Saturday, March 31, 2007

Fall Out Boy: Thanks for the money

It was spotted first by Dictionary Girl, a blogger on the Suicide Girls network (no, we really do only read it for the articles): Fall Out Boy's video for Thanks For The Memories is little more than a sold-out, soulless advertising hoarding. At least the opening caption has the good grace to mention the sponsorship tie-up with TAG (a can of spray with which young American boy virgins attempt to attract females, kind of akin to Lynx), but the repeated shots of Nokia brand mobile phones - that's Nokia - are either paid, undeclared endorsements, or else a startling coincidence. The pointless scene which makes much of a Ford Tahoe also reeks of being funded by a marketing department.

We live in a capitalist society, and advertising is everywhere. But when your video is made according to rules laid down by men in suits, and you're too busy pocketing the cash to even acknowledge that you've been bought, that makes you worse than Fay Weldon. At least she admitted how cheaply her art could be bought.


3 comments:

Sky said...

To be fair, FOB did acknowledge that they had been bought. The video was accompanied on their webpage with a note from the band stating that they accepted the placements so that they could afford to make the video they wanted to make and provide the bandwidth for it to be available for free download for the first week.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Not really, Schuyler. On their website, they say:

Our brand new video is now up exclusively at falloutboyrock.com. For the entire weekend, our site is the only place you'll be able to see "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" and, thanks to TAG Body Spray, you can also download high quality versions of the video for your iPods and Computer screens FREE!

So, they acknowledge sponsorship from TAG - but they don't admit that the content of the video is tailored as a result; there's nothing about the Tahoe (the Chevvy Tahoe, apparently, not a Ford) or the Nokia phone. That the content has been dictated by the sponsorship, the key point, isn't mentioned. Oh, and what about the bulk of the audience who will see the paid-for-endorsement without reading a posting on the FOB blog to discover that they're actually watching an advert?

Anonymous said...

It's a Chevy Tahoe. Not Ford.

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