Notes on American idol and the Matrix: Branding Methods

As I mentioned in my earlier posts I am reading the book Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins. Chapter one centered mainly around the online community of spoilers whose main goal was to figure out the T.V. show Survivor before each season even aired. The next two chapters focused on the marketing motivations and subsequent research behind America Idol. American Idol has been criticized for its blatant use of product placement and its concept of commercializing real people into the American idol brand. While these may be true statements about American idol, idol makes no attempts to hide its motives. In this way it has returned to the advertising of the beginning of the television era in which only one product sponsored a show and was given total exposure. Coca-cola has done the same with American Idol. Idol creates a family friendly atmosphere that allows for that gossip and collective intelligence to be employed. It is an interesting strategy for a show to take, instead of trying for the method of subliminal product placement where the viewer thinks " they were wearing American eagle shirts weren't they?", reality TV has taken a new route and decided to scream the product into our ears and faces. I believe that shows like idol are valuable to have in our lives and I did buy into their program, but as a loyalist that was my job.

The Matrix is similar to the Survivor Spoilers in that another community has developed as a result of a Media product. While the survivor spoilers were not intended by its producers the opposite is true for the Matrix. The creators of the Matrix wanted to create an ever expanding world that its fan could have co authorship of. The movie was a cult classic because it was created to be understood on different levels and have different meanings and facets to pretty much every aspect. This creates a never ending series of holes for fan to fill in. Due to its complexities, fans must go to each other to put together the pieces through the use of collective intelligence.