"Boyfriend" False Advertisement

Of course Justin Bieber has a VEVO channel on youtube. But his first, original channel -- which launched his career -- is "kidrauhl". On this channel was posted, on April 18th, a 45-second teaser of the much-anticipated music video for his single Boyfriend. When the official video finally premiered on May 3rd (on his VEVO channel), it took a completely different direction than the one suggested in the teaser.

Now, from my understanding, a "teaser," in this case, would have been a short, representative segment of the actual music video, to get people curious/interested in watching the whole video when it premiered. My problem with Bieber's teaser is as follows: The first 20 seconds of both the teaser and the actual music video are identical. Then, in the real video, the focus is zoomed out and the "teaser" is continued on an iPod held by two girls in a car. The clip goes on for a few more seconds (viewed on the iPod), the screen goes black, and then the song starts over with a completely different scenery altogether, which has nothing to do with the teaser. Basically, the remaining seconds of the 45-second teaser never actually make it onto the real music video.

This bothers me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am positive that many people who contributed to the 78 million views of Boyfriend clicked because they wanted to see how the teaser developed in the full music video.

My impression of all this was that the music video was already made a certain way, and then, to be able to say that the teaser actually was part of the real video, a 30-second clip  was glued on at the beginning. My impression is supported by the fact that earlier, on March 30th, "kidrauhl" released a 20-second teaser of Boyfriend, from later on in the song, very similar to the April 18th teaser, with the small exception that it technically isn't featured in the music video at all. In fact, in the 45-second teaser, at the second where it stops being featured in the music video, you can actually see the superposition of two images (second 32). The clip that is glued on is actually part of the first, 20-second teaser released in March.

In this way, the longer teaser released 2 weeks after the first one basically serves as a transition from the first teaser to the full music video. However, the contents of the first teaser never actually make it onto the real video. The fact that a second teaser is released so soon after the first one definitely makes it seem like someone was trying to cover a mistake. In this way, the second teaser contains elements from the first teaser and from the real music video.

Besides all these technicalities, both teasers were misleading. The final music video is a whole different concept altogether. A teaser should give the viewers a glimpse of the real music video, not trick them. By creating a fake story line, Bieber may have intrigued people enough to watch his whole music video, but the result is counterproductive. In fact, they may end up preferring the teaser(s) to the music video.

In any case, false advertisement won't make new fans.