Some Thoughts on Viral Marketing and Me

This is Marina Orlova. She has a YouTube channel

about words. It's quite popular.

I am about to write a blog about viral marketing.

This is something that I have more experience with observing and analyzing than applying, and consequently, what I have to say should not be misconstrued as "expert advice", but rather as a culmination of observation and thought. If you're looking for a guru... I'm not it.

I have some friends who are, and who do nothing but make incredible "viral" media.

I've been thinking a lot about this kind of content lately, and I feel like it's about time I compiled some of these thoughts into one place. In doing so, I think it's best to start with a run-down of all the advice I've been given directly, or which I've read recently that I think has some bearing on the topic.


So, let's begin with the advice of my friend Ronen, who - and I don't use this term lightly - is a creative genius, and a masterful executor of the ideas he's presented me with below.




From a Facebook conversation earlier today, here are some selected quotes (and/or paraphrasings).

He began by critiquing the way I went about approaching him and the way in which I suggested he watch one of my recent videos. He noted - essentially - that by asking him to watch "as a favor to me", I was telegraphing that my film wasn't offering any value to him, and thus, he argued I should do the following instead:

"Say 'I think you'll enjoy this video, check out the first 20 seconds and see if it's for you'.

Ideally, just say the name, and if the name stimulates me, I'll go watch. [By doing this] you're just OFFERING value, instead of asking for it. Then if I'm stimulated by the content, I'll be inclined to share it with people who I think will also be stimulated by it."

and...

"If you want it to be popular... that is the ONLY way to do it.

It has nothing to do with implicit subject matter, and if you think your subject matter will never be adopted popularly, then you're literally insane to try and make it popular. It won't get popular through manually pushing the video around, but from designing it to be viral.

...And the idea that something must be stimulating to the general populace to work is absurd; if there are 1,000 people who like Sherlock Holmes slash fiction, then a properly viral designed piece of sherlock holmes slash fiction will reach all of them.

Viral is an issue of characteristics, not scale.

Viral means the first people to interact with it will send it to the next people to interact with it, and it will spread through them. It has nothing to do with the scale of popularity. Though, again, they effect one another.

A properly designed internet video, to be viral, should:

• Have a name that clearly explains what it is in a fun way, so people can effectively share it without having to describe it manually
• Have a thumbnail and beginning that shares the bulk of the value, so people stop and watch - etc.

Ultimately, there are two possibilities: The video has value, in which case you should OFFER me the value of watching it. [Or] the video does not have value, in which case you're asking me to sacrifice the value of of my network to promote it."

I've reformatted and edited some of this for clarity and ease of reading, as well as to facilitate the discussion I want to have with regard to this blog, but the essence of Ronen's points are both insightful and helpful. I think the point is clear enough. If the goal is widespread popularity, Ronen suggests designing things in ways that provide as much initial value to the viewer as possible.

This actually goes to something which I've said hundreds of times myself within the context of my own clients:

Made me cry... If you didn't, you're not a person.

The most successful media - of any type - is that which is designed first and foremost to move audiences in some specific way... To laugh, to cry, to jump in terror, to shout angry epithets at political talking heads on screen - you name it.

It just has to be effective.

The more media can move an audience to feel something, the more that audience is - as Ronen put it - "stimulated" by it and will thus be moved to share it with others.

There are a lot of different ways to do this, but it is nearly impossible to do - or so I find - if you are constantly focused on "the message" and not on the quality of film or media product you're making. Basically, cramming something dramatic or funny into a political or philosophical message that you're beating someone over the head with doesn't really work.

It's also nearly impossible to really move people if you are substantially constrained from utilizing all of the tools at your disposal to push your media productions in ways that really get at that emotional core... But I will come back to this point in a little bit.

Apart from my discussions with friends like Ronen, I've also been reading some other websites and things that suggest different "rules" for viral marketing strategies. For example, www.webmarketingtoday.com says the following:

"An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources"

This is a pretty simple list, but I feel like it probably gets to the heart of the matter. The website goes into a little more detail about what each of these points mean, but it's all pretty straightforward.

In any case, I'll break it down the first 4 real quick.

