Latest news with #Roomies
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Is your favorite social media sitcom actually a marketing campaign?
The scripted series 'Roomies" made something of a splash on social media this summer with two-minute vignettes about a young woman from Ohio who finds herself living with two strangers as she tries to make her way in New York City. The weekly show makes plenty of jokes about Midwestern transplants and sometimes-grim urban life—a costumed Spider-Man performer from Times Square is an early villain—following a classic sitcom formula. It's also a marketing campaign. 'Roomies" is written, produced and directed by the marketing team at Bilt, a financial startup whose products include a credit card that members can use to pay their rent while earning rewards at local businesses. The Bilt name, however, has yet to appear in its first nine episodes. 'Audiences are so adept at spotting advertising," said Zoe Oz, chief marketing officer at Bilt. 'How do we start to get people to pay attention, to engage with us without us having to, you know, throw it in their face?" Consumer fatigue with traditional ads and 'corporate" social-media posts has further encouraged marketers' perennial urge to produce their own entertainment. Brands lately have been embracing episodic social content. Jewelry brand Alexis Bittar since last year has been producing a series of Instagram skits called the 'Bittarverse." This summer alone, magazine brand InStyle launched the second season of its scripted mockumentary-style series 'The Intern," pizza chain Little Caesars spoofed the reality show 'Survivor" with 'Pretzel Crust Island," and cosmetics retailer Sephora created 'Cute at Work," a series documenting the beauty routines of women in jobs as disparate as professional surfer and firefighter. Bilt appears to be one of the first brands to avoid featuring itself in its series. Its decision to start a new account for the show also plays to social-media algorithms that have evolved to feed users several posts from the same accounts without annoying them with more overtly promotional posts, according to Rachel Karten, a social media consultant and author of the 'Link in Bio" newsletter. 'When the account is dedicated to one series, it's likely that the next video a person is served in their scroll is within that same world and is something they'd be interested in," said Karten. The series stood out in the 'for you" TikTok feed of Veronica Stern, a 26-year-old New Yorker, because of its high production values and a lead character who seems like a fellow musical theater lover. 'I am 100% that lead girl. I was like, wait, how do I get on this show?" said Stern, an actress who works in social media. Stern said she didn't realize it was marketing until she read the @RoomiesRoomiesRoomies account bio, which is the only place that Bilt's name has shown up so far. That is exactly the response that Bilt is looking for. But 'Roomies" won't be brand-free forever. Bilt plans to eventually integrate some of its corporate partners into the characters' lives, according to Oz. The roommates might, for example, use their Bilt benefits to pick up a complimentary shake after attending a fitness class at gym chain Barry's, which announced a partnership with Bilt earlier this year, she said. The inevitable follow-up question is familiar to all marketers: How can Bilt demonstrate returns on what appears to be a considerable investment? The series doesn't cost Bilt much, said Oz. The company declined to provide specifics. In the short term, the company is primarily concerned with engagement, said Oz. How many people are watching the show and commenting? Do they seem to want new episodes? The series' debut currently has a combined 3.2 million views across Instagram and TikTok, though Bilt didn't pay to promote it, said Oz. The series also coincides with Bilt's efforts to emphasize that it is more than a credit card brand. Most marketers would struggle to get such a project approved, according to Lia Haberman, a social-media consultant. A startup like Bilt that has a $10 billion-plus valuation is in a different position than a legacy brand, she said. 'When you've got, you know, shareholders to report to, this is probably not the kind of series that you're gonna be able to produce," said Haberman. Alexis Bittar's 'Bittarverse" also didn't promote the brand or its products at first, but the posts now allow followers to buy the jewelry worn by key characters like Margeaux, an elderly denizen of Upper East Side society played by actress Patricia Black. The brand's namesake founder says he created the series primarily to entertain himself and take control of his brand's identity after buying it back from Brooks Brothers in 2020. Bittar says that some items have sold out after being featured in skits. But the real value of the project, he said, is attracting new fans through the 'fierce community" that has developed in the videos' comments and furthering Alexis Bittar's reputation as a brand that explores social topics and pokes fun at its own industry. 'I totally understood or understand how luxury needs to trick the consumer into spending $2,000 on a bag, but there's a pretentiousness that I've never agreed with," said Bittar. 'I love taking jabs at it." The 'Bittarverse" will soon expand with a new series, he added.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Is Your Favorite Social Media Sitcom Actually a Marketing Campaign?
