Make An Argument
By Eric Hughes
February 1, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I get there, and some time later the middle act - the group I had intended to see - begins as planned, probably. I didn’t see it. That’s because by that point I was off introducing my Chatty Cathy self to their opener, a Chicago-based three-piece whose brief set as the first of the night’s two bookends had me all giddy and stuff.
I don’t know that I’ll forget - I haven’t yet, anyway - a thing their front man said to me well into our talk. He’d asked, as some bands do, what brought me out that night, and I listed off a few things: 1) that my day job (at the time) was helping to launch an iTunes-like music store for independent artists, 2) that in addition to the website, I blogged about music on my own and I wanted to write about a show in my neighborhood and 3) that I’d heard from a friend that the act I was now missing was “good,” and that “it would be worth my time to go out and see them.”
So many things brought me out, but mainly the third thing.
To that point, the front man drew a mystified expression on his face, as if he’d been told in 2005 how Lost would end five years later. Largely confused why someone would pay for a show with little to no knowledge of its in-house bands, he said: “Man, nobody does that, to show up to a show like that. Nobody does that.”
Throw everything I’ve written so far into a sack, put the sack down and then remember where you left it.
Skip ahead to this week to an article appearing in The New York Times. Titled The Pregame Show (of Commercials) Begins,” the story explores how the Internet and social media altered the way we devour and talk about our media. Its emerging trends seem to contradict conventional thought on how to present Super Bowl commercials effectively.
Companies, apparently, no longer wait for the Big Day to unveil their $3.5 million buys; many of them, now, post teasers of their advertisements online - if not the whole thing - with aims to stimulate conversation about their ads, and consequently, their products.
As I perused the thing, I couldn’t help but feel wayyyy out of the loop. I barely watched much Super Bowl the past several years, I’m not one to brag about hilarious YouTube videos and post them to my
Facebook - that is, of course, if I had Facebook - and the rest of it. Yet I continued to read, as I tend to do anyway with the Times, and came away quite fascinated about how tens of millions of people will have actively seen many of this year’s Super Bowl ads before, you know, the Super Bowl.
As I evaluated what the article might really be saying about our culture, I came to realize that it was only a matter of time for this strange thing to happen.
Remember that sack? Go on and get it.
That band’s front man was caught off guard the night we spoke because I had evidently gone against conventional wisdom by going to hear music without comfortably stumbling upon a few samples first. Here we are, in a golden age of Bandcamp and Soundcloud and Grooveshark and Pandora and Hype Machine and Spotify and many other wonderful tools to stream and download music, and in one swoop I’d denied their existences entirely by not utilizing any of them before my show.
To my credit, I admit the episode happened as I was just getting acclimated to Chicago and its music scene. And what does a boy without friends and an interest in understanding a city’s music scene do but
go out and see some bands?
Today, my approach to music has changed quite a bit. I now have many favorites I’ll actively go out and see, and I’ll use Bandcamp and the stuff emailed into me through my music blog to figure out who might be worth featuring.
The Times story, however, didn’t resonate with me merely because of what I do with music. Instead, it exposed a truth about how a lot of us go on and sample something before we go out and do it.
Movie trailers, of course, are hardly new. But how often do you see one because you intentionally found it? I’d think that happens a whole lot more than running across one on, say, television. Because of that, an advertiser's work is cut out for them indeed. All they need do is post videos to YouTube, and little Chris Nolanites, little Nic Cagians, whatever the persuasion might be, check it out, and if they love it they’ll want to make sure their friends know about it, too.
Television has gotten into the game, too, and I’m not just signaling Super Bowl ads. Of the broadcast networks, Fox seems to embrace the model of pumping out content before its premiere most. Three years ago, the net broadcasted Glee’s “Pilot” episode - and only its “Pilot” episode - four months before its fall debut to a) have its first episode air post-Idol and b) to build up anticipation over the summer. And in the current television season, Fox released the “Pilot” episode of New Girl, in its entirety, to iTunes, Hulu and others.
What’s needed in all this, though - to dabble and sample - is interest. I could get invited to a production of live theater, for instance, and though I like theater and can appreciate it, I don’t actively track it. As such, I wouldn’t need to see a clip of the show - if one does exists - or read a synopsis even. I’d go as a lot of us used to. I’d just go.