And Then There's This_ How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture - Bill Wasik [59]
FIG. 4-4—ORWELLIAN VS. GLADWELLIAN
BILL SHILLER GIVES BACK
Bill Shiller, I reflected, had been greedy—he had only taken from the corporations, playing their online games, watching their “branded content,” accepting their wisdom and recipe tips and even, on MySpace, their friendship. But what had he given back? Nothing; and in the last phase of the experiment I decided it should be incumbent upon Bill Shiller to shoulder his share. I signed up for BzzAgent, Streetwise, and (fibbing about my age a bit) even Tremor, which sent me this e-mail back: “Hey Bill, we’re pumped to have you as part of the Crew. Now you get to tell everyone what you really think about the latest music, games, movies, products, and a whole lot more.” It added: “Your friends will be glad you did.”
As a new BzzAgent, I joined a campaign on behalf of a forthcoming line of Ziploc bags called Zip ’n Steam, which one could use to steam fresh vegetables in the microwave. A week or so after joining the Ziploc campaign, I got my Zip ’n Steam bags in the mail, as well as an e-mail from BzzAgent Jono, aka Jon O’Toole, the BzzAgent communications director who serves as the nominal head of all campaigns. BzzAgent Jono, I was told on signing up, “now uses the Ziploc® Brand Zip ’n Steam™ Bags to cook just about everything he eats—especially fresh veggies!” In Jono’s own e-mail to me, he was a bit more insistent. “Are you planning on attending a cookout for the July 4th holiday?” he wrote. “Holiday events are a great place to Bzz about the bags. You can even show everyone how well the bags work by doing a demonstration and sharing the delicious results.” As it happened, I had been invited to a Fourth of July cookout, though “cookout” was perhaps too strong a word: it was a party, really, but the hosts planned to grill on the fire escape. Later, if attendees crammed out onto the same fire escape and craned their necks just so, they would be able to see some fireworks.
At the party that evening, a drizzly Wednesday, perhaps twenty or so people were waiting for the first burgers to finish when Agent Bill Shiller made his move. Ever since a somewhat unflattering story in the New York Times in 2005, BzzAgent has been very diligent with its disclosure requirements, insisting that all agents explicitly identify themselves as such whenever they are “Bzzing” about a product. In keeping with this credo, I explained the whole program to all those loitering near the microwave as I filled the Zip ’n Steam bags with asparagus and broccoli rabe. I added some sliced garlic, sealed them, and let the microwave do its magic. As promised, the bags ballooned out but did not burst. “No water is required,” I said, to general nods. “The vegetables steam in their own moisture.”
After letting the bags cool, we all tentatively reached in, extracted some stalks, and ate them. They were a tad oversteamed but generally tasty. “Honey, come and try some viral-marketing broccoli rabe,” one woman called out to her boyfriend.
“Is it reusable, the plastic bag?” asked my friend John, a BBC producer stationed in New York. I told him that it was.
This seemed to trouble Christian, a bachelor colleague of mine. “If you used the bag to cook cheese,” he asked, “would the bag then retain the odor of the cheese?”
“You don’t steam cheese,” I pointed out.
“I’ve heard that plastic shouldn’t be reused,” interjected John’s girlfriend Nomi, a graphic designer. “That more than one use of it, even if you refill a water bottle, that it starts to degrade and let bad material into what you’re drinking or eating.” She paused. “But obviously Ziploc didn’t tell me that. A yoga teacher did.”
Here was another chance to emphasize my disclosure. “From Ziploc’s point of view,” I pointed out, “they probably hope you don’t reuse them either. Because then you’d buy more. Like me, your yoga teacher may have been hired by Ziploc as a plant.”
“Well, I basically consider my yoga teacher