MURKETING

Don’t Tase Britney (or whatever)

How small can an idea be, and still gain what at least appears to be cultural traction?

The answer is incredibly small. So small that we don’t even bother to attach a name to the person at the center of such an idea. We just call these people “[fill-in-the-blank] guy.” The two present examples are “Leave Britney Alone Guy,” and “Don’t Tase Me Guy.” In keeping with the rules of the game, I will not bother with actual names here, since it doesn’t matter.

Leave Britney Alone Guy is, of course, some guy. He made a YouTube video in which he offered a “tear-filled defense of Britney Spears.” Allegedly, he has a “large Net audience” that has made him “a darling of the mainstream media.” Also, he now has “a development deal.” Variety.com says: “Plan is to develop a docusoap built around Crocker, a 19-year-old who lives with his grandparents in Tennessee.”

Meanwhile, there’s Don’t Tase Me Guy. Again, this is some guy. This guy apparently said “Don’t tase me, bro,” while being tased at a John Kerry event. In an example of the kind of current-event product-making (“spinning products off events, or even off what the historian Daniel Boorstin called pseudo-events”) that I wrote about a while back in this Consumed, someone is selling related T-shirts. I would say the main change since that June 2006 column is that the threshold for just how pseudo an event can be before someone pronounces it a phenomenon and at least attempts to commodize it, continues to get lower.

[Update: I missed this earlier, but Adfreak prefers a different Tase Guy T.]

I should disclose that I haven’t bothered to watch any of the related YouTube videos; I’m operating on the Snakes on a Plane theory that once you “get” the phrase, you don’t have to bother with whatever cultural artifact the phrase supposedly refers to. I suggest you do the same. If you waste time actually watching Leave Britney Alone Guy, you may be several minutes late in hearing about Whoever Comes Next Guy.

Your stereotype is ready

Ever wonder how other people see you? What quick shorthand mental category they put you into? Here’s how the server at Jerry’s on Division in Chicago, IL, apparently summed up one customer yesterday, on what I assume was the order ticket for the kitchen, which ended up being given to the customer with his check. That’s my guess anyway. I mean, was the customer actually supposed to see that he’d been reduced to “hippie guy”? I kind of doubt it. (Though hippie guy was chagrined to learn that he was evidently not projecting as contemporary an image as he’d thought, he was also amused, and didn’t let the incident affect his tip.)

Coincidentally, I’m in Chicago for the next day or two and as they say, “posting will be light.”

Synthetic smells, synthetic sells

I’m afraid this link is going to expire, and probably requires registration, but: If you’re interested in scent marketing — meaning the way fragrance is used in hotels, retail environments, and so on — here’s a good overview by James Vlahos from the NYT Mag‘s Key, by James Vlahos. The piece is interesting, but it’s also long, so here’s the nut graf:

Take a whiff. Maybe you’ve noticed — and maybe you haven’t, and this isn’t entirely by accident — that the world has lately become a more fragrant place. Westin hotels waft a blend of green tea, geranium and black cedar into lobbies; Sheraton has jasmine, clove and fig. Jimmy Choo stores smell of cardamom and ivy, while Thomas Pink opts for the tang of fresh linen. Artificially introduced aromas are seemingly everywhere, and while certain applications are obvious — like pumping the smell of fresh-from-the-oven bread into a supermarket to draw shoppers to the bakery department — a growing number of companies employ the technique to sell products with no intrinsic odors. Sony Style stores, for example, are scented with a blend that includes orange, vanilla and cedar, an aroma the company hopes will put female shoppers at ease. Even “new car smell” isn’t what it used to be. Cadillac, for instance, wanting to ensure that its models smell not just like any generic new car, infuses interiors with a custom scent called Nuance.

And here’s my favorite tidbit:

The hurdles that scent marketing would have to overcome to achieve anything like that effect, however, are significant. Scent doesn’t work like a broadly efficacious drug, but rather by playing on learned associations particular to individuals. One man’s cinnamon is another’s skunk. Preferences are cultural (vanilla tops the charts for Americans, while sandalwood is a hit in India) and generational (people born before 1930 love natural smells like grass and horses, while people born later are fond of synthetic smells like Play-Doh and SweeTarts).

