MURKETING

To Do: Enjoyable bears

We loved Jill Greenberg’s Monkey Portraits, so we’re excited to hear that she’s back: with bears. October 11 through November 10 at Clamp Art in NY. More here. (Thanks E.)

“Craft My Ride:” Scion, down with DIY

The DIY/craft community has, to date, had a somewhat mixed response to big-company efforts to get down with their scene. But the efforts continue, and it’s interesting to keep an eye on how each new effort is received. The latest, from Scion:

Beginning September 10, 2007, crafters will have until October 22 to submit accessory designs for items such as key chains, seat covers, floor mats, steering wheel covers, tissue holders, etc., to www.CraftMyRide.com. Crafters will need to go to the website to obtain rules and instructions. A pool of craft-friendly retail stores chosen from across the United States will judge submissions, and finalists will be chosen November 2. …

Committed to fostering independent artistic expression, and creating competitions in multiple genres such as fine art, street art, architecture, music and film, Scion is consistently looking to bolster communities with an inherent independent spirit. The arts and crafts community is one such population.

Hmmm…. Well, like I said, we’ll see.

More on this subject soon.

Mad Men Musings: The pleasure of manipulation

I don’t know how many scores of advertising and marketing professionals I’ve met over the years. I do now that I almost always ask them what got them into the business. And that to date, precisely one has mentioned an interest in persuasion. Why is that answer so rare? Persuasion is an interesting subject, and it’s at the heart of the advertising business. Maybe it’s just not polite to talk about it. I wouldn’t know.

I bring this up because there was very little ad-talk in the most recent episode of Mad Men, and if I want to keep going with my little series about the show, I have no choice but to go a little meta this time. So: I think it’s pretty clear that our (un)hero Don is very interested in persuasion — in fact, he’s interested in manipulation, persuasion’s even-less-polite-to-discuss cousin. And of course when I say he’s “interested” in manipulation, I mean he has a near-pathological drive to manipulate and control others.

This manifests itself amusingly when he works off whatever weird hostility he has toward his boss by tricking the older man into a 23-flight stairwalk, causing the poor sap to vomit up his 24-oyster, multi-martini, and cheesecake lunch in front of some important clients. Heh heh heh.

It was a weird moment in what was definitely the weirdest — and I think the best — episode of Mad Men to date. Don’s wife slapping a neighbor in the supermarket, Young Turk Guy delivering a bizarre monologue about how great it would be to eat what you kill as fondles his new rifle, the Dreiser-ish secretary he delivers it to offering an impossible-to-read confirmation that such an existence does sound ideal, etc. Some of this material can be read as dealing with How To Be A Man In This Modern Age, but some of it is just wack. In a good way.

Still, I hope they get back to more ad-talk next week.

Oh, and speaking of ad-talk, persuasion, and going meta: There is of course a marketing firm marketing this show about marketing. It’s called Crew Creative Advertising. I’m a little annoyed to have learned this by way of a post on Madison Avenue Journal, which says, “They contacted us early this week with a request to pre-promote this based on your robust response to date!”

Well! Nobody from Crew Creative has contacted me. What’s up with that? Don’t they want to persuade me to persuade the Murketing audience to watch their client’s show? Maybe the problem is that I haven’t been sufficiently upbeat about the program itself. Today’s post is pretty nice, though. Maybe I only did that to manipulate Crew Creative. But if so, I guess I shouldn’t talk about it.

[Complete Mad Men musings archive here.]

Things thought about: One more

Sherry Turkle, probably best known for The Second Self, has edited this book, Evocative Objects: Things With Think With, which was published earlier this summer, but that I only learned about today:

Collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.

This volume’s special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects–an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer–are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, “No ideas but in things.” The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.

Sounds interesting. A companion, it would seem, for Taking Things Seriously.

A journey through the meaning of things

Speaking of taking things seriously, it’s a shame that this WSJ piece from today’s issue is available only to subscribers. A first-person piece by Katerine Rosman (who I knew slightly some years ago), it begins:

On Sept. 17, 2003, in a chaotic intensive-care ward, just before being medically induced into a coma, my mother summoned all of her energy and whatever oxygen she could to make one request: “Take care of my eBay.”

From there it goes into Rosman’s investigation of her late mother’s eBay life: the glass pieces she bought, why she bought them, the connections she made, what she hoped would happen when she was gone. I won’t recount the whole thing here, but it’s a journey, and toward the end Rosman writes: “For the first time, I was able to look at the glass as a representation of how my mom wanted me to live — not merely as a reminder of her death.”

It’s great stuff. Maybe it’ll turn up online elsewhere. Or you could always just go buy the paper.