Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing
[Black Hat sits at a desk. A voice speaks from off panel, in front of Black Hat.] Off panel: CNN hired you to improve viewership.
[Black Hat continues to sit at the desk.] Black Hat: ...yes, and?
[Next panel, conversation continues.] Off panel: You texted "Holy crap, turn on the news" to a million random phone numbers? Black Hat: It sure did work. Off panel: Not what we meant!
Black Hat was hired by the Cable News Network ( CNN ) to increase its popularity, presumably long-term. However, all he did was text one million people implying that a huge, unbelievable event was happening. While this technically did increase viewers of CNN, this was most likely only for a few minutes before the viewers realized nothing had happened. Because of this, Black Hat did very little to help CNN.
It is possible that this is the finale of a long career Black Hat has had in marketing, beginning in 125: Marketing Interview .
The title text is spoken by the offscreen character who, after saying that division of CNN was firing Black Hat, told him that the online headline writing department wanted to hire him. This is because the message Black Hat texted to the million phone numbers is very similar to link bait , which are headlines or titles that, like the text message, promise highly interesting articles without being very detailed as to their nature. Thus, perhaps online, Black Hat could bring clicks up long term through this unscrupulous practice, as opposed to mass unsolicited texts. The practice of link bait has also been mentioned in 1283: Headlines .
[Black Hat sits at a desk. A voice speaks from off panel, in front of Black Hat.] Off panel: CNN hired you to improve viewership.
[Black Hat continues to sit at the desk.] Black Hat: ...yes, and?
[Next panel, conversation continues.] Off panel: You texted "Holy crap, turn on the news" to a million random phone numbers? Black Hat: It sure did work. Off panel: Not what we meant!