WWE and Pop-Culture: How can we best combine two awful flavors?

[Coco]

So, I've seen threads recently about how WWE should try to capitalize on Twilight's success. Absurd. Twilight gets over on the romance more than the vampires. Do people want to ruin WWE even more than is being done already?

I've also seen threads on how John Cena's rapper character would have drawn better because rap is deeply rooted in pop culter ATM. Okay. I might buy that.

But my thread is to talk about the notion that combining WWE and pop-culture would be a good idea. Really?

Why do we want the WWE to become more deeply integrated with pop-culture? WWE is niche entertainment. Surely one would do better by entertaining the niche than FAILING to appeal to the masses and looking like a fool for it. Should a company that has such a hard time entertaining and selling to the audience they have be so focused on appealing to an even wider audience who they won't be able to please? Should WWE find it's niche as a smaller company or go out and grab pop-culture by the balls?

Obviously some of WWE's lame humor and lack of build need to be handled. But once we have a dramatic, well-thought out wrestling company, do we need appeal in pop-culture to follow? Is bigger better or should WWE accept the audience they can get by doing what they do best (which is no pop-culture)?

How would you pump pop into the product?

Lady Gaga parody gimmick? Obama-type character obsessed with change for the masses to believe in? What's popular now and how can WWE best capitalize on it if that's their desire? Get creative, people?

 

[Decarow]

As for the Obama type character who wants change, look no further than Chris Jericho.

As for trying to get in pop-culture, the WWE has been doing guest hosts for that reason, correct?

Remember the Rosey O'Donnel/Donald Trump feud? They capitalized on that. I think I remember seeing "Obama" beat up "Hillary Clinton" in 2008?

The WWE has been trying for years to get in main-stream media. Hence WWE Films. John Cena was the Grand Marshall for the Fiesta Bowl. I actually remember "Best Week Ever" on Vh1 a few years ago and seeing Boogeyman dump worms on JBL lol.

WWE has brought in countless celebrities to help with this.

Sadly, to draw in some of the audience VKM wants, he has to do some kind of pop-culture reference.

But if anyone disagrees with how WWE is running things, I would like to challenge you to start a billion dollar business in a struggling industry.

And if WWE ever did anything to refer to Twilight, they would fail miserably. They would bring in the demographic of prepubescent fat girls and lose just about everyone else.

 

[Ambiguous Turd]

As for the Obama type character who wants change, look no further than Chris Jericho.

As for trying to get in pop-culture, the WWE has been doing guest hosts for that reason, correct?

Remember the Rosey O'Donnel/Donald Trump feud? They capitalized on that. I think I remember seeing "Obama" beat up "Hillary Clinton" in 2008?

The WWE has been trying for years to get in main-stream media. Hence WWE Films. John Cena was the Grand Marshall for the Fiesta Bowl. I actually remember "Best Week Ever" on Vh1 a few years ago and seeing Boogeyman dump worms on JBL lol.

WWE has brought in countless celebrities to help with this.

Sadly, to draw in some of the audience VKM wants, he has to do some kind of pop-culture reference.

But if anyone disagrees with how WWE is running things, I would like to challenge you to start a billion dollar business in a struggling industry.

And if WWE ever did anything to refer to Twilight, they would fail miserably. They would bring in the demographic of prepubescent fat girls and lose just about everyone else.

I beg to differ. The WWE fanbase has shown time and time again that they will digest whatever shit McMahon gives them. Look no further than Hornswoggle running around the arenas each week, or unfunny DX merchandise humor as they pitifully attempt to peddle merchandise in front of the fan's faces .... which is humor about 4-5 years too old that nobody finds funny anymore.

I think WWE capitalizing on the success of Twilight is brilliant. It's all about how you book the characters and how complex you want to make them.

WWE has already issued a press release that they are now drawing a record amount of women into their audience. From a business perspective, if WWE wishes to continue down that path to both increase that audience and solidify their current audience .... they would continue doing the exact same thing. Having a Romantic vampire or two running around that can be booked as a Romantic type, but also can be brutal in the ring ... would satisfy both the women who look at them for the looks and the guys who look for the action.

WWE would be wise to connect with Pop Culture.

