Monday, October 28, 2013

How World War Z Tricked Me Into Buying A Pepsi, and Why I Don't Care

Elizabeth Riepenhoff
er140610@ohio.edu


Every time I turn on the television and begin flipping through the channels, I always end up pausing on what I initially think to be a news program. After a few minutes of watching and listening, I begin to realize something is a little off. The colors are a little too bright; the text is a little too big for the screen and…wait…

Is this woman trying to sell me something?

Yep! We’ve all seen them. Ads masquerading as news programs, news articles, any type of news, really. What’s the name for it? Native advertising.

                                              Photo Credit:  http://wcownews.typepad.com
 



Granted, those on television are easier to pick out, but what about those that appear online? Not so much. Nowadays you can be reading an article on BuzzFeed and read about three-fourths of it before realizing that although it might have some news in it, it’s also sponsored by some outside company.

Take the example of the article run by The Atlantic about Scientology.
One of the big indicators for this one is the little yellow rectangle that reads “SPONSORED CONTENT,” but how many of us really think about that? I know I don’t. Many people thought this article was legitimate; it wasn’t until later on that people started wondering why they felt a little tricked.
This makes me think of this past summer, when I went with my brother to see the new World War Z film. I’d read the book; he hadn’t. I thought it might turn out to be a pretty decent movie.
A little ways in, I found myself really wanting a Pepsi. Not a Sprite, not a Fanta, but very specifically a Pepsi. So I left my brother in the theater for a minute so I could go get myself my large Pepsi and some popcorn. 
You’re probably wondering where this is going, right? Well, I came back to Ohio University at the end of the summer and decided to explore YouTube in my short break during RA orientation, when I came across a video.
This video was an "honest trailer" about World War Z, and it made me laugh at how horrible the movie actually was, until the end, when the makers of the YouTube video kindly pointed something out for me.
A scene from World War Z. With Brad Pit. Drinking a can of Pepsi…from an ALL-PEPSI MACHINE. Huh...
Now, let me get back to the point. Movies, television stations, radio stations, news outlets, they’ve all got to get money somewhere, right? You could try to argue that newspapers could get their money from selling newspapers and movies get their money from selling tickets, but there is a very little amount of people in our generation who read actual print newspapers and movies are WAY more expensive than a lot of people realize. They have to sell ad space to make enough money to give readers/viewers/listeners valuable content, and if they need to be a little devious about it, then okay. Writers, actors and radio hosts need their paychecks, and we smaller folk need our various forms of news and entertainment.
World War Z might have been a poor movie, but I got to watch it with my brother and laugh at the ridiculous zombie clicking his teeth at Brad Pitt. And I enjoyed a nice cold Pepsi while I was at it.

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