As more merchandise goes digital in our digital revolution, the ability to sell it is compromised. “Why pay for something when you can make a copy for free?”, or so goes the increasingly mainstream wisdom. Who cares if it’s intended for sale?
The creators do, naturally.
And so advertising is the online mantra now, something viewed with concern for decades. I’m sure you’ve noticed in this past year how news or video delivered online requires a bit more of your time and attention to get to the free stuff. The net is clogging with ads but some people will turn them off so how does the advertiser prevail?
By blending it all together. Blur the “free” entertainment and the ad until ad-stigmatism takes over and they become inseparable in perception. The Op-Eds recoiled in horror back when the first Coke can in a movie scene earned a fee for placement but now that can is the movie star and the sales pitch IS the story.
The Gymkhana series, pitching DC shoes, is taking this to the next level and we’re not going back.
This series is a triad of viral video so laden with product reference the products become the content; FORD and SPY and Monster Energy Drinks, Pirelli Tires and Castrol Oil. But the sales pitch is blended with hip hop so skillfully you’ll probably stay till the end anyway. And that’s the point. The first two videos have won mainstream advertising awards, and below you can watch part three.
Our culture is being shaped to believe that endless advertising is entertainment, because conventional no-ad performance is now digital and hard to monetize.
Evidence that innovation is not always improvement.
But hey, the video is great.
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