Clever Marketing

I know I've posted more videos than usual in the past few weeks. I know that YouTube isn't really all it's cracked up to be, and that using my own creative juices is preferable to re-posting the efforts of others. (Or is it? Wait. Don't answer that.) I know much time can be wasted watching three- and four- minute vignettes.

That said, have you seen either of these yet? I had only planned to post one, but Jonathan and I had some debate as to which one was more worthy of sharing, and so I've decided to give you both. (Can you guess which one each of us preferred?)

These are both rather clever marketing campaigns, given that in a short period of time, they've each managed to gather nearly three million views. (Granted, that's a very small percentage of people who will see a Superbowl ad, say, but it also costs a bit less to distribute.) This leads to some interesting discussions and reflections on the nature of advertising and how the advent of the Internet has changed such things. It goes beyond that, though - our media-saturated culture has changed not only the way corporations market their products, but also how we interact with that marketing, how we respond to what they tell us, how we determine which items we will purchase, perhaps without even realizing we're being influenced. 

It's an interesting thing, really, because I am changed, be it ever-so-slightly by the videos and television I watch, by the books and blogs and articles I read, by the music I hear. I absorb these external influences subconsciously, and my worldview shifts the tiniest (or in some cases, not so tiny) amount. In a world with so much input, do I make time to sort through it all, to process, to evaluate?