The scripted series 'Roomies' made something of a splash on social media this summer with two-minute vignettes about a young woman from Ohio who finds herself living with two strangers as she tries to make her way in New York City. The weekly show makes plenty of jokes about Midwestern transplants and sometimes-grim urban life—a costumed Spider-Man performer from Times Square is an early villain—following a classic sitcom formula.
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember
When I was growing up, the genre-defining dollhouse sim The Sims was the ultimate escape. I'd build dream homes, cultivate a neighbourhood of weird and wonderful friends and live out a fantasy adult life. So when EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2 last weekend to celebrate the series' 25th anniversary, with all expansions included (my nine-year-old self's dream) naturally I was compelled to return to my happy place, revisiting my 10-hour pyjama-clad marathon sessions micromanaging the lives of the Newbies, Roomies, and the Goths, and occasionally removing their pool ladders when they were taking a little swim, and only taking a necessary pause for mum's roast dinner. While the familiar chaos of breezy music, tragic pool accidents, and my own personal french maid delivered a powerful dose of nostalgia, there is something else lurking beneath this game's quirky and cheerful exterior, something that I wasn't conscious of when I was a kid. To my surprise, the game now feels less like a chance to live out your dream life, and more like a struggle simulator. (I also forgot how much time my Sims spent playing chess.) Like a Lynchian picket-fence town, I realised, there's a darkness lurking under suburban sheen. The original Sims games were more dystopian than today's perky, brightly coloured The Sims 4. The Sims 1 instead offers a desaturated daily grind. The contrast isn't just the aesthetic – 20 years ago, Sims had no dreams or ambitions. Your virtual families worked long hours for expensive lives, where death – and some of the most gut-wrenching music in game history – lurked behind even mundane everyday tasks. Forget personality, aspirations and tastes. The Sims 1 is a capitalist nightmare where survival trumps self-actualisation. I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it'll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible. And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you're on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There's simply no time to make friends, something I didn't remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood's messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically 'Play in bed,' thanks to the Livin' it Up expansion pack that provided the world's most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There's nothing dark about that expansion's heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life. Even these moments with the most meaningful loves of my Sims' lives seemed to offer them nothing – they were transactional, serving nothing more than to unlock new interactions. They are performing for my enjoyment, not theirs. Friendship is also bleakly transactional here: you need a certain number of them to climb the ranks at work. Stay lonely, and you'll stay poor, and probably die from having a cheap, spontaneously combusting microwave. It's an especially sad existence for single Sims who live alone. Exhausted from work, if you don't find time to call your friends on the phone for hours – or they decline to come over – your relationships decay rapidly. Like Black Mirror's award-winning Nosedive episode, losing social credibility quickly sees things spiral quickly downhill for your Sims. And nothing flips a millennial's stomach as quick as the music that heralds a terrifying, sudden burglary. It's still horrifying 25 years later, so just hope that you had the foresight to spend your meagre savings on a burglar alarm. That's before we even get into visits from the Grim Reaper, and creepy prank calls. These unexpected callers frighten me just as much now as they did then. Perhaps my new darker perspective on the game comes from the world we live in now. I'm finally living my fantasy adult life – I just didn't realise it would be less lounging in gothic-mansion dream homes, and more feeling overworked, underpaid and on the verge of a spiralling breakdown. In 2025, an era of economic anxiety and burnout, the grind of The Sims feels brutal. For all its existential dread, The Sims 1 is still an escape. Sure, it presents a kind of capitalist nightmare. But, it is a capitalist nightmare you can control. No matter how hard the daily slog got, you can always type in a cheat code and wipe away financial stress with a click – the ultimate fantasy. It's also weirdly accurate: just like in real life, external advantages (and cheating the system) are way more likely to lead to success than grinding away and following the rules. Yes, The Sims 1 was and remains a dystopian suburban treadmill, but it also makes room for humour. It's a world where chaos is funny, failure is temporary, and the worst tragedies could be undone with the click of a mouse. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember
