Possibly I spent too much time reading political news, or possibly I’m just more addled than usual this week, but I didn’t notice as much backlash, dissent, and critique as usual in the last seven days. Here’s what I’ve got.
1. Recently in the linkpile in the sidebar at right I noted this NYT article, “Wal-Mart’s detractors come in from the cold.” Wake-Up Wal-Mart disputes this and says the anti-ness continues: “It is unfortunate that the Times chose to ignore all that we’ve done over the last year, and all that we are planning for this year, and instead focus on Wal-Mart’s PR stunts as evidence of an imaginary slow down.”
5. And of course no AntiFriday is complete without the Anti-Advertising Agency, which is skeptical of a Facebook application that purports to fight global warming:
Possibly I’m overdoing it with all the Buying In chatter, but it’s kind of dominated my week. Here’s the expanding linkpile of online reactions etc. Also: ReadyMade did a very nice brief, which I mention because (I hadn’t known this) the magazine has been experimenting with an all-digital version. For the moment at least you can check it out here — and of course I’ll mention the Buying In brief is on page 18.
Also, if you’ve ever looked at the front page of Murketing.com you’ve noticed that I have almost no HTML skill outside of the context of blog software. Well, E finally stepped in and bailed me out: Check out the front page now. Big improvement!
Finally, a reminder: I’ll be in Richmond this evening, and Chicago Saturday. (Click the bold city name for details.) Love to meet you if you’re in those spots.
Here she talks about her Crafting A Business column in Venus Zine; about getting asked for business advice; about dealing with big companies (including when to walk away); and about why it’s hard to explain the DIY movement. Check it out:
Q: As with Jennifer and Tina, I’ll start with the Craft Mafia(s). How do you see the ACM at this point, and all the new Craft Mafias that seem to keep forming?
We constantly struggle with the best and most effective way for us to organize, and recently we had a meeting where we made some really important decisions about who we are at this stage. Because, several of us are no longer running businesses or have moved on to other things. We decided that at this point the group needed to continue to support the other mafias in terms of being an administration of the hub site, but we’ve never sought to be a group that dictates the structure or activities of other mafias other than some general guidelines.
Q: One thing that’s happened since we talked for the book is you’ve started writing a kind of business-advice column for Venuszine. I get the impression there’s a lot of hunger out there for business advice as people look for the way to turn their creativity into a way to make a living. Is that sort of how this column came about? Are there things about being an “indie” entrepreneur that are different from being a “traditional” entrepreneur?Please continue…
Today, Murketing is pleased to present the second in a series of three Q&As with Austin Craft Mafia founders who are in Chapter 13 of Buying In. Tina Sparkles built a considerable following with Sparkle Craft, which of late has been best known for her handmade, Earth-and-animal-friendly guitar straps.
Aside from the ACM, however, here she addresses a few surprising developments: On May 9, 2008 she announced she was taking her last orders for guitar straps and moving on to new things. More on that (including what went into the decision), below, as well as her thoughts about crafting and doing-it-yourself and consumption and ethics; about the pleasure of teaching others crafty skills; about why she stopped buying new clothes three years ago; and about a new book she’s working on that ties all of the above together. Here goes:
Q: Let’s start with the Craft Mafia(s). One of the things that really interested me about the ACM is I’d never quite seen an arrangement like this — you’re all independent, and your affiliation seems, to an outsider at least, to amount to sort of quasi-formalized mutual support. How do you see it at this point, and how do you think a setup like this helps the new Craft Mafias that seem to keep forming?
A: The Austin Craft Mafia is an odd magical little creature. Mostly, we are just a group of friends, a family. From the beginning we have always made decisions about our group as we went along, without any big grandiose plan about what we are or what we wanted to be and I think that has really allowed us to grow as a group organically. We tackle issues and opportunities as they come along and keep communication open and fair.
As far as other Craft Mafias are concerned, I feel like the whole bonding-together-to-have-a-bigger-voice is what attracts people to form their own groups, as well as having a localized community to support their individual endeavors.
Q: When I spoke to you while I was still writing the book, more than a year ago, you mentioned that you were considering trying to find a local manufacturer, so you could focus more on design. But now you’ve got a whole new direction — what went into your thinking on that?Please continue…
So, the day is here: June 3, official release date of Buying In. Go to your bookstore and demand a copy! Write a flattering review on Amazon! Tell all your friends! Give a copy to a much-photographed celebrity! Etc.
Anyway, I’m up early to do a few radio interviews (Brian Lehrer today* for those of you in NYC), and was extremely pleased to be greeted by this review of the book in Salon, by Laura Miller, a writer I’ve long admired: “Buying In is an often startling tour of this new cultural terrain….” Whether you agree with her take or not, the review will definitely give you a sense of whether this book is for you.
