Annals of non-viral video: Ummm, no, this will not work on my Tween
- Wed, February 09 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
I get some pretty strange pitches as a blogger. This one caught my attention: A music video about nutrition labels aimed at tweens. As parent of a tween, I started worrying the second I started reading the pitch. A “viral video?” For “Tweens?” About “nutrition labels?” Uh-oh.
Then I saw the lyrics:
Intro Verse:
Everybody wants a simple way
To maintain a healthy weight
And we all want to get the most nutrition out of what we eat.
There are no magic answers but there is one powerful tool we often overlook
The Nutrition Facts Label.
I tested the video with my own Tween, who fell onto her bed laughing hysterically. I don’t think that was the intention. And by the way, last I checked, she wasn’t grocery shopping or eating a school lunch that came with nutrition labels. Is this the number one way to get her to eat healthy? She thought it was a joke. I said it wasn’t. Then she wanted to know: “Why does this video have old people buying things?” When I tried to explain the apparent purpose of this video, she said, “Why does reading a label make you healthy? You have to actually understand nutrition and change what you eat for that to work.”
By the way, she can be receptive to messages on nutrition. She loved the documentary Supersize Me and after watching it, she never ate McDonald’s again.
When people’s health, well-being and survival is at stake, we need to do our job extraordinarily well. That means doing the hard work of understanding how to truly connect to others and compel them to action. Putting finger-wagging, irrelevant information to a beat is not marketing. It’s malpractice.
Comments
I have to agree with you—the most glaring problem I see here is that it is clearly adult-based reasoning for eating well. Kids don’t all want to reduce their calories! So, adult based reasons combined with music does not a kid-friendly video make.
Hysterical. Truly.
And I love that it is referred to as a “viral” video. As if the word makes it so.
Had a similar experience with my now 22-year old daughter, a former McDonald’s junkie. She read Fast Food Nation when she was 17 and never ate at McDonald’s again.
Wow, that video is horrific. Oddly enough, I could see it going viral for comedic value. My first inclination after watching it was actually to post it on Facebook to give all of my friends a good laugh!
Wow, as a video producer, I can only shake my head. Sure, sometimes it is tough to find the kid-friendly angle on things, but this is so far off the mark that it’s, as your daughter demonstrated, laughable.
Last year, my company was faced with making an educational video for 8 to 11 year olds about safe digging practices and the importance of calling 811. Not an easy task, but we pulled it off, and 40,000 copies are now being utilized by public schools.
You can see the campaign here: www.call811kids.com/
Captain Vegetable did it SO much better! http://bit.ly/dLpnjH More entertaining, informative and in about half the time. Oh, and he actually spoke to the intended audience.