MURKETING

Q&A: Neek

At some point during the reporting of the Brand Underground story, I was introduced to Neek, a high school student who was into The Hundreds, and was also kind of a figure on the NikeTalk message boards. Not long after that, in fact, his notoriety on NikeTalk culminated in someone making a Neek T-shirt. (That’s it at left; the style is an echo of Supreme, of course.) Apart from being another reason that NikeTalk kind of freaks me out, I thought this development was fascinating: Neek had basically become famous by way of his fandom, to the point that he’d made some strange transition from consumer to brand. Of course when I say “famous,” it only applies in the sense of 21st Century microfame of a super-fragmented culture. But still.

Anyway, Neek ended up not being part of the Brand Underground piece, but he’s certainly an interesting manifestation of that culture, and we kept in touch. Lately he’s gotten involved with a project called Fruition — another step on the road to converting his lifestyle into a way to make a living — and I decided it would be worth a Q&A. So here it is.

Let’s start with the very straightforward background stuff about where you live and how you ended up there and so on — including where the name “Neek” comes from, if you please.

Yeah. I live in Vegas and I just graduated high school actually. I am 17 years old, turning 18 next month. I ended up in Vegas because my parents wanted to move away from the hustle and bustle in New York City. They wanted a more slow-paced life. So that is why I am here.

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Brand Blogger Q&A: Moleskinerie, Positive Fanatics, and Notebookism

It’s time now for the second in our series of interviews with brand bloggers. Our gracious subject today is Armand Frasco, who presides over three interesting blogs: Moleskinerie (focused on Moleskine notebooks); Notebookism (on notebooks in general); and Positive Fanatics (on Ikea). Here goes…

We first spoke some time back, when I was writing about Moleskine (for Consumed, June 24, 2005), and came upon your site. When did you launch this blog, and why? And how has it changed since then?

Moleskinerie was launched in January 2001 on a whim, just out of curiosity and to find out who else was using the notebook. It turns out the answer is, a lot. Last year, Kikkerland Design, Moleskine’s U.S. distributor reported sales of more than 4 million units. Moleskinerie has since become the number one fan site for the product, with readers coming from as far as South Africa, Mongolia, Malaysia –- even Patagonia.

Lately you’ve started a newer site, called Notebookism. What’s that one all about, and why did you start it?

I initiated Notebookism last July in response to many requests for a non product-centric blank-book blog. With hundreds of brands and legions of aficionados out there we’ve just uncovered the tip of the journaling iceberg. Many Moleskine users also own other kinds of notebooks so Notebookism is just an extension of their paper playground. We are lucky to have the Blick Art Company as our founding sponsor.

What’s the big news around Moleskine these days, and how does it affect these two projects, if it all?

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Q&A: Rosemary Williams, Behind The Wall of Mall

A couple of weeks ago I journeyed out to the Dumbo Arts Center to see an exhibition called Point of Purchase. One of the pieces on view there was a big wall of shopping bags, called The Wall of Mall, by an artist named Rosemary Williams. I was interested to learn that there was also a podcast associated with this piece. I signed up for that, and checked out some of Williams’ earlier projects at her site. A lot of her work is right up my alley — projects like Bodega Booty (a “recreation of a New York City bodega” functioning partly as “a love poem” to such stores), and CEO Views, in which we get to look out the windows of some powerful New Yorkers, and hear them talk about their vantage-points, in every sense of the term.

I decided to see if Williams would be willing to answer a few questions, and I’m pleased to say she was. A former New Yorker, these days she’s living (and teaching and making art) in Minnesota, not so far from the Mall of America, which turns out to be quite relevant to her podcast, “Rosemary goes To the Mall.”

Let’s start with the obvious questions. “Rosemary Goes To The Mall” is sort of a spinoff of the Wall of Mall, “a giant sculpture made out of shopping bags from the Mall of America.” What were you hoping viewers of the Wall of Mall would take away from it?

The “Wall of Mall” is meant to be an overwhelming representation of the “brandedness” of our daily lives. I was trying to respond to the Mall of America as iconic architecture, but also as a place which embodies our society’s obsession with stuff, and the ever increasing involvement and identification with manufactured items, the way they imbue status and provide a kind of weird personal satisfaction. I’m not saying that when I was a kid we didn’t want all that stuff and now we do, but there has been a definite creep of national chains overtaking the local store, for better or for worse. On the one hand, this provides a kind of safety, because you know what you are going to get at Starbucks, or the Gap, and it lessens the amount of work one has to do to get a satisfactory coffee, pair of jeans, etc. On the other hand, there is a sameness that is creeping in, which is rarely countered. Read more

Q&A: Sket One’s Product Customs

Several months ago I was very taken by some images I saw of vinyl figures made by Sket One, and spent a little time researching (well, Googling) him. The figures were part of a show called “Subcultures: The Art of the Action Figure,” at Channel 1, in New Haven, where Sket One lives; you can check out coverage of that show, with lots of pictures (including one that I use on the jump page) at Vinyl Pulse.
Eventually I decided to approach him as the second in my series of Q&As with people who are artists and entrepreneurs, finding ways to make a living from creative enterprises. He kindly agreed, and that exchange follows.

Sket One has been writing graffiti since 1986 (here are some of his pieces in that medium,via graffiti.org.) He graduated from art school in 1992, and also works on canvass, on products such as skateboards and shirts, and in the form vinyl figures. And, he works as an art director, at a sports marketing agency called Silverman Group. You can read his official bio and see examples of all his work (since here I’m mostly focused on one set of vinyl figures) at his web site, and on his Myspace page.

