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Pulling in viewers and raking in the dough through any means necessary has long been a part of media and advertising – and that has only ramped up in the age of social media. While ragebait...
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00:00Pulling in viewers and raking in the dough through any means necessary
00:04has long been a part of media and advertising.
00:07And that has only ramped up in the age of social media.
00:11I mean, we might have to hack the hate. Hack the hate?
00:14While rage bait continues to be lucrative in some sectors,
00:18taking a look at some recent events, it appears that its effectiveness might be
00:22waning when it comes to traditional media.
00:25So let's take a look at why this all-press-is-good-press outlook was a part of the media for so long.
00:31And then we'll look at recent cases like Sidney Sweeney's American Eagle ad
00:35that signal that things might be shifting in a different direction.
00:40All-press-is-good-press is the idea that getting your name or creation out there in a big way
00:45is so important that it's worth getting any kind of press, even if it's negative.
00:50There is no such thing as bad press, Andy.
00:53Brand strategy professor Jonathan A.J. Wilson explained to NBC News,
00:57Controversy grabs attention and puts you at the front of people's minds.
01:01It splits crowds and forces people to have a decision when otherwise they probably wouldn't care.
01:07That can lead to disproportionate publicity, which could be converted into sales.
01:13No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.
01:15No, it's not.
01:16It gets the people going.
01:18How this strategy plays out changes across mediums and sectors.
01:22In some, like social media and politics, it has continued to increase in recent years as the
01:26all-controlling algorithm has become the singular point of focus for so many hoping to achieve
01:32notoriety in those areas.
01:34Fame equals money.
01:37I told you I wanted to be famous.
01:39And because the algorithms of most of the major social media sites seem to favor negative interactions,
01:45because it keeps people more engaged and locked in for longer, that's the direction so many
01:50of the people creating content for those sectors across the board choose to go in.
01:55They're not all crypto-fascist and lightweight nut jobs.
01:57We also have some venture capital dems and centrist schools.
02:00Dad's ideological range was wide.
02:02While this all-press-is-good-press mentality has certainly long been a part of traditional media,
02:08print, advertising, film, television, etc., its success has always been hit or miss.
02:13There have been times when just the right bad press has paid off in a big way.
02:17Because that's going to make people say I'm going.
02:20They're going to want to see just how coarse, rude, crude, and vulgar dolemite is.
02:24But also plenty of occasions where it backfired spectacularly.
02:28First, let's dive into some of the times when it really worked to get a better understanding of
02:33why people hold so tightly to the idea that bad press could be their big win.
02:39Both on-screen and in real life, we're inundated with examples of success
02:43seemingly being born out of negative reactions.
02:46Take the Wolf of Wall Street, where Jordan is upset at how terribly a magazine interview frames him.
02:52He fears that it will spell the end of his budding success.
02:55But, as his wife points out, that bad press might not be such a bad thing in the end.
03:01A total,
03:03Hatchet job.
03:04There is no such thing as bad publicity.
03:07You look great.
03:08You're in a huge magazine.
03:10And she's right.
03:11The article leads to people swarming to apply to work for Jordan,
03:14allowing him to take his business to the next level.
03:17Unarrested Development maybe is tasked with turning a scandalous movie into a hit.
03:22Because she's had to cut it down so much to even get it shown in theaters,
03:26she fears no one will actually care to show up.
03:29But then…
03:30Anne spearheads a protest against the movie.
03:34Which immediately draws interest and turns it into a hit.
03:37It's a disgusting movie about cousins who are into each other.
03:41Are there any more seats?
03:42Oh no, we're making it worse.
03:44Real life examples go back to before we even really had press of any kind.
03:49All the way back in 356 BCE, for example, it's claimed that a guy named Herostratus burned down
03:55the second temple of Artemis just to get his name immortalized in the history books forever.
04:01And we're still talking about him over 2,000 years later, so he wasn't wrong.
04:05In more modern times, many people who felt they couldn't get the stardom they wanted through
04:10exclusively positive press have also become unafraid to lean into the negative here and there
04:15in the hope of getting their name in the papers and propelling their career forward.
04:18What's it going to do for our profile to hire its most notorious criminal?
04:22Ah, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
04:24Jane Mansfield was great at this.
04:27After struggling to become an actress for years,
04:29she realized that she got a lot more attention if she played into the dumb blonde bombshell trope.
04:35Leave and walk out on all this publicity?
04:38She constantly set up publicity stunts,
04:40ones that often saw some part of her clothing popping off or falling down.
04:45And while some found them grating, they did indeed get her name out there.
04:49You can check out our full video on Jane to learn more about the truth
04:52behind her persona and how she built her career.
04:55I feel that there's a time and place for everything.
04:58This kind of building a career on scandal and provocativeness
05:01also brings to mind the Kardashian family.
