Weezer just launched a brilliant video to promote its latest single, "Pork and Beans," which, even if you don't happen to like Weezer, is interesting for two reasons: First, and most
boring, because it's obviously now standard practice to launch music videos online in advance of the single or the album. In this case, the video came out a full month before the release of the
single. (It still amazes me how quickly that has become de rigueur in the music industry while brands in other much less interesting categories are still trying to put up walls between themselves and
their customers.)
It intrigued me because the video is a brilliant parody of YouTube stars. I haven't seen YouTube being parodied before, and it's interesting when you watch it to see just
how familiar many of the phenoms have become.
A lot of the individual stars are immediately recognizable: Tay Zonday, the guy with the freakishly deep voice who sings "Chocolate Rain;" Chris
Crocker, the Britney Spears superfan; the Numa Numa guy. But even more impressive, some of the skits - like the Diet Coke-Mentos experiment or that guy who rocks Pachalbel on the electric guitar - are
recognizable simply through their styling. All of them have real cultural heat. (Which makes you wonder how much money their celebrity would be worth if they were monetizing themselves as aggressively
as YouTube.)
But I found it a little ironic that this parody of user-generated fame comes at a time when the balance of views on YouTube seems to be swinging in favor of professionally
produced films. Take a look at the most-viewed video page, for example. As recently as 18 months ago, most of it was user-generated content. Now, the cacophonic majority are music videos of mainstream
artists.
My initial hypothesis was that it was part of the corporate plot to take control of the Internet. (Which I'm wholly convinced is happening, by the way. For video evidence, just search
for "human lobotomy.") But upon further reflection, I found that the answer is simpler.
There's no shortage of user-generated content on YouTube or any of the myriad of other video-sharing
sites. But there is a real shortage of good content. A few weeks ago I saw the unlikely statistic that 200,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. I wish I could source this, if only to
challenge it. But even if that number is high, there's no doubt that there are millions upon millions of UG videos that go completely unnoticed outside the small group of people who were directly
involved in their production (perhaps you've starred in some of them yourself).
The reason most of them remain unnoticed is that most of them are bad ideas. They lack intrigue or insight.
They aren't unique or beautiful in their presentation. They're not fresh. And that makes them nothing more than tumbleweeds in the wasteland of bad entertainment.
We recently talked with a
company that decided to build a Web presence by embracing the idea of "assisted user-generated content." It's an odd concept (isn't that just documentary?) but sensible in a way. There's a big
difference between someone ranting in front of a cell phone camera and a passionate expert captured by a skilled documentarian.
William Bernbach said it best: "I can put down on a page a
picture of a man crying, and it's just a picture of a man crying. Or I can put him down in such a way as to make you want to cry. The difference is artistry - the intangible thing that business
distrusts."
More brands need to take a page from his book. At the same time that they're breaking down the walls between their brands and their customers, they're going to have to break
down the walls between artistry and corporate culture. The novelty of consumer-generated content gave a few brave brands some currency for a little while, but it's going to take more than that for
those brands to retain their relevance and stand out in a horizon that grows ever more cluttered.
It's going to take artistry. Elusive, intangible, profitable artistry. Exactly the kind of
artistry that has made stars of those few fresh, unique, entertaining YouTubers. And exactly the kind of artistry that led Weezer to parody them now that they've become worthy of the art of
parody.
Paul Parton is the brand-planning partner at the Brooklyn Brothers, a creative collective. (paul@brooklynbrothers.com)