Horatio Alger stories–and our media abounds with them–have always bothered me. They often do not tell the whole story. Susan Boyle's an Horatio Alger story. We want to believe these stories so bad, esp. during hard times (and we're still pretty much in economic hard times.)

And, yes, there are a lot of–for lack of a better term–"savvy" marketers who are poised to make the Horatio Alger story happen just the way that will tweak our emotions and make us believe that something can come out of just a whole lot of spunk and "talent."

Interestingly, though, with Susan Boyle, there have been a bunch of social media types who are acting a bit like leeches on her Alger-esque rise. Check out the number of Twitter accounts that are Susan Boyle Fan accounts. I'd hazard a bet that these are set up by enterprising marketing types trying to bolster their own reputations by starting a fan site. Think about the latest bit of cheering that came out of the marketing sphere over the woman who (supposedly) did the Mad Men Twitter stuff all on her own (supposedly.) If not an outright conspiracy, there are more funhouse smoke and mirror "savvy" marketing effects than there were even a few months ago. We'll see more of it until it becomes ineffective.

More important than our prejudice was the way the producers of the show cut her segment, further priming us to reject her. The segment starts with the kind of background music you’d expect during an animated character’s wacky hijinx and then we hear laughter from the audience. The message: don’t take this woman seriously, she’s Britain’s answer to William Hung. Then, she introduces herself to bewildered looks from Ant and Dec and rolled eyes/disgust from the judges. Once she starts singing, everyone is dumbfounded and Ant even says, “You didn’t expect that, did you?” to the camera.

Realistically, she did have to go through some sort of audition to even get in front of the camera. I read somewhere that Simon Cowell’s record company is already in talks to cut a deal with her. With Leona Lewis, such rumors didn’t start until closer to the show’s finale. Cowell got to where he is by knowing what the people want, and what we want right now is to feel good. I somewhat cynically consider a marketing campaign to be "good" when it acknowledges the ugly truths about humanity, and capitalizes on those truths by presenting us with the people we pretend/want to be. The average person likes to think they don’t judge others based on their appearance, especially in a talent competition. But when all is said and done, there’s no objective reason why people initially reacted so negatively toward Susan Boyle. We saw a frumpy, goofy, middle-aged woman, who has never been kissed and lives alone with her cat, and, when that combined with the masterful editing of the segment, we thought, “Surely, she isn’t a winner”. When she turned out to be talented, we were ashamed of ourselves. So, some marketing geniuses at Britain’s Got Talent took our shame and turned it into a feel-good story (despite it still being derisive of Susan) during a time when everything around us was depressing (I also wonder how many times our military has completed a mission, like that with the Somali pirates, without receiving media coverage…). Now everyone is sharing Susan Boyle videos as if to say, “Look at me, world. I can accept this ordinary-looking woman for the talented singer she really is.” And we can sleep easier thinking that we really are the people we imagine ourselves to be.

Sorry for the long-winded response but this has been bothering me.

Why, Ze Frank — We Media Game Changer award winner — comes to mind as a prototypical example. Here's a guy who was doing dog portraits for extra cash. learned some web skills and accidentally created a performance art industry for himself when a video he made became viral.

So take hear, ye Brian!