MURKETING

Forgotten

AdFreak, citing BoingBoing, muses briefly on false memories and branding. One of the cited studies came up briefly in this article (of mine) about brand revival and memory, and in somewhat more detail in the third chapter — if I’m remembering right — of Buying In.

AntiFriday bonus! Potential 3M backlash?

Across the transom comes the mystery email of the day, reading: “It was recommended that I pass this on to you..,” followed by this link. It goes to a post at All About Content, headlined “3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar.”

This is the story of how a $24.5 billion multinational corporation refuses to pay a small licensing fee to the amateur photographer who inspired its commercial campaign.

The short version of the allegations is:

In December 2006, somebody covered a car in Post-Its (above), and the images got a lot of Web love.

In spring 2008, 3M got in touch to license the image(s).

Apparently not wanting to pay the requested sum, 3M simply recreated its own version of the idea — Video — to use at point of sale, etc. (Below.)

I’ve done zero reporting on this, so basically I’m simply telling you that All About Content is outraged, and makes this familiar argument about backlash peril:

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Sponsored pranks

Maybe you’ve seen it, but the WSJ has a story today about “The New Pranksters,” meaning groups like Improv Everywhere. Apart from veteran prankster Joey Skaggs cranky but funny assessment of the trend (“”There’s a lot of junk out there calling itself pranks”), the most interesting thing is the stuff toward the end about advertisers and marketers figuring out how to convert these activities into a commercial persuasion tactic:

Some advertisers are starting to see the marketing value of pranks. Taco Bell recently hired [Improv Everywhere and Urban Prankster founder Charlie] Todd to stage a “freeze” in a new restaurant in Flushing, N.Y., where paid extras posing as employees and patrons simply froze in place, baffling the actual customers. The stunt was later used in a viral marketing campaign for the restaurant’s Frutista Freeze drink, and a video of the prank has been viewed 500,000 times online, says Taco Bell spokesman Will Bortz. “We thought it was brilliant,” he says….

Recently Mr. Todd began accepting corporate sponsorships. In exchange for running a Yahoo logo on the video of his coming MP3 pranks, he says the company is paying him a fee, which he plans to use to hire a production team and possibly stage aerial shots. Mr. Todd says he’ll inform participants about Yahoo’s involvement beforehand. “If I work on a corporate thing, there’s going to be a certain percentage of my fan base who thinks it’s evil,” he says. “It’s been a very difficult thing for me to figure out.”

AntiFriday: Your weekly compendium of backlashes, dissent & critiques

* Those of you who follow the links in the sidebar at right, or via the Murketing RSS feed or Delicious, may recall the stories about an Army-themed clothing line launching soon at Sears. Apparently some are not happy about this deal, because some of the clothes will feature the patch of the 1st Infantry Division. Politico quotes one vet saying: “That patch is to be worn by only people who served in the 1st Division. What right does the Army have to sell our patch?” More about the history of the Big Red One patch here. [Thx: Braulio]

* “EtsyBitch is a communal blog of likeminded Etsians who are tired of the demeaning treatment, abuse, and general mismanagement of the Etsy.com site.” [Thx for the tip: Harriete (who I should clarify wasn’t endorsing the blog, I don’t think, just telling me about it.)]

* “Corpoetics is a collection of ‘found’ poetry from the websites of well-known brands and corporations. Nick Asbury has visited various company websites, found the closest thing to a Corporate Overview, and then set about rearranging the words into poetry.” Examples here. [Via Design Observer.]

* The Association of National Advertisers has sent a letter to regulators arguing Google-Yahoo search advertising deal “”will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers.”

* Center for Science In The Public Interest going after Sparks. Earlier CSPI went after Spykes, an A-B product that was pulled (not long after being the subject of an April 29, 2007 Consumed).

* Anti-Advertising Agency talks up a documentary called Bomb It, “about the battle for public space between graffiti writers and advertising.”

* Triple backlash special: The Grinder zings an ad by the Corn Refiners Association that’s meant to backlash against anti-high-fructose-syrup sentiments. Got that?

Flickr Interlude

One Hung Far Low, originally uploaded by etravus is for Obama/Biden 2008.

Caption notes: “My wife and I are really into Chinese-American signage.”

Retail romance

This looks cool: The Brooklyn Historical Society has an exhibit called Counter/Culture, photos of mom & pop shops around the borough, some of which have since closed, others are still going.

At the Society’s site there’s a series of audio files in which the photographers talk about the project and some of the stores.

The exhibit opened yesterday, and runs through December 28. It’s at 128 Pierrepont, corner of Clinton, in Brooklyn (obviously). Hours here.

Via Gothamist, which has more nice pictures from the show, here.

To pinch the nose

I’m not even going to try to explain how I came upon this, but have you ever wondered: Is there a blog about pince-nez* spectacles — one that “provides advice and debunks myths” regarding this style of eyewear?

The answer is: Of course there is.

And it’s quite informative! The best post, I think, is this one.

[*Pronunciation audio file here.]

Flickr Interlude

Originally uploaded by ribena.