05:04Initially, the Kardashians were only tangentially connected to fame through
05:07patriarch Robert Kardashian's friendship with OJ Simpson
05:10and then second eldest daughter Kim's friendship with Paris Hilton.
05:14But when Kim's private tape with Brandy's brother Ray J leaked,
05:18momager Chris saw a chance to really put Kim and by proxy the rest of the family
05:23in the spotlight.
05:24As her mother, I wanted to kill her.
05:27But as her manager, I knew that I had a job to do.
05:30The family has then spent the following nearly two decades doing
05:33anything to keep their names in the press.
05:35Even if that means leaning into or even making up negative stories about themselves.
05:41His belief in all press being good press allowed them to build an allegedly billion dollar empire.
05:48These tactics can find success when promoting specific projects as well.
05:52Take the CW promoting the first season of Gossip Girl with risque posters featuring negative
05:57reviews about how raunchy and terrible the show was.
06:00Which, of course, only led to more interest from the show's actual target audience.
06:05That's the point. You're no one until you're talked about.
06:08More recently, there was Sydney Sweeney and Glenn Powell's pretend affair to promote their rom-com
06:13Anyone But You. The film did do incredibly well at the box office.
06:18But that seemed to be more in spite of the scandalous promo than because of it.
06:23In fact, by the time the film actually dropped,
06:26many who had been excited about it had already grown weary of the antics.
06:30And, at least in the traditional media sphere, this is a response we've started to see more and
06:36more in recent years. As rage bait and seeking out negative engagement has become an ever-growing
06:42trend online, it seems to have started to become less effective to promote stars and their music
06:48films and TV shows offline. Well, all press is good press. No, this was bad press.
06:54Think back to Game of Thrones, for example, and how obsessed the showrunners were with
06:59subverting expectations, even at the expense of the story. While their big swings might have
07:05initially driven conversation around the show and brought in more eyes, by the final season,
07:10things had so totally fallen apart that even people who had been dedicated fans up to that point
07:16could barely stand to stick around. As we discussed in a video a while back,
07:28Sabrina Carpenter came under fire from critics when she dropped the cover and title for her new album,
07:33Man's Best Friend. Many found the cover to be degrading, but a number of commenters began to
07:39wonder if that was the point. That it was all just an attempt to drum up extra press for the album
07:45by sparking a little anger. It backfired as no one, not even her own fans, seemed to find the
07:51attempt at satire funny, and it opened up a larger conversation around some problems people had with
07:57Sabrina's lyrics and stage persona. Instead of digging in her heels, however, Sabrina changed course
08:03and released a new cover. We have to give the people what they want. Only time will tell if it's all
08:08blown over or if that larger conversation the controversy kicked up will have longer lasting effects.
08:14Of course, a major factor in how successful, or not, attempts at modern outrage marketing are is
08:21who the intended audience is. It's been shared 32,000 times. Well, all press is good press, right?
08:28You might want to watch it first. If you're aiming for people who do enjoy constantly surrounding
08:33themselves with things that make them angry because it's the only way they can feel anything,
08:37this can certainly still be a lucrative avenue. But for others, especially people who are just trying
08:42to support someone they're a fan of or find something new to watch, the utility of negative
08:47shock value driving interest seems to be waning. While everyone loves a good bit of drama now and
08:52then, constant controversy has become boring. We're all trapped in a battle against algorithms designed
08:59to feed us bad news and keep us in engagement loops based on rage and fear.
09:03This is really bad. Could be cool. It could be cool. It could really be turning into a moment.
09:09I think that's why I'm so excited about these atrocities.
09:12So it's not a surprise that many people have started to burn out on that being used to also
09:17try to get us to buy things. Health Cosmetics was recently in hot water thanks to their choice to put
09:23comedian Matt Reif, a guy who joked about domestic violence and specifically said he didn't want to
09:28pander his career to women in an ad for the company. The company posted a non-apology about
09:34how they missed the mark, but many fans are still unhappy about this apparent attempt to spark
09:39controversy to drive conversation around the brand. Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney has been at the center
09:45of a number of attempts at turning outrage into dollar signs in recent years, from the Anyone But You
09:50promo to her bathwater soap and now, most recently, her American Eagles jeans ad. While Sweeney first gained
09:57many female fans from her roles in The Handmaid's Tale and Sharp Objects, as her star grew with the
10:03success of Euphoria, it seemed that she was interested in focusing on building up her male audience.
