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.