MURKETING

In The New York Times Magazine: “Hoarders”

STUFFED:
A TV reality series suggests the thin line between our national consumer frenzy — and psychopathology

…. Hoarding, he says, has “more to do with a person’s psyche than their taste in decorating.” Given how dark that psyche can be, why do people watch? Sharenow offers several reasons, from the visual wallop to the raw narrative drama. “There’s something kind of Joycean about watching a hoarder,” he continues. “You’re getting this incredibly deep picture of their entire existence in a way, through the objects and through the stuff they accumulate.” ….

It’s interesting then that “Hoarders” has found its audience now. In a sense, the show can be read as a metaphor for an entire culture that has lost perspective on the relative importance of things and desperately needs help.

Read the column in the December 20, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Blu Dot’s Real Good Chair promotion

A REAL FIND?
A furniture maker hypes its wares by leaving them out with the trash.

In early November, a marketing agency’s “street team” began scattering a client’s products on the sidewalks of Manhattan and Brooklyn….

Read the column in the December 6, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

SLEEPING GAG:
A product idea becomes a joke — and then a product.

A lot of ThinkGeek’s customers, fooled or not, didn’t simply want to appreciate the funny idea of a Tauntaun sleeping bag. They wanted to own one. And said so in tens of thousands of e-mail messages and phone requests.

Read the column in the November 29, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Augmented Reality

REALITY BYTES
Does ‘augmented reality’ technology help us see deeper into what’s before our eyes?

This phrase has become one of the pervasive buzz concepts of 2009, and as is often true in such cases, it seems to describe a variety of manifestations from the practical to the pointless to the pie in the sky….

Read the column in the November 15, 2009, New York Times Magazine — a special entertainment-focused issue — or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Ammo branding

TARGET MARKETING
Ammunition seem like a commodity, but even bullets get branded

ATK has been in the consumer-ammunition market for only a few years, but the commercial-products group of its armament-systems division now manages a portfolio of about 20 consumer-ammunition brands. That’s a fair amount of differentiation. Some of the reasons are obvious: the ammunition needs of duck hunters and of pistol-range enthusiasts are quite distinct from each other. But some of ATK’s ammo-brand differentiation sounds more akin to the sort of image making many people associate with, say, energy drinks or deodorants.

Read the column in the November 8, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

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In The New York Times Magazine: Hummer Owners

HUMMER LOVE:
How do the drivers of a widely loathed vehicle see themselves?

Hummer loyalists come across as a beleaguered lot. Less predictably, Luedicke and his fellow authors, Craig J. Thompson and Markus Giesler, argue that Hummer drivers position their ownership at the center of a “brand-mediated moral conflict” in which Hummer enthusiasts are not only innocent but also heroic. Conflict with vehement critics turns out to play a key role, with the Hummer owner casting himself or herself as a “moral protagonist” who must, according to this theory, “defend sacrosanct virtues and ideals from the transgressive actions of an immoral adversary.” And what sacrosanct virtues would those be? To oversimplify a bit: American exceptionalism, rugged individualism, love of the frontier, community and freedom.

Read the column in the November 1, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

NOTE: I am in receipt this morning of an email alerting me to the existence of a 2006 documentary called Hummerland. According to its distributor: “In this humorous documentary, the director went looking for the appeal of this modern-day tank. She returns with a tragic-comic send-up of our consumerist society.” Sounds interesting. As you know, once I’ve written about a topic in Consumed, I am on to the next one. But if you want further thoughts on Hummerthink, this might be worth checking out.

ANOTHER NOTE: I am also in receipt of another email from someone who did Hummer-related research: “Vehicle of The Self,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 2006. Again, my interest was in the points made in the specific research that I cited, and what it implies about the disconnect between how we think of our own consumption decisions and how others “read” them, not in offering a comprehensive assessment of Hummer-ness. But if you’re interested in the latter, there’s more fodder for you.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Redbox

FEW RELEASES
For some at-home movie watchers, less is more.

Some studies show that consumers are happiest with a lot of choices. Other studies show that consumers are confounded (to the point of nonconsumption) by too many choices. So much, then, for studies. What about an actual business that allies itself closely with one or the other of these theories? For instance: DVD-rental kiosks that hold only 125 to 200 titles. That’s a pretty limited set of choices even by the standards of a Blockbuster, let alone of Netflix, which has an infinite-seeming selection. Back in 2002, Mitch Lowe asked his kids what they thought about such a scheme. They pronounced it “crazy.”

Today there are more than 18,000 redbox kiosks at drugstores, grocery stores and McDonald’s franchises all over the United States; new locations are added at a rate of about one per hour. …

Read the column in the October 25, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Mexican Coke

CULT CLASSIC:
An American icon’s Mexican formula develops a devoted following.

Spend a few years writing about consumer culture, and you might get a little jaded about products or brands with cult followings. The extreme-loyalist customer always insists that there are perfectly rational reasons for his or her devotion; to the disinterested observer, the reasons seem dubious. This is good news for me, because it assures that I have plenty to write about. But this week, for once, I’m casting myself in the role not of the reasonable observer but of the dubious product-cultist.

Read the column in the October 11, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

UPDATE: Amusing segment on The World, I was interviewed, but then the host did a personal taste test. http://www.theworld.org/tag/10132009/ (scroll down).

