9 Comments

  1. To be honest I thought Cassie’s contributions were somewhat offensive. And I have to wonder if the Scorched team don’t throw around the word “engagement” with a little bit too much reckless abandon. In most instances comments and messages I offered were never responded to. Infact Cassie’s YouTube experience could only be rivaled by that of Oprah – in for a month or so, then nothing more.

    I loved that on the same YouTube profile her age was given as both 18 and 20. (I guess that space time continuum stuff can mess you up bad!) I loved that despite this apparent dire lack of water she could invariably be seen swimming in a pool or being photographed in front of sizable rivers, even in humble Bourke. I loved how she subscribed to any Australian she could find on YouTube (actually, I did love that – I need all the subscribers I can get). [Take note everyone – sub4sub is alive and well. If you subscribe to someone they will be curious and check you out.] But mostly I loved her exit strategy, a humble comment on her YouTube profile:

    Thanks Guys,

    Yeah all that stuff aonCPN at Scorched TV is where I will be doing all my blogs from now on. You should really go and check it out. Let me know what ya think

    I’m not sure Australia needed its own LonelyGirl15, but I guess it got one anyway. I guess I am just grateful that in some ways it was painfully obvious. I mean what kind of vlogger has three or four cameras at different angles pointed at their heads during a vlog? And fortunately Australia reuses the same 30 actors in everything on television so Cassie’s alter-ego (Kate Bell) and former lives (Blue Water High, Home and Away) were easily identified.

    I guess this raises a lot of philosophical questions, but I am not sure this is necessarily any more “clever” than the Witchery Man-In-The-Jacket moment. But perhaps anything that reaches an audience is good publicity. Though, for the record, I didn’t watch Scorched on television and won’t be buying the DVD.

    John Lacey’s last blog post..Advertisers: Users Engaged ‘For The Sake Of It’

    1. yeah I know you weren’t a fan. And no real disagreement here, though obviously I know some of the constraints they had. But I’m glad they won. Cos next time, it’ll be easier to push for real engagement, and less ‘SM channels as broadcast’. Baby steps for everyone. By the way, I discussed in depth with one of the team exit strategies from SM campaigns, but like I said, they do what they can with what they have.

      Channel Nine changing the TV date from December back to October was a sucky thing to do. They won in spite of them. That’s what I’m happy about.

      1. I don’t mean to belittle the effort. The whole thing about taking fictional characters and bringing them to life on the web is personally very challenging to me because I deal in this online space with real people. I arrive with this expectation that people are who they claim to be. I was dumbfounded when Bridget Taylor on a recent episode of The Gruen Transfer suggested that:

        “…on line people in that space, people are used to be[ing] tricked and they don’t mind.”

        Let the record show that I mind… lol

        John Lacey’s last blog post..Advertisers: Users Engaged ‘For The Sake Of It’

  2. Any chance we could lose the self-playing video, please? Make it click-to-play, or hide it behind a cut, or something?

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