CINCINNATI — One local man who is passionate about digital marketing has made it his business goal and mission to help small businesses here in the Tri-State gain exposure through Facebook.

Les Fultz has been running « More with Les » for only three weeks now, but already he has seen an impact with his digital marketing efforts. And the already impressive reach on his Facebook videos spotlighting local businesses back it up.

Though he’s successfully taking on this new full-time role as a digital marketer, Les has no background in the field. In fact, Fultz owned a cleaning company he founded in 2010.

But as Fultz continued to experiment with short Facebook videos showing potential clients new cleaning products and techniques in an effort to attract new customers to his business, he knew he was onto something big.

As more new clients came flocking to his business after seeing the short editorial-style videos posted on Facebook, Fultz realized how powerful this marketing tactic could be. It was then that he set his sights on the idea of helping other small local businesses achieve the same success.

« I really wanted to help local companies understand the power of digital content, » Fultz said.

The Westwood native titled his new editorial-style show « More with Les, » which highlights small businesses around the Tri-State. Fultz plans to spotlight everything from locally owned retail shops and restaurants to business news and entertainment.

« I hope to show companies that there is a lot of business potential behind producing video content through this platform (Facebook), while also giving small businesses a taste of just how powerful publishing an impactful episodical-style video can be. »

So far, Fultz has published four pilot shows to Facebook. Although he has fewer than 100 followers on the business page, the videos have reached more than 27,000 people, he said.

« I’ve been working really hard to get this going, and really the last three to four weeks have been out of control, » Fultz said

As the « More with Les » pilot series prove his business model is a success, Fultz eventually plans to offer clients an « all-encompassing exposure package, » which will include photos of the business as a well as a write-up that will be published on his website.

« I’ve already recruited a copywriter for the writing aspect and a photojournalist, » he said.

While Fultz has been offering his services for free as the pilot series is being completed, he eventually plans to start charging local businesses.

The price of the services will start at $495 and will include an « all-encompassing » package.

« This is a viable option for the little guys, » Fultz said. « While larger companies don’t think twice before spending $10K on a video that sits on their website, it’s oftentimes out of the marketing budget for smaller companies. But it’s just as important for them. They need video, too. »

Fultz plans to have most of the videos for « More with Les » produced in his West Side studio, Valere Studios. The space was built late last year and is fully equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, along with everything else necessary to his fun and timely episodical videos.

The name of the studio was derived from the Latin word for value and was designed and built by Fultz with the help of the building’s landlord.

In addition to « More with Les, » Fultz also uses the studio to showcase local artists and musicians and will even use the space as a live broadcast studio.

« So, really, I have two big irons in the fire — I help promote local artists by showing live music at night on the Valere Facebook page and then the ‘More with Les’ show during the day on the ‘More with Les’ Facebook page. »

Fultz hopes he can continue to attract clients that are looking for more brand exposure or businesses that have a story to share as his just-launched business takes off.

When asked if he had a background in video production, Fultz said that only two years ago, he had no idea how to operate a camera.

It was an entrepreneurial drive and determination to make a difference, mixed with a lot of long hours and hard work that brought him to where he is today.

Fultz also hopes that by sharing his story, he can inspire and motivate others to follow their passion in business and in life.

For more information about Les Fultz, visit his website, the Valere Studios Facebook page or the « More with Les » Facebook page.

Spin is spin, even when it is written by journalists. (Image: scyther5 / iStock / Getty Images Plus)

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I first started writing articles when I was a teenager, as one of the ways I could contribute to the movement to stop the war on Iraq, to free the refugees from detention in Australia and to stop a waste dump being built where I lived (one of the poorest parts of Sydney).

I’ve been a journalist for 16 years now, writing from Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Pakistan and other countries — aiming to center the voices of those who aren’t usually heard, and covering the other side of the story. But now, as a freelancer in Mexico, like many journalists and writers, I’m forced to do content writing between the journalism in order to pay the bills. As a result, I’ve learned a lot about how this huge and booming marketing industry works. I’m alarmed by how many people don’t realize the supposed blogs they’re reading are simply well-concealed marketing, and about the serious social impact of this calculated, dollar-driven invasion of the internet.

***

Nearly half of millennials (43 percent) have been misled by medical information on the internet. A recent Harris Poll found that people tend to click the first article that comes up in a search, even though such articles are often advertising content aimed at selling medicine or medical devices.

