Surely by now you’ve heard about the “integration” of GM vehicles into the new show “My Own Worst Enemy.” But just in case:
The show’s central character, played by actor Christian Slater, has two different personalities. There’s Henry, a suburban dad who drives GM’s recently launched family-oriented Traverse crossover. Then there’s Edward, a secret agent who speeds around in the new version of GM’s Camaro sports car set to go on sale early next year.
More in this story, too.
In other car-murketing news, the LA Times had this story about people hearing mysterious music in Lancaster, CA:
They all soon learned that the tune was coming from a musical road installed by Honda Motor Co. designed to play the overture when Honda Civics and other cars drove over it, as part of a marketing campaign targeting younger folks. The first musical road in the U.S. is featured in Honda commercials that began Sunday….
In Lancaster, the road attracted tourists from across the country and inspired dozens of YouTube videos, some filmed in the dark. People drove on it repeatedly to hear the noise, which sounded like the distant warbling of horns. Some even drove in reverse to see whether the song would play backward. (It did not.)…
For Honda, the possibilities of making a commercial that could also become part of the cultural moment — spreading through YouTube videos and cellphone recordings — was irresistible….
Over the weekend the NYT reminded us what a poor job the school system does in educating young people about personal-finance basics.
Today the NYT tells us that someone is stepping up to teach Americans how to be thrifty: Retailers.
The Stop & Shop grocery chain is offering “affordable food summits” where consumers are taught how to lower their grocery bills. Home Depot offers classes on how to cut energy bills. And Wal-Mart Stores hired a “family financial expert” who has used online chats to teach several thousand shoppers how to save money for college, whittle away debt and sell a house.
Great. If this works out, maybe they can add geography and math classes. No Consumer Left Behind!
Since I pondered conspiracy-theory pscyhology here the other day, I should note this Illuminati/Bohemian Grove T-shirt evidently spotted on Macys.com by Alex Jones. Not to be paranoid, but it looks like the T is no longer available!
Coincidence??
[Thx: SW.]
Posted Under:
Products
This post was written by Rob Walker on October 13, 2008
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Coolhunting notes some new products from Porter, “the famed Japanese bag maker,” that are “drawn from the William Gibson line, which is inspired by the science fiction writer of the same name.”
It wasn’t clear to me whether that means Gibson was involved, and on what level. Coolhunting says: “The shoulder bag costs $340 while the laptop bag goes for $530. The bags are exclusively available in limited numbers from Self Edge in San Francisco. The store is also planning on hosting a William Gibson party on 9 November with the man himself.”
Curious.
This led me to the Self Edge site, which has fresh news of more Gibson product.
William Gibson, always the fan of a faceless and logo-less product that exceeds all expectations; something timeless and classic that most across the world can relate to. Last week we brought you William Gibson’s Head Porter bags, and this week we’ve got his new line of Athletic Shoes.
William Gibson’s new line of athletic shoes?
Hunh.
In Self Edge’s online store, the high-tops are $168, the low-tops $158.
They do have a nice look.
I wonder if Blue Ant has a piece of this?
At Selfridges. Via The Dieline.
Posted Under:
Products,
World News
This post was written by Rob Walker on October 13, 2008
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MILK CARTOON:
Co-opting the kids’-entertainment-character marketing strategy for a lunchroom staple
Today, as part of a special food-themed issue of the New York Times Magazine, Consumed looks at an effort to get kids to drink more milk — by putting pop culture branded characters on the cartons.
As the Milk Media Web site puts it, “We introduced the concept of branded cartons to forge relationships between sponsors who had characters that kids really cared about as a more effective tactic to make milk ‘Cool for Kids.’ ” …
Milk has few enemies. Branding that reaches out to children inside the educational system, however, is a reliable source of outrage. …
Read the column in the October 12, 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.”
Posted Under:
Consumed,
Murketing,
Sustenance
This post was written by Rob Walker on October 12, 2008
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[Today: The return of guest Q&As to Murketing.com. This one comes from Nate Schulman, a master’s student at California Institute of the Arts. He brought to Murketing’s attention a recently completed graduate thesis project that you can read about below. More about Murketing.com Guest Q&A’s, and how you can submit ideas of your own, here. Take it away, Nate.]
We all know about things like customizable shoes or DIY silk-screening outfits, which charge and assist you in the co-creation of “your” product. But those examples of “collaboration” are more about an end product than an end system. A thesis project by Joseph Prichard of the MFA graphic design program at the California Institute of the Arts offers a look at a different form of collaboration: Working with cyclists on a mapping system for cyclists.
His 4th Street Bikeway effort created an informational graphics system for a Los Angeles bike route, and involved Angeleno bikers in the process. I had a class with Prichard, and what interested me about his project was that the end-user/consumer of the program he come up with had a role in its creation — but in a new way. And I had a few questions. Those questions, and Prichard’s answers, follow.
— Nate Schulman
Q: Tell me how this project came about. Those not in Los Angeles might be asking: “People bike in LA??”
A: It started out with the vague notion of wanting to design something that would address some of the transportation problems we have here in Los Angeles. I’m not an engineer or an urban planner, but I feel strongly that there is a role for graphic design in encouraging alternatives to car use in our city.