• People like "free" stuff - including information and advice.
• For something to actually go "viral", it needs to be exceptionally easy to share that thing with other people (note: this is why the Daily Caller was probably foolish to abandon YouTube in favor of Ooyala as a video platform).
• You've got to be prepared for the consequences of scaling up. If you're hosting a website that goes viral, and you don't have the bandwidth to support it, you're gonna be in trouble. (I'll let Ze Frank explain this one)
• People have to be moved or stimulated by the piece of media you're offering them.

The last two points (utilizing existing communication networks, and taking advantage of other people's resources), I think I should go back to the article and let them explain:

Utilizing existing communications networks:

"Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science graduate students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in his or her network of friends, family, and associates. A person’s broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon his or her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect email addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission email lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion."

Takes advantage of others' resources:

"The most creative viral marketing plans use others’ resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others’ websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others’ webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else’s newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own."

So... This stuff really amps up the game from what Ronen was talking about.

Ronen's points are solely content-based, but the truth is, even with what they believe to be exceptional content, advertisers don't sit back and just hope that their videos and media "go viral". They get in touch with people with large networks and attempt to exploit those networks in order to get that initial bump in viewership that pushes content in those key beginning stages into high search rankings.

I won't get into this within the blog here, but this is why there are hundreds of people out there on the web who (claim to) specialize in "Search Engine Optimization".

Conceptually, the idea here is that not only do you need to make sure that you have well-designed productions that offer value to the audiences you wish to reach, but also that you need a well-designed campaign that exploits human networks and a solid understanding of internet technologies to really get off the ground so that the media you've made has the best possible chance at being seen by the greatest number of people.

Now........... Up to this point in this blog, I've presented a lot of generic points about what people should do, but the specifics have really been unexplored. Ronen's advice, while great, initially really annoyed me.

He said:

"Design something that is viral, and people will share it organically, instead of through altruistic charity"

It annoyed me for a handful reasons (some more personal than others), but mostly because as true a statement as it is, it's such an exceptionally vague thing to say that it's borderline useless and that kind of advice isn't helpful - especially when unsolicited.

Awesome guy.

Of course the goal is to design things that people will share organically and talk about in positive way!. The question is; what are the kinds of things that people want to share organically?

Well. Enter into the record another recent conversation.

This one was with my former boss and friend, Tucker Carlson, on what topics people seem to flock to particularly within news media. I asked Tucker to give me his thoughts, and he responded in his typically sharp and witty way, which I will boil down to two brief statements.

First, Tucker explained that:

"Readers love sex, violence, mystery, famous people, death and weight loss stories. Also weather. Inherently interesting topics written clearly make good stories."

But also:

"...the key is controversy plus simplicity: say something nobody else is saying, and say it in a way everyone can understand."

So here it is. Here's the essence of it all.

If you want to design something that has high viral potential, some of the best ways to do that are to exploit sex, violence, mystery, celebrity, or death in a simple way that potentially also sparks controversy.

But................. Here's where I get to throw a monkey wrench in the whole discussion and talk about myself.

* * * * *

What happens if the organization you work for has professional (and legal) standards that bar you from exploiting those kinds of things? What happens when organizationally, the mission is education and the brand is fairly serious? How do you make content that that simplifies ideas and sparks controversy when institutionally, integrity, honesty and intellectual nuance are highly valued?

Seriously... Stop and think about this challenge.

Let me illustrate through a real story, actually: A few months back I scripted a little comedy sketch which would - hopefully - highlight the issue of cronyism. The premise was to use a foot race where one person gets special treatment by the referee (or whatever you call it in track & field) in order to win at someone else's expense.

Here it is:



Admittedly, I didn't spend a ton of time on any particular part of this, purely because I was exceptionally busy on other projects - so it is not by any means my best work.

However... My original script idea involved using the starting pistol to shoot the loser in the leg. This is arguably way more funny and would have been way easier to build into the continuity of the foot race concept....... and the final "reveal" would have been way more effective.

But to be perfectly honest, I killed that part of the video and re-worked it to what it is because the Charles Koch Institute really shouldn't be involved in the productions of videos where people get shot.

Not ok.

So while the gun idea would have been a lot funnier (and to the extent that anybody cares about that video at all, it would have been more "controversial"), it wasn't ok from an institutional standpoint.

There are plenty of other examples, but ultimately, the point I have to make here is that the issue is ultimately about trade-offs.

