|
______________
______________
______________
______________
|
 |
The Secret Identity of Super Greg
Click here for the Val Venis interview Although there’s no reliable statistic, it’s probably safe to say that the average university student surfs through hundreds of pages each month. And because there’s just so much out there, it’s even safer to say that most won’t remember the majority of the text, pictures and movies only a few days later. That said, if you’ve stumbled across Super Greg’s site, you probably remember it. Point your browser to www.supergreg.com and a less-than-astonishing barrage of photo and text come flying out at you. Welcome to the personal home page of the Super One, a would-be famous mono-browed DJ who wants nothing more than to introduce you to his friends, his equipment and, yes, his music. The whole thing is just so naïve and unintentionally stupid that it becomes unbearably funny. The allure lies in that there’s this guy who’s obviously trying so hard to look cool and professional, but he still manages to come off looking like an idiot to the rest of the world. Odds are, it won’t be long before you tell your friends about it. And then they’ll tell their friends about it, who in turn will tell their friends, ad infinitum. The knowledge of Super Greg and his krazy disk jockeying ways spread like the plague. So, like Furnitureporn.com and Hampsterdance.com before it, an anonymous and innocuous web site has managed to become a cultural institution thanks to good ol’ fashioned word of mouth. With its simple layout, cheesy photos and imbecilic captions, the home page of the tight, red jumpsuit-wearing Super Greg is thus able to leave its impression on the malleable tiles of the pop culture mosaic in our minds. Everyone loves a pathetic fool, right? And then, the cyber-gods of irony step in. Super Greg isn’t a fool. Hell, he’s not even real. And if there’s anyone who is naively mistaken about their ‘coolness,’ it should be the person who’s sitting at the keyboard and just got suckered into some pre-emptive product placement. See, the Super One isn’t some random style- challenged pseudo-musician with HTML-savvy; he’s a completely fabricated marketing tool. Confused? Along with Rubberburner.com (basically the same sort of idea, but this
time with a “slim and handsome race car driver” as your host), Super Greg
is a completely contrived fake. In reality, it’s owned by Lee Jeans, an
American-based denim apparel company. The man who
Still confused? If you’re wondering why a company selling blue jeans would create a home page for a fictitious struggling DJ, the answer is obvious: for him to do battle with their spokesman—a little plastic doll who answers to the name of Buddy Lee. Though the ad campaign is much more popular in the States, there’s a chance you may have seen the irrepressible kewpie doll guy who’s been Lee’s mascot for quite some time. Created by Paul Malstrom and Linus Kalsson of the Fallon advertising group, Super Greg’s entire raison d’être comes down to being a thorn in the side of a plucky little doll who hawks blue jeans. Possessing admirable strength of character and a refusal to bow-down in the face of adversity, Buddy Lee is the embodiment of the everyman hero. But, like the Batman needs the Joker, Buddy Lee needed some villains to square off against. “In order to define Buddy Lee and his values, we needed to find characters that were his opposite. He’s a man of action, who doesn’t brag. The villains are self-absorbed and cocky and think they are great winners,” Malstrom explained. Originally unbeknownst to Lee, Malmstrom and Kalsson created the fake
web page during breaks in their filming of the television commercial spots.
Their secret plan was to rely on a form of ‘viral’ marketing to raise awareness
for the impending television campaign. People kept forwarding the location
of the site to other friends until the sites were receiving reportedly
tens of thousands of hits a day. When the commercials finally aired, many
couldn’t believe that their favourite online losers had made the big time.
Fallon fostered brand loyalty and campaign recognition without even once
mentioning blue jeans.
It’s both a sign that the net is going more corporate and that marketing
wizards are getting craftier. Some people are taking notice, however.
“Both the [Rubberburner] and Super Greg sites are hilarious, and humour advertising never bothers me much... but I worry about crafty marketing schemes weaseling their way into content, be it in a website, a movie, or a TV show,” he wrote. Still, it’s not like there are any Lee Jeans logos splashed on the screen; Super Greg’s fostering brand recognition here, not conning you into buying pants. Crass commercialism isn’t the only thing disconcerting about the Super Greg site, though. The fact remains that the American public embraced this guy not because of his talents or his personality, but because they saw him as this loser with no sense of style and no sense that the world was laughing at him. Maybe it’s indicative of the increasingly nasty and cynical world we live in, then, that Lee Jeans would embrace this sort of shallow, elitist thinking and use an entire marketing campaign based on the timeless pastime of making fun of those we don’t think measure up to our standards of cultured and cool. As for the actor portraying Super Greg, one has to wonder if he sees some sort of conflict in passing himself off as an ineffectual under-achiever to the world in order to gain fame. According to Malstrom, the actor who played Super Greg “really is a
bad DJ who never had the chance to play in good clubs.”
|