I find it somewhat depressing that a huge chunk of the population might be “fond of synthetic smells.” But maybe that explains Crayon Cologne (more on which here) or, for that matter, Play-Doh Cologne.

If you don’t like Mizrahi’s Target work, you’re a “brand racist”

We all know the old game of snob vs. reverse snob. When a guy at Vuitton says Coach “has nothing to do with luxury” and might as well be “selling iron ore,” well, that’s kind of snobby. The reverse snob from Coach of course decries the Vuitton guy as an elitist who needs to realize that “luxury has been democratized.”

These examples are from Fortune‘s recent recap of the eternal mass/class squabble in its latest issue. All pretty familiar, but noteworthy for Isaac Mizrahi popping up to defend himself from “critics of his work with Target.” His name for these people: “brand racists.”

Brand racists! That seem like a pretty harsh upgrade on snobbery, no? And actually, I’m pretty sure I read in one of the other recent mass/class articles somewhere else that Mizrahi’s Target success actually helped him to get Bergdorf’s (or something like that) to pick up his high-end line again. But maybe they just did it because they needed one line that had a mass-y connection to avoid looking like luxury bigots: designer tokenism, in other words.

Anyway, lux context aside, it’s actually kind of interesting to consider brand bigotry. Even those of us who claim not to pay attention to logos tend have very strong feelings about the ones we would never, ever wear. Three Adidas stripes may be fine, but put a swoosh on the same object and forget it; a polo shirt with an obscure brand’s icon is okay, but not with the Polo logo. Etc. Of course we all have our reasons for our biases, our lines of thought to assure ourselves that we’re acting on the basis of rational factors and rational factors only. Then again, bigots always think that way, too.

Really, though, I suspect brand bigotry is an underrated factor in the consumer/brand dynamic: How much are we motivated not by the brands we love, but by the brands we shun? If brand and identity are (or can be) tied together, isn’t the shun factor pretty crucial? If you have a very clear picture notion of the brands you simply won’t consider associating with, it makes shopping that much easier.

No wonder department stores are segregated by brand.

Next up for Thomas Hine: “The Great Funk” that was the 1970s

I’m admirer of Thomas Hine — Populuxe is a wonderful book, and so is The Total Package, and I’m a big fan of his The Rise and Fall of The American Teenager — so I was pleased to see this news, that he has a book coming out about the 70s. That’s a great subject, and a really great subject for Hine.

Here’s a bit from an interview in which he talks about the new book due out in November, The Great Funk (and in which he mentions in passing that Populuxe was out of print for a while; I find that astounding.)

The time when the assumptions of the Populuxe years were truly undone, once and for all, was the decade of the 1970s. And I realized that even though this was a period that was antithetical to the fifties in so many ways—a time of scarcity rather than abundance, fragmentation rather than national unity, personal exploration rather than social progress, corruption rather than trust, defeat rather than victory—it visually interesting and even positive in all sorts of unexpected ways….

[The Great Funk] reflects its time in that it is less about technology and more about consciousness. It deals a lot with clothes and the body, and thus is PG or even R rated, rather than G. The title is a play, of course, on the Great Depression, which is one meaning of funk. But funk is also about texture, and rhythm, and a sensuality, which is also an important part of the picture. And it contains some incredible pictures of interiors. I think that those who like Populuxe will be intrigued.

Sounds good to me. I actually think there’s much about understanding the 1970s that can help us understand the present era. Again: great subject for Hine.

Getting rid of a spent iPod battery

Last night, I managed to put a new battery in my (third-generation) iPod. It was slightly more of a pain than I thought it would be, but it seems to have worked. So this morning I was about to toss the spent battery into the trash when I realized that this was probably not a very responsible thing to do.

One quick Google later I found this: FastMac says that even though I didn’t buy my new battery from them, I can send them my old one and they’ll dispose of it responsibly through their TruePower Recycling Program.

So barring unforeseen developments, that’s my satisfying unconsumption moment of the week.

