On last week’s season 5 premier of MTV’s The Jersey Shore, we were given a run-down of the previous season’s drama. While most of the storylines reached natural conclusions before the next season began, one storyline remained gapingly open.
Background:
Snooki, The Jersey Shore’s own version of a glammed-up Ewok, was still upset at her housemate, Mike (otherwise known as The Situation) as The Situation had not so discretely revealed that the two had been intimate in the space between season three and season four’s Italian jaunt.
Snooki was unhappy with this revelation either because it was untrue, or because she didn’t want others to find out. (This something we’ll likely discover in later episodes.)
Either way, making things worse and thereby further enraging Snooki was the fact that Snooki had a boyfriend at the time of the supposed hook-up.
Fast Forward to The Premier of Season 5 Last Thursday:
The Situation, already on shaky ground when it came to the credibility of his gossip, had been seeking vindication for his story ever since the end of season four. More or less ostracized by the rest of his housemates for his senseless gossip, he recruited his best friend to accompany him on his quest for vindication.
When it comes to references for jobs and meeting romantic interests, good friends can support you and provide a strong character reference. When it comes to broadcasting a message that you’re campaigning for others to believe, it can often do you more harm than good.
This was exactly the case for The Situation.
Crazily enough, his good friend, Rich ‘The Unit’ Smith did more to discredit his story than reinforce it (for additional insight into why The Situation’s search for validation was doomed from the start, take a look at The Unit’s Facebook page).
The Lesson:
Even when your good friend — whom you’re relying on to relay your message — is actually a reputable human being, the message is never as strong as when it comes from a single source.
By enlisting his friend to help tell his story, The Situation was engaging an additional platform to distribute his story – and therefore diluting it. When there are two different platforms telling a story (in this case, The Situation being one and The Unit being the other), the stories can easily diverge resulting in confusion for the audience and consequently weakening the message.
As each different person told their story to the same audience, differences emerged that resulted in audience confusion.
Although in later episodes this confusion will probably manifest itself in slurred 3am screaming matches and day-old hotdog throwing, in the real world, using two different platforms to deliver a message typically results in audience dissipation.
Besides the importance of unifying your message’s distribution channel, there’s another lesson to be learned: if you find yourself drowning amidst the drunken frivolousness of The Jersey Shore, take a step back, there’s always something to be learned.
- Jared Holst
Strategic Account Manager