When people aren’t searching, they are often coming across such misleading content via social media. Of the 20 most-shared articles about cancer on Facebook last year, over half, according to The Independent, contained claims discredited by doctors and health authorities.

How does this misinformation make its way into widely circulated articles? Often, it is there on purpose: Content marketing — corporate advertising disguised as articles, videos and information — is being systematically manufactured on an industrial scale.

The global spend on content marketing is predicted to reach US $313 billion by 2019 — around double what it was in 2014. Companies are devoting more and more effort to creating advertising that doesn’t look like advertising: content that consumers want to interact with, such as blog articles, infographics, reports and studies, moving emotional YouTube videos, social media content and « native advertising » (ads that look like news or opinion content).

Content marketing aims to be useful or entertaining so that consumers invest time reading or interacting with it — unlike other forms of advertising that can easily be ignored. Companies are also mass producing content for their sites and social media pages, as more pages mean better search engine optimization, more visitors or social media views, and higher brand awareness.

The number of « news » stories has increased by 36 percent each year, Christopher S. Penn, VP of marketing technology with SHIFT Communications, told EContent. He said that in 2016, his company expected 88 million stories to be published. « No matter how amazing we think our content marketing is, customers are drowning in media, » he said, referring to the phenomenon as « content shock. »

The overall composition of internet information is shifting toward strategically executed corporate drivel: substandard health articles aimed at convincing readers to consume more wine, real estate articles pretending to enable consumers with helpful « tips » to find the house they can’t afford and emotionally manipulative Pepsi videos pretending to understand rebellion and social justice struggles.

The proportions of junk food we consume affect our bodies. Similarly, the composition of the information we’re fed affects our collective knowledge, our ability to think critically and the focus of our collective attention.

The Quality of Content Marketing

« One’s mouth becomes watery when, people around you boast of fried foods. Weather one is male or female, young or old, maximum people have the fondness for the shiny, greasy food, » opens one article on Listovative. Though clickbait rather than content marketing, the article showed up at the top of two separate Google searches, showing that with the right strategy, low quality can make it to the top.

Then there’s this unsound mortgage advice with bonus grammar mistakes on real estate site Trulia, including oversimplified statements like, « It might be five years before you recoup the initial costs of purchasing a home. » Companies like Trulia employ a strategy of mass production of such content in order to attract clicks and readers. Typically, they content farm their « blog articles » from extremely underpaid and often inexperienced writers. Often, this means unqualified people are producing content that provides what is portrayed as serious health, parenting, diet and financial advice. The content pretends to be useful for the reader, but it could in fact be counterproductive, or even dangerous.

WebMD, for example, earned $561.3 million in 2016 from advertising and sponsored content — 79.6 percent of its total revenue, according to its annual report. Because the site produces good, reliable information, it can be hard to weed out the sponsored content, such as a depression test, sponsored by drug giant Eli Lilly, maker of antidepressant Cymbalta. Now removed from the site, the test gave everyone who took it the result: « You may be at risk for major depression. »

As long ago as 2010, a Nottingham University study of health advice on the internet found that none of the sponsored or commercial websites provided correct medical information. A similar study from 2013 found that in searches about sports injuries, nearly half of the top results came from companies trying to sell something. The researchers — doctors — had noticed that many of their patents were coming in and, based on what they had read online, would request medical devices that were not appropriate for them.

Another type of content marketing with little integrity is « newsjacking, » where companies use trending hashtags to promote themselves. A few of the more infamous examples of this include designer Kenneth Cole taking advantage of the Cairo protests in 2011 and tweeting, « Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.… » The Golf Channel used Martin Luther King Day in the US to tweet, « Tweet your ‘golf’ dream on the anniversary of MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech.… »

Meanwhile, 62 percent of business-to-consumer marketers use infographics as a tool as well, seeing that this didactic format works well as an advertising weapon.

The proliferation of junk content is aided by economic inequality. The internet is not a level playing field, and just like in the real world, those with more money often hog the limelight. Those companies with more money to spend on page creation, advertising, analytics, influencers (people with high social media followings can be paid to promote content) and social media campaigns skip to the front. Social media signals like retweets, shares, retweets by influencers and so on, can drastically affect a site’s Google search ranking, and those retweets, likes and shares can be bought through companies like Mechanical Turk or Boostlikes.com.

