MURKETING

Starbury scoring?

Both Business Week and Brand Channel have done pieces recently on the success of the Starbury One sneaker — which sells for the startlingly low price of about $15. I will admit that when I heard about this sneaker, I was pretty skeptical. But Business Week says “3 million pairs have sold since its August debut.” (Although somewhat oddly, the source on that is Stephon Marbury.) Business Week continues:

The Starbury and its ilk have the potential to undermine Nike’s basketball sneaker business. According to researcher NPD Group Inc., the low-cost shoe market — sneakers under $50 — has grown nearly 9% over the past two years and now makes up more than half of the $16.5 billion of branded athletic footwear sold each year in the U.S. Nike sells its own cheap sneakers, but doesn’t have much traction against such low-cost entrants as the $35 Amp runner, a creation from Payless ShoeSource. “If I were a branded athletic company right now, I’d be reconsidering my whole approach,” says Jeffrey Bliss, president of Javelin Group, a sports marketing firm.

I don’t know about any of this threatening Nike’s business model. I think they’re doing pretty well these days.

BrandChannel adds this:

Though the brand was promoted in influential basketball lifestyle publications, a major ad budget wouldn’t keep those shoes priced below $15 for very long. So over the summer Marbury embarked on a series of launch appearances dubbed the Starbury Movement Tour to introduce the brand at Steve and Barry’s stores throughout the US. (Marbury was paid no money up front, unlike his previous endorsement deal with sneaker brand AND1, but receives royalties on sales.)

Also, Marbury apparently wears the shoes during games: “And even as his on-court performance occasionally (all right, more often than occasionally) incites 20,000 fans at Madison Square Garden to boo (or worse), Marbury burnishes his good-guy image with a brand that is accessible to nearly anyone.”

I definitely agree with that last point, and I basically thought that was all this brand was going to achieve — making Marbury look good. But I guess it’s actually resonating with some group of consumers. Is it parents buying these shoes for their kids? Is it adults who just want some no-nonsense sneakers and don’t care about whether they’re “cool” or not? Or are kids really into them? I would think that there’d be some risk of schoolyard stigma associated with wearing a brand basically known for being super cheap. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

Doing lines in L.A.

In other update news: Brand Underground co-stars The Hundreds have opened their store in Los Angeles.

No charge

“The most expensive thing is the journalists themselves. That’s why user-generated content is interesting.”

— Nicholas Ascheim,
director of entertainment, video and audio,
New York Times Digital

Gorilla Suit Day

Well, yesterday was National Gorilla Suit Day.

Every year, we talk about getting some gorilla suits. We never do it.

Where can you get a good gorillla suit? I think it would be a really good thing to have. I think it would pay for itself.

Pig in

Amusing to see this item named a favorite “Graphic T” by Omiru this morning. “Totally retro,” it says. Perhaps so. But we’re big on the pig here at Murketing HQ, so let me just say: To get the very coolest Piggly Wiggly T designs, you have to go to an actual Piggly Wiggly grocery store. They good news is they’re a lot cheaper than the $37 item pictured above.

“Stuff”

The new issue of a magazine called 52nd City, published in St. Louis, has the theme, “Stuff.” The editors write:

Most of the submissions we received for this issue dealt with tangible stuff and lots of it. Maybe because we have so much room out here in the Midwest we hang on to stuff a little longer. There were multiple stories reflecting on stuff left behind after someone dies. Stuff collected and stuff purged. Not being able to let go of childhood stuff, gruesome as it may be. Stuff in the bottom of a purse. Stuff found in junkyards. eBay stuff. Sports stuff. In fact, we didn’t have room for all the stuff we wanted to use, so the website is teeming with extra content this issue.

I haven’t seen the issue, but some of the, er, stuff they put online is cool. Such as: “Streetside Pick Up,” by Elie Gardner, and Ari Holtz’s essay “The Burden and Gift of Possession,” which is about getting rid of stuff (a topic of interest to me, as you may recall). So take a look.

Via Ecology of Absence.

Airness

Mr. Jeff Staple calls my attention to this product: “8 Euros (about US$11) for a beautifully designed bottle of AIR. Yes, flavored oxygen that tastes like crap and makes you feel slightly nauseous. Only ‘marketing’ could allow this product to exist.” Interesting for sure, and possibly inevitable given that water has already been branded so many ways, and so successfully. Thx Jeff…

Workplace trends

I’ve been meaning to plug my friend Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s new blog: She writes about workplace trends for Time, and that’s also the subject of Work In Progress. Probably the recently announced layoffs at Time Inc. aren’t the hook that she and her colleagues were hoping for, but so it goes. She addressed that news in a recent post. Some excerpts:

Not surprisingly, layoffs have a staggering effect not just on the laid off but on everybody in the workplace. It affects our performance (just count all the tired old metaphors I’ve used so far in this posting). It affects our families (my husband jokes that his nascent small business will provide us with all the instrument cases we can eat). It knocks about our emotional equilibrium, hobbles our confidence, widens our chasm of self doubt….

