2. The Tumblr community goes crazy for Charlie. Or, rather, for
his dad's wry little conceptual-art project, which shows shot after
shot of Charlie, always in tears, with dryly hilarious captions
like "I wouldn't
let him drink bath water," "He is bad at eating
yogurt" and"I
wouldn't let him eat Buzz Lightyear's head."
3 (a). Tumblr, it's worth noting here, increasingly rules the
internet. What takes off on Tumblr these days often breaks through
as viral phenomena on the internet at large. On March 26, Tumblr
hit the 100-million blog mark -- up from "just" 50 million blogs in
April 2012. For now, at least, Tumblr is unstoppable.
3 (b). Marketers and media companies are still having a hard
time figuring out how to harness the power of Tumblr, and Tumblr
itself is having a devil of a time figuring out how to monetize all
those eyeballs. Just yesterday Tumblr laid off the editorial team behind its Storyboard
initiative, apparently bowing to pressure to move toward
profitability. But none of that bothers Charlie...
3 (c). Charlie is more bothered by the fact that his dad asked that he not wipe his muddy shoes off
on the car seats.
4. Wait, actually, there's one media company that has
figured out how to instantly monetize
tantrum-throwing-toddler-related Tumblr content: ABC. The network
booked Greg Pembroke and his sons Charlie and William (you get the
sense that cheerful three-and-a-half-year-old William would have
had a crying fit of his own if he didn't get to tag along) on "Good
Morning America" yesterday; the show reported that the "Reasons My
Son Is Crying" blog attracted 600,000 visitors in just a week's
time. (There are no ads on "Reasons My Son Is Crying" -- or much of
the rest of Tumblr, for that matter -- but of course "GMA" ran
commercials before and after the Pembroke family's appearance, and
pre-roll spots are running before the web clip of their segment.) Charlie gets through
the brief appearance without completely losing his shit, but...
5. Back to Tumblr! There you can see that Charlie cried at the airport on the way to New York for his "GMA"
star-turn, while getting
mic'd for "GMA," and also back at his hotel where he was upset
that, in his dad's words, "We wouldn't let him open the hotel door and run
naked through Times Square."
6. Perhaps most notably, Charlie also got to throw a tantrum at, yes, Tumblr
headquarters during his visit to New York -- thus completing
the Internet Circle of Life. (Why was he crying? "We wouldn't let
him eat candy from the floor.") Hard proof, I suppose, of the
astonishing speed and velocity of viral fame these days (remember,
Greg Pembroke's first Tumblr post was just 8 days ago), and
evidence of the way that social media can touch the lives of even
the barely ambulatory.
POSTSCRIPT: In a move reminiscent of Yahoo's recent aqui-hire of 17-year-old Summly CEO
Nick D'Aloisio, Tumblr has hired 21-month-old Charlie Pembroke
to be its new Chief Revenue Officer and VP of Business Development.
His job will be to visit big brands and keep crying until their
CMOs agree to give Tumblr money.
OK, I just made that last paragraph up -- but not a half-bad
idea, don't you think?
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" columnist for Advertising
Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.