If you prefer a shorter take, though, Seth Godin is concise and decisive: “great!”
Meanwhile, the next Austin Craft Mafia Q&A will be up in a couple of hours.
*UPDATE: If you want to hear the above-mentioned Brian Lehrer Show segment, it’s archived here; that link also has the various posted comments of listeners. After my segment I hung around for a chat about Sex & The City with Slate‘s ever-impressive Dana Stevens. Here is that segment, again with comments.
Here, as promised moments ago, the first of a three-part series of Q&As with Austin Craft Mafia members who pop up in Chapter 13 of Buying In. Jennifer Perkins makes and sells jewelry through her Naughty Secretary Club, and like the rest of the ACM is one of the crafty world’s more impressive success stories.
In addition to the Austin Craft Mafia’s unique small-business support-system model, she talks here about her TV hosting experiences (and whether she would do that again), about the Etsy impact on the DIY scene and crafty businesspeople, about how much she loves Twitter (among other social-networking tools), and about the future — which for her includes a book she has coming out later this summer, The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girl’s Guide To Handmade Jewelry. Here goes:
Q: Let’s start with the Craft Mafia(s). One of the things that really interested me about the ACM is I’d never quite seen an arrangement like this — you’re all independent, and your affiliation seems, to an outsider at least, to amount to sort of quasi-formalized mutual support. How do you see it at this point, and how do you think a setup like this helps the new Craft Mafias that seem to keep forming?
A support group is exactly what the Austin Craft Mafia is. We have an understanding that if we do an interview we are sure to mention the Austin Craft Mafia. If any of us take out advertisements we mention the Austin Craft Mafia. I have the Austin Craft Mafia printed on all my products packaging and more! It is a very reciprocal relationship where it behooves everyone involved and their businesses to be a part of the Austin Craft Mafia.
In the early days Jenny Hart, Tina Sparkles and I could not afford to place ads in magazines like Venus and Bust alone, so we split the ads three ways. When we started branching out and taking out individual ads, we decided to mention that we were the Austin Craft Mafia. That way the members of the Austin Craft Mafia still benefited from our individual ads in some way. If Jenny was taking an ad out in Ready Made and I wasn’t, as long as the ad said “Austin Craft Mafia” it helped my business in a roundabout way. If Vickie Howell sends out an order it has a Naughty Secretary Club postcard inside the envelope as well; when I ship out an order it has a Sublime Stitching postcard inside. We are like a small-business support system.
We don’t regulate to a great degree what the other Craft Mafias do with their groups. We have a few guidelines, but how they run their show is up to them. We are very open about our structure and how it works and some groups have started a similar thing and others have taken it in different directions. Some craft mafias are interested in using their group to help their businesses along and other mafias use the group as a form of crafty camaraderie. The Austin Craft Mafia only meets as a group once every several months (though we see each other socially constantly) we use a Yahoo group as our main form of communication to make life decisions. Some other mafias get together and craft together weekly and monthly. Either way it is supportive.
Q: You’re among the ACM members who have dabbled with television, on the DIY Network (where oddly they don’t seem to identify you as Austin Craft Mafia members — odd given the recognition that the name has in the indie craft movement). Is that something you see being part of your future, either in a bigger way, or a different way? And what did it mean for your career/business?Please continue…
Beginning today: Three Q&As in three days with three founders of the Austin Craft Mafia.
This is partly a tie-in to Buying In: The book is officially published tomorrow, and the Austin Craft Mafia is an important part of one of the closing chapters. While Buying In is not really about the DIY/craft movement (see this Time Magazine review for a good snapshot of the book in general), the final section offers some forward-looking explorations of where our relationship with branded and material culture is going — and where we might make it go. The craft scene plays into that in one chapter, and in the course of that chapter I tell a bit of the story of the ACM.
I thought it would be kind of cool, then, to give a kind of instant update of three figures whose stories are partly told in the book: After all, a book is a static object, and things can change between when it’s written and when it’s read. But here I have the more real-time Murketing.com at my disposal, and happily for me ACM co-founders Jennifer Perkins, Tina Sparkles, and Jenny Hart were all willing to take time from extremely busy schedules to play along with this stunt.
Posted Under: Buying In (the book),Uncategorized by Rob Walker on June 2, 2008 Comments Off on This Week on Murketing.com: Three Q&As with Austin Craft Mafia co-founders
While this is an informal enough occurrence that I’m not even sure I can call it an “event,” I am informed by a spy in Richmond that they’ve got a picture of me on the door of the bookstore advertising the fact that I’ll be there. So I may as well tell you.
