No such thing as oblivious
There's a local-kid-makes-good story going round today about how an 18-year-old London student's YouTube vid about the iPhone was picked up by Apple's ad agency. The heartwarming lesson: Normal people can be advertisers, too. Or something.
Really? This story seems implausible. Or, at the very least, disingenuous. First of all, according to the NY Times story, the video had only been viewed 2,000 times before it was picked up by Apple. Hmm. Some marketing peon must've had a hard time upselling that idea based upon such a small popularity base. Or maybe he didn't, since the video is so similar to/derivative of Apple's current style of advertising. Either way, Apple's decision to incorporate UGC is little more than a PR stunt.
And then there's this myth of the oblivious multi-media producer who toils away out of pure "passion." There's no such thing as a person who doesn't understand the global reach of YouTube. YouTube may have been a means for sharing amongst friends at one point, but anyone who posts to the site now must know they're sharing with a tremendous audience. Everyone's hoping to get discovered, whether they admit it or not.
