The Britney Experience |
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This week YouTube was all about the VMA, MTV’s Music Video Awards. Within the ten most viewed movies on YouTube two days ago, six of them were of Britney Spears’s come-back at the VMA. It’s very interesting to see the tremendous effect of such a short event, or rather experience.
This week YouTube was all about the VMA, MTV’s Music Video Awards. Within the ten most viewed movies on YouTube two days ago, six of them were of Britney Spears’s come-back at the VMA.
For a few days, all the clips were taken offline due to copyright restrictions, but it’s back. What happened: after three years of absence, she made a performance that was a nightmare to look at. No lip sync, hardly any movement in the 25-year old body. A disaster.
It’s very interesting to see the tremendous effect of such a short event, or rather experience. To be honest, the impact of the kiss Madonna gave Britney on stage a few years ago, has been my favourite pr-generating moment for a long time.
If you look at the process of creating meaning, the first step you have to take is sensory perception. According to YouTube and many other websites, the amount of persons who had a visual and auditive encounter is tremendous. The next step is about the emotion that comes from this sensory perception. Well, just go back to YouTube. The most popular movie of this week is not Britney, but a crying and devastated fan who begs the world to leave Britney alone.
So what’s the experience? I think that it is amazing to see how a pop star can fail, just like any other human being. The experience is one of shock and pity. It’s hard to say this soon whether the experience is meaningful or not, but I think it puts a lot of stardom behaviour back into perspective. Just like the huge success of the Dove Evolution commercial that shows how glossy magazine models are transformed into unrealistic beauties, the Britney performance shows the boundaries of the impossible.
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Rene, I believe that you are confusing your professional eye what a brand is and should be in your perspective and what kind of experience Britney evokes. It is your experience that you ‘experience’ the weakness of a superstar. The emotional outburst of a fan that wants to protect her, we might be touched by the emotion of that fan.
You also argue and defend in your thesis that an dramatic event may be come a brand.In my opinion the event is a social experience shared by many others with quite emotional loading of fear and threat. It is an event everybod will remember, that doesnot make it a brand.
Hi Albert, maybe I’m not clear about my vision of inconsistent star-behavior. But Britney Spears, just like many other famous people, is a strong and valuable brand. Why else would anyone pay 90 dollars for a signed cd. There is definately some brand equity here.
However, just like brands that represent products and services, she better find a balance between innovation on the one hand and consistent communication on the other. After all, that is what makes a strong brand according to David Aaker.
Rene, I believe you are confusing your professional eye about what a superstar should be like and what kind of (brand)experiences she evokes. That she should be consistent and impactful.Everybody has a different and personal experience of a superstar. That a fan has an emotional outburst, that may touche a lot of people because her emotions are truthfull to herself.People are usually emotionally affected when deep emotions are shared.
Then is experience value the same as brand equity? Who owns the brand by the way. Kevin Keller had an interesting slide in his presentation. He draws the brand loose from the company, as a shared interactive asset of company and fans!
Well, talking about Keller, he believes that experiences are a marketing communication tool. These tools can be used to create a customer response to a brand’s meaning. The ultimate goal, of course, is to create a customer relationship. Keller writes: “By becoming part of a special and personally relevant moment in consumers’ lives, sponsors’ involvement with events can broaden and deepen their relationship with their target market”.
Just look at the way people can become friends. Sharing a unique experience definately speeds that up. Think of the extreme example of Patty Hearst. Can people be influenced strongly enough to commit crimes for their favourite brand? Anyway, human behaviour is something you know a lot more of than I do.