10:09It was always framed as business smarts, that she knew what sells in Hollywood and so she was going
10:15to make sure she was the one cashing the check. But in light of her recent issues, it seems less like
10:24business acumen and more like she just genuinely might not want to keep around a certain subset of
10:29her audience. In response to the bathwater soap backlash, she just said that it was mainly the girls
10:35making comments about it, then attempting to equate people making jokes about Jacob Elordi's bathwater in
10:40the film Salt Burn with her actually marketing a real product. She also ran into trouble with her recent
10:46American Eagle ad, a knockoff of the Brooke Shields ad from the 80s, but changed to center the focus
10:58around a much more specific set of jeans. There was immediate pushback to the ad, followed of course
11:08by people claiming that anyone that had a problem with it is just overreacting. But in the larger context
11:13of everything that's happening in our current moment, it does feel very pointed. Overall,
11:18the ad seems destined to be b-roll for some future documentary about how all of this was normalized.
11:24There was a slight bump in American Eagle's stock price as people talked about the ad,
11:28but it has overall continued to tumble. While Sweeney initially seemed to be attempting a Mansfield-esque
11:35role in Hollywood as the secretly brainy busty blonde,
11:38I'm gonna go to college for business. And so that way when I go to school for business and I get
11:43a contract for 20 million dollars, I can read that contract myself and not get f***ed over.
11:48Her shifts to focus on seemingly exclusively negative controversy to drive interest don't
11:54actually seem to have driven that much interest in the product she's hawking or her actual job,
12:00acting. She had two films released recently, and both flopped. Of course, she's not the only person
12:07in or creating these films, so it's not like their failure rests solely on her shoulders.
12:12But with her apparent long-term interest in keeping her name in the press via any means necessary,
12:18even if it's nearly wholly negative, it's surprising that seemingly didn't help bring in
12:23any viewers, even those who might only seek to support her solely because she ruffled other people's
12:29feathers. There are other sides to the all-press-is-good-press equation. For example,
12:34when bad press comes when you're not seeking it out, and you just have to roll with the punches
12:39and hope you come out on top, and maybe it gives you a little notoriety boost in the end.
12:44Oh my god, this is horrible. I'm so sorry. I'm so humiliated.
12:48Yeah, but you know what they say, Mon? There is no such thing as bad press.
12:52Take Ariana Grande and the controversy around her relationship with Wicked co-star Ethan Slater.
12:57It could have engulfed the entire promo tour. But they kept mum, and in the end,
13:01it didn't seem to hurt the film's success or audience enjoyment of Ariana as Glinda.
13:07Or the recent kerfuffle between Variety and Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler's daughter Sydney.
13:12Or as the star of the new Alien TV show, she was set to do a cover shoot and interview for Variety
13:17with the show's creator and her co-star Timothy Olyphant. She backed out at the last minute,
13:22changing her reasoning a few times before eventually saying she just
13:26felt uncomfortable doing something like that. She ended up not on the cover, and much of the story
13:30didn't shine a particularly bright light on her professionalism. But in the end,
13:35it hasn't kept people from enjoying her in the role, or the show itself from finding its audience.
13:40A while back, musician Chapel Roan asked her fans to not stalk and harass her in public.
13:45I don't care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job, the career field I've chosen.
13:54That does not make it okay.
13:55And unfortunately, as is often the case, this attempt to set boundaries with fans was met with
14:01intense pushback and a media storm about if she should really be a star. The media blitz did likely
14:07get her name out to new people that hadn't previously heard of her, and thankfully hasn't derailed her career.
14:13There's also another side to all-press-is-good press. It can be used deliberately to get
14:18wide dissemination for a message that would otherwise be suppressed. In this case,
14:23the outrage that fans it is from the powers-that-be who are trying to suppress it.
14:29But in talking up how oh-so-terrible it is, they end up spreading the idea out more widely to people
14:35who begin to realize that it does sound like a pretty good idea, actually.
14:39And we can see this with Pedro Pascal, for example, using both his existing platform
14:45and the extra press, brought on by the ridiculous hate campaign against him,
14:50to continue to loudly and proudly stand up for his beliefs.
14:54In a world where it now seems nearly impossible to escape negative news and people attempting to
14:59make bank through angering others, many people are just tired of dealing with that kind of promotion.
15:05Even the curiosity to see if something or someone is really worth being angry about
15:10doesn't seem to be enough to pull people in anymore.
15:13Everyone is laughing at me.
15:17Well, they say all press is good press, Baroness.
15:20Our wallets have tightened so much and our attention is pulled in so many directions.
15:24We don't really have the money, time, or care to spend on things or people who
15:28only seem interested in making us unhappy.
15:31No such thing as bad press fight.
15:33My integrity just allows me to agree with that statement.
15:36Even in the social media sphere where rage can definitely still pull in the big bucks,
15:41many people are growing tired of it and choosing to ignore it or even straight up block the people
15:46peddling it. Instead of focusing on petty attempts to enrage us for profit,
15:50we can spend our time and money supporting people in projects that are actually aiming to have a positive
15:56impact. Or at least to make something actually entertaining.
16:00That's the take! Click here to watch the video we think you'll love.
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