Commercially Aware
You can call them sellouts, but HEAVE calls them career moves.
As a general rule, I don't trust anything that comes from the internet. My mail-order Russian bride tried to stab me in my sleep, Amazon.com once took five weeks to ship me a book and the Overstock.com commercials make me wonder if I'm buying a toaster oven or a sex escort (or some combination of the two, God willing).
The same is true of online universities. To be sure, I understand that we live in a viral age, and that soon enough most forms of social interaction with be highly digitalized. But until I can walk into a graduate course in my boxers while eating beef-a-roni and TIVO'ing "The Real Housewives of Orange County," I just can't equate one with the other. Commercial campaigns for online universities have always struck me as cheap and slightly disingenuous (also like my Russian mail-order bride).
But Phoenix University is working hard to change my mind. Now, I know exactly zilch about their academic programs, standards, or instructors, or whether they are a fully accredited degree-granting institution. But I do know that they've hired a damn good advertising firm, who have made full use of the song "Bleeding Heart Show" by The New Pornographers off the incredibly catchy album Twin Cinema.
Whoever made this commercial is my new hero, because they understand the power of music in advertising. When I watch the commercial, I too believe that by registering for Phoenix University's online program I can become an assured, health-conscious, socially active upper-middle classer striving for a job and a paycheck that better reflects the inner drive and talents that I already know myself to possess. And let me tell you, it feels damn good.
I love the band, love the album, love the song, love the commercial, and so, vicariously, love the product. Cue the music, boys.
The New Pornographers and Phoenix University
Posted by Ryan Peters on Nov 08, 2007 @ 12:00 am
