Getting out of tricky situations isn't easy. But along the way, I get to hang out with princesses (they never wear their crowns), camel jockeys (literally!) and famous (well at least quasi-famous) people...all for the love of media and travel.
Okay, so where am I?
I'm at the Microsoft Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles taking in the 69th Emmy Awards and trying to get one of those drinks loaded with bitters that Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are sharing.
No luck.
Speaking of luck...last year I waxed poetic (very much tongue-in-cheek) about flirting with the Emmy statuette and her going with a hundred or so other writers, producers, actors, and actresses. This year was different. Sometimes you get lucky a second time.
Flirt no more...
This year also saw my return to the red carpet, and honestly the two best parts of my night was watching Lena Headey and Sophie Turner (both of Game of Thrones) scarf McDonald's fries and milk shakes on their way to the red carpet. At the end of the entertainment debauchery, it was a fantastic night for Hulu, which proved to be a late bloomer to the original scripted series game. Sunday, it became the first streaming service to win an Emmy for Best Series for The Handmaid's Tale, leapfrogging Netflix and Amazon.
Hat's off to the marketing folks at Hulu. Seriously, how much of the public do you think has seen The Handmaid’s Tale? Certainly the voters have (again a credit to Hulu marketers), but it goes into the category of the things that make you go "hmmmmmmmm." Does this show have 1/100th the audience penetration of This Is Us? At the end, it was a triumph for not-widely-viewed series, led by The Handmaid’s Tale and Black Mirror (Netflix). It was also a big night for Big Little Lies and Veep which held onto the best comedy series and best lead actress in a comedy series titles. Women broke that glass ceiling through with wins for Lena Waithe and Reed Morano (you'll have to look them up to know more, sorry. I didn't know who they were before last night). Back to the red carpet...whatever you think the carpet is like, think again. Here's a taste:
During the show, I decided to troll celebrity and celebrity-ish Twitter accounts looking for behind the scenes tidbits. I mean celebrities are people too. Right? Let's see:
I'm preparing for an other trip...and another surgery...yeah, getting old sucks. I'm also prepping for the Emmys on Sunday. I got a new lens to break in. You know I'll post pictures. Stephen Colbert is hosting...more political humor. Ugh! I'm thinking Louis Vuitton for the red carpet. Yeah, that's the ticket...yet I digress.
I bring up the traveling because it's a little known fact that I see a classical music performance or an opera in every country I visit that offers such a thing. In Europe, it seems every major city has a beautiful opera house. Ah, the Opera...a kid I remember it being something you were taught to avoid. It was a old school meant to be enjoyed by the stuffy, nose-up crowd in tuxedo tails and shiny shoes. The opera was strictly for the high cultured. As I aged I learned to truly appreciate it because I get to use my slim knowledge of classical music and study up on the stories and the history of each type of performance.
Regardless of how well I've aged and how cultured I've become, the fact remains that it is still a difficult sell for younger audiences. Swedish opera house Folkoperan knows this fact and decided to pick the easy path to try and reach Swedish millennials is to use the old advertising adage that "sex sells."
To promote the premiere of Puccini’s Turandot, Folkoperan and its agency crafted a commercial called “The Opera of Orgasms” that is devoid of words, just moans and groans and, well, orgasms.
So much for high culture...
If you are new to opera, the connection to sexual situations isn't a stretch by any means. Opera is peppered with fables spun from of unbridled yearning, retribution and heartrending losses. Elevating its more applicable qualities was invented yesterday either. Last year, the Paris Opera recruited Bret Easton Ellis to craft a modern version of “Figaro,” a story as contemporary and depraved as you can get without dolling our red-light district ticket prices.
Turandot is especially suitable for this kind of interpretation. First released in 1926, it narrates the tale of Prince Calaf who falls in love with the unemotional Princess Turandot. To gain permission to marry her, potential suitors have to solve three riddles; any wrong answer results in death. Yikes!
“We live in a society where we’re constantly encouraged to indulge life, but it’s often in very superficial ways,” says Mellika Melouani Melani, director and artistic director at Folkoperan. “In our interpretation of the opera, we want to pay tribute to the urge of desire and the total devotion that comes with it. In our film, the orgasm symbolizes this.”
In the commercial (the Folkoperan marketers call it a film), people in diverse—not necessarily glitzy—sexual circumstances express their apex to the tune of the Nessun Dorma aria. It’s a festival of unlimited longing, those moments when you’re so close to metaphorically falling off the cliff that things like environment, expectancy and social norms no longer carry any weight. And it exquisitely echoes the state Turandot’s admirers find themselves in, one in which the proximity of pleasure is so painful that nothing matters more than finding release, not even oblivion.
Now trust me, having an orgasm might actually be the closest you and I get to singing opera. Both are big physical experiences that release endorphins and oxytocin, but this piece just rings wrong with the current state of advertising. It’s over the top and getting ample amount of press but it’s done so well, it’s much too hard to be incredulous.
So what do I know?
I do know this—it's becoming all too easy for brands to use sexism as low-hanging fruit to go viral. Time after time, we rise to the bait, giving the brands exactly what they set out to achieve: Internet Fame.
On an almost daily basis, sexism in headlines, adverts and newspaper front pages is getting taken to task on Twitter. But, by tweeting about those brands and making them go viral, are we giving them exactly what they want?
As Oscar Wilde said "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about". Brand managers are well aware of this," says Anthony Patterson, professor of marketing at Liverpool University. A "response — whether outrage or support — demonstrates that consumers are engaging with their brand."