The Business-Run Newsroom

On the other hand, the newsroom is being taken over directly by corporations, with businesses boycotting traditional channels and creating their own « newsroom » as part of their corporate website. (For instance, Red Bull may encourage you to find out the latest sports news by going to its site.) Meanwhile, traditional newsrooms are using their editorial teams, or setting up special native advertising teams, just to provide disguised content for companies.

Coca Cola’s newsroom includes not only articles about the product, but also listicles about topics vaguely connected to the product, such as 16 Things You Didn’t Know about Vending Machines in Japan and Around the World, and news sections, such as community, business and innovation. Plus, the site offers ways for consumers to participate — by submitting photos of their « Coke moments, » for example.

Red Bull’s Content Pool is focused on the sports and culture events the brand sponsors, as well as a quotes corner, photos of the week and « premium » film and music content.  Red Bull TV streams similar content live.

Nestlé, according to Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), creates more than 1,500 pieces of content daily, with its subsidiary, Purina, a pet food company, having its own animal story site.

Still, there’s an advantage for businesses if content they produce (or pay for) appears to be independently produced or published. This is where news outlets like BuzzFeed come in. In BuzzFeed videos, people try food and products, and their sometimes-critical responses lend credibility and interest value to the marketing, at a time when the newer generations are increasingly skeptical of direct advertising. CJR notes that BuzzFeed employs a team of 65 people to produce work on behalf of corporate clients, while a larger team produces other editorial content.

The world of « native ads » is growing. Fairfax Media launched its native advertising business, Brand Discover, in 2015, and it has since grown from a team of three, to a full-time team of 28, plus more than 3,000 freelancers. In a campaign for the South Australia tourism authority, Fairfax created and published over 200 content elements, including listicles, infographics and itineraries. Time Inc., meanwhile, also launched its native advertising agency, The Foundry, in 2015, and its team of 150 has since served companies like Bank of America, Volvo, Emirates, Merrill Lynch and California Tourism.

Meanwhile, many consumers struggle to tell the difference between journalism and marketing, with nearly half of the respondents for one survey not knowing what native advertising was.

Fewer Journalists

With this mega shift towards news that is more directly produced by (or for) corporations, journalism is changing: Writers and journalists are expected to be able to write advertising copy, and those writing for company « newsrooms » are considered journalists.

More people are working in native advertising teams and as content writers, and the number of actual journalists is decreasing. In the US, the number of journalists in daily newspapers dropped by 39 percent between 2005 and 2015 — from 54,100 to 32,900. In the UK, the number of journalists dropped from 70,000 in 2013 to 64,000 in 2015, but the number of UK workers describing themselves as public relations professionals jumped from 37,000 in 2013 to 55,000 in 2015.

Many freelance journalists, writers and other creatives are also being forced to turn to content writing to supplement their income. This means journalists are writing more about food, celebrities, tech and companies than about social justice or global issues. On top of this, content writing can be extremely exploitative. Sites like iWriter pay rates of $1.62 for a 300-word article, and $4.05 for a 700-word article. Clients (in my experience) will then often read over the finished piece, keep the text and use it, then rate the writing low in order to not have to pay even that. Other sites like Upwork see freelancers competing to bid the lowest for their labor, while Upwork keeps 20 percent of the wage for itself.

Social Consequences of More Corporate Information and Content

The digital information we have access to is increasingly corporate-made and sponsored. Of course, collaboration between much of the big media and the business world isn’t new, but this collaboration is increasingly pretending to be content worth reading — and since the internet provides infinite space for articles, infographics and video content, we’re seeing a deluge of this type of clandestine marketing.

The era of sponsored content portends a vulnerable fate for the next generation of consumers, when it comes to misinformation and manipulation. A 2016 Stanford study of US high school and university students found that their ability to analyze information on the internet was « bleak » and « they are easily duped. » In one test, 80 percent of students believed native advertising was a real story. In the example, a picture of a homepage, the native advertising was marked clearly with the words « sponsored content. » In another test, 40 percent of students felt that photos on their own — without context, explanation or coming from a reliable source (in this case, uploaded to Imgur) — were a reliable source.

Whether the content is low quality and uninformed or part of an expensive, well-resourced and multichannel corporate campaign, spin is spin when it comes from corporations — and now, that spin is dominating the information quickly available to us on the internet.

MDC Partners (NASDAQ: MDCA) and Tremor Video (NYSE:TRMR) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, risk, earnings, profitabiliy, institutional ownership, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Risk Volatility

MDC Partners has a beta of 1.56, suggesting that its stock price is 56% more volatile than the SP 500. Comparatively, Tremor Video has a beta of 1.36, suggesting that its stock price is 36% more volatile than the SP 500.

