Be You

July 19, 2006 in Communications with 4 Comments

Jami emailed an article today from Advertising Age that talks about Wal-Mart’s less than effective attempt to reconnect with teenagers. You can check out the Wal-Mart site for teenagers. Similar to MySpace, teens can create their own page and submit videos. They’re competing for the chance to have their videos used in Wal-Mart commercials. As the article points out, "The site is an attempt at closing the trend gap Wal-Mart now faces as Target wins more teen-apparel dollars."

Only problem is that teenagers are seeing right through this attempt to be hip. For example, one of the students interviewed in the article explained, "Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren’t at all, and they were just being kind of weird," she said. "Are these real kids?"

This brings me back to the conversation about better blogging (or better teaching or better worship leading or better marketing or better web design) from earlier this week. You have to be you. You can’t try to be something you’re not. The people you’re trying to reach will see right through it.

While we’re on the topic of MySpace, I find this to be an interesting phenomenon. Why is it that the same people that complain about that lack of authenticity in today’s institutions and leadership also have their own MySpace pages where they’re pretending to be someone they’re not? These are interesting days we live in.

4 Responses to “Be You”

  1. Ryan July 19, 2006 at 8:55 am #

    I think it’s really sad, but you see a lot of people in ministry who appear to be attempting to be someone other than themself. I was at C3 this year at Fellowship Church and saw a lot of pastors that appeared to be trying really hard to be Ed Young(colorful striped shirts, “frosted tips” it’s sad I know what that is) . You can tell when someone is trying to be something they are not because don’t appear comfortable in their own skin. This could be percieved as judgemental, but that’s not my intention. Just an observation.

  2. Luke Camara July 19, 2006 at 10:37 am #

    I am committed to being me…but many in my denomination are committed to making me like them. Now that is sad.

  3. JG July 20, 2006 at 1:21 am #

    I guess I’m missing the last reference in your post to “the same people that complain.” Who are we talking about here? Sounds intriguing … JG

  4. Anne Jackson July 20, 2006 at 12:21 pm #

    Dang…you must have found my luchadore MySpace.