One way or another, there will be things that I simply cannot do under the Charles Koch Institute label that I would be able to do on my own, because they would violate the principles of the institution (and several would also violate my own moral principles), even if they'd be things that would be likely to boost view counts.



Here's a short list of these types of things:

• I cannot manufacture controversy dishonestly (news media does this all the time) by taking people's words out of context.
• I cannot deliberately oversimplify concepts to the point that they create popular, but inaccurate soundbites.
• I cannot exploit directly sex, violence, or death in my films without potentially damaging the CKI brand and guiding principles.

I could find real controversy, and that's part of the current strategy, but it's one of those "easier said than done" things. I could, also, utilize mystery & celebrity in my quest to use media in promoting economic freedom.

As examples, the book Atlas Shrugged - if you strip away the abysmal dialogue and cardboard characters - has the plot of a great mystery, and I would argue that that mystery is very effective at promoting economic liberty against collectivist public controlled economies.... and there are a handful of celebrities who are sympathetic to the ideas I promote - so it's possible (although rather unlikely) that we could find some way to involve them.

Also, another idea I had recently was to start doing videos that talk about the "economics of ____", where the blank is filled in by something relevant in popular culture (like Superman!).

I think an "Economics of the Hunger Games" video would be a really good concept, and I think I can easily do it without violating the principles of the Institute.

But....... There's yet another challenge...

It's hard to explain a movie

if you can't show it.

I don't know if I could do it effectively without actually showing clips from the film or directly referencing characters and showing pictures, etc., and that would be a really tough sell to my organization's lawyers, who have exceptionally limited tolerances for any potential IP violations.

CKI values "10,000% compliance", after all. And it should.

But... this really becomes the crux of the issue. There's a point at which I have to temper many - if not most - of the things that make for great "viral" media within the CKI environment, and while these limitations are often totally legitimate and important in order to maintain both ethical/moral and brand integrity, they are limiting factors that inhibit our videos from having that same kind of mass appeal and "shareability" as some other media.

I understand and recognize this.

So what have I done to work around those limitations? What can I do?

Well... For one thing, I've opted to focus on creating documentary-type projects that I think get at some of the more dramatic stories that illustrate the need for more economic freedom. I think this is a step in the right direction.

Stories like this:



And fortunately, some people do seem to really appreciate and respond to it emotionally in the way I am hoping for. For example, from one unsolicited comment I read about the video posted to a friend's Facebook:

"Wonderful, wonderful film, Sean. Couldn't help it, I wept throughout. I began a small business myself, and though I didn't have the degree of success Jim has had, my little firm fed and clothed a number of families. It brought stress and anxiety to my life, but also the greatest happiness. Small business is the heartbeat of America; I pray we can stop government's malicious interventions in its success. Thanks for what you're doing."

Reading stuff like that makes you feel good. But... As proud as I am with this film, it could still be better.

I mean, ultimately, the subject itself could be better. Jim Garland is a fantastic human being, and a great subject in general, but let's be honest...

On the scale of things, a struggling entrepreneur just starting out and being crushed trumps a successful entrepreneur like Jim, and regulations or government officials that are threatening to shut someone down trumps general uncertainty and the frustration of increased costs.

Likewise... A kid starting a business to help his disabled parents out getting shut down even after he files all the right paperwork and speaks to government officials in advance of opening hot-dog stand trumps everything. Especially if it's also happening right now:



Story matters. News-breaking timeliness matters. Human interest matters. Immediate sympathy for your subject matters. There are several things a producer can do to make sure their media hits the pinnacle of "viral" potential.

And it's all on a continuum.

The subject of your story really matters... Nobody cares about a rich millionaire fighting against a tax-increase... yet everybody cares about a poor kid holding a bake-sale or opening a hot dog cart to pay for some medical bills. It's all economic freedom in the end, but not all stories are created equal in the minds of most audiences.

* * * * *

I've been sitting here with this blog post all night, and I've not come to any definite conclusions about what really needs to be done... All I do know is that there are trade-offs here, and if you want to make a video that is likely to be truly "viral", it's clear that there are some definite ways to do that.

But... They come at certain costs, many of which CKI is not prepared to bear (for mostly good reasons).

...making economics fun!