If you’re in Richmond, please stop by and say hello.
If you know anybody in Richmond, please tell them to stop by and say hello.
Details:
Thursday June 5 // 6 p.m.
Fountain Bookstore, Inc.
Historic Shockoe Slip
1312 E. Cary St.
Richmond, VA 23219
WATER PROOF:
A bottled water criticized by environmentalists tries to detox is image
This week in Consumed, a look at the efforts of the luxury/status water brand repositioning itself as eco-friendly. Is this in response to the much-reported backlash against bottled water? Sort of.
[A spokesman’s] most surprising assertion is that Fiji was already an environmentally conscious company — and that’s part of what has been “frustrating” about the media coverage. He points to various conservation efforts in Fiji, and to the fact that the brand’s entire business model depends on the aquifer there remaining pristine.
Others, of course, point to another unchangeable aspect of Fiji’s model: getting that water to far-flung markets where people will pay a lot of money for it. Fiji’s luxury-chic status has always been directly tied to the idea that this is a rare substance from an exotic place. Which, in turn, is the issue that enrages its critics….
Read the rest in the June 1, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.
Time for another Fortnightly Weekend Thingdown. For whatever reason, I didn’t see that many Things that captured my attention the last two weeks. So it’s a short list.
Also, while I usually present the Things without comment, this time I need to provide a little context for the first one. It comes from the blog on the Fiji Green website, which is part of the bottled water company’s recent efforts to position itself as eco-friendly. More on that subject in this week’s Consumed, which I’ll post soon. But meanwhile, here’s the explanation of this item, from the aforementioned blog:
On April 26th, St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco held the ”Discarded to Divine“ gala, an eco-friendly fashion show and charity fundraiser. Kim, our Northern California events coordinator, recruited designers Elaine O’Malley and Lisa Anne Fullerton to create a dress made from 100% recycled and reused materials, including FIJI Water packaging, for a model to wear throughout the evening.
More here, though the pictures and description are not as illuminating as they could be. I can’t really tell how the dress is put together and how the “packaging” is incorporated. I guess those are Fiji labels, right?
Anyway, Discarded To Divine involves designers making new garments out of old, discarded ones that are too messed up to be worn on their own anymore. The results are auctioned, raising money for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco, an organization that helps the homeless and the needy.
So far as I can tell, this Fiji Green dress wasn’t part of the auction. Perusing these pictures of the event, it looks like maybe Fiji was a sponsor, or at least was giving out water, and this model just walked around at the gala and mingled. So was this essentially just a mobile ad for Fiji and its good intentions, inserting itself at an eco-friendly charity event? A merger of unconsumption and murketing? What do you think?
1. Above, a trailer for a short film about the DKNY orange bikes promotion that ticked off some people so much they sawed the bikes in half when they realized it was a murketing effort that cyclists said shamlessly knocked off the “ghost bike” idea that is intended as a marker for cyclists killed or hit by a car. The film short, titled Orange Bikes Take Manhattan, plays tonight as part of a program of shorts at the Bicycle Film Festival. (Thanks Andrew Andrew!)
2. According one marketing executive: “Consumers hate us — the marketers and advertisers who invent new ways to spam them online and offline. The result: [ad/marketing pro] turnover is rising dramatically, and advertisers are ranked below lawyers in terms of public respect.” Ad Age suggests that the underlying problem, or the upshot, or both, is that “self-loathing has become all too commonplace in marketing.”
A marketing backlash among marketers? Well, no. The proposed solution is “Marketing with Meaning.” Examples: “ConAgra Foods, which has attracted more than 2 million visits to a healthful-lifestyle site since January, and Kroger Co., which has gotten more than 1.2 million votes on more than 35,000 designs in a contest to create the grocer’s national reusable bag.”
Assessing this, Anti Advertising Agency lives up to its name and critiques the critique: “A different type of more stealthy, manipulative message.” (That AAA post has drawn some comments worth checking out.)
3. Speaking of AAA: “Add-Art is a free Firefox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with curated art images. Created with the support of Eyebeam, Rhizome, Add-Art releases new art shows every two weeks and strives to feature contemporary artists and curators.” Intro/demo here.
I’ve never been to Printers Row, but it appears to be a big event.
This time around — even I’ll be there! So if you’re in Chicago, come by. I may have some more on details & incentive on this front soon. Here is what I presently know:
Mark Bauerlein and Rob Walker
In conversation with Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn
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WATER PROOF:
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Kim Fellner's book 
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