Monday 30 July 2012

Viral marketing of an absurd kind

I generally don’t take any interest in celebrity gossip but the recent story about Kirsten Stewart’s affair with a married film director raised an eyebrow.

Basically she was dating her co-star from the Twilight films but has recently admitted to cheating on him with the director of her new film. So let me get this straight; a couple who play a couple in a film are actually a couple in real life and she had an affair with a guy who was the director in her new film and whose wife played her mother in that film. Who says Hollywood isn’t incestuous?

The whole saga is obviously done for publicity. Actors and pop stars basically rely on the public’s peculiar need for celebrity gossip and have to keep dreaming up new and ingenious ways of keeping themselves in the public eye. Quite how the Twilight saga was so popular is something I’ll never understand but the chances of her new film being anywhere near as popular are highly unlikely. This “affair” is just a way of saying “I’m a stupid, insecure moron. Please watch my new film”.

It’s a kind of perversion of what is done in the business world. We have to do something called “marketing” which involves getting our name and brand seen in such a way that convinces people to phone us up and buy our products and services. This blog is technically marketing. Here I am basically saying “I am a grumpy individual who thinks the Twilight films are a dubious story involving a girl torn between necrophilia and bestiality. Please let us design you a website.”

Admittedly the above probably won’t generate any business at all but I know quite a few people read this drivel. It might even make some people chuckle. Either way it gets our name into the public conscious. It might also be something that people will forward to their friends. As a result, our name and brand spreads. Fair enough, comments about necrophilia might mean we spread more like a disease but viral marketing is very effective. It’s almost as effective as the celebrity virus which has now consumed 95 percent of the globe and will soon wipe out all intelligent life on this planet.