The Unboxing Mentality

On Youtube there's probably thousands of unboxing videos by now. Probably hundreds of thousands, in addition to PR advertisements and/or advertainment projects that get posted up. Remember the post-classic era of YouTube when these things started to happen with regularity? The products became rather professional and even mildly interesting, generating a lot of baseless enthusiasm for various products.

One of the earliest and most viral types of YouTube marketing was the "Will It Blend?" series, which clusterfucked all kinds of product placements and madness into one video every few days. In a way the series was a metaphor for itself.  People jumped onto these videos because they were more exciting than Lonelygirl15 and easier to find than interesting, creative, niche videos. I don't know if Blendtec sold a lot of blenders on the strength of this noteworthy advertising campaign, since it made everyone think that even food blended in the machine would turn into poisonous dust, but they sure got a lot of attention.

But I'm talking about the olden days of YouTube. These things all happened years ago. People actually got angry that Lonelygirl15 deceived them about being a real vlogger. For a while you'd see all kinds of angry comments about whether or not it was really a lone girl posting those videos. Most people came to their own conclusions, and in the end they turned it into a 'meh' series of shorts. This series didn't advertise for much except the performers in it.

However, the two corporate creations mentioned above gave some PR or adman the idea that you didn't have to create a persona to sell products and advertise on YouTube. Blendtec was too silly, Lonelygirl15 didn't really sell anything but belief that vlogging was worth anybody's damn – and the jury is still out about that. The solution is brilliant: just go to a real person who wants to get hits, give them an exclusive product to vlog about, and have them sell it for you.