A brand of imaginary brands

Last Exit to Nowhere:

A collection of unique shirt designs which are inspired and pay homage to some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in 20th century fiction – from the sunny shores of Amity Island (Jaws) to the frozen climes of Outpost #31 (The Thing).

Definitely my kind of thing. Above, of course, HAL, from 2001. Plus Tyrell Replicants (Blade Runner), Polymer Records (Spinal Tap), Mighty Mick’s Boxing (Rocky), etc.
Via Coudal.

Previous imaginary brand notes here.

Mad Men Musings: Then and now

Several scenes in the most recent Mad Men rated as either interesting, highly pleasing, or both. The most pleasing was the afternoon work party at a local bar, particularly the moment when all the ladies squealed when “The Twist” came up on the jukebox. It’s such a spontaneous moment of joy, it makes you wish you’d been young in 1960. Then again, it’s just a TV show, so who knows.

One of the interesting scenes was un-hero Don’s steamrolling of clients in a pitch meeting. The geezer running the cosmetics company client seems skeptical of the creative direction the ad men have come up with, and Don basically says: You’re a loser, get a clue, and until you get a clue, get out of my face. The geezer rolls over and does what he’s told.

I was once in a pitch meeting with a very hot ad firm presenting ideas to a very cold company. I assume the dynamic in such moments is never what it would be if there weren’t a reporter sitting there, but here’s how things were similar, and different. One difference is that nobody wore a suit: The sartorial power-signifier uniform was premium denim, worn basically by everybody but me. Another difference was an absolute lack of argument. The main similarity, however, was that the ad firm dominated the meeting in every meaningful way. There was some guarded skepticism, but no real objection to even the nuttiest ideas. The power, in that meeting as in Mad Men was with the agency (albeit in a different way).

Much of the ramp-up hype about Mad Men included assertions that the show was about a time when Madison Avenue was all-powerful, and this scene seemed designed to make the point. On other hand, the giveaway was Don’s mention that the client was the number four player in its industry. I have a feeling this is what sets the power tempo today as in the past: Basically, how scared is the client? How desperate is the client? How willing is the client to believe that these agency guys (then or now) somehow have the secret formula for saving their sorry ass? All of which is why my favorite bit about that whole thing was Don at the end saying, basically: So anyway, let’s hope it works out. “It’s not a science,” he grins. Indeed. My guess is that it’s not so different today.

Which brings me to the third noteworthy scene, which was both interesting and pleasing: Don hanging out with his bohemian mistress and her absurd beatnik pals. (“We’re going to get high and listen to Miles,” one of them deadpans.) There’s an almost comical air of Us vs. Them in the scene, as the beatniks mock Don for his complicity in creating The Lie that we need more stuff, and toothpaste will solve our problems, and so on — all the sorts of things that have made people like this so tedious for the entire history of people like this. I think one of them actually calls him a “square.” Don’s palpable contempt is a laff riot — “I hate to break it to you, but there is no Big Lie, there is no System” — and he’s unapologetic about drawing a bright line between himself and these sentimental bozos. He’s part of society, and they’re not, and they can kiss his ass.

Well, you already know what’s different today on this score. Today’s equivalent of the beatnik counterculturalist would not say, “Your toothpaste can’t solve our problems.” He would say, “Your toothpaste needs to sponsor an artist series if you want to connect with my demo.” And the ad-man wouldn’t say kiss my ass, punk. He’d say, “Yeah, we’re talking to Banksy.” Also, everyone in the scene would be dressed exactly alike. Maybe that’s progress, and maybe it isn’t. But a marketing pro openly sneering at the fauxhemians to grow up already? That’s about as likely today as a chorus of squeals greeting a pop hit from a jukebox in a bar. But I think it would be — almost — as much fun to experience firsthand.

[Complete Mad Men musings archive here.]

A useless watch that’s so useless it’s not even a watch

I’ve been at pains to make clear that my interest in useless watches is not a de facto interest in bracelets. A useless watch and a bracelet are not the same thing.

