Well, it’s official. There really is no pleasing me. One minute I’m all up in arms because every other web series is playing fast and loose with the product placement. But then, give me a truly enjoyable series that only barely shows its commercial roots, and I’m all, “Dude, where’s the pitch?” Case in point: Lost in America, the ambitious travelogue-cum-promotional-series from AT&T, produced for Tremor Media by Digital Content Partners and Studio8.
Things start well. I mean, it stars iJustine! Seriously, if you wanna land the point that your network keeps people tapped in wherever they go, who better to brand you than one of the web’s most famous lifecasters? (Sure, she caused a few minor problems for AT&T with that whole 300-page iPhone bill thing, but hey, bygones.) Doubling your fun is Justine’s costar, Karen (of Karenism), a blogger extraordinaire in her own right. And the premise is, let’s drop them off in the middle of nowhere (well, the middle of Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; and Chicago, Ill. anyway) and give them a series of missions to complete, using only their AT&T phones. Fun!
And, slickly directed by Tubefilter’s Drew Baldwin, it sure looks great. Alaska looks great. Justine and Karen look great. Quality is not remotely an issue here. So why haven’t I rushed out to switch to AT&T yet?
It’s not Justine and Karen’s fault. They attack their missions with such adorable zeal that they may soon be replacing buttons as the official worldwide standard of the cutest thing one can be as cute as. And the missions themselves – uploading photos and video, downloading music, searching the Net – are certainly a reasonable measure of a phone and a network’s capability.
But, thing is, I didn’t really get a feel of why AT&T and the Blackjack 2 were better than anything else they could have been using. Sure, they got great coverage in Alaska, but I had no way of knowing if getting great coverage in Anchorage (a city of 300,000 people) was that big of a deal. (Though getting full bars while on that tiny little plane did seem pretty impressive.)
Also, the web site for the series, with its sporadic Twitter updates and too-thin video blog, really undermines the entire stay-in-touch-while-on-the-go concept. I would have loved to see more blog posts clearly updated mid-mission, or more videos that felt like real behind-the-scenes footage and not just discarded outtakes.
Now, I love the idea of a series that encourages people to step away from the computer without fear of slipping out of touch. And Lost in America, with its two engaging stars having fun adventures in some of America’s greatest cities, totally did that for me. It just didn’t convince me I need to take an AT&T phone with me.
