This Is Content Marketing To The EXTREME!

By John D. Verlin

According to Mike Gonzalez' article in the Wall Street Journal today--never have we seen a more blatant act of "content" marketing than what Obamacare is planning via the California Endowment (investing $130 million) in messages/commercials to convince Hispanics to sign up for the Affordable Care Act.

Ever since Norman Lear's "socially-prominent" sitcoms of the '70's have we seen messaging content "woven" into story lines by the likes of Hollywood screen writers.

Mr. Hernandez reports, This week saw fresh evidence of how worried ObamaCare supporters are: news of an effort to use Hollywood story lines to send a message to Hispanics that they should sign up. It's not the first time promoters of government programs have used TV and radio programming to win over the country's largest minority group. If ever there was a confluence of crony capitalism, big government, Hollywood, liberal media and the academy, this is it.

Here is content marketing at it's best and maybe not so obvious (paid for messaging blended in to scripts). 

Content marketing is nothing new--even paid for (the cigarette companies' were masterful in convincing/partnering with Hollywood in the '40's-'50's to have all characters in movies smoke).

But what strikes me as unusual, is this almost smacks of political brainwashing/propaganda.

It's one thing to run TV ads targeted to a specific demographic--but a whole other thing to pay to have it carefully woven into the fabric of broadcast programming content.

In radio--this is illegal WITHOUT an open & close announcement that parts of this program were paid for by so and so.

As I see it--specific Hispanic shows will feature one character suggesting or arguing with a family member.

Without this distinction--the obvious "propaganda" label can be inserted. Mr. Hernandez goes on to write"

Martin Kaplan, the dean of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, where the Norman Lear Center is based, was nothing if not explicit about the initiative's goal: "We know from research that when people watch entertainment television, even if they know it's fiction, they tend to believe that the [information] is actually factual."

Norman Lear knows how right Mr. Kaplan is about the influential role entertainment can play in shifting the national political conversation. Mr. Lear, now a spry 91, was the television writer and producer who did so much to change America's mores in the 1970s with such shows as "All in the Family," "Maude" and "Good Times."

It's the same type of influence Orsen Welles had in his famous 1938 "War Of the Worlds" radio broadcast (see earlier post)--only they DID ANNOUNCE AT THE BEGINNING AND END of the show that it was fiction--but some listeners never got the message.

In my opinion--from a marketing standpoint--it doesn't get any better in content subterfuge than this.

On a more sinister note as Mr. Hernandez states:

Many new immigrants—this writer included—who were looking for cultural cues had TV's version of America and little else. A good number of immigrant families we knew during that period thought that the fiction depicted on Mr. Lear's shows was what America actually looked like.

Thus is my point of this "paid for content"--or any sponsored content in programming without notification to the audience borders toward propaganda.

Mr Hernandez even comments: The new initiative out of the Norman Lear Center is unique in that it is consciously bringing together so many liberal forces to convince Hispanics to sign up for ObamaCare...breaking down people's natural pride and their reluctance to depend on welfare is the stock in trade of those who want government to grow by any means. Perhaps they don't appreciate the immense toll that eroding self-reliance has on these communities. Once churches, clubs and social organizations cease providing services because "the government will do it," they are almost impossible to bring back.

Progressives are extremely savvy about using entertainment and powerful cultural institutions to carry out their initiatives. Conservatives know how to complain about it, but so far they have been badly outmatched.

Question is...if this is going on behind the scenes for Obamacare marketing 101--where else is it going on--and to what extent?

Newscasts, sports broadcasts, other sitcoms, reality shows?

This is why our freedom to choose and openly disagree is so important. It gives us a checks and balance on government.

And that is what our Founding Fathers wanted for this new experiment in government.

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