Lounge Trend Hunter Christy looks at the cult of Robert Pattinson & Twilight

The R-Pattz Saga

Recently I asked myself two questions. One, why is everyone suddenly so obsessed with Twilight, and two, who (/what) is ‘R-Pattz’!? I know all you Twilight/Pattz fans are shaking your heads and ‘tut-tutting’ at me, but there must be some who share my bewilderment as to where this came from.

Having discussed the issue with friends over the past week, I had mixed responses. Some shared my confusion whilst others confessed their undying love for the main character, Edward Cullen (A.K.A. R-Pattz, formerly known as Robert Pattinson). His presence alone sells the films to them. One friend in particular, who chose to remain anonymous said, “He is the most beautiful thing since Jude Law and I would like to have my wicked way with him”. There is no question; women everywhere are weak at the knees for Mr Pattz. Personally, my knees are stable. Ever since Prison Break Wentworth has always been my Mr Big, regardless of homosexual rumours and recent weight gain.

So perhaps that is what sells it to girls within my age bracket (20-25), but what about the rest? Twi-mad fans range from as young as age 11 to the ripe old age of 80. Essentially, Twilight is about ‘a teenage girl [who] risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire’. My thoughts exactly. So how has Twilight become such an overnight phenomenon? Did they have a carefully constructed, rigorous marketing strategy or is ‘Twilight-mania’ merely the result of a series of well-written, gripping novels? Is the success down to the actor who is simultaneously playing Edward Cullen and winning the hearts of women from Brick Lane to Fifth Avenue?

The creator of yet another of the hundreds of Twilight fan blogs, TwilightLexicon.com, Lori Joffs states that “teens identify with Bella [Cullen’s love-interest, played by Kristen Stewart] in fantasizing about their first love”. She also points out that older women find this innocent portrayal of love a form of escapism, allowing them to recollect “those first twitches of falling in love and reliving it through Bella”. Consequently, Stephanie Meyer’s series of novels appeal to women of all ages. Summit Entertainment – the production company for the films - realised this and devised an advertising strategy to secure the male audience. They did so by producing an advert in which the bad vampires fought the good ones, gaining airplay on channels such as ESPN, in order to reach their target audience; ‘the Lads’.

I was surprised to discover that Summit Entertainment is a much smaller company than those that usually churn out the Hollywood Blockbusters, such as Warner Brothers. It may be argued that Summit actually had the upper hand in having a low budget, as it forced them to utilise social media such as the likes of Twitter and Facebook, which are increasingly influential as a means of marketing, specifically considering the main audience of Twilight are teenage girls. The adverts placed on MySpace alone have been viewed over four million times. However, due to the volume of obsessed fans, much of the marketing taken out of Summit’s hands and spread through word of mouth. Fans produced online user generated content through the likes of YouTube videos, Facebook groups etc., which created the hype that surrounds the films. Twilight-mania has transfixed audiences to such an extent that the next movie could almost go without official advertising and still be a smash-hit.

There are hundreds of fan-created blogs devoted to the films, such as Twitarded.blogspot.com and TwilightMoms.com. One company has even secured a partnership with Summit Entertainment allowing fans to design and sell Twilight merchandise. The site, http://shop.cafepress.com/twilight has more than a staggering 6,000 designs for sale. Books are even in the process of being written about Twilight madness, such as Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media and the Vampire Franchise by Jennifer Stevens Aubrey.

I was adamant that I would not be sucked into the Twilight vortex that everyone has seemingly been abducted by, until I was stuck in traffic and noticed a bumper sticker on the Volvo in front of me, informing me ‘Warning: Driver may be reading Twilight’. This was the final straw; I had to find out for myself. To my surprise, I hesitate to admit that it is Chapter 2 and I am already hooked…

 

Christy Thatcher, 22, London

Micro-Blogging: The New Web Phenomenon?

What is happening in the ever-changing world of youth communication? Are ‘traditional’ mediums for online social communication becoming obsolete? Are the younger generations still reading the standard type pad style blogs? Are they media multi-tasking? These are some of the questions that posed themselves as The Lounge looked into the composite world of online communication.

Many young people don’t feel the need, have the time to attempt to read and digest a full blog due, in part to the constant diet of information snippets that they get fed from the established sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Myspace and Twitter as well as less established sites like Plurk, Fanfou, and to some extent Tumblr. The content on these sites goes a long way to satisfying their daily curiosity craving while fitting in with their hectic life-style. The aforementioned sites let users share information through short ‘micro’ posts, whilst eavesdropping on the upcoming activities, opinions, feeling and conversations of their peers through applications such as Facebook’s ‘news feed’. These ongoing streams of status-updates can be logged with ever-increasing ease; via the web, SMS or IM – in short, meaning that you will never be too far from a means through which you can let others know anything at all; how you are feeling, your plans for the evening, or what you ate for breakfast!

On top of this, young people are now getting more and more involved in micro-blogging through visual media sites such as Flickr & DailyMugshot, as well as using video (one to explore for brands that would like to attach a face/personality to their target audience insights). Micro-blogging with video has been coined as ‘live-streaming’ or ‘life-casting’. These terms originally referred to 24/7 streamers such as Justin TV, but now essentially refers to those who use video to stream their life online in any length. This process is becoming easier all the time, thanks mostly to the technological advancement of the mobile phone – meaning that there is now no longer any need to strap a camera to your head! Several popular services make it really simple to life-cast via mobile to the web, these include; Juicecaster, Kyte, Qiklife (launched in 2008 as the world's first life-casting ‘community’) and Next2Friends (where life-casting found it's way into Social Networking at Next2Friends with their introduction of live streamed video from mobile).

So do time-precious young people still engage in media multi-tasking? The answer is yes; all-in-one services are emerging, letting you micro-blog with multimedia, i.e. posting; photos, video, text, music, and other content. Twixtr mashes up Twitter with photos; Twiddeo merges it with video; Seesmic is its own video micro-blogging community; Utterz is an emerging mobile-driven platform that uses voice, video, text and images; Zannel is similar, but has developed a more professional presence using bands and studios. This sort of multimedia micro-blogging will simplify young people’s online lives. They will no longer have any need to visit multiple sites as these services will give them all that they need to stay in the social loop.

These developments could well be the beginnings of the next web phenomenon, one that will flourish in the hands the younger generation of internet user. Just think about what young people do on their phones (texting and taking pictures), then tie this to what they are doing online (social networking) and a marriage of the two makes perfect sense. It will maximize the potential of our new media and technology by using them in ways that are mutually beneficial to each other and most importantly, irresistible to the average young internet user. Pretty soon, everything will be viewable through the handset, bringing about a new unprecedented level of online connectivity among the next generation.

What is clear is that the ongoing evolution of social networking sites, coupled with the emergence of new micro-blogging sites is spawning a new online medium through which brands can attempt to engage and connect with the collective consciousness of a generation, while simultaneously supplying young people’s insatiable need for instant information…. Viva la evolution!