Earnings Valuation

This table compares MDC Partners and Tremor Video’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

MDC Partners has higher revenue and earnings than Tremor Video. MDC Partners is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Tremor Video, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Dividends

MDC Partners pays an annual dividend of $0.21 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.0%. Tremor Video does not pay a dividend. MDC Partners pays out -30.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

Insider Institutional Ownership

86.1% of MDC Partners shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 36.4% of Tremor Video shares are held by institutional investors. 3.4% of MDC Partners shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.2% of Tremor Video shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares MDC Partners and Tremor Video’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for MDC Partners and Tremor Video, as provided by MarketBeat.

MDC Partners currently has a consensus price target of $11.83, indicating a potential upside of 13.24%. Tremor Video has a consensus price target of $3.13, indicating a potential upside of 38.89%. Given Tremor Video’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Tremor Video is more favorable than MDC Partners.

Summary

MDC Partners beats Tremor Video on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About MDC Partners

MDC Partners Inc. is a provider of global marketing, advertising, activation, communications and strategic consulting solutions. The Company and its subsidiary agencies (Partner Firms) deliver a range of customized services. The Company’s segments include Reportable Segment, All Other and Corporate. The Reportable segment consists of the Company’s integrated advertising, media and public relations service companies. The All Other segment consists of the companies that provide the Company’s specialist marketing offerings, such as direct marketing, sales promotion, market research, strategic communications, database and customer relationship management, data analytics and insights, corporate identity, and design and branding. The Reportable segment includes the operations of various companies, such as Allison Partners, Anomaly, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Doner, Forsman Bodenfors, Hunter PR, kbs, MDC Media Partners and 72andSunny.

About Tremor Video

Tremor Video, Inc. is an advertising technology company. The Company provides software for video advertising effectiveness. The Company operates through online video advertising services segment. Its technology optimizes performance of video advertisement campaigns across all screens, including computers, smartphones, tablets and connected televisions. The Company’s buyer platform enables advertisers, agencies and other buyers of advertising to discover, buy, optimize and measure the effectiveness of their video advertisement campaigns. The Company’s technology analyzes video content, detects viewer and system attributes, and uses its repository of stored third-party data to optimize and target the delivery of advertisement campaigns. Its buyers can transact directly on its buyer platform through the Tremor Video DSP, a user interface that allows them to manage the execution of their campaigns on a programmatic basis. The Company also offers a seller platform, the Tremor Video SSP.

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The new king of the social media realm – video – is settling well on its throne while static content takes a backseat. No wonder then, that given their increasing popularity, most businesses today are viewing videos as marketing gold. Consequently, video has become the format of choice for sharing personalised content between peers as well between brands and their consumers.

We knew video had arrived the day Snapchat sign-ups skyrocketed to 10 billion video views per day and Instagram and Facebook followed suit (rather shamelessly) in launching their video features. So why is video winning hearts locally and internationally? The answer is simple: storytelling sells.

Today, video inspires, motivates and eventually sells. “They [marketers] are seeing a 200 to 300% increase in click-through rates when a video is embedded in an email; higher Google rankings (53%) and a six-fold improvement in recall, engagement, likelihood of product purchase and shareability,” Huffington Post reports.

The big question is: What are the key factors to keep in mind when rolling out videos? What will make your audience – who have low attention spans – hit the share button?

In my humble opinion, here are some dos and don’ts that can make or break the fate of your video.

Do’s

Keep it short and sweet. The average attention span of audiences is now estimated to be less than eight and a half seconds! If you’re all too familiar with that tinge of disappointment when you’re showing a video to a friend and they tap your phone to check the time left, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Remember the basic rule of grammar? The shorter the sentence the more impactful and coherent it is. Apply the same rule to your videos.

Respect cultural relevance. While the love for cats, dogs and baby videos is universal, it is essential for marketers to set the foundation of their campaign by researching the way their potential market thinks, decodes and processes information. The cultural context, which includes the social, political, physical and economic makeup of your consumers, can help brands understand and cater to the needs and expectations of their audience. Online marketers have started to recognise the importance of this cultural connection by strongly advocating localisation and customisation.

