them either. Then, the pork industry took offense because the term Swine Flu might be hurting their bottom line. Notice the link in that article is from the economy section and not the health section.

I suggest renaming the current virus to something more pleasant like “The Shiny Happy Flu” or maybe we can use the philosophy of the lobby groups and use negative connotations as a jumping off point. We can try to stop crime by calling it the “Breaking and Entering Flu”, or maybe we can get my favorite rock in space reclassified as a planet by calling it the Pluto Flu! My personal favorite is the “Dependence on Foreign Oil Flu”. The options are truly endless.

This is a real-time example of the transfer of word meaning from “real-life” to a marketing effort. This is an interesting time to follow the effects of lobby groups on our lives. It is very easy to supplant the reality of situations with a particular agenda.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I have issues with marketing that is used to subjugate or diminish the inherent possibilities of something that might be classified as good for the world. Science is good for the world.

“Girl Science” is a class offered by our local park district for young girls in the community. “Girl Science” is not good for the world.

Now before anyone goes crazy and thinks the people behind this are evil, let’s take a step back and realize that it is probably done with the best of intention and they shouldn’t be demonized in any way.

With that said, the idea behind “Girl Science” is to learn about and produce one’s own cosmetics. This is for grades 3 to 8. Let’s leave marketing make-up to third graders for another post.

Why is this even a class? When it comes down to it, this is a class that promotes make-up for young girls, differentiates between real science and “Girl Science”, and is in general an instance of pandering to women. The idea that girls \ woman cannot be interested in actual science is absurd. If we train our children that nothing is interesting unless it comes with a ribbon on top and covered in pretty things, then that’s how our children will develop.

If you haven’t had a good luck at toys \ apparel \ merchandise in general that is marketed to children, please take a few moments to do so. You might find that a boy might get a mural of the planets, while a girl gets a mural of a unicorn. You might find that a boy has a t-shirt with the saying “Science is Awesome!”, while a girl gets a shirt that says “Princess”. You might find that a boy gets a book about outer space from Santa, while a girl gets a book about a bratty group of girls that go night-clubbing.

On the flip side, there are educational and fun things for boys and girls out there, but just step back and look at the overall picture of what is really being marketed to our children, especially young girls. It’s just scary. If we keep on going in this direction, we are going to have real issues with getting our daughters (and sons) into science, math or anything else that might make the world better.

Since I was a teenager, there has been much debate about the role that video games and violent television has played in a general undermining of our social values. The general point being that violence in games, movies, television, etc. plays a role in aggressive behavior or an unrealistic view of right and wrong.

In my opinion, the issue is that our reality has been invaded by pervasive marketing.

What does that mean? Well, if we take an objective look at our current “reality”, we can see very little realism in it. From news programs to “reality” television, what we see is often fake, staged or filled with product marketing. People have been saying for years that there is very little news on the news. It is incredibly difficult to find solid, unbiased news sources that actually show bad things that happen along with the good.

But this isn’t really an article about truth in news. It is an article about the marketing of goods and services in the news and reality television. More importantly, it is about how this might be psychologically destructive for us all.

Why would this be destructive? The issue is that we as a people can have a hard time doing what is right and wrong. But to look at that further, I think we are losing the ability to differentiate between what is fake and real. I don’t mean to say that if see a purple dinosaur on television, that we all think we are being attacked by one in real life. I do mean to say that if we only see fake reality such as social devastation, fictional violence, war, etc. and do not see real life tragedy such as killings, what really happens in war, etc. that we can only further our apathy towards things that are truly bad.

Taken to an extreme, I believe that when a teenager kills his entire family because his video game was taken away, that the issue might not be video game “violence”, but a lack of understanding of real violence and it’s effect on life. This probably happens at a young age and I fear that my young daughter will grow up in a world that does not embrace the good AND the bad things that happen in life.

So why does this happen? Marketing over long periods of time can have lasting psychological effect on what we believe to be good and bad. Television, including the news, is often programmed around products or services that are being sold. We are marketed drugs that allow us to always feel good, sleep perfectly and to cure all instances of uncomfortable life. We are led to believe that happy people are only created through the deprivation of sadness, hostility or anything resembling discomfort. This is all marketing. People have been happy for thousands of years without any of this. When I say “happy”, I mean in the generalist of sense. Because this marketing is actually embedded within our reality shows and news, it is hard to know the difference between what is really “real” and what is essentially an advertisement.

I wonder if we need to learn how to cope with reality, rather than to pretend it is different than the actual truth. I believe that we need to allow all forms of emotion into our lives. This includes complete devastation as well as uncontrollably good happiness. I come from a place of many good things in my life as well as some that were straight-up awful. I identified my brother after he was killed in an automobile accident, was there when my mother died, my grandmother as well. I saw at least two dead bodies in the street, was in an induced coma for a few days, was in a few car wrecks of my own, one of which I came very close to seriously hurting someone because I was too tired one Sunday evening. I was also there when my daughter was born, got married to someone that can keep me on my toes, got to see my mom go on for years after they said she wouldn’t and so much more. I would of course want the lost people in my life forever, but it can’t be the case. With that said, I could not and would not change these experiences that I’ve had.

Without balance, it’s not much of a life. Without allowing reality in, I don’t think I could have ever learned how to cope nor get back to being happy after bad things happened.