- No, larries didn't invent PR and Marketing, it actually exists
- 1D is a product, selling products makes money and money makes people do horrible things.
- Narrative changes, rebranding and seeding
- VASS HAPPENIN' ?
And i'm not going to include external links and sources and shit, because that will be like creating timelines all over again and i simply can't do it. Sorry again.
No, Larries didn't invent marketing and PR, it actually exists.You would (maybe, depending on how long you've been in this fandom, perhaps)be surprised how weird and constructed and creepy PR gets. (Think hidden wifes and secret babies and fake marriages)
Also, while I think a part of this fandom is predominantly clever, I wouldn't credit the ideas of seeding, rebranding, astrosurfing and so forth to the larry fandom.
Here's a short explanation of some useful terms (which all existed before larries):
PR
(Yes, i actually see people genuinely asking what PR means all the time)
PR means public relations. A PR team is meant to take care of promo(-tion, if anyone is in doubt) and establish the narrative through media that they believe creates the most attention and profit aorund the brand.
A PR team may include publicists, narrative-teams and other specific groups within the team.
Seeding
Seeding wasn't invented by larries (unfortunately).
It was originally invented to plant ideas or influences in markets of consumers. It is a marketing stragedy invented to be used for politicians and to sell (literal (not human!)) products.
The idea is to influence the consumers from within the market by gradually introducing a narrative or an idea through media.
The advertisement industry pretty quickly found out that certain people and certain types of people have more credibility, likeability and therefore ability to influence a broad spectrum of people in different markets.
Astrosurfing
Astrosurfing is in a way an further development of the seeding-idea. The idea is to immitate the consumer and infiltrate the consumers platform.
Astrosurfing could involve for example having somebody working for a brand leaving positive reviews on products on the brands site (or elsewhere), pretending to be a consumer.
Think of it like the internet-version of the kind of TV advertisements that goes something like: ”I used this product and liked it - i'm a completely normal consumer with no external motives, so you can trust me. BUY THIS!”
Astrosurfing is that, just less detectable and more effective.
It's kind of like product placement, just without having to use actual external sources outside the company/coorporation/whatevs to do it. Just exchange movies/ people with profiles on social media and it's astrosurfing, really.
Of course it gets a bit more complicated when it's not a jeans company trying to rebrand, but a politician or a say, the biggest boyband in the world that needs a new narrative introduced.
1D is a product, selling products makes money and money makes people do horrible things
I have heard a lot of people excusing their view points with "they wouldn't lie".
The answer is yes they would.
Yes. They. Would.
Apart from House's point, 1D isn't just consisting of Louis, Harry, Liam, Niall and Zayn, but probably includes several hundred people working on their brand together.
I can assure you that H&L aren't the ones making the most money in this deal, and therefore they wouldn't be the ones loosing the most if they came out and it changed their popularity.
You know who would loose considerable amounts of money?
Modest! would.
SONY would.
Surely you must be able to grasp that one of the biggest coorporations in the world would lie, if they thought telling the truth would cause their most popular product to loose market value.
Narrative changes, rebranding and seeding
Now to the part where i explain why all these things do in fact also involve 1D, including Harry and Louis.
While I've been doing my timelines, I've kind of concluded something I already suspected before. We're in he middle of a narrative change, and we've come quite a long way from the starting point. Both in terms of H&L and in terms of general image/ branding.
1D is being rebranded from being a boyband reserved for screaming pre-teen girls to being a serious music group with a potential long future in the industry. - they're creating a much broader market than before while the boys are growing up.
I have been wondering a lot about a possible H&L seeding process being linked with the rebranding of the band (which -I think it's obvious to everyone -has been going on for a while).
There's a lot to say in terms of the general rebranding of the band, but i'm just going to try to stick to H&L, because this is already becoming an endless rant.
Harry's image
We used to have articles in which Harry being liked to every girl he was ever seen with. Harry was the ”womanizer” and the big money maker, which i'm sure no one is in doubt about. He was used for promoing models, which in turn helped him (modest!) create the famous womanizer Harry Styles.
I don't need to remind people of how Harry acted out in November 2014, leading to numerous articles about ”don't knock it 'till you try it”, ”not that important” , ”wouldn't date a dickhead” and any of the other very suggestive things he said.
At around (and when i say around” i mean almost exactly) the same time, sugarscape and Yahoo Celeb UK started posted a lot more Larry-articles than usual. Like, a LOT.
The Mike Adam (the shocked host in the lovebite-interview) started conversing with larries on twitter, openly talking about and shipping larry. Lauren Toyota was of course another journalist suddenly focusing on Lary again, and while she (and all of her very unlikely stories) might be very hard to find credible, she was a part of a tendency starting point blank on Nov.1st.
During the last months of 2014, Nadine was also introduced, which continued in some ways into 2015. While it might seem like the typical model-beard/ winter girlfriend storyline was being repeated, it turned out that the ”inside sources” this time was saying how devoted of a boyfriend Harry was, instead of how many of the girls friend's he'd been with. (hint: ”inside sources” = people who work for their PR/management. THIS is how to seed)
Asides from the general media implementing different narratives when it comes to Harry, it is hard to tell whether there has been a difference in terms of the narratives being pushed by astrosurfing. Mainly because astrosurfing isn't meant to be discoverable.