Selling economic freedom with sex and celebrity is actually a spectacular idea, but it's not something that can be done by CKI and also keep the integrity of its brand. Likewise... Selling economic freedom with over-simplifications and soundbites that spark controversy (think; "Professor says higher tax rates will kill poor people!" may attract eyeballs, but it's not something that can be done by CKI and also maintain the moral integrity of the institute, me, or the professor whose statements I'd be mangling for political reasons).

So given all that as limitations to content-based virality, what can be done to make sure the videos we do make get the widest distribution possible?

I think the only possible answer going forward is do the best we can to find true and compelling human interest stories, and to find ways to create educational media that really captures something popular or celebrity driven as well... And, possibly most importantly of all, given our content limitations: To have a serious marketing and distribution strategy in place.

We need a strategy which does all the things discussed above... To the extent possible, marketing & distribution must make an offer of quality content (we have that, and we'll continue to get better at that), and that offer needs to be made to people within the target audience (who need to be clearly defined), and specifically we need to be making that offer in a coordinated way to people with large networks which can be exploited so that - to the extent that organic, word-of-mouth distribution is possible - we get the biggest boost we can coming directly from people who are credible and reputable leaders in the audiences we want to cater to.

I hope we start really getting better at this. In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away and trying to find better and better stories to tell about economic freedom.

By the way. If you have one, please go share yours right now.

Character, Story & Economics in Comics

There's a "Phoenix rising" joke here somewhere...

It's no big secret that I've been a fan of (especially superhero) comics for a long time. While I've never been a serious "collector", or the kind of fan-boy who dresses up and flies around the world to every Comic-Con ever. I've never even been to the famed San Diego Comic-Con, and although I think I might have fun there, it's not exactly a high priority.

That said... I was the guy explaining who the giant alien with the big grin was to my buddies at The Avengers.

(It was Thanos, FYI... Who is a Death-obsessed jerk.)

It's also probably not news to all that many people that I'm a fan of Superman as a character and as a conceptual idea, even though I know most comic book fans don't treat him very seriously anymore.

As a filmmaker and story-teller myself, I think a lot about character. Even within the context of documentary film making, character matters a lot. One thing I've learned over the years is that good stories really aren't about sharp plots or witty dialogue, they're about believable action being derived from honest and clear character motivations. If a character is strong and well-developed, then it's incredibly easy to spot instances where they are acting "out-of-character", and when dialogue or plot points in a film hinge on a character doing something every audience member would understand he would never do, then the story suffers.

To use Superman as an example, everyone who is familiar with the character understands that he is a man of a virtually unbreakable morality and commitment to bringing villains to justice - he is not out for blood or vengeance. He stops crimes and aggression, he protects people from all types of disasters, defends the world against alien attacks - but he does not kill criminals. Superman is a character that is swiftly approaching 100 years old, and while different writers have done different things with him, that aspect of his character has remained fairly consistent.

Don't do drugs. Or Superman will KILL YOU!

He is a character that has the power to kill every human on the planet in a matter of hours if he really wanted to... But that action wouldn't be something befitting "Superman".

So imagine going to a Superman film and they introduce his back story: being raised by two loving parents in small-town Kansas. He's taught all the same core values we are aware of, he fights for "Truth, Justice and the American Way", and then the first random criminal we see him fight, he just slices in half with heat vision. No "justice" there.

Doesn't make any sense, does it? No.

More importantly... The drama of who Superman is, exists within that juxtaposition of his morality and his power. He could do just about anything he wants, and he could kill every villain he meets... But he won't. And he has to deal with that. Each time he hands a supervillain over to the police (or the Green Lantern Corps, or the New Gods or whoever else...), he knows that it's possible that that villain will harm someone else in the future. He's also got to deal with his immense power every time he's sitting at his desk at work, or kissing Lois Lane.

These are the struggles of Superman, and without them, there is just no story at all.

I've been thinking about all this quite a bit lately, because it effects my own efforts to become a better filmmaker. But thinking about personalities and motivations, and trying to get at who people are isn't enough to understand why people take action. You also have to consider what is possible for individuals to know, and how the limits of knowledge effect the choices people make.

Sometimes bad authors will cheat both their characters and, by extension, their readers by introducing some "deus ex machina" moment that completely disrupts the story with some new piece of information or new power that countermands all the other information they already gave throughout the story and voila, mystery solved or obstacle overcome!

