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March 13, 2014

Manipulative Marketing and Marty McFly

Ok, before you read any further, I’m going to need you to watch this video.

Watch it yet?  Ok.  Grand.  Let’s move on.

Here’s why I hate that video:

I am more or less obsessed with “Back to the Future.”  Like, dangerous levels of obsession.  I watched that movie when I was a very little boy and something about it just resonated with everything about me.

“Back to the Future” had such a tangible effect on my young, developing mind.  I mean, everyone who knows me says that my personality is basically a cross between Marty McFly and Han Solo (Editor’s Note: Literally no one has ever said this about Jonathan).

Sure, lots of people love this movie.  But do any of them have the poster hanging in their living room?  I do.

Do you know the date that Marty and the Doc travel to in Back to the Future Part II?  I do.  It’s October 21st, 2015.  “How could you possibly remember that, Jonathan?” you ask.  Oh, I don’t know, only because it will be the date of my 29th birthday!

Sidenote, – if you’re not doing anything on October 21st, 2015, I’ll be hosting a BTTF marathon.  Bring a present.  29 is a milestone birthday.

Anyway.

It should be really, really obvious why I hate that video then.  I can sum it up pretty succinctly:

It’s.  Not.  Real.

I don’t have words for how badly I want to live in a world with hoverboards, Mr. Fusions, and flux capacitors.  But we don’t.  It’s fiction.  And this stupid commercial that has been designed to toy with the hearts of impressionable young men like myself is doing exactly what its creators wanted it to do:  It’s gone viral.

People are sharing it.  People are tweeting it.  People are emailing it.  This video is getting views – lots of them – and more than one friend has texted me asking if I’d seen it yet (perhaps the single biggest barometer for the success of this ad).

This ad taunts me – it’s trying to sell me something and it doesn’t even have the decency to tell me what it is it wants me to buy, and now (according to vague hints on their website) I have to wait until December to find out!?

Ugh.

This kind of advertising tactic is low and cheap.  It’s not clever.  It’s not honest.  It relies heavily on your sense of nostalgia and cherished childhood memories to achieve its goal of selling you a lie.  It’s the same thing that Dane Cook does to sell you on the lie that he’s a comedian.  That’s what we’re watching here, folks: the Dane Cook of viral videos.

It’s not a Hoverboard they’re selling.  It’s not the promise of a childhood dream actually realized – it’s probably a shoe, or an energy drink, or a new Tony Hawk game or something.  It’s a new world we live in, where commercials don’t actually tell you what they’re about (actually, I guess it’s been that way for a while now).

The difference is that we’re doing the work.  We tweet it.  We post it.  We write long-winded and ranty blog posts discussing it.  We do all of this for them – we do it willingly and for free.  And when they’re finally ready to tell us what it’s about, we’ll throw money at it.

So what’s the real lesson here?  Well, there are two, really.

  1. I really, really like Back to the Future.
  2. If you’re looking for a way to guarantee your online efforts go viral, get enough money to get a bunch of celebrities in your commercial, and give Dane Cook a call and see if he’ll let you peak at his playbook.

Maybe I’m wrong, though.  Maybe this is all real and I need to have more faith in humanity and science.  It’s just that all of this manipulation of a cherished movie is, well, frankly, this is heavy.