Take the London's Daily Mail. On eve of Britain triggering Article 50 and officially entering Brexit negotiations, it was #LegsIt (not #Brexit) that topped the UK's Twitter trends. The newspaper's headline declaring "Forget about Brexit, who won Legs-it!" alongside a photograph of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and British Prime Minister Theresa May and a pain staking analysis of their legs, prompted the ire of thousands on social media.
A statement from a Daily Mail spokesperson (which began with "for goodness sake, get a life") only added fuel to the fire. "Sarah Vine's piece, which was flagged as light-hearted, was a side-bar alongside a serious political story." The Daily Mail wasn't sorry. And, why would they be? We, by venting our outrage on Twitter at their "light-hearted" sexism, made #LegsIt the most talked-about story of the day.
Long story short: Women shouldn't be roadkill in a brand's race to get viral fame. Brands, it's time to get your act together and find another way to get internet fame.
I'm at the Vatican and anyone in the advertising game will tell you that this is probably the last place you want to be potentially facing the wrath of God for all of your past sins stretching the truth and checking the Federal Trade Commission manual to make sure your spot doesn't mislead consumers. Anyway, that's a story for another day, but seriously, the Vatican, especially standing at the entrance/exit of St. Peter's Basilica in the August/September with the sun reflecting off the limestone is no place to be without a bottle of cold water.
The Vatican Museums: Heed the Advice
Yet, there I was, baking in the sun as the Pope waxed poetic in Latin over the loudspeakers and my tour guide going on endlessly about how lucky we were it was a Wednesday and everyone is watching the Pope and we had early access to the Raphael Rooms, Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican itself. Meanwhile, all I could think about was my brain NOT exploding from the heat and when I could make a beeline for an eight Euro bottle of water with gas.
Blah blah blah, alright already...I need some water! Speaking of water, it's become quite an industry, right? Give a nod if you remember water. You know, regular classic water where you turned open the knob and lifted the level to the very top? It was refreshing, divine, perfect; the ultimate drink that you enjoyed for pennies a glass. Now, water as we once knew it is dead swallowed by our obsession for what's next...our mistaken ideal that everything could always be improved upon.
Water is now bottled water, spring water, artisan water, antioxidant water, flavored water, carbonated water, fizzy water, water with gas, flat water...jeez, I sound like a thirsty "Bubba" Benjamin Buford Blue...
Gustave Leven, Super Genius
All of these waters are simply capitalistic spins on original water with consumers in their sights because companies know that the gullible will drink it up. There are three things that should never cost money: sunshine, air, and water. Now you go into a fancy restaurant and they ask you if you want sparkling or flat water. If you ask for regular water, the server's face grows into a passive aggressive sneer with a complimentary warning that it will come from the tap! Seems "free" is not really an option anymore.
Now one of the trendy waters is Norway's artisan water Voss, you know that cylindrical bottle with the silver top? Well guess what? Norwegian television has reported that Voss has the very same sources as tap water from a municipal source, contrary from it's snooty marketing and big price.
Many people think the designer trend started with Evian, which ironically is naive spelled backwards. But really, who convinced us that water should or could be sparkling you ask? Well I have the answer...
Meet Gustave Leven. He had a bold idea: Convince Americans that they wanted to drink Perrier, aka “Earth’s First Soft Drink.”
In the 1970s, you can imagine that Americans weren’t so open-minded about opening their wallets for water, instead openly laughing at paying astronomical markups for a liquid that flows freely, and usually safely, from their home taps.
That all began to change sometime in seventies, with a nutty idea from a Frenchman who peddled fizzy water in green glass bowling pin-shaped bottles. His company was Perrier, and its carefully constructed, impeccably timed advertisements paved the way for one of the greatest marketing scams this side of Barnum and Bailey.
Perrier’s campaign created a massive new market for the American beverage industry, and it still serves as a playbook for how to convince people to pay for water. At the same time, it does not fully account for what remains an even greater mystery: the enduring appeal of bottled water.
Whether they choose fizzy Perrier, flat Poland Spring, or a different label, Americans are guzzling more bottled water than ever before. And in an era defined by speed and convenience, they show no signs of slowing down.
Perrier’s American transformation began with television ads in the spring of 1977. They were straightforward, but eye-catching and ear-catching. The company spent somewhere between $2.5 million and $5 million on the groundbreaking campaign.
“More quenching, more refreshing, and a mixer par excellence,” intoned the rich baritone of Orson Welles in a Perrier advertisement dated 1979, as a bubbling stream cascaded from a green bottle and swirled into a clear goblet.
“Naturally sparkling, from the center of the earth,” the actor continued. He wrapped up the ad with a single word, the “r”’s perfectly French: “Perrier.”
Perrier’s advertising was selling a specific message, and it targeted a specific population: well-to-do baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, as they entered adulthood. It sought to assure them that those who partook of Perrier’s sparkling waters were sophisticated, classy, and conscientious. It conferred, in a word, status.
So capsulizes the story of Gustave Leven, Marketing Genius.
What seems abundantly clear, however, is that the powers of marketing are as limitless as the water we drink and the air we breathe. Last year, Vitality Air, a Canadian company started offering “fresh air,” in three and eight-liter bottles.
“Remember the day when people laughed off bottled water?” the company explains on its website. “The truth is we’ve begun to appreciate the clean, pure and refreshing taste of quality water.”
