think ello ? It ’s the social internet that push itself as the indie option to Facebook , butwas then unmasked as VC fund by XOXO beginner Andy Baio . Now they ’re back , with more VC money , and their young ad campaign is just as cluelessly disingenuous as their last one .
It ’s not really exculpated what ello is trying to be . Maybe some kind of lifestyle internet for hipsters who guess they are too coolheaded for social networks ? Other than its whittle - down retro pattern , ello is virtually indistinguishable from half - a - dozen other descendants of a haired , heavy - browed common root bonk as Friendster . you could broadcast message , place updates and picture , make friends , and share your up-to-the-minute music , crafts , or beard moisturizer cream .
What ello does have is style . And a marketing crusade drive to hoi polloi who hate merchandising , or think of themselves as too smart to fall for the privacy - invading , data - sneak scheme of other apps . It ’s like they learn Thomas Frank ’s bookThe Conquest of Cool — all about advertizement business firm working with companies like Volkswagon and Dr. Pepper created the so - called counterculture using merchandising political campaign in the 1960s — and learned the very bad lessons from it . Frank ’s book is a call - out of how Madison Avenue co - choose our desire to be free of its clutches , by marketing things to us with ingenious anti - ad effort that invoke to our frustrated desire for real dissent .
So yeah , ello is endeavor to rick your hatred of merchandising into a merchandising hunting expedition . It ’s kind of an onetime trick in the advertising world , but they are still hoping it will work because this sentence it has a social media twist !
Mic ’s Jack Smith interview ello founding father Paul Budnitz about themarketing scheme , which will also include an anti - Facebook surveillance run — on Facebook . Writes Smith :
Wow , much meta .
Ello ’s campaign seems fate to fail — not because it ’s absurdly hypocritical , but because their target marketplace is n’t really that interested about embodied data mining and direct ads . Two recent studiesfrom the Pew Research Center showthat people between 18 and 29 are far less distressed about corporations gathering their secret datum than other old age chemical group — though they are far more disturbed about government snooping than their elders . 55 % of youthful adult say they disapprove of the US government gathering individual information for the “ war on panic , ” but 46 % mat up that corporations assemble private data point was a “ sightly trade ” for free servicing like Facebook .
So if ello really wanted to entrance the zeitgeist , they ’d do an anti - NSA advert campaign and predict their users freedom from government scrutiny . Instead , they ’re go the “ concealment theater ” road , wheatpasting anti - surveillance chic over their Facebook clone in the hope of gaining market parcel with anyone who is naive enough to hang for their tricks .
Photo by Adam Clark Estes
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