If you told me there was a movie starring Lindsay Lohan, I wouldn’t exactly rush to see it. Actually, if you told me about ANY movie about teenagers discovering the true meaning of ___(pressing topic)___, my response would be, “yyyyyeah, maybe later.”
But I had to see what all the fuss was about when my friends started saying “that’s so fetch.” It’s what? Fetching? Is this one of those delish teen words you totes shorten to make them coo’?
So I saw “Mean Girls.” Nothing special about the movie as a whole* but something struck me about the way they introduced that catch phrase. A character openly tried to invent the catchphrase. Another character explicitly stated that it would never catch on, and within the diegesis, it did not. However, in real life, that catchphrase became so totally fetch, it was rizdonculizzle!**
It got me thinking about why people use the phrase. It’s not a reference to something that is...”fetch.” It’s a reference to the movie, and a silly moment wherein a character fails to present themselves as cool. Therefore, when we use the phrase, it means we are making ourselves cool by jokingly saying we are uncool. It’s a double negative. This is the same logic underlying hipsters’ taste in music.
So what does this mean for progeeks? Maybe you can use multi-layered meaning to promote your product. One of the main principles of marketing is that it’s not about the product so much as the idealized people who use it. We’ve seen this since the dawn of advertising. A product looks better when it is used by perfect people with perfect lives, and suggests that a potential customer can reach that same level of perfection if they buy said product. “That’s so fetch” is an example of taking it to another level. In this case, you’re not cool if you affiliate yourself with the product. You’re cool if you’re TOO cool to affiliate yourself with a product***, but you can’t explicitly state that unless you somehow mention the product to begin with. There you go. Inadvertent product plugging.
Back in the 90s, Sprite did a campaign that tapped into their audience’s disdain for hype. Remember those commercials that featured basketball players shooting a commercial, and one of them asked, “what’s my motivation?” It was hilarious! More than that, it hit home for a lot of people who were sick of the “perfect people” ads. If you can’t get people to try your product just by telling them it’s good, do not dress it up. People can see through the hype and they don’t like being talked down to. Instead, you can try ironic advertising. Instead of saying it’s good, make fun of someone saying it’s good. People will laugh, and that will make them remember it. Some will embrace your product and others will just make fun of the commercial, but either way, you’ve made everyone pass the message along.
*Although I am 10 to 15 years too old to be in the target audience, so don’t mind my opinion. I’m not a fan of Justin Bieber either, but he seems to be doing fine without me.
**Rizdonculizzle. You heard it here first, people.
***By using the phrase ironically. This could serve to align you with the more popular friend who said it would never catch on, because you are using the phrase while knowing it has the opposite effect. Alternately, it simply proves that you are too cool for the whole movie to begin with, and you are therefore mocking one of the in-world cool characters’ failures by referencing that moment.
-Tamara Hecht
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