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In The New York Times Magazine: Luxury e-tailers

EXCLUSIVE FOR ALL:
Buying pricey lux goods — along with the aura of virtuous thrift

You might decide not to buy a pair of designer shoes. Alternately, you might decide to buy a pair of designer shoes that has been marked down 50 percent. Abstaining can make you feel thrifty, frugal and (these days) admirable. Buying a bargain can make you feel all that, too. Plus you get new shoes.

Perhaps this is why there’s an interesting footnote to the much-discussed troubles of luxury brands in this time of virtuous thrift: online sellers of the discounted stuff are “flourishing,” The Economist pointed out recently…..

Read the column in the October 3, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

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In The New York Times Magazine: RePlayGround

TRASH TALK
Attracting consumers by educating them on the value of their junk

“A lot of what I do is rebrand garbage,” Tiffany Threadgould says. “It doesn’t have to have a nasty stigma to it.” Maybe it doesn’t have to, but it’s not exactly shocking that it does. Still, what Threadgould means is that she wants more of us to think about things before we throw them away — or rather what we might do with them instead.

Read the column in the September 27, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Naked Pizza

PIZZA WITH A POINT:
A fast-food alternative wants to start a conversation — palatably

If you want to read a lengthy essay, complete with journal citations, about the company’s philosophy of eating, it’s on the company blog. Entries run as long as 1,400 words. But if you just want some pizza, that’s also fine. “You can dig as deep as you want,” Leach says, “or not dig at all.”

Read the column in the September 13, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

In The New York Times Magazine: Quirky.com

GROUPTHINK, INC.:
Selling the crowd-pleasing notion of collective creativity

Many behold the overwhelming abundance of products at the mall, the big-box store or even Amazon.com and conclude: That’s enough; we don’t need any more new stuff to consider buying. Ben Kaufman doesn’t see things that way. He is sure that he is not alone. “Everyone,” he says, “has a product idea.” It’s probably true: even as we piously lament the endless and wasteful junk that clutters the material world, plenty of us are simultaneously pondering some hypothetical (https://comfortdentalcareofbrookline.com/order-xanax-alprazolam-1mg-online/) doodad that we are sure would be a retail hit.

A few months ago, Kaufman, who is 22 and lives in New York, started a business aimed squarely at the armchair inventors among us. Quirky.com is meant to bring “community developed” products to the marketplace….

Read the column in the September 6, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

Idea for a build-your-own ‘Consumed’ collection: Your advice?

From time to time people ask if there will ever be a book-form collection of Consumed columns. Whenever I really think about what such a collection would consist of, I’m confronted with a dilemma: The column has several quite disparate audiences. Which one would I have in mind when picking the columns to include? Or should I try to please everyone (which, as you know, seldom works)?

So I’ve been toying with a solution, but it involves things I’d need help with. Maybe it would be relatively easy, or maybe it would prohibitively difficult. I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m hoping to do the necessary research over the next month (although that may prove ambitious, given other commitments.)

My idea:

A build-your-own Consumed collection.

That is: Have a Web site (I guess) where there’s a sort of menu of past columns, sorted by topic. The reader could then pick and choose per his or her own interests. Want all the design-related columns? The ones that are more focused on marketing? On consumer psychology? Eco/green stuff? The  entrepreneur-focused columns? The ones dealing with more artistic or critical takes on consumer culture? Some mix of those things? Great. Just pick what you want.

Obviously some columns fit more than one category, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Also obviously, this idea would seem to work best for the e-book market, which I gather is still relatively small. (And I guess book-on-demand scenarios, which I know less about.) So it may be the front-end expense would outweigh the potential payoff. And I’m not sure how well this would mesh with the college market, where I know my columns get used a lot, so I guess I imagine that’s a market I should pay attention to.

There could also be a kind of “directors’ cut” physical version, with my own favorites (or the most-chosen columns from the pick-your-own menu?).

Anyway I’m floating this here to see:

1. If any of you are aware of precedents or similar projects I should look into.
2. If anybody has any advice on fining a person or firm of any kind that might be able to execute something like this. I have no idea if my notion is possible, or if it is, how expensive it would be. So any tips that might lead me to answers would be greatly appreciated. Or if you would pass this post around, that would be great too. I need all the research help & feedback I can get.
3. Your overall thoughts about whether this is a good or bad idea.

Use the comments or email murketing@robwalker.net as you please.

In The New York Times Magazine: The “New” Linens N Things

CLEANED SHEETS:
A stripped-down version of a mass retailer offers one business for the Great Recession

The new version of lnt.com that celebrated its “grand reopening” a few months ago may not strike the typical shopper as anything radical. The interesting stuff is in what’s behind the site, or maybe even what isn’t. …

Read the column in the August 30, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

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In The New York Times Magazine: No Mas Cassius Clay T

CALL IT A DRAW
An indie designer comes up against a big trademark owner — and the unexpected happens.

When the indie brand No Mas got an e-mail message from CKX Inc., the company that holds a majority stake in Muhammad Ali Enterprises and oversees the rights to commercial uses of his name, his image and his likeness, founder Chris Isenberg pretty much knew what was up. Most such stories end unhappily, with the small-brand creator stymied, the rights owner accused of bullying, or both. But this one has a twist ending…

Read the column in the August 9, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here. (See the T shirt more clearly here on the No Mas site.)

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