That's just not fun, and frankly, it's also terrible writing.

The exciting thing about writing and reading fictional characters is when they're testing their limits, just like the best moments in real life are when we test our own. That - again - is where all the drama comes from. The thing that makes Superman people's least favorite superhero often times is simply that he's too damn powerful and writers don't explore the other side of that issue very well. The fact that he's too powerful makes him a hard character to write, because you can't really put him in jeopardy very easily.

He's bulletproof. He flies at supersonic, near light-speeds. He can run just as fast. He is strong enough - in some incarnations - to move the moon and other small planets. He has x-ray vision, heat vision, supercooling breath and immensely powerful lung capacity. He can fly through space no problem... And he's powered by the Sun, so even getting too close to a yellow star just makes him even stronger!

Now... Knowing all that. The writer's job is now to find this man some kind of challenger that can put him in danger. As you might imagine, that's damned hard!

Quick break-away from Superman for a quote about storytelling from a surprising source:

"The only thing that never runs out of being exciting to watch is human courage and overcoming odds, and knowing that character, 'You know what? Afterwards I'd have a beer with him', in other words you have to have some human touch and that's the hardest thing to do. Bullets are easy, you can buy them at 23c a piece. If you buy emotions... They're priceless, you can't buy 'em." - Sylvester Stallone

Sly's right.

Overcoming odds and relatability is the key... So to put it another way - you've got to find ways to make Superman bleed - and not necessarily literally.

With that in mind........ I would argue that there is one (often unexplored) major challenge Superman faces all the time that can and should create interesting character dilemmas, and as you might have guessed for this particular blog, it's an economics problem.

Superman faces a tremendously devastating economic calculation problem.

Seriously. He flies through space too!

Let's stipulate that Superman is an incredibly productive police force all by himself, and he can save far more people from far more horrific events than any human being can hope to accomplish... But... He still cannot be at all places simultaneously. He is, for all his powers, not omnipotent. There will never be enough "Superman" to go around and take care of all injustices all the time.

That scarcity results in the need for Superman (or really any superhero) to constantly deal with the question of prioritization and the ranking of his own actions against their possible alternatives. He must decide who gets his attention, and how urgently, and he must do this constantly while also balancing his own needs as well.

To give a specific example, In one issue of Superman I picked up recently, it opens with Kal-El having returned to Earth recently from an extended period off-world protecting the galaxy from some huge intergalactic threat, and I believe, visiting a newly re-created version of his home planet, Krypton. When he returns, he holds a brief press conference and in the middle of it, a tearful woman walks up to him and slaps him.

Slapped Superman. The Man from Krypton. In the face.

Anyway... She explains that her husband died of a brain tumor that Earthly doctors told her was inoperable, but that Superman, had he been on planet Earth at the time could have used his x-ray/heat vision to destroy the tumor and save her husband's life. It was sad for Superman, and it made him get all philosophical for part of the book wondering if he's forgetting about doing the "right thing" for the people.

But what the hell!?

Yes. He could have used his precious time to save that one woman's husband from an untimely death. Instead... He was busy SAVING SEVERAL WHOLE PLANETS of people/aliens. It seems to me that Superman used his time wisely.

But then, here's the rub...

Economics tells us that - in fact - neither me, nor the woman, nor Superman, can say for certain that he made the right choice. Why? In short, because Superman isn't a savior-for-hire within a free market.

Without a price system, and without Superman actually selling his services in some way, he's got no way to accurately judge other people's true need or what uses of his time maximize value for the individual people he presumably serves. Prices are the only decent way of acquiring that information, and it's a problem for Superman just as it's a problem for non-profit organizations... We spend so much time in the non-profit world just trying to figure out if we're wisely using our resources because we just don't get the necessary feedback information from a market. If we could get price-based feedback, it'd be a lot easier to know if we were doing the right things. Or rather, it'd be easier to know if we were using our resources in ways that maximize value to our intended "consumers".

All that aside........... Let's be honest... If Superman did have profits & losses to guide him and help him decide what to spend his time & energy on, then I think it's exceptionally likely that the entire populations of the planets he was off saving would undoubtedly pay far more for his valuable & rare protective services than any random woman with a cancerous husband could afford.