Compelling storytelling. Here’s a fun fact: The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text! Now think about the last video you shared on your timeline. It reached out to you on some level, didn’t it? Be it testimonials, fictitious content, stories of everyday heroes (minus the awful costumes), interviews or documentaries, if your videos have strong narratives that resonate with your viewers, they will strike one of their emotional chords.

Bring back subtitles. Termed as ‘The Silent Revolution’ by creatives, silent videos on Facebook have made a comeback; thanks to the ever-evolving consumption patterns of audiences. Brands have finally accepted the fact that sometimes ads and videos are on auto-play and most users don’t tap for audio even if the visuals interest them. To cater to this behavioural pattern, more description-heavy, infographic-style and visually appealing videos with subtitles have ‘silently’ made their way into the social media mix.

Don’ts

Stick to one platform. Cross-platform strategising has become crucial for video syndication. Gone are the days when you could copy and paste one video on to all social media platforms. These days, it is important to understand that if the content is tailor-made for each platform, it will have a higher chance of engagement and turning buzz to business than one-size-fits-all marketing. Though YouTube has ruled the roost when it comes to videos, other platforms have joined the race for more eyeballs with their ‘Live Stories’ option for a truly personalised information-sharing experience, offering marketers a several options to choose from.

Don’t forget to personalise. The ‘Story’ option that started with Snapchat and is now available on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has upped the ante of personalised communication. At the same time, with 10 billion video views per day, (Facebook has eight billion according to Bloomberg) Snapchat remains significant for marketers as well. Therefore, brands can reach different audiences on these platforms. However, they have to tailor their content accordingly and remember that the more customised their content is, the higher the chances are of reaching their target audience.

Ultimately, most brands – even the ‘not-so-experimental’ ones – are now utilising video to further personalise the consumer journey and reach the right audience through relevant touch points. This helps them bring a ‘human touch’ to their brand and create better rapport with their target audience, which eventually leads to conversions, loyalty and a premium customer experience. From soul-stirring stories to plausible testimonials to feature-rich demos, videos are revolutionising the way consumers interact with branded content and giving marketers what they have always wanted: higher conversion rates.

Taniya Hasan is Head of Content, Digitz.

A FORMER director with credits on Doctor Who, Wild at Heart and Life on Mars has turned away from mainstream media and now hopes to educate Cumbrian businesses on the power of online video.

Andrew Gunn, Kendal, has spent his career so far working with some of television’s most well-known faces and directing Daleks.

However, he has left the industry and set up his own online video marketing and advertising business.

“I was fed up with the lifestyle,” Mr Gunn said, explaining why he chose to leave his directorial career.

“I was away from home about 85 per cent of the way and I have two children.

“I was hardly ever at home so I was constantly working and commuting.”

However, Mr Gunn is still passionate about all things video and has diverted his attention to online content.

He can help individuals or businesses with video creation, video marketing, online video advertising, video for social media, YouTube marketing, video SEO and ranking and video marketing training and consultancy.

For any aspiring vloggers (video bloggers) out there, Mr Gunn can even teach clients how to vlog and build their own YouTube channel.

“There’s three things I do,” he said. “Do it for you, so I’ll provide a service from video creation right through to video marketing and optimisation.

“There’s the teach you to do it yourself or the mid thing which is help you do it yourself.”

Mr Gunn, 52, believes that there is huge potential in online video but that many businesses are not making the most out of it.

“What I’m trying to do is create very professional videos because that’s the easy bit for me with my background,” he said.

“But they’re attached to a marketing plan and a strategy.

“For me it’s about education. It’s digitise or die! Because one day you’re going to regret you’re not using it.”

And although he has some money cannot buy memories of time spent on set with Doctor Who baddies, Mr Gunn said that he believed that the same fulfilment could come from this new line of work.

“I can take all my filmmaking talents and expertise and put it into the marketing arena,” he said.

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On February 3rd, The Fault in Our Stars’ romantic lead Ansel Elgort released his debut music video. It was for a song he wrote and produced, called “Thief.” In the video, he wears a leather duster and no shirt as he sings to his real-life girlfriend, Violetta Komyshan, “Call me a thief / There’s been a robbery / I left with her heart.”

This song and neon-tinged video was a viral hit the day it came out — and that day only. It was the rare example of bad songwriting, illogical performance, and embarrassing artistic failure that’s also seductively enjoyable in the same way that a gas station cinnamon roll seems delicious if you have nowhere to shop besides a gas station. You’d be forgiven, after two to 40 plays, for thinking the song might be okay. It’s easy to decide that the unendingly endearing Elgort should get some credit for trying. In an interview with Teen Vogue, he said his “character” in the video was inspired by Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and also the rest of Queen. Sure, why not?

