So . . . today is the first day of my marketing communications and advertising class. In preparation for this (or maybe in honour of this?) I watched a movie on the topic over the weekend. It was a documentary by Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame), the conceit of which was that it would be the first documentary about advertising and product placement to be fully financed by advertising and product placement. Hence the title: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. And it was good enough that I will be showing it to my class later this semester.
Now I know what you may be thinking: how lazy is this guy that he will abandon his professorial responsibilities for 90 minutes while his students watch a movie? Hell, that's would I would think. I still remember a substitute teacher letting us watch Die Hard in high-school law class (no, that really happened). But this film really brings to life a lot of the concepts that we discuss in class, and even provides value to the class beyond what typical teaching can offer.
I am a prof that generally dislikes textbooks. I think I am in the minority; I know a lot of profs like texts because they (somewhat) efficiently deliver a decent chunk of theory and facts to students, which allows the prof to expand and go beyond the base material. I just happen to find them too wordy and expansive (not to mention expensive), and in my opinion they are a vestige of the pre-internet age. Our need for heavy repositories for information on particular subjects has been drastically reduced in the past couple of decades (does anyone buy encyclopedias anymore?). Also, given my bent for practical education, the idea of stuffing students full of theory without any practical implications is not what I am in favor of (which is not to say that I think other profs are in favor of that, but clinging to textbooks certainly doesn't help in that regard). I do use textbooks (including in my advertising course) but avoid them whenever I can.
Anyway, back to my main point, which I dropped some time ago . . . oh yeah, here it is: Spurlock's movie provides a useful look at how advertising and product placement actually happens, as opposed to the pros and cons of doing it. You see him in meetings with key figures in the industry, you see how meetings are conducted, what kind of work is done, how deals are made, etc. One of my favorite conversations in the movie (for which I claim spoiler immunity, because it's in the trailer) takes place when Spurlock visits the marketing department of Ban deodorant. He asks them what Ban is all about ("Ban is . . . . blank") and after several seconds of silence, the marketing director says "that's a really good question." We can teach all we want about having a strong positioning and finding a place in the competitive landscape, but it is equally (if differently) informative to let students know that a lot of practitioners don't know how to do that.
I also read a fascinating book on advertising over the summer (The Age of Persuasion by Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant) that combines a history of advertising with some of the nuts and bolts of the industry that textbooks seem to lack. I'm suggesting it as supplemental reading, and will refer to it (i.e. steal from it) throughout the course.
I strongly recommend Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold if you have any interest in advertising and how it works. Even if you don't, and are more of an anti-business type, this movie is for you too - a running theme of the movie has to do with the evils of advertising and how it is co-opting art. So go see it, and no, I wasn't paid for my endorsement.
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