Thus in truth, I'm quite sure that the result would be the same either way: Superman would fly off to those other planets, save millions of humans and aliens in the process, and ultimately he would just have to learn to accept that even though it sucks he wouldn't be there to save a handful of individual people who he could have saved otherwise, what he actually did choose to do was a far better use of his available time and powers.

Now... To be clear... I'm not actually saying Superman should sell his services, or exist within a for-profit market. I don't really think he should be doing that any more than I think non-profit institutions like the one I actually work for shouldn't exist. Non-profit institutions and services are every bit a part of a free society as any for-profit business... But they have knowledge limitations. Serious ones...

In spite of the fact that profits & losses would tell Superman if he was doing things people valued - a for-profit Superman would have a lot of social credibility downsides, so I'm not sure that's the right answer.

But still... Anyone working without price signals has a calculation problem, and thinking as a story-teller who cares about character development, I believe that there's a lot of drama that can be found within that problem.

How does Superman know that he is making the right choices in deciding who to save and who to ignore? He doesn't. So he's going to have to wrestle with that. It's a good story line... He's also going to have to wrestle with the fact that he has wants, needs and desires for himself as well. So what happens when he takes a day off and X number of innocent people die who he could have saved?

What happens when it's not some random woman's husband, but Lois Lane who needs immediate saving, and Superman is millions of light years away on Apokalips or wherever fighting Darkseid?

How's he going to feel about his value judgement then? Maybe still ok, but... Ouch, right?

Faces of death. Superman edition.

Is the alternative for Superman to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, fighting every level of injustice from playground squabbles, to business fraud, to Facebook bullying, to Ponzi-schemers and government bailouts and congressional insider trading... and, you know... also the really scary stuff like Doomsday?

No Lois. No Daily Planet. No TV anchor gig. No Martha Kent (or Jonathan, depending on whether or not he's alive)... No Lana Lang. No fireside chats with Bruce Wayne... No scientific exploration, taxonomy projects, and it goes without saying... No playing "farmer" up in the Fortress of Solitude. Nope.

All day, every day, Superman is fighting injustice... and even still, some injustices persist. So in the split seconds this utterly miserable version of Superman has between various rescues, while he's blazing around the world, he should probably just cry because he's a failure.

It's extreme, but I think it makes the point.

Superman as a character is not just a product of his powers, or his morals. He's also a product of the choices he makes in deciding how to act versus the literally innumerable alternatives from which he could select.

And that problem - the problem of tradeoffs - is an economic problem.

How cool would it be for some writer of Superman to really delve into this question? How does Superman decide who and what gets his attention? How does he know he's making the right decisions? He has no system of measurement, no competing bids for his time. At the end of the day, it's only a question of his subjective values and a first-come-first-served selection process... I wonder if that would make him feel guilty, or if it would frustrate him to not know whether or not he's using his time effectively.

Maybe I'll try to write that story someday.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

I'm a little behind on this, but I recently watched Morgan Spurlock's "Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold".

There's certainly an element of this film that is kind of pointless. Spurlock himself seems to want to make a compelling intellectual point about advertising, but for the most part, the film is really just about himself. Of course, this is no different from Super Size Me or Where in the World is Osama Bin Ladin, and many of the other projects he's created. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but in a way, it will always keep his work from being particularly moving. I'd bet that anyone who goes into this film hating the very idea of advertising will walk out thinking that it's as awful as they always believed, and people who go in thinking advertising is perfectly ok aren't going to find anything here to dislike.

There's no really impressive or profound message here. We all already know that product placement exists, and I think the vast majority of us are pretty ambivalent about it unless it actively takes you out of enjoying the show.

I can remember several instances of obnoxious product placement in recent TV shows like Heroes, Smallville and other action-heavy productions. Not that it's surprising that a show that's going to need to blow up a few cars each season or have people flying around the world and shooting laser beams from their eyes needs the extra cash... But when you have one character basically stop a scene to tell the other character how great their new Nissan "Yaris" is, well........ That's pretty crass.

But the thing is, we all know it's crass, and we spot it a mile away - and it's not very effective.

The really interesting and compelling aspect of "Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" for me is simply the behind-the-scenes view of marketing executives and the advertisers Spurlock is working with to finance the film. Oddly enough, I actually enjoyed the parts left on the cutting room floor better than the final cut of the film in some ways.