The remaining workers–the so-called survivors–suffer too. They can experience decreased productivity, increased stress, depression, anxiety, lowered morale and job dissatisfaction. A decrease in organizational commitment–loyalty to the employer–is common, adds [management professor Rainer] Seitz. “There’s also survivor guilt: Why was I spared?”

Research has found that the manner in which a layoff occurs can rile workers just as much, if not more than, the actual firing. For instance, a lack of advance notice can really rub workers the wrong way. Failing to adequately and thoroughly explain the reason for the job elimination–even if it’s a macro reason like an industry downturn–can also tick us off.

She concludes with links to a variety of layoff-related material. Here’s the whole post. The blog will likely be interesting to follow in the weeks ahead, as the layoffs play out — even if this isn’t quite the workplace trend Lisa wanted to be thinking about quite so much.

Business of rap

This WFMU’s Beware of the Blog post asks: “who’s got the best rapper for their corporate video?,” and links to three soul-crushing examples of rapping in training films and so on, attributed to Microsoft, Wendy’s, and the Software Publishing Association. Each is depressing for different reasons, and I couldn’t finish any of them. But still.

Pillow fighting

Well, other people often know about this sort of thing long before I do, but:

The Pillow Fight League (PFL) leads the way as the most exciting and innovative new wave in sports entertainment. Featuring strong female combatants, the PFL is engaged in the unprecedented whip-action attack of pillow fighting. Not just for the slumber-party sleepover anymore, these women are serious brawlers – armed with beauty, brains and a nasty disposition.

They’re on tour now, and it almost goes without saying that the opening matches are in Williamsburg. The multimedia clips, blog, Myspace link, and merchandise you’re looking for are all here. I like the logo.

Questionable branding strategy of the day

Meth Coffee: “Mental clarity! Mind-altering euphoria! Nail your ass to the chair with Meth Coffee, a smooth, rich roast supercharged with maximum caffeine and dusted with yerba mate.”

Noted: “CONTAINS NO ACTUAL METHAMPHETAMINES.”

Great.

[Via NRN Food Service Blog.]

More evidence

Theme Magazine has a sort of history of streetwear, from Stussy and PNB Nation era through more recently becoming “a Wall Street Journal-approved phenomenon.”

“Wall Street Journal-approved”? The Wall Street Journal gets credit for being the Big Media Bad Guy? What did they run, like a little box on five cool T’s you can buy now? Come on! Can’t I even get respect as the mainstream old dude who ruined everything? How about disrespect?

All right, forget it.

Anyway, interesting read if you want a crash course.

Notable promotional strategy of the day

“Real estate agent gives guns to homebuyers,” reports Reuters. And yes, it’s in Texas, not all that far from my home town, in fact.

A Texas real estate agent looking to add more bang to her business is offering clients in law enforcement a free Glock pistol if they buy a home from her.

…[The agent] placed an advertisement offering a pistol with the purchase of any home worth at least $150,000 in the city police department’s monthly publication, “Badge & Gun.”

“Whether people want the gun or not, it has stirred up a lot of attention,” [she said].

The offer is only good for police officers. She says she’s given away two of the $500 guns to officers who bought houses from her.

“Rich Social Commentary”

Hey Borat-lovers: Ponder this New Yorker Shouts & Murmers essay by George Saunders, which in its way raises a question or two about whether the movie challenges, or merely panders. Something to think about, is all. And it’s funny, as Saunders always is.

Exploding? Inevitable? Plastic?

So according to this USA Today story, Edie Sedgwick is hot hot hot. Evidence? Well there’s the book Edie: Girl On Fire, co-written by David Weisman and Melissa Painter. “Weisman was co-director of the underground cult classic Ciao! Manhattan starring Sedgwick and other Factory celebs,” USA Today notes. Speaking of which, Urban Outfitters is selling Ciao! Manhattan T-shirts. More evidence!

Of course really all of this is just evidence of supply, not demand. Where is the grass-roots side of Edie-mania? “Edie is an online phenom,” USA Today claims. The paper then quotes Ben Allgood, 22, who is identified as “creative director for Edienation.com. He says: “A lot of kids are finding her, and a lot of people are creating online communities.”

No other examples of online communities or phenom-ness are offered. So I went to Edienation.com, which bills itself as “the ultimate insider guide to Edie Sedgwick,” but is basically a promo site for … the book Edie: Girl On Fire. (A quick whois.com check confirms that it’s registered to Weisman.)

I hope Weisman’s PR team got a bonus for this one.