Since the thing that really got my attention was the Product Customs, I’ll start there. What inspired those? Would you characterize them as making a comment about brands and products and so on, or was it a more purely graphic-driven inspiration? And, of course, I’m curious how you decided on which products. (Windex! I wouldn’t have thought of that…)

The product customs were done for many reasons. I love pop art objects from my past. I also work for a marketing agency so I am drilled the whole “BRANDING” scheme every dear born day. The message I tried to convey is, first off, cool stuff is designed every day by designers who take their time investigate and study design, design some more, and the end result is something as simple as mustard and ketchup get picked up thrown in a basket and used (only later to be thrown out). So think about it: That packaged was designed by someone? Maybe a team? Well I noticed it, do you? Read more

Brand Blogger Q&A: Food Market Index (regarding Whole Foods)

This week’s third Q&A is, like yesterday’s, probably the beginning of a series: A series of interviews with brand-specific bloggers. In this case I imagine the series will be less open-ended (but I could be wrong). I’m starting with a relatively new brand blog, one that focuses on Whole Foods. It’s called Food Market Index, and so far it’s been quite good. The proprietor is Mr. Food Markets, Rob Denton, who kindly agreed to answer some questions.

When did you start the blog, and what goals did you have in mind?

May, 2006. My goals for the Food Market Index were to have fun and to try to amuse and inform readers. It was also a creative outlet for my ideas about organic foods, shopping, and Western civilization in general. I wanted to explore an area of personal experience that is also a familiar one for millions of people.

And were you perhaps inspired by any other brand blogs, or not so much?

Not at all. Oddly enough, I wasn’t all that aware of other brand blogs until after I started mine. I found that every niche has its fans — from Trader Joe’s to Toyotas. Some of the other brand blogs are quite inspiring in their scope and execution; others are a little snarky for my tastes. I feel like I walk a middle line down the shopping aisle — I like Whole Foods Markets, obviously, but I can also laugh a bit at the whole milieu, and at myself and fellow consumers too. [ Read more

Tied Up: The Q&A

From time to time here at Murketing, new features will be introduced. For example: Q&As. There was one yesterday, and there will be one tomorrow. There will never be three in a row again, I can assure you. But this one, here, today, below, is the one I want to introduce with a few words, because I hope it’s an example of the first installment in an open-ended series, a specific subset of Q&As.

The interviewee in this case is Bethany Shorb, and the subject is the ties that she makes and sells, mentioned in an earlier post. (She does a lot of other things as well, and those are addressed below, but see here if you just can’t stand the suspense.) Since that earlier post she has launched the Cyberoptix Tie Lab: “A new take on conservative menswear.” All of this makes for a good example of what I want the open-ended series to be about: interviews with people who are artists and entrepreneurs, finding ways to make a living from creative enterprises.

Clearly, this general theme is a long-time interest of mine, and I’ve pretty much done all I can with it in the various other venues I write in. My focus here is somewhat different, and so is my one and only criteria for these interviews: Here on Murketing I’ll be interviewing people whose work I, personally, find interesting.

Here we go:

You’re from the New York area originally, you have an MFA from Cranbrook, and you live in Detroit. I guess you ended up in Detroit because you went to Cranbrook?

That’s correct — in the Fall of 1999, I packed up all of my earthly possessions into the back of my little red pickup truck and headed for the Great Unknown. I was living in Boston at the time after getting my BFA at Boston University. I cried my eyes out for days upon arrival.

But wait, looking at your blog, your views on Detroit have softened a bit? I’ve never really spent any time with Detroit and sort of fascinated with it.

There are great things to be said about Detroit from a creative standpoint, there is definitely a justifiable fascination with the city. It is relatively inexpensive to live, especially compared to places like New York, Boston and Los Angeles — and that allows you to allot much more time to making art rather than making rent, and there is much more space to do it. Detroit seems to be a unique incubator for quality art and music, there are less distractions and I think people get a lot more done as a result, but if I didn’t make a trip to either coast every few months I’d probably go a bit crazy. Music is a huge exception, there is usually somewhere you can go every night of the week and hear excellent music — whether you want to party or pull up your laptop in a dark corner of a coffee shop or dive bar, I think a flourishing music culture really goes hand in hand with any kind of art making.

The downfall of the Detroit area is that the economy here is not the best at the moment, so people are consuming little else than what is necessary to live, thus why I really want to get my product out to more areas of the country where people are actually spending on luxury and fashion items.[ Read more

Anti-Fake: A Q&A

When I saw this “Stop Rockin’ Fake Shit” T, created by a Georgia-based brand called Prestigious, written up by Freshness, I was immediately interested in what Susan Scafidi would think about it. Her current project is a web site (and book in progress) called Counterfeit Chic, and it’s “about the culture of the copy within the multi-billion dollar global clothing and textile industry,” her site’s Introduction explains. “It’s about New York’s Canal Street and Beijing’s Silk Alley, but also about the cognitive and sociological reasons that make us want to buy or reject knock-offs in the first place.” Generally knockoffs are thought of as a luxe-world issue, but it’s a topic in the brand underground as well, albeit with some different spins. Whether these T’s actually get much consumer traction or not, they do express a particular point of view on conterfeits that’s worth considering. Prof. Scafidi graciously agreed to answer a few questions.

Q. In the luxe world, the fight against counterfeiters seems to play out in the form of legal and/or legislative moves, which tend to be focused more on producers than on consumers, right?

A. That’s right – we haven’t seen a grassroots “Save the Vuitton” movement or (role) models proclaiming, “I’d rather go naked than wear fakes.” Most anti-counterfeiting efforts have been pursued through the courts or through law enforcement efforts. But a quick tourist travel advisory: in France and Italy, consumers can face steep fines for purchasing fakes. Also, bringing counterfeits back into the U.S. is prohibited.
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