For example, we get to watch Morgan Spurlock ask nearly everyone he interviewed the question, "What's your favorite ad of all time?"

What's interesting about that is apart from a few really iconic ones, like the classic 1984 Apple ad, is that quite a few people couldn't really remember what brands their favorite advertisements were actually for. I've seen this kind of thing many times over the years, and it's one of those reasons that I don't really think that any of this is all that big of a deal.

More on that in a second.

Also in the deleted scenes, we get to see far more of Ralph Nader and watch him demonstrate as clearly as it's possible to show that he fundamentally believes that he should be the sole arbiter of what people should be allowed to see or think, and what they should be allowed to sell - and as such, he also gets to decide what people should be allowed to buy and have.

Nader frequently gets called a "consumer advocate"... But... Exactly whom is he an advocate for, I wonder?

The kind of insulting, infantilizing and paternalist nonsense he advocates doesn't treat consumers with respect, it treats them with contempt. Dictating to other people what they can see or hear on TV, what kinds of ads people can create, and what kinds of products should and should not be available to consumers is honestly the most condescending thing I can think of. It is literally telling everyone else that they have no willpower, that they are easily manipulated, stupid sheep, and that they don't know what's best for their own lives....... and that, more importantly, Ralph Nader does know better.

Nader has never figured out that people actually do vary in terms of needs, wants and judgments of value.

So he's appointed himself the "protector" of people who don't need his protection. And though he makes it into the final cut of the movie, the additional footage found in the deleted scenes just drives this point home.

And really... This is my bigger complaint with the film actually.

Spurlock seeks out branding "experts" of all kinds - people in market and advertising departments, people who create TV and print ads, brand managers of the various companies that paid for the movie's production. He even talks to Frank Luntz ("fuck you, Frank!"). These were the people who are supposed to represent the "pro-advertising", and "pro-product placement" side of things. He then talks to such fabulous luminaries as Noam Chomsky, and a bunch of professors (of what I'm not certain, actually) and politicians who - like Nader - believe that advertising is "pernicious", and is ruining society.

But... You know who he doesn't talk to?

Spurlock doesn't visit with a single economist. Not one. Not in the entire film does anyone who might actually have some insight on to the overall picture of advertising and markets. This is a pretty big gap in the discussion though, because without these voices, the film leaves the audience with only the idea that advertising is either ugly, but necessary... or... it's just flat out evil.

The thing is though, Nader and Chomsky and those guys think that advertising is awful because ultimately, they despise the results of advertising - that is, they despise the very idea of people exchanging goods & services for money. It's especially awful (to them), because businesses use advertising as a means of getting a bigger market-share, in order to.... *GASP!*... profit.

Profit is, of course, the problem.

In my own experience, I find that people believe it's a problem because they don't understand that businesses profit in the non-political realm by providing value to other people. Chomsky and the like might say that advertising deceives people into believing that they value or need something they wouldn't otherwise want, but let's think about that for a minute.

What those guys are saying, in reality, is that they're much smarter than you or I, and they know what we need, want and should be able to get - and more importantly, what we don't need and shouldn't be able to get.

That reality is never spoken about, and Morgan Spurlock certainly doesn't cover it. I suspect he largely sympathizes with it, although given that he is the real subject of the film, I imagine that Spurlock is someone who isn't all that committal about any kind of moral philosophy. Or perhaps he is, but won't let that get in the way of an opportunity for self-promotion.

In any case, the fact that this doesn't get spoken about is somewhat telling to me.

Nobody wants to admit or own up to the fact that by trying to control people's economic decisions, they are literally expressing contempt for people they believe to be dumber and less capable of thinking critically about advertising than they are. Now... Maybe some people aren't very smart and are very easily swayed by TV commercials. Ok. Fair enough, QVC is pretty popular, after all.

But let's pose a rather important question, just because nobody else did.

Nader claimed that you'll see millions of ads in your lifetime. I'm sure he's right about that. But what he neglected to say was that you'll see millions of different ads... Quite a large number of them produced by companies competing for your attention within the very same market, in fact!

So... The question is this: If you see ads for Coke, Pepsi, RC Cola, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Dasani Water, Red Bull, and for good measure, POM Wonderful, in the same day, what do you do?

