Seth's Blog : Talent becomes media

Talent becomes media

Rivian has a new ad, starring Bill Murray.

It’s not a great ad (more on that below) but the remarkable thing is that it features the quirky, beloved and scarce Bill Murray. Between the movie rights, music and Bill, they had to have spent many millions of dollars, and it doesn’t look like they bought a single slot of ad time. For less total cost than a boring Ford commercial in 1985, they hooked up with two icons.

That’s a complete flip from hiring an unknown to pitch your brand of freeze dried coffee but spending millions on network TV.

Thirty years later, the attention equation is now reversed. No one watches an ad on YouTube unless they want to, and so, your talent buy is your media buy.

This is going to amplify a different sort of creative agency as well as give recognizable talent more leverage. A good ad in the TV days was annoying but led to action. A good ad today creates enrollment and buzz. Attention is insufficient, though. Ghostbusters was seen by millions, but it didn’t sell many vintage Hearses.

[And why is this a lousy ad? I love my Rivian, but not because it has a Ghostbuster button. The first job of advertising a new brand is to earn it a position, to give us a story about what you’d like to stand for. Who it’s for and how we’re going to feel when we wear the label you’re offering us. Jaguar dropped the ball when they re-branded last year. AI companies are terrible at this as well, and it appears that Rivian missed a chance with Bill.]

Don’t cross the streams.

PS While we’re on the topic, please don’t buy cheap chocolate.