I am not bothered or unsettled by the MTV VMA performances or what they may or may not say about the state of culture. And least of all I’m not bothered by the Google trending elephant in the room. This post isn’t about the particular VMA performance that blew up the social interwebs Sunday. Instead, it is about the gullible, shallow assessments of something we all—as consumers, marketing professionals, designers and generally sophisticated and sentient beings—should be more aware of: that anything connected to or representative of culture is complex and encoded with multiple layers of meaning. The VMAs, like many cultural activities, are spectacles and unearth a wide spectrum of emotions. They make you feel something, for better or worse; attraction or aversion, allegiance or avoidance, appreciation or appall. The VMAs are also designed to serve as entertainment. All of the performances were designed, truly conceptualized and constructed, to cause a reaction. Inevitably some were better executed than others. To place sole ownership of the performance squarely on the performer is short-sighted, and frankly quaint, given what is known about the level of planning, design and marketing that goes into displays like this. As marketers, designers and social commenters, we, of all people, should be sensitive to products (including people as products) and experiences that are coded with multiple layers of meaning and references. Read More