Are you so easily "manipulated" that you instantly run out and buy every one of them having been successfully brainwashed by all the ads? Do you decide you're thirsty and pick one of those beverages? And if so... Is it just the best ad that wins you over? If so, what precisely constitutes, "the best" ad? Since preferences are subjective and vary from person to person, a single person's tastes, values, sense of self-image profoundly influence the ad that person is going to think is best.

What's more, what if you decide that you're thirsty because of one of these ads and you simply go to the fridge and get some milk and it doesn't compel you to buy anything at all?

When you really start thinking about what compels people to engage in trading behavior, human motivations are a hell of a lot more complex than people like Ralph Nader would want you to believe. The over-simplifications people like that engage in tend to stem from a failure to understand a lot of economics basics, but those over-simplifications make it so that there's always a villainous merchant and a poor, ignorant, consumer being taken advantage of.

And by the way... In this case, "being taken advantage of" actually just means consumers exchanging money for stuff the consumer wants made by somebody else voluntarily. It's ghastly, I tell you!

Ultimately, it's always going to be up to you what you do and what you buy, advertising or not - unless someone can actually force you to do buy what they're selling.

But who would be doing the forcing, I wonder? Could it be.......... Government?

I've often said that politicians really need to go through at least a crash course in Public Choice theory before they can be allowed to serve in government. This is precisely because of people like Ralph Nader. On the one hand, they want to save me from myself - so they argue that politics should be in charge of a lot of personal decisions made in the market. For my own good, of course. What they fail to grasp, however, is that once politicians have the power to make those kinds of decisions; big, well-connected individuals can swoop in and sway those politicians into using that power to the advantage of the companies that they run at the expense of competing companies who don't have those connections.

It's pretty straight forward really... If a politician asserts that he gets to decide which types of ads are acceptable, and which aren't, or which products are ok to be sold and which aren't, then what happens is anyone with access to that politician will put in some lobbying effort to make sure that what's "acceptable" is whatever they are doing, and what isn't acceptable is whatever their competitors are doing.

There's no principle to uphold really... Just the whim of the politician in charge.

But of course, we don't want to talk about that in the context of Spurlock's movie - I'm guessing simply because he doesn't understand how this works any better himself. Nader most certainly doesn't. Neither does Chomsky, or any of the other academics in the film.

It's too bad, really.

One other thing that's pretty unfortunate as well, is that the film completely omits the hundreds of millions a year the United States Armed Services spend on the movie & TV business in product placement. He also glossed over the fact that a good part of the tax-payer financed bailout of the General Motors corporation went directly into getting GM's mediocre automobiles into every movie made in the last several years - most notably, Transformers.

Not sure if this just didn't make it into Spurlock's footage, or it was a deliberate omission, but it strikes me as a little odd to talk about product placement without addressing the huge amount of money the government itself spends on placing government propaganda into entertainment.

It is literally that type of propaganda that compelled me to leave the entertainment industry a couple years into that career and do free-market media production instead.

So ultimately........ "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" is cute, light and fluffy - and above anything else, it's really just a vehicle for Morgan Spurlock to make some money doing what he enjoys doing. Nothing wrong with that, although it's a little at odds with Spurlock's own stated (and implied) philosophies. It's pretty entertaining, and Spurlock's antics are often worth watching, but it omits or avoids so much in the discussion that in a way, the whole film is totally pointless as a documentary. If anything, I may have learned a few insights into how best to go about trying to find corporate sponsors, but then, most of that material wasn't particularly counter-intuitive anyway.

It's really simple, actually.

You cold call hundreds of people, pitch your ideas, and hope that they say yes. Most won't call you back. Of those who do, most will say no. If you're lucky, a handful of people will say "yes", but when you get the contract, it's a few dozen pages long and the money they hand you (or promise to hand you later on, if you've met all their terms) comes with a lot of strings.

No big surprise there.

Does this make for mind-blowing, ground-breaking documentary cinema? Well... No. Not really. But it was pretty fun all the same, and I do think if you have a chance, watching all of the DVD "extras" is well worth your time... Especially if you're interested at all in seeing how the product placement process really works.

It's neither as dastardly, nor as scary as some would make it out to believe. Mostly, I find it predictable.