John Cena if kept as the Rap character, would have made that much needed connection to Pop Culture that the WWE needs, and would have very likely been an icon ... and the next Steve Austin.

He was pushed the WWE way, and the way all of those who advocated "toning him down" wanted. He became a generic bland babyface, all-around nice guy. And where as he is a draw, he is not anywhere near the draw that Hogan, Austin, or The Rock were ... and as a result the business has suffered, since he is billed as the marquee star.

So for all of you who advocate eliminating this character and what they did to Cena over the years, you can answer for your own failed vision for Cena's character, because the entire business has been put into a slump due to assistance from this very move that WWE made.

Connecting with Pop Culture is the way to bring more Casual Fans into the product, therefore WWE would be wise to find a way to integrate the two. What they have done thus far, I have been less than impressed with. WWE needs better writers to capitalize on this and need to get Vince McMahon off the Creative Team. It's clear that Vince is the last person that understands today's Pop Culture and his writing clearly doesn't scream out to the audience "The WWE product is modern, today, and hip".

 

[JJYanks121]

The best connections made are often the subtle ones. On one end of the spectrum, you have people coming in as guest hosts that are part of "popular culture". The allure of these people alone can often bring intrigue (someone like Shaq offers quite a lot in this case), while others are simply there to promote something they are doing like an appearance on the Tonight Show. This technique could bring different people week to week, but won't keep them coming back. The other way which was g-d awful, was a few weeks ago, a woman was chasing a guy in a tiger costume with a golf club. For starters, SNL already did a skit like that and they did it 2 weeks prior. It wasn't good to begin with, and being late to the party didn't help the cause. We're talking about a LIVE show. To do topical things should be easy, but if those are the type of attempts, I vote no.

What I meant by subtlety is an incorporation of real life figures into wrestling personas or gimmicks. Take Zach Ryder. His character is a cross between "Growing up Gotti" and the more recent and more newsworthy "Jersey Shore". All you need to do on top of his catchphrase is give him a stupid Jersey Shore type nickname like "the anecdote" and you have a valid connection. I'm not saying that a character as such will bring in viewers from the outside, but it does show even in a small way, that the WWE product is current and up on trends in this world. If slowly but surely, personas become even more relateable to today's world, word spreads the WWE is "hip" and "trendy" in itself and that could bring viewership up.

To me, any time a wrestling product goes too far outside the box, it comes off tacky. The McMahon jab at the Nuggets owner was funny for like, 2 minutes, but it was a 15 minute segment on a 2 hour show. Perhaps a better solution would be for some of the characters to incorporate the real life issue as a one liner or something throughout the show. My feeling is that people watch wrestling for the same reason they watch other drama shows. They want to be entertained, they want to get caught up in the stories that unfold, but unlike other shows, they get to see the stories unfold in a ring where these professionally trained athletes perform feats most of us can only dream of. With that said, there's a good percentage that gets more wrapped up in the stories than they ever will with the wrestling itself and thus, a focus must be put on the characters that are involved in the stories they are hoping to see.

As far as ideas, I don't have too many in particular. Ultimately, today's wrestling is about personas and some characters just interest you more than others. As stated, Zach Ryder's is one I think somewhat crosses over. Miz as well. As time goes on, I think more people need to tap into what it is that people buy into in this world. In the first post, I saw a Lady GaGa reference. Something like that could work if a diva took on the persona of just being "out there" and essentially creeping out the other divas. Mickie's original character was like that in the form of a stalker. This character could just be an attention seeker by being weird, dressing weird, etc. Again, it's not about directly referencing pop culture, it's about showing that pop culture has at least some influence on your product and that you are current.

(Weird last idea - a heel who pisses people off by bragging about how many facebook friends he has - the technology today is crazy and I think there's room to talk about it on the air since we all know wrestlers twitter and facebook and myspace and all that)

 

[iamcountrymusic]

The only examples i can think of were the worst. Like the Trump/Rosie thing, Obama/Clinton (because Vince is a conservative asshole) and Vince against the owner of the Nuggets.
They could be successful but the people coming up with gimmicks are middle aged or old. So what do they really know about what's happening in pop culture.

i think a good example of how to do this wrong is the Governor in TNA. What the hell were they thinking?