However, judging from comments on news sites and social media, the general public (not the fandom) seems to either 1: not care about harry's dating or 2: think he's gay, and that the articles suggesting romance between him and Nadine are based on so little that they're comically untrustworthy.
Whether the ”general public” in the comments are astrosurfers or not, there are little to no comments from people forwarding the womanizer-image.
When a paper occasionally posts some article about Harry and some girls, the comments are literally ALL people telling the sun to reinvent themselves, because it's getting old.
It's the same thing on sugarscape's and yahoo's larry-friendly posts; where there were angry and demeaning comments before (read: how to astrosurf and make yourself the authority and the reader look naive/ deluded while spreading doubts), there is now a vast majority of people saying ” i don't care” and people thanking them for writing about it.
Louis Image
..started out as a literal mess.
Louis is the witty, funny guy at heart really, so it wasn't so hard to portray those sides of him to the public as being his only sides from the very moment 1D was formed.
When 1D was marketed in the US and Eleanor was introduced, Louis's fans had already hooked on to the idea of Larry possible being very real. Louis' described himself as ”flamboyant” when asked to choose one word and his behaviour was classified as pretty damn camp (whatever you think of that expression) by a lot of people.
Literally no articles whatsoever was written about Louis then, except for when is was about his and Eleanors' latest strolls around town with starbucks or when he was mentioned in the articles that started appearing at almost (again, when i say almost, i basically mean exactly) the same time about how deluded and crazy larry shippers were.
Louis' public image then underwent somewhat of a minor change, reinstating and pretty much sealing the straight-narrative. His witty sass was being portrayed as kind of a rude side (read: bullshit tweet 1+2) instead of the previous funny-guy perspective.
His 'i-am-a-one-girl-kinda-guy-with-eleanor and also a homophobic football-fanatic' image was, at best, a very unsuccesful way of simply keeping the real Louis away from the public and did never – the way i see it – have any market appeal in itself. It was simply that without the established kinda whatever-image, he would be the 'maybe-gay-kinda-camp and also funny guy' – the first part potentially being very very bad for their US sales.
(note: i'm not saying that Louis isn't sassy and doesn't like football. I'm saying they choose which personality traits to focus on)
His image or outwards persona was never really about making money, as far as I can tell. It seems to me that it was more about not loosing money.
I don't know whether the fear that a not-straight member would cause them to loose money or not has any truth in reality. They probably could have turned it to their benefit, but it would have been risky, so they chose not to.
Fast forward to now, and the media portrayal were getting of Louis is all about how his songs are doing great in the market, how he recently registered a company and how he is supporitng charities. We have been getting less and less Elounor exposure since mid 2014, and she has only shown up ONCE in 2015. Currently she's very publicly in LA (or at least, she was two days ago) while Louis is very publicly in the UK at the same time as Harry.
Louis' image change is in no way as drastic as Harrys', but that's because it isn't needed, as Harry is the person most people knows about. At the same time, Harry is the one with the womanizer-image, whereas Louis is already sort of 'camp' and flamboyant, therefore would be easier to seed into a coming out.
VASS HAPPENIN
The theory I have, the general smart part of the fandom has and basically every reasonable person would have if they read a bit about PR, seeding and rebranding is that a coming out process for H&L would look like this:
1: Eleanor being out-phased.
2: Harry's image being changed (no more womanizer Harry)
3: Social media hints, like H&L or families tweeting each other and hinting that they're spending time together.
4: Pictures of H&L in social circumstances like going out with friends or going to the same parties or to dinner together.
5: There'll be articles about this, media will print the photos and there might be speculation. (papers who've previously deterred and ridiculed the L&H-narrative will be speculating too)
There will be speculation for a while, perhaps.
6: They'll come out. Probably in a scheduled exclusive and probably in print. It could be in video interview, but that would be breaking the norm.
That theory has been around for quite a while. Long before H&L really, if you remove the names and exchange them with other people.
Now you be the judge of where we are in that process exactly.I'll give you my thoughts:
Let's recap:
Eleanor out-phased?
She has appeared publicly with Louis twice in 2015. The first time, she didn't really appear (LA).
She is at the moment in LA, away from Louis, which she made everyone aware of. Like when she made everyone aware of her having left for London when she was in LA. There has been Elounor break-up rumours within the fandom.
I think we can pretty much check this one.
Harry's image being changed?
I don't wanna explain this again. CHECK.
Social media hints?
Jay tweeting about Louis going to london, restaurant @'ing Des, Louis and Harry in the same tweet, jay retweeting a larrie and so on. (Gemma very openly supporting lgbt right might be part of this too. Og yeah, and Harry.)
Seems like it has happened to me.
Pictures together?
Lairport. Lairport. Lairport. Numerous articles about lairport.
Clubbing with Zayn, Lottie and others in Japan.
I think there might (almost certainly) will be more of these, but i think WE ARE (in the middle of) HERE.
And basically, that was the gigantic rant of doom (which nobody is probably ever going to read. Anywho, I will remember what i thought today when i wake up tomorrow, and that's at least great.))
Byeeeee.
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