The Marketing that Took “Jersey Shore” From Zero To Hero
Guest post by Dea Surjadi
First of all, I don’t watch Jersey Shore and I’m not suggesting that you should.
I like Top Chef, Mad Men, and that’s it.
The second season of Jersey Shore premiered a couple of weeks ago. The show apparently isn’t all about six packs, orange skins, and drama.
Nielsen ratings confirm about 5.3 million viewers tuned in that Thursday night. Apparently it’s the best season premiere since the season 2 launch of The Osbournes in 2002.
It’s also about what could be one of the best marketing opportunities on television. Here are a few basics of MTV’s marketing mix (which concepts are familiar, but they score by kicking it up a notch):
Filed under Guest Posts, Marketing | Tags: dea surjadi, jersey shore, marketing basics, mtv, snooki | Comments (8)Mirror, Mirror, On My Mind
Friday’s probably a good day to Wax Lyrical for a change. So,with some trepidation, I share with you the first poem I ever wrote; or, at least, the first poem I ever thought was halfway decent.
The Background
I wrote this in 1992, when India was just starting to experience a loosening up of the airwaves, with access to things like American soap operas and MTV (though MTV India wasn’t launched until a few years later). Doordarshan – Indian public television – was suddenly no longer the only entertainment option (and I use the word “entertainment” loosely).
Artistes like Anuradha Paudwal, a popular Indian singer, were in danger of being toppled from their pedestals as more Americanized performers started to appear. Words like “yuppies” were making their way into our vocabulary, foreign brands were moving from the “black” to the “white” market, and the cocktail party circuit was bulging with “culture vultures,” as they were often referred to. India – at least, my India – was encountering a kind of cultural colonialism from “the West” that it was unsure of how to respond to. (Whether or how it responded is a whole other discussion.)
I was in drama school, and this poured out of me after a particularly cathartic exercise. I was naive enough to believe that a “four-figure job” was something to aspire to. Re-reading it, I point a pretty good finger… but it was always pointing back at me as well.
Oh, one more thing: we don’t use American-style punctuation in India… at least, we didn’t then. This is just as I wrote it, many years ago.
Filed under Personal, Shonali Burke | Tags: anuradha paudwal, culture, doordarshan, india, mtv, national school of drama, nsd | Comments (20)