“Thief,” an ‘80s-inspired pop-rock song about being a thief and a romantic, came out in suspiciously close proximity to the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s romantic-heist movie Baby Driver, starring Ansel Elgort, various movie stars playing thieves, and the color magenta. But I think the urge to enjoy “Thief” is related to the urge to enjoy Baby Driver.

It’s related, more specifically, to the trend of male pastiche film directors marketing their movies with soundtracks that are essentially personal playlists. Those playlists aren’t necessarily relevant to the story, or organized for emotional effect. They’re simply filled with songs that fit the director’s personal definition of cool. Like any mixtape, they come with a tinge of vulnerability, but they’re bragging a bit, too: “Look at how deep my music knowledge goes!”

You could trace this idea to 2004, when the marketing for Zach Braff’s Garden State was shaped around its indie mixtape soundtrack. Braff made a show of handpicking the then-obscure songs for Garden State’s soundtrack, which won a Grammy, went platinum, and became so popular that it essentially gifted The Shins with their career. It’s even been credited with bringing indie rock into the mainstream for the first time. This is different than a karaoke film like Pitch Perfect or Sing!, which use popular songs to give audiences a jolt of fun and recognition. The promotion and conversation around Garden State included the soundtrack as part of Braff’s highly personal vision, not the contribution of a separate music department. Liking the soundtrack meant you “get” the guy behind a beloved movie.

The shift in thinking around soundtracks as personal playlists turned the vaguely uncool habit of buying and listening to movie soundtracks on its head. Fans of Garden State were buying into a personalized playlist assembled by an artist with a growing cult of personality. It’s intimate and appealing, like watching Elgort awkwardly serenade his high school sweetheart.

Baby Driver’s basic conceit is that a talented getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) doesn’t actually want to be a getaway driver, and he loves music. He loves it so much that he owns about a dozen different iPods for different “moods,” and he can only pull off a heist if he has the right song queued up. That’s not a bad idea for a film, but it is a transparent one. It serves as a plot-legitimated excuse for Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz writer-director Edgar Wright — who has a cult persona among certain demographics who love big, fun movies about boys in wild scenarios — to make his personal playlist public.

The act of sharing a playlist with the world is unique to the streaming age. Even 10 years ago, playlists were collections of hoarded music, and mixtapes were destined, at most, to circulate among a small circle of friends. Or, alternately, they were curated gifts for specific individuals — a romantic, embarrassing, private pursuit. People have always used evidence of their musical taste to posture, but rarely as quickly and easily as they do when they tweet a Spotify or SoundCloud link to all the stuff they hope defines their personality. With playlist movies, the soundtrack serves the same function, on top of (or arguably, instead of) the function of choreographing a film’s narrative arc, or filling out its world.

I’m not here to make anyone feel guilty for enjoying those playlists, as you can and should take your kicks where they come. But I do want to figure out why audiences have deemed it fun for a movie experience to involve compulsory mental compliments to a quirky male director for being cool enough to like James Brown and Beck, and omnivorous enough to also have a soft spot for Myspace pop star Sky Ferreira and one ‘60s soul classic.

This is the same trick writer and director James Gunn pulled with Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, and then doubled down on with this spring’s sequel. These films are marketed in a way that implies moviegoers are getting something extra, something they couldn’t get on their own, as if you couldn’t just dig through your dad’s vinyl or search “best of the [insert decade]” on Spotify. As if you don’t have taste.

In reality, it’s the major film studios that are getting a bonus. Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1, released in January 2015, was one of only eight albums from that year to go platinum. When Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 came out, it was, first of all, a movie called “Volume 2,” and second, marketed with a promotional Doritos bag that came with a flimsy tape deck and a headphone jack. Marvel fans waited online for the Doritos to go on sale for hours after Amazon promised they would be available, and spent the intervening time cursing into the abyss of Twitter. One official poster for the film was just Baby Groot holding up a copy of the tracklist. That soundtrack was available on a cassette tape and written up by Pitchfork. The vinyl edition of Baby Driver (Music from the Motion Picture) is currently sold out on Amazon.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 was ripped to shreds by dozens of outlets over Gunn and Disney’s bald-faced choice to center much of the story on the wordless, doe-eyed, “cute enough to slap on thousands of types of merchandise” Baby Groot. But it somehow survived criticism for the distracting integration of its overeager soundtrack, which included an Electric Light Orchestra intro sequence that was many, many minutes too long, and the same section of Looking Glass’ “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” played half a dozen times. With a bigger budget than he had for the first film, and the freedom to ask for any track he wanted, Gunn even pulled the Sam Cooke all-time classic “Bring it On Home to Me” to back a painfully cheesy scene between Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord and Zoe Saldana’s Gamora.

