"Mystery Pistachio"

As online media such as YouTube has exploded in popularity, entirely new kinds of celebrity have sprung forth through the form of vloggers, directors, and more. People who would otherwise be ordinary users uploading videos onto the website have come into fame, with loyal viewers, or subscribers, from across the globe climbing into even the millions for some of the more popular names. The pervasiveness of the media has grown with this, something I realized in further detail when I came across this video by MysteryGuitarMan, a musician who has become known for his inventive (and somewhat eccentric) music videos:

While advertising has entered into the online media scene with 30-second clips that play before and occasionally between streaming videos such as those from popular internet television source Hulu, I found this advertisement a particularly powerful example of how deeply embedded it can become. Even as audiences move away from other forms of media where advertising has made its mark, the industry doesn't fail to follow as made clear in this relatively new variety of product placement. By turning over the creation of the actual advertisement to an entertainer with a large following, as the number one subscribed director on YouTube, a catchy, amusing internet clip is created with a promotion for the Wonderful Pistachios product incorporated thoroughly into the mix.

As detailed in Professor Straubhaar's lecture, techniques to include product placement and the use of celebrity make this advertisement-in-disguise extremely powerful and effective, as a YouTube celebrity with an incredible following of 1, 104,780 subscribers (as of 8:20 on this Sunday night) creates a music video centered around the pistachio product, and is even still eating them during the vlog that follows the music portion.

The appeal of an advertisement like this can be found in the fact that, as the advertising industry discovered long ago, people want to become more like the celebrities they admire, to include purchasing the same things that they do. By seeing this video of MysteryGuitarMan eating Wonderful Pistachios, viewers are more likely to buy the product themselves, simply because he makes them "look good," or even something as simple as drawing there attention to it so that they're more likely to recognize and purchase some pistachios of their own during their next trip to the grocery store.

Additionally, a link to the Mystery Pistachio website in the information bar below the video directs users to even more celebrity endorsements, featuring famous faces from Snooki to Chad Ochocinco reveling in what is presented to be an extremely delicious pistachio snack.