Tag - naked

Meet the man with the Midas marketing touch
It’s no secret that brilliant creative minds are in hot demand in the golden age of content marketing. Being able to create engaging content that will be shared – maybe even go viral – is a skill that most brands will pay big bucks for.
Someone that fits the bill perfectly is Christian Van Vuuren, a man who understands the concept of ‘viral’ all too well. A few years ago, after a vaccination-less holiday through South America, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and put into isolation in hospital. He ended up having to remain there for over six months, and used the time to create a series of YouTube videos featuring him rapping about the experience:

Since his happy recovery, Van Vuuren has been putting his talents towards creating cringingly accurate portrayals of a certain type of sub-culture – the hipster – and in particular, the sub-sub-culture of the hipster who lives in Bondi.
Van Vuuren and his mate Nick Boshier have created the wildly popular YouTube series Bondi Hipsters, which features short webisodes highlighting the irony of the lifestyle many Bondi hipsters lead.
Here’s a particularly funny example:

But Bondi locals aren’t the only ones who think that these boys have some serious content-creating talent. Google recently flew them to the Olympics (along with their three production partners) and put them up for the duration of the games so that they could film a series of episodes based on the games. Google has also come on board (through YouTube) to promote the series as featured content.
He’s mates with Google, has a killer recipe for viral content, and clearly has his finger on the pulse when it comes to pop culture, and yet his strategy (as shared with The Vine) is astoundingly simple:
‘Set a date, and shoot it… It’s so easy to talk about an idea, or to develop an idea forever, or to always dream of the perfect people to play the characters, or the perfect network to show it at the perfect time-slot… But just set a date, get some mates together, and shoot it. The technology is there now, and it’s affordable. You can have the same access to very similar quality technologies that fully fledged professional studios have got access to. Get a Canon 5D/7D and a copy of Final Cut, and you are well on your way! Then put it on YouTube and share the balls off it.’
Exactly.
 
The Message is brought to you by Tick Yes – providing solutions for all your digital and content marketing needs.

Online and social media content shows the world is wild about Harry
You’ve got to feel a degree of sympathy for Prince Harry. Sure, he’s been born into a world of incredible privilege and wealth, but he’s been born into it at a time when every move he makes is being documented, analysed and commented on. In other words, he has become content fodder, not merely for the newspapers and magazines that caused his mother so much grief (and, some would say, ultimately killed her), but for anyone with access to a computer or Smartphone.
While still at school, his teenage dalliance with marijuana was splashed all over the front pages of the tabloids, earning him the (admittedly funny) moniker ‘Harry Pothead’.
Fast forward a decade or so and the 27-year-old prince has become a cause célèbre of the content world due the kind of trip to Las Vegas lots of 27-year-old men like to take with a few mates. As a result of a game of ‘strip billiards’ photos of the naked royal – the third in line to the English (and Australian) throne – have gone viral.
It is an incident that raises some interesting questions about the changing nature of content and, particularly, content syndication.
Privacy in the online content world
As soon as the photos came to light, Buckingham Palace requested – nay, demanded – that all newspapers respected the young man’s right to privacy and not publish the revealing pics. In the UK, all except The Sun (predictably) have complied. But, of course, the Palace is powerless to prevent everyday content creators who aren’t governed by a code of conduct from spreading said shots via social media.
Harry and his elder brother William are known to have a deep loathing of the paparazzi – blaming the photographers who hounded their mother for her untimely death. Yet now, due to technological advances and the rise of Smartphones, everybody is a potential paparazzo – as Harry has just discovered.
Of course, you could argue that he should choose his party companions more wisely or even behave in a manner more befitting his title. On the other hand, you could justifiably argue that everybody deserves the right to privacy and that anybody should be allowed to let their hair down without worrying about someone publishing photos of them doing it.
Clearly, the latter point is the prevailing one in the UK at the minute, with thousands of Britons demonstrating their support of the beleaguered prince by joining a Facebook group showing themselves performing Harry’s now infamous ‘naked salute’. Soldiers (and Harry himself is an Afghanistan veteran) feature prominently in the tribute.
As a result of the furore, the Facebook account of one Spike Wells has now been deleted, prompting speculation that the mysterious Mr Wells was in fact a pseudonym for Harry himself.
On the one hand, it’s a little sad that access to Facebook – something most of Harry’s Gen Y contemporaries believe is both their inalienable right and an essential part of life – has proved impossible because of who he is. On the other, this event is an unintended content marketing masterstroke, depicting Harry as a real man of the people and proving an ongoing connection between the royal family and their subjects.

What’s your take on the Prince Harry photo scandal? A big fuss over nothing? Proof that the royals are over-privileged time- and money-waster? Or proof that they are just like the rest of us – and a good thing too?

 
The Message is brought to you by Tick Yes – providing solutions for all your digital and content marketing needs.