It’s a good playlist, sure, but it doesn’t directly serve a movie that slaps genuinely fun action sequences next to half-assed attempts at sincerity. Throwing Sam Cooke into an awkwardly scripted intimate moment is sort of like walking into Saks Fifth Avenue while bleeding from the head: the context only makes your problem more obvious.

In the lead up to Vol. 2’s May release, Edgar Wright says he freaked out, worried that Guardians might steal some of his preferred songs. In an interview with The Frame, he recounted a conversation with James Gunn: “So I texted him and we had this funny text conversation… where I said: ‘Hey, man, I was just panicking that some of my Baby Driver songs are in Guardians 2.’” There have been plenty of summers when a song has appeared in multiple blockbusters that were in theaters at the same time, but here, where the music is supposedly so specific to the dude at the helm, it would feel inauthentic. Suddenly hit music isn’t a salable commodity, it’s the personal property of the men using it to bolster their personal cool.

David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde, out next week, has been marketed similarly. Another neon-tinged, ‘80s-inspired, slick confection from a buzzy young male pastiche director (this time starring Charlize Theron as a platinum-haired assassin), it debuted at SXSW — best known as the country’s most influential music festival. (It’s no coincidence that Baby Driver premiered there, too.) It’ll be surprising if the soundtrack takes off in the same way as either of these two films. It features some similar choices: Queen (like Baby Driver), Bowie (like Guardians of the Galaxy), and, uhh, Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” (like DC’s Suicide Squad, which tried and failed to get the same musical attention as Marvel’s Guardians). Those crossovers may tie Atomic Blonde’s soundtrack into the hit playlists that preceded it, but they also make it feel less personal and specific to Leitch’s taste.

In Baby Driver’s case, hyping up a soundtrack of curated cool is a good way to mask the fact that the movie itself is not so novel or carefully thought-out. Every character in the film is barely sketched in — including Elgort as Baby, whose bobbing sidewalk dance routines don’t make him anything more complicated than “charming,” and whose desire to replace his dead mother with iPods is an almost offensive attempt at understanding grief.

Filmed in Atlanta, Baby Driver feels as though it’s set anywhere and nowhere. A movie that purports to be about music in some meaningful way has not even a winking knowledge of its setting’s outsized cultural importance. It dwells mainly in New York rock and California pop. The real Atlanta is the epicenter of trap, which is inarguably the dominant style of rap and probably the single largest influence on Top 40 music in the United States at the moment. Historically, it’s been a center of gospel, RB, and neo-soul. But Wright’s Atlanta is just a series of parking garages where Beach Boys, The Commodores, and Simon Garfunkel bounce off the walls. (To be fair, one track featuring Run The Jewels plays during the end credits.) In that sense, the soundtrack has some fidelity to the film’s protagonist, who is still wearing skinny jeans in 2017, and constantly leaves his sunglasses on indoors. He’s supposedly a boy with encyclopedic musical references and a good personality, but he’s actually oblivious to everything around him.

Much like Ansel Elgort’s music video for “Thief,” which is so easy to give some amount of credit to in recognition of its zeal and romanticism, and even more like a gas station cinnamon roll, which is so easy to enjoy in a gas station, Baby Driver is easy to like in the midst of summer blockbuster season. This time of year, between Transformers: The Last Knight and The Emoji Movie, even the slightest indication that a personal creative process happened in one individual’s brain is tempting to interpret as a triumph for art and the human spirit.

I don’t blame Wright for packaging his movie for success — starting the trailer with a spinning record player and welcoming fan art steeped in musical nostalgia. Nor do I really begrudge him getting away with it. At least, however imperfect Baby Driver is, and however uneven Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 was, there were fingerprints on them. Someone made you a mixtape, and that’s still intimate, even when it’s not. But how sustainable is this — men with identical taste, making mediocre movies, begging for love with a playlist from the heart?