When I was growing up, the genre-defining dollhouse sim The Sims was the ultimate escape. I'd build dream homes, cultivate a neighbourhood of weird and wonderful friends and live out a fantasy adult life. So when EA surprise-dropped a rerelease of The Sims 1 and 2 last weekend to celebrate the series' 25th anniversary, with all expansions included (my nine-year-old self's dream) naturally I was compelled to return to my happy place, revisiting my 10-hour pyjama-clad marathon sessions micromanaging the lives of the Newbies, Roomies, and the Goths, and occasionally removing their pool ladders when they were taking a little swim, and only taking a necessary pause for mum's roast dinner. While the familiar chaos of breezy music, tragic pool accidents, and my own personal french maid delivered a powerful dose of nostalgia, there is something else lurking beneath this game's quirky and cheerful exterior, something that I wasn't conscious of when I was a kid. To my surprise, the game now feels less like a chance to live out your dream life, and more like a struggle simulator. (I also forgot how much time my Sims spent playing chess.) Like a Lynchian picket-fence town, I realised, there's a darkness lurking under suburban sheen. The original Sims games were more dystopian than today's perky, brightly coloured The Sims 4. The Sims 1 instead offers a desaturated daily grind. The contrast isn't just the aesthetic – 20 years ago, Sims had no dreams or ambitions. Your virtual families worked long hours for expensive lives, where death – and some of the most gut-wrenching music in game history – lurked behind even mundane everyday tasks. Forget personality, aspirations and tastes. The Sims 1 is a capitalist nightmare where survival trumps self-actualisation. I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it'll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible. And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you're on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There's simply no time to make friends, something I didn't remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood's messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically 'Play in bed,' thanks to the Livin' it Up expansion pack that provided the world's most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There's nothing dark about that expansion's heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life. Even these moments with the most meaningful loves of my Sims' lives seemed to offer them nothing – they were transactional, serving nothing more than to unlock new interactions. They are performing for my enjoyment, not theirs. Friendship is also bleakly transactional here: you need a certain number of them to climb the ranks at work. Stay lonely, and you'll stay poor, and probably die from having a cheap, spontaneously combusting microwave. It's an especially sad existence for single Sims who live alone. Exhausted from work, if you don't find time to call your friends on the phone for hours – or they decline to come over – your relationships decay rapidly. Like Black Mirror's award-winning Nosedive episode, losing social credibility quickly sees things spiral quickly downhill for your Sims. And nothing flips a millennial's stomach as quick as the music that heralds a terrifying, sudden burglary. It's still horrifying 25 years later, so just hope that you had the foresight to spend your meagre savings on a burglar alarm. That's before we even get into visits from the Grim Reaper, and creepy prank calls. These unexpected callers frighten me just as much now as they did then. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Perhaps my new darker perspective on the game comes from the world we live in now. I'm finally living my fantasy adult life – I just didn't realise it would be less lounging in gothic-mansion dream homes, and more feeling overworked, underpaid and on the verge of a spiralling breakdown. In 2025, an era of economic anxiety and burnout, the grind of The Sims feels brutal. For all its existential dread, The Sims 1 is still an escape. Sure, it presents a kind of capitalist nightmare. But, it is a capitalist nightmare you can control. No matter how hard the daily slog got, you can always type in a cheat code and wipe away financial stress with a click – the ultimate fantasy. It's also weirdly accurate: just like in real life, external advantages (and cheating the system) are way more likely to lead to success than grinding away and following the rules. Yes, The Sims 1 was and remains a dystopian suburban treadmill, but it also makes room for humour. It's a world where chaos is funny, failure is temporary, and the worst tragedies could be undone with the click of a mouse.