That said, this item blurs the line. I’d say it’s a bracelet that comments on useless watches. And since it’s sold at the MoMa store, it must be, if not “art,” then “Good Design.” Via Better Living Through Design.

Earlier notes on low-utility watches here, here, here, and here.

Do you have a “crafty” tattoo?

Well, don’t tell me about. Tell the makers of Handmade Nation, the forthcoming documentary about the DIY/craft phenomenon. Details here.

(I was going to say “DIY tattoo” in the headline, but, really, a DIY tattoo is a bad idea. See a professional.)

Thanks to Web 2.0, you can be friends with a rock star’s intern

Amusing post from the always-enjoyable Online Fandom (Nancy Baym) on friending Michael Stipe and Peter Buck on Facebook. “For weeks nothing happened. Which was about what I expected,” she writes. When suddenly one day: “Both friends requests were accepted within 45 minutes of each other.” She continues:

Over the next couple of hours I watched as they both joined lots of groups and became friends with the same people at the same time.

And I’m thinking, ok, I didn’t really expect it to really be you, but do you have to make it SO OBVIOUS that it’s not?

In the end, though, she keeps Stipe and Buck among her “friends” just the same. For full explanation and thoughtful consideration of pros and cons, here’s the whole post.

Note: I’ve added a new category and backed in previous Murketing posts on Facebook etc., all now are categorized under “Social” Studies. Also: Murketing’s del.icio.us links on “SocialNetworking” here.

Communicate with other members of your household via toast

Those of you who recall the Consumed about toasters and “innovation” may be interested in this:

This toaster by Sasha Tseng incorporates a little message board where one can read quick notes. The message also gets “toasted” into the toast itself so it gives new meaning to “read while you eat”.

Via BB.

(Red) remixed

Wendy Dembo writes:

Last year when the Gap came out with their (red) campaign, the first word that popped into my head, was insu(red)/uninsu(red). They did a few kind of ironic shirts like bo(red) and ti(red), but I wondered why they didn’t make an uninsu(red) shirt.

With insurance looking like it’s going to be the touch point for the 2008 Presidential election, I thought that making these shirts could hopefully get some uninsured kids to think about their need for health insurance, perhaps even the need for universal health care.

She got Jeff Staple to execute the shirts, which are on sale at the Reed Space in New York.

It’s interesting to see something in the brand underground realm using the visual remix strategy to address a political issue. It will also be interesting to see what sort of reaction it ends up getting.

The power of the Internet … to help a major-label artist

I’ve been waiting for a story like this: Singer Marié Digby, supposedly discovered by the grass roots in the all-empowering wilds of YouTube (“I just turned on my little iMovie, and here I am!”), was actually a major-label signee all along. She gigged in L.A., met a veteran music manager who connected her with a publisher, who connected her with Hollywood Records, which signed her in 2005, and hooked her up with a veteran producer.

Once the album was completed late last year, Ms. Digby and her label began looking for ways to gain visibility. …

That’s when the idea of posting simple videos of cover songs came up. … So she posted covers of hits by Nelly Furtado and Maroon 5, among others, so that users searching for those artists’ songs would stumble on hers instead. Her version of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” proved a nearly instant hit.

As Ms. Digby’s star rose, other media outlets played along. When Los Angeles adult-contemporary station KYSR-FM, which calls itself “Star 98.7,” interviewed Ms. Digby in July, she and the disc jockey discussed her surprising success. “We kind of found her on YouTube,” the DJ, known as Valentine, said. Playing the lucky nobody, Ms. Digby said: “I’m usually the listener calling in, you know, just hoping that I’m going to be the one to get that last ticket to the Star Lounge with [pop star] John Mayer!” The station’s programming executives now acknowledge they had booked Ms. Digby’s appearance through Hollywood Records, and were soon collaborating with the label to sell “Umbrella” as a single on iTunes.

Etsy TV

Have you seen this yet? If you follow the whole DIY craft thing, then you know that Etsy is the big online store where many thousands of handmade-thingmakers sell their handmade things. Now Etsy has launched an e-zine, and video “newscast.” I think it’s pretty funny, but what do I know? If you have an opinion, I’d like to hear it.