MURKETING

Flickr Interlude

Originally uploaded by Joseph Robertson.

In The New York Times Magazine: Green Cell

DREAMING IN GREEN:
The value of a hypothetical, maybe even impractical, and unrealistic, product

If something similar had originated in the skunk works of a big company, or even at a start-up angling for venture capital, it most likely wouldn’t get far. But that, in fact, is the point: the nonmarketplace context of hypothetical products frees the designer to leapfrog practical-minded meetings about market share and profit margins and the like and to land at the bigger questions: is this something companies should do — or must do?

Read the column in the April 20, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

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AntiFriday: Earth Day backlash? Coffeemaker betrayal? Prius-smashers? Etc.

Aside from the already-mentioned Anti-Advertising Agency’s plan to get marketers to quit their jobs, here’s the rest of this week’s list of backlashes, critiques, and dissent.

1. Earth Day is coming up. Guess what? Ad Age suggests there may be a kind of Earth Day backlash brewing, and that the holiday is practically becoming “the new Christmas,” as “marketers of all stripes are bombarding consumers with green promotions and products designed to get them to buy more products — some eco-friendly, some not so much.”

“Companies are saying, ‘We need something to green ourselves up, so let’s … sponsor Earth Day,'” one marketer comments. “It’s really now in this hype curve, and hopefully we’re getting toward the top, so we can start having some fallout.” Another is more blunt: ” “Earth Day’s usefulness has passed.”

2. Actually this is one from last month, but I wanted to mention it. There’s this company in Seattle that makes a single-cup, commercial-grade brewer, called a Clover, “specifically for the cafe and retail environment.” And indeed it seems their clients tended to be indie coffee shops. More recently, this company was purchased by Starbucks. At least some indie shops, such as Stumptown in Portland/Seattle are now reportedly dumping their Clovers. Says the owner of River Maiden Coffee in Vancouver: “This feels like a betrayal.” Core77 coments that the incident is a “precise, accelerated example of how a well-designed product can become a vessel into which people pour their beliefs, expectations and senses of betrayal.”

3. Via Murketing.com’s incoming links, I can offer you one person’s backlash to the recently mentioned drug advertising campaign that uses the form of “Missing” fliers, which apparently is in place in San Francisco as well as New York: “Particularly distasteful.”

More backlashes, critiques and dissents after the jump. Please continue…

Self-hating ad pros: Here’s your way out

Apply for the Anti-Advertising Agency Foundation of Freedom Award: All you have to do to qualify for consideration is be a professional marketing willing to marketing pro who has quit your job. This initiative:

aims to respond to the increasing commercialization of public space, human relationships, journalism and art by decreasing the number of individuals working in industries that directly support these goals. “Getting these talented people out of advertising and working on real problems is so exciting!” states Steve Lambert, CEO of the AAA.

Lambert and AAAFFF Executive Director Anne Elizabeth Moore have put up the initial seed money for the grant — I gather it’s currently at $500 — and encourage further donations here.

Application forms for the grant (“Please briefly describe your sleaziest campaign,” etc.) are here, and worth downloading.

The vast numbers of ad industry creatives who regularly express hatred toward their own jobs is expected to bring in thousands of submissions. “So many ad industry types hate what they do. I wish we could help them all,” Moore states.

What’s murketing? One answer in two parts

Murketing, a driving theme of Buying In, is derived from the words murky and marketing. The term refers to the blurring of the line that used to separate commercial persuasion and everyday life. That plays out in a number of ways (thus it takes a book to really spell it out) but here are a couple of recent examples that have crossed my desk that suggest at least one aspect of what I mean by “murketing.”

1. Friend of Murketing.com loud paper recently dropped me a note with the picture at right, which she snapped near Port Authority. At first, she suggests, she thought maybe this was an art project, playing with the form of the missing-person/lost pet flier.

Ah, but no. It says: “Last seen while waiting for Claritin to start working.” And if you note the number on the pull-off tags along the bottom: the 800 number ends in ZYRTEC. That, of course, turns out to be a rival allergy-fighting drug.

So that’s one example.

2. This morning, other friend of Murketing.com (and I think friend of loudpaper, if I remember right) Braulio sent along this LiveScience item about a company called Flogos. The Flogos site is pretty blunt. It’s two “inventors” who “wondered what would happen if we made clouds into shapes,” and then apparently made the leap to: “What if we can make logos?” Well, then you might just get paid, that’s what!

These clouds are actually a mixture of soap-based foams and lighter-than-air gases such as helium, something like what you’d get if you married helium balloons with the solutions that kids use to blow bubbles from plastic wands.

The company uses re-purposed artificial snow machines to generate the floating ads and messages, dubbed Flogos. The machines can pop one Flogo out every 15 seconds, flooding the air with foamy peace signs or whatever shape a client desires. Renting the machine for a day starts out at a cost of about $2,500.

So that’s an other example. If you’re curious what the real after-effects of the consumer-“empowering” DVR revolution will be, well, my guess is it’s a whole lot more stuff like this.

A whole lot more murketing.

[Thanks loud paper & Braulio — I hope it wasn’t presumptuous to call you “friends” of Murketing.com!]

Brought to you by the letter F

We were speculating the other night, while watching 30 Rock, about the sub-plot involving a (fictional) reality show called MILF Island: When did it become okay for the big networks to use acronyms that encompass the F-word?