Standout innovation in the realm of blending in

The Economist has a very interesting article on one of my favorite subjects: Camo. (Here’s a about camo from 10/17/04).) It’s about new developments and technology in the camo world. Check Consumedthis out:

“Adaptive” camouflage that changes rapidly in response to the environment is also in the works. TNO, a Dutch defence contractor based in Soesterberg, is using thin, textile-like plastic sheets embedded with light-emitting diodes (LEDs). A small camera scans the environment, and the colours and patterns displayed on the sheet are changed accordingly. The material is not yet flexible enough to be worn comfortably by soldiers, but it is being tested in Afghanistan with Saab Barracuda, a Swedish maker of camouflage equipment.

Pieter Jacobs, TNO’s chief technologist, says the defence ministries of Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, which have funded the development of the technology, consider such “chameleon” sheeting to be an urgent requirement. Maarten Hogervorst, a vision neuroscientist at TNO, says its performance is formidable. A tank draped with the sheeting and parked in front of a grassy slope displays an image of grass on its exposed side, for example.

Well if this comes to pass in a wearable form it would definitely cross over to fashion applications, right? Maybe you could have a shirt that changed colors to complement the surroundings!

Anyway, the article also gets into camo’s opposite number: Detection technlogies. Interesting stuff.

Flickr Interlude

CHEEZE, originally uploaded by drhaddow.

To Do in NYC: Shearer show

Speaking of stuff happening in New York: I was interested in this from Deborah Solomon’s Q&A with Harry Shearer in the NYT Magazine:

This Friday, you have a show opening at the Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. Are you a visual artist of some kind? I collect video footage of political and media types who are always yakking at us on television — the footage I collect is of them not talking. The project is called “Non-Talking Heads.”

The gallery’s site says:

Well-known personalities from politics and the media are caught here in the moments before “going live”. Each portrait hangs silent, still, cheek to jowl in Shearer’s living, breathing portrait gallery.

I’m not sure what the presentation will be from either of these bits, but I’m picturing a bunch of TV screens with silent video loops, and I think it sounds fantastic. I believe I have mentioned before Shearer’s “Silent Debates” series on My Damn Channel. That’s here, link goes straight to video.

The gallery is at 522 West 24 Street, New York. It opens Friday night, per above, but normal hours are Tue-Sat 10 to 6, and personally I’d rather look at these in silence, not at a party.

‘Off consumption’ and possibly interesting

A friend of the site has asked that I tell you about Interesting New York, an event this coming Saturday, September 13. It lasts all day and as I understand it consists of a whole bunch of short presentations by a variety of people on a variety of subjects, selected for level of “interesting”ness. The supremely annoying site for this event is here; the less annoying rundown of presenters is here. A few other friends of Murketing turn out to be on that list — but enough about that.

The one that caught my attention is The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption. That would be Gaurav Mishra, who writes: “On March 23, I decided to go off consumption for a year to understand an increasingly important subculture whose members refuse to define their identity by buying things.” Here is Mishra’s blog — which turns out to be a book in progress. I was a little surprised to see the top post is about “How to market to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism.”

So I suppose he’s the marketer who went off consumption … in order to become a better marketer? I’m not sure how I feel about that.

But … there’s some other interesting stuff in the blog, which I’ll have to examine more closely a little later,  and if you live in New York and want to pay $35 to hear from him and the other presenters at this event, I’d be curious to hear what you think.

Interesting New York
Saturday, September 13, 2008
10:00AM to 6:00PM.
The Katie Murphy Amphitheater at FIT
7th Avenue at 27th Street (Building D), New York City

This massive bailout made possible by…

Outstanding brands-in-the-news cameo for the Coca Cola company today, in the WSJ’s tick-tock story about the Fannie/Freddie takeover: The action involving Henry Paulson and other officials culminated in “a marathon session over the Labor Day weekend, fueled in part by Diet Coke and Coke Zero.”

Would you feel better or worse if it was Red Bull? Diet Red Bull? Starbucks lattes?

Okay, how about Sparks?

Flickr Interlude

IMG_6823.JPG, originally uploaded by katerw.

In The New York Times Magazine: Red Mango (v. Pinkberry)

GONE SOUR
The sweet benefits of a clearly defined rival

This week in Consumed, a look at Red Mango’s rivalry with Pinkberry.

It’s a cliché that the fight for survival brings out the best in business rivals, but a clear rivalry is also useful to consumers — it’s something to latch on to, an opportunity to take sides. Many Red Mango locations are in conspicuously close proximity to a Pinkberry. Kim claims this is a “coincidence,” owing more to his own chain’s real estate research than to any provocation. But read the reviews on Yelp.com of the Pinkberry and Red Mango locations that more or less face each other on Bleecker Street in New York. The Red Mango at 182 Bleecker registers four stars out of five, based on 74 reviews — many of which reference Pinkberry directly.

Read the column in the September 7, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine, or here.

Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. The Times’ Consumed RSS feed is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.

To make a point about Consumed that you think readers of The Times Magazine would be interested in: “Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, Magazine, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. The e-mail address is magazine@nytimes.com. All letters should include the writer’s name, address and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished letters. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.”