“I thought of a fun marketing idea to use to launch the release of my song with Il Pagante in an unusual way, without foreseeing that this could create such a large media short circuit“. As Fabio Rovazzi about the theft suffered while he was live on Instagram, which later turned out to be a fiction.
Translated into more incorrect but effective terms: I had an idea, but I didn’t think everyone would fall for it. But really everyone.
The scene of the boy who passes by during the live broadcast and steals the singer’s phone soon enters several national home pages: from La7 to Il Giornale, from Fanpage (which then updated the piece) to Nicola Porro, the only one mentioned to leave the final question mark.
The fact is that the “Rovazzata” brings him a significant advertising return. And free, too. Massive advertising done in the media. Those who comment under the videos are not exaggerating – but giving him credit – for having “trolled” the journalists.
Then there are those who take it less well, like Pierfrancesco Maran, councilor for the House of Palazzo Marino and candidate with the Democratic Party in the next European elections: “But what a great find Rovazzi – he writes on social media – We Milanese could also have a fun marketing idea in suing you for damage to your image and simulation of a crime”.
This is where the other side of the marketing “masterpiece” comes into play: first the news, with the publicity generated by those who report the fact; but anyone who knows a little about the current way of providing information knows very well that the comment on the news it now takes up 80% of the space of the news itself. Even in TV shows people talk about the insecure Milan (which is not denied here) and the topic “raised” by the video. Then go and see how many daily thefts occur in the Lombard capital, to discover that the region is the most tormented in terms of muggings and that dozens of them occur in Milan in just a few days. Yet they don’t make the news with this fuss.
But why did Rovazzi capture the media’s attention in this way with a common incident like a mugging?
For two reasons which are the Achilles’ heels of modern journalism: lack of comparisons And pursuit of the reader.
Verifying the news before disclosing it is now an obsolete practice for a journalism that runs too fast and thinks it can fix everything by making “corrections”.
But everything doesn’t work out. Partly because no one guarantees that the correction of the news will reach the same audience as the first published version, and then because the correction tool does not prevent national newspapers from being practically used as puppets by the first marketer who gets smart.
This is how a new type of news is born: attractive, gossipable, instagrammable. The promise of the video promptly inserted in the title attracts the click of the public who scrolls the home page, and captures it at the cost of credibility: ordinary in the era of the journalist who chases a reader who is too distracted to delve into anything.
Then the final stunt: with everyone’s attention captured and the microphones ready to intercept him, Rovazzi just needs “a little push” to reap the benefits.
“I wanted to reassure you because it’s all fake – the singer tells his followers – We did all this because ‘Maranza’ comes out tomorrow at midnight“, the new single.
And so not only do the media correct it, but they also talk about the “advertised” product. Genius yes, but in a world of idiots.
