Putting Up Posters


' Putting Up Posters '

I like putting up posters. To promote a movie and give interviews, to attend the premiere if I like the movie I made. Photo-shoots are bizarre. They bring clothing and stuff which I find funny, because they want an interview about you and want you to dress up, which I think is funny . But I don't mind. And also if you do not want anyone to see what you are actually wearing , it is easy that they have clothes there. [I'm constructed which] is something I have had to come to terms with in a sense. It happens all the time. In an early film, my scene was cut. But also in interviews they edit out of context or they lie. I do my best and hopefully they get it. (Keanu Reeves, 1/4/98 & 5/15/03)

In this chapter I have attempted to sketch the corporate tendency to create engaging advertisements in the form of entertainment such as advergames and adverfilms. A trend that works to stimulate the possibilities and opportunities for online entertainment - since a lot of money is pumped into development of, for instance, 3D graphics and audio - but at the same time it may deprive the user of pleasure because in the end it all comes down to promoting and selling a product or service. This goes beyond the playfulness and enjoyment of sheer audio-visual entertainment such as watching a movie in the cinema or on television. Although the format seems to work so far, more and more companies try to capture their target audience through advertainment, which is likely to result in a fading interest on the side of consumers. Also, the results of collecting data through advertainment may not prove itself too useful, which is caused by people giving out false information as well it is difficult to find out what the correlation is between sales and the advertainment. Buying directly through an online 'order now' button is easy to prove , however, in reality that doesn't seem to be the case - which may largely depend on the type of advertised products, e.g., cars . Right now lots of money is spent on these types of 'putting up posters' because they are being heralded as the future of online advertising by building relationships between consumers and products through inter- active experiences. They offer an appealing destination where a company, its marketing messages and customers intersect. Businesses crucially rely upon blurred boundaries between production and distribution, encouraging the target audience to work for them. They connect with their online customers by providing engaging advertisements that are meant to be passed on within one's circle of friends , creating the potential for exponential growth [52] . This trend raises interesting questions regarding on the one hand, the cultural status of online entertainment-as-advertisement, e.g., is advertainment part of an aesthetic experience or branding experience? When entertainment's only use becomes to promote a product or service, the status of entertainment as cultural and aesthetic artifact collide with or are replaced by a brand experience - that is, if there is a notably difference to work with. On the other hand, regarding participatory culture in a commercially mediated environment, e.g., what is the status of b2c, c2c, and p2p in a commercially structured network? Tapping into online networks means examining various types of communities and the mode of exchange both within that community and between company and community. Depending on the product one wants to advertise a different network structure may be called for. Such as, it is very unlikely for a company like Coca Cola to develop something other then offering a portal to promote its brand. Because Coca Cola in itself doesn't mean anything, rather than the association with a particular lifestyle - which is hard to grasp in an entertainment format. What happens when p2p simply means sending a link from one person to another for a basically non-interactive presentation such as BMW's adverfilm versus what happens in a fuller interactive and more difficult to control environment such as corporate Web logs? Companies not only choose a particular format to reach a particular target that is likely to be interested in such a format, they also need to look after the open or closeness of their interactive marketing campaign in order to the level of control they keep over the interactive message. Web logs, for instance, are much more open , so a company needs to figure out what employees are likely to write about the company and products and whether that would suit them or not. However, if a company gives out guidelines, the idea of a Web log is totally undermined. In short, the various answers to these questions among others - studied by various academic disciplines - may contribute to building a fruitful frame how companies can relate, reach out and link to their online customers through interactive marketing practices.

[52] This tactic of businesses to use advertainment for promotion purposes through viral marketing means foremost creating loyalty, but also cutting through information clutter, affording protection from competitive attacks, and saving costs while increasing profits.




Contemporary Research in E-marketing (Vol. 1)
Agility and Discipline Made Easy: Practices from OpenUP and RUP
ISBN: B004V9MS42
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 164

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net