The initial idea was a speculative redesign of the signage for Los Angeles’ 4th Street bike route. The goal was to design a comprehensive system that would make the route more attractive to potential cyclists — something that would address the shortfalls of current signage and hopefully serve as a model for future route planning.
To create a system that really spoke to the needs of the cyclists, it was important to me that I have members of the cycling community contribute to the design process. To that end, I held a series of participatory workshops where I worked with local cyclists to determine the form and content of the final system.
As the project progressed, a second component emerged that came to be as important as (or more important than) the first. In addition to the proposed “official” signage system, I designed a set of tools and templates that would allow cyclists to easily create their own DIY bike route signage. My aim was to involve cyclists not only in the design of the system but also in its eventual implementation and expansion. By providing a set of open tools, my intention was to give people the ability to design for their own needs.
What was the most exciting moment of the process? Likewise, were there moments of panic (a true testament of a thesis ;0)? If so, how did you work through them? Read more
Back in February I had a short post pondering what a bad economy meant for the “green” movement. (Funny, February seems like it was a giddy boom period compared to today, eh?) Two more recent views on that question:
A Marketplace report is largely pessimistic: “Financial Crisis Is Not Eco-Friendly.”
A piece on The Big Money, by Eric Pooley, offers a more optimistic view: “Save the Economy, Save the Planet.”
Of course I was sad that New York Magazine never reviewed or otherwise acknowledged Buying In, but even so I was pleased to see they are interested in the broad topic of the murky line between commercial persuasion and culture, as evidenced by a big story on a very murketing-y topic: product integration. The writer, Emily Nussbaum, found some great examples, and makes what I think is exactly the right big-picture point:
It’s happened so gradually you may not have noticed—or, perhaps, haven’t cared. American consumers take pride in their media savvy; they are too hip to be fooled, too jaded to be appalled….
… “Most Americans, like the proverbial frogs in the slowly boiling water, may not notice how prevalent it has become. Yet Nielsen Media Research tells us that product integration has occurred more than 4,000 times on network prime-time television in 2006.”
… that proportion has risen vertiginously, jumping 39 percent in the first three months of this year versus the same time period last year. Within the top-ten broadcast-TV shows, advertisers paid for 26,000 product placements in 2007….
… And television integration is merely one ripple in a larger trend that also extends to “highbrow” art forms. In the recent revival of the musical Sweet Charity, the line “I’ll have a double Scotch on the rocks” was changed (with Neil Simon’s permission) to an order for “Cuervo Gran Centenario.”…
This is the post-TiVo click-culture counter-revolution I talk about in the middle section of the book: There’s no way to “zap past” these commercial messages, or the many others that Nussbaum collects in the piece.
Anyway, the article is definitely worth reading (and maybe it’s been highlighted already on marketing/ad blogs, but I hadn’t seen it until my physical issue of New York arrived yesterday), if nothing else, just skim through and fine the bit about Soyjoy.
And of course if you, or your friends at New York, are interested in murky forms of marketing, plenty of links, updated all the time, here.
The band Of Montreal recently published something that reads like a short manifesto, or possibly a parody of a manifesto, with the title, “We Will Only Propogate Exceptional Objects.” The first paragraph riffs on identity:
To project our self identity into the outer and, to amplify the howl of our self expression, we have many tools at our disposal; our art, our clothing and hair style, the way we talk…, and, for a lot of us, the objects that populate our living spaces. There are myriad vendors, attempting to contribute to our identity campaigns, creating rather dull and uninspiring products. Making the production of any new objects, at this point, almost seem criminal.
This sounds like a complaint about consumer culture. Or, again, a parody of a complaint about consumer culture. “The howl of our self expression”?
Anyway, whatever the intent, it goes in a direction that seems a little odd after having just asserted that “making the production” of new identity-stuff seems “almost criminal.” Because the real point of the piece is to announce that the band’s next record will not simply be a record. It will be a “collection.”
Skeletal Lamping Collection 08 includes T-shirts, tote bags, buttons, wall decals, posteres and even a paper lantern. The idea is that with most of these objects, if you buy the thing, you get a code for a digital download of, you know, the band’s next batch of music. If you’d like this entire lifestyle suite so that you can immerse yourself fully in the Of Montreal-ness of your “identity campaign,” that’ll be $90.
I guess this is a creative way of promoting a new release — making it more “relevant,” as they say.
It also seems like kind of a reversal of the longstanding trend of trying to make products “cool” by associating them with certain music, whether it’s the background at a hip retailer, or the soundtrack to a TV ad. Maybe at this point music seems incomplete without products — and it’s the music that now needs to be made “cool” by being associated with on-trend merch.
On what I think is a very related note: Carrie Brownstein writes about the death of the “rock star” idea here. More about that later, but a line from closing paragraph: “Maybe the death of the rock star is due to the fact that brands are the new gods and musicians merely the preachers.”
Via PSFK and Marginal Utility.
Recently I read Stephen Baker’s book The Numerati, all about “the mathematical modeling of humanity,” and Bob Garfