Tragicommerce

In Consumed: Da Mayor In Your Pocket: How a terrible news event made the transition into (curiously amusing) commodity.

A few days into the Hurricane Katrina crisis, Steve Winn was in a hotel room in Memphis when he heard a now-famous radio interview with Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans. Begging for more federal help and using harsh language, Nagin sounded raw and desperate. A New Orleans native, Winn evacuated before the storm, assuming that he’d be home in a few days. Winn’s company was also based in New Orleans: Emanation Inc., maker of amusing novelty items like Cajun in Your Pocket (a plastic device with six buttons that plays recordings of Cajun sayings) and the similar Mr. T in Your Pocket. But like many evacuees, Winn was thinking not so much about work as about the implications of this disaster for his life, and for a place that he loved, and he was frustrated about what seemed an impotent government response to the catastrophe. So he didn’t know what to make of it when friends and acquaintances called him with the following suggestion: The interview was great fodder for a Nagin in Your Pocket….

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Related links: Emanation, maker of Da Mayor In Your Pocket. Slimbolala post; no notes post.