The 22-Year-Old with $25 Million Just Made the Worst Tech Commercial
Remember Lucas Duplan, the Stanford kid who grabbed a $25 million investment for an app he won't tell anyone about? He still won't explain what "Clinkle" does, or when it will come out, but that didn't stop him from making this insanely pretentious promotional video.
AllThingsD quotes Duplan, who is taking a measured approach to his nascent company that hasn't actually done anything yet: “We really want to make sure we test everything before we start hyping it." It's been two years.
That's wise, except he's already begun hyping it! This video is the definition of hyping a thing: take an object that has no demonstrable merit (Clinkle), toss in lots of weighty words about altruism, interconnectivity, revolution, and changing the world. Use dramatic music liberally. Concerned faces. Optimistic glances. Determination. Borrow some of the production values generally associated with ads for anti-depressants or United Airlines. Try, very hard, to make people forget they have no reason to care about Clinkle. Pretend Clinkle isn't just another way to buy shit with your phone.
The ad's tagline is "We’re All In This Together"—and Duplan had better hope so, or he's going to have some very disappointed investors.