The “Culture Warrior” Bill O’Reilly Shows Scandalous Guitar Hero Ad

There’s been a lot of “boob” related news in the land of video game marketing.  First, there was the laughable Civony/ Evony media campaign that had a progressively more revealing campaign to entice “teh clickyz”.

Next was EA’s “Sin to Win” marketing campaign that encouraged visitors at San Diego’s Comic Con to perfom “Acts of Lust” on booth babes/ costumed reps.

Now, the Culture Warrior himself, the self proclaimed revealer of “pin-heads” has gotten into another tizzy about sex, marketing and video games.   As GamePolitics.com has previously reported, Mr. O’Reilly is no fan of video games, iPods and technology, he’s an out and proud luddite.

Here’s the video of Papa Bear expressing his mild disgust towards a new “low” in video game advertising.

First of all, I thought the little viral video was pretty funny, with lyrics from confirmed songs in the new Guitar Hero game popping up in the little black censor bars across the naughty parts of the people in the video.

This is some pretty decent viral marketing and to be honest, I kind of liked it.  I know that sex sells, I know that advertising has no problems using the sexuality of people and situations to sell their products.  Sex, no matter what people attach to it, is a very basic and primal animal impulse.  This has been ingrained into our evolution, our instincts and our culture from the moment we climbed out of the primordial ooze.  With this in mind, sex in advertising is not going away… not because we’re all perverts, but because it works, it’s appealing and it immediately grabs our attention.

I didn’t like the Evony ads because there was a disconnect between what the ads were and what the product was.  It was cheaply using sexuality and boobs to get people to click the ad and sign up for a game that’s essentially a civilization building clone.  It was selling you one thing and then delivering something different.

I didn’t like the EA “Sin to Win” campaign because it potentially put real people at real risk to sell games.  The EA campaign, while inherently sexual, it used sex to invite people to act on their baser instints, it strayed from the story and context of the game and just had a very strong “hur hur… boys like boobies and boys like video games… lets market this campaign to the boys”.

Neither of these marketing campaigns had any wit, had any real style and ended up just using sexuality for its own sake.  Neither campaign enhanced the communicative value of the game among their player base, neither game used sex as a story… they just used the sexual imagery and tone as more of a prop.  It’s like using a flame thrower to kill a fly, sure it looks cool when you’re doing it, but in the end, it’s overkill and you end up destroying stuff you like too.

This (as of yet unconfirmed) viral video for Guitar hero, uses sexuality in marketing effectively.  The setting is the Santa Monica Promenade, a place where you’re sure to see lots of bikinis, but very little nudity… these women are confidently strutting down the walkway, knowing full well what they’re doing and looking like they’re having fun.  That’s when the twist comes in.  The guy pops in, divides the naked foursome in half and struts his stuff.  This turn of events is clever, unexpected and provides us a memorable experience that defies the initial expectation of the video.

This video has a fun, tongue in cheek attitude and it’s not afraid to give you that all to important shock that any good viral video has.  Sure, it’s viral, sure it’s most likely sponsored by Activision, sure… they even use sex to sell.  In this case, if it is in fact for Guitar Hero, this is the place where it’s appropriate to sell sex.  Sex and Rock & Roll go together, you cannot have the Rock & Roll culture with out conjuring up the image of Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll.  In this case, it’s a complete play on something that we’ve already thematically connected.  It sparks memory, it sparks curiosity, it sparks conversation and it’s absolutely appropriate in tone and execution.

Secondly, it falls in line with Guitar Hero’s previous marketing campaign where stars rock out in their underwear in an homage to “Risky Business”.

Again, Guitar Hero is treading in thematically familiar waters here.

What irriated me about the O’Reilly response was that he only called the women “pin-heads”, not the man… who I might remind you, was also fully naked.  That just smells like a double standard to me

As Kotaku reported:

Kotaku was even notified about the O’Reilly video by a viral marketing group that drew parallels between this video and the one for Guitar Hero World Tour featuring Heidi Klum, and also aired on O’Reilly’s show.

Yep, that’s what marketing companies do.  They disseminate information.  In this case they sent Kotaku the O’Reilly response and not the actual video, which is better than sending them the YouTube link.  All in all, this is not the first time Bill O’Reilly’s had the vapors about Guitar Hero and was unashamed to put this abomination on his show for all to see:

If you’re going to use sex in marketing, make sure it works… make sure it’s appropriate to the audience, the theme, the product and to the expectations… and if you’re lucky, you too will be able to get prime time coverage on Fox News!

The “Culture Warrior” Bill O’Reilly Shows Scandalous Guitar Hero Ad