April 21st, 2007
Dave Winer gets naked
Dave Winer thinks he's found the future of advertising on the Internet. I hope he's wrong. Because if Dave's vision ever becomes real, then media will become an endless commercial break of fast talking car salesmen stripping down to their underpants to sell us a Nissan.
Dave links to a YouTube video called "Let's Get Naked" an advertisement on YouTube (un)dressed up as content. This, he says, is 21st century advertising:
In the future, advertising will be so entertaining that it will create its own pull. No need to intrude, to hitch a ride on other more compelling content….If it's perfectly targeted, it isn't advertising, it's information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
But "Let's Get Naked" is advertising rather than information. It's the video of a fat bearded car salesman stripping down to his boxers and explaining why you should buy cars from Clay Family Dealerships — a Massachusetts based dealership for Subaru, Chevrolet, Hyundai and Nissan motorcars. The humor is infantile and the pitch pathetically ingratiating. Trust me, the fatso is saying, trust me because I'm going to half undress on YouTube and show off my gross body while explaining why my car dealership is genuinely honest. This may resonate with Dave's frat-aesthetic sensibility, but to me it's neither funny nor educational. Most annoyingly, the guy doesn't even take off his boxers. So he doesn't even deliver on his first promise — of getting truly naked.
If this the future of media, then please lock me in a library and throw away the key. Dave is wrong that these sorts of advertisements are entertainment. A commercial is a commercial and indendent content is independent content. A fat guy on YouTube trying to sell me a Subaru from his "honest" dealership is neither Scorcese nor Kurosawa. We've all heard it a hundred times before — somebody pitching an "honest" car dealership that will "finally" expose the truth about a car's "real" price. Oh yeah. And, if you believe that, then I've got this can't miss Web 2.0 social networking user-generated-content start-up that you really need to look at.
So I'm afraid Dave Winer just got taken for a ride by an obese car salesman from a Boston suburb. Unless, of course, it's Dave who is taking all of us for a ride. Go to YouTube and watch the commercial for yourself. Then watch Dave.
Doesn't he kind of resemble that half naked bearded salesguy? Has anyone seen Dave in his boxers? Has he tried to peddle you a Nissan recently?
Andrew Keen is author of Cult of the Amateur. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