Now I see that print ads for Gossip Girls do the same: OMFG, says this one. So I guess F is in!

Or maybe this has been going on for a while. MILF is certainly such a widely used term that I guess nobody really notices it any more. And I’m certainly not one to complain about profane language. But I’d hate to be asked by somebody’s child — or, really, my parents — what MILF or OMFG stands for.

Possibly the networks involved are getting a complaint or two, but also possibly not. NBC is even selling MILF Island T-shirts.

WTF, right?

Chumbywatch: NYT to Chumby up!

The Times plans to distribute its multiple podcasts on the device (thus users can literally wake up to the papers’ reporters). In addition, chumby users will be able to download a Times widget that will instantly deliver breaking news photos to the device’s screen.

More here.

I’ve (obviously) been thinking about the Chumby as a Consumed subject, but maybe this means I should stay away from it because it would look biased? I don’t know. But just for the record: You the Murketing reader know I’ve been on the Chumby trail for a while now.

Flickr Interlude

obama tees & buttonz, originally uploaded by _cheryl.

Obviously I could not resist this one.

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Chumbywatch: Hacking it

I can’t explain my continued interest in the Chumby, beyond the fact that I like saying and even typing the name. But still, here’s the latest: A Wired writeup on Chumby-hacking. “More than 600 developers have built Flash widgets for the Chumby,” Wired says, “and around 200 have shared those widgets on the Chumby Network, according to Chumby Industries.”

Moreover:

The Chumby is designed in a way such that its core electronics can be easily separated from its outer shell. This lets Chumby owners create that exact look they want. Some enterprising crafters have already stuffed the screen into teddy bears and footballs and even exquisitely designed wooden cases.

Earlier Murketing posts about the Chumby here and here.

“Buying In:” Early, early reactions, cont’d.

More early mentions of/reactions to Buying In:

Publisher’s Weekly just gave the book a “starred review,” which was pretty exciting. “Marked by meticulous research and careful conclusions, this superbly readable book confirms New York Times journalist Walker as an expert on consumerism. … [A] thoughtful and unhurried investigation into consumerism that pushes the analysis to the maximum and builds a thesis that refutes the myth of the brand-proof consumer.” The whole thing here, though you have to scroll down quite a bit. And maybe “superbly readable” is really all you need to know.

Other mentions: Gelatobaby, Web home of my estranged identical cousin, widely beloved design writer Alissa Walker. Street culture news emporium Slam X Hype. Business blogger ChasNote. Flickr star Lorenzo. And Bookdwarf, which maybe shouldn’t count because this same writeup as the one on Secretly Ironic that I mentioned earlier. But I’m not going to pass up the chance to say “Bookdwarf,” am I? Finally, I particularly admire Canuckflack’s sentiment: “Should you buy it? Yes.”

Flickr Interlude

 IMG_1377.JPG, originally uploaded by andy54321.

  “McDonald’s sign over Dillon, Colorado.”

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Imaginary brands: past and future

Brainiac points out a contest of potential interest to those who follow imaginary brands. The contest is from Mark A. Raynor, author of The Amadeus Net, “a satirical novel set in the near future.” Contest is:

Alter a vintage ad — for any product — by inserting a product from a fictional future. That is to say, a product featured in a book, movie, or TV show set in the future. Post the ad online, and alert Rayner. The winner will receive a copy of “The Amadeus Net,” and will also get a walk-on part in his next novel. Deadline: April 20.

Details here and here. Entries to date here.

And if some of you are wondering, the answer is yes: Inspired by Worth1000.

Design & ethics — and regulation?

I’ve recently been perusing a site called TheDieLine.com, which bills itself as “The Leading Packaging Design Blog.” Enjoyable. Aside from nice images of packaging (an acquired taste, I guess), I thought this essay, “Packaging Goodness” was pretty interesting. It starts with a link-filled overview of prior thoughts by others on design and ethics, before coming around to questioning just how much power package designers really have in what is after all a client-driven business.

Here’s an excerpt:

If a company is just scraping by, and their competitors are not investing in sustainable packaging, then I can’t see some lone package designer digging in his or her heels and insisting that their client must go green or go bankrupt. To really do good, the sustainable packaging mandate must be fairly applied to all. A Walmart or a federal government (same thing?) are in a much better position (than graphic designers) to insist upon this. And if all manufacturers had to follow the same sustainable packaging rules, than theoretically those rules shouldn’t put any company at a competitive disadvantage.

Pamela Anderson: Marketing-industry skeptic

Recently I was told by someone who knows a lot more about blog popularity than I do that having high-impact key words in a post’s headline is good for traffic, because I guess headline words mean more to Google’s algorithms. If true, then surely this will be the most popular post in the history of Murketing.com.

Even so, everything about this post and its headline is totally justified: According to some blog, that isn’t Photoshop above, that’s Pamela Anderson reading the recent book Unmarketable (“examines the corrosive effects of corporate infiltration of the underground”), by Murketing Q&A subject Anne Elizabeth Moore.

Would it be fair to infer that Anderson got hip to this fine book by reading Murketing.com?

No? It wouldn’t?

Okay, then. Just asking.

Flickr Interlude

try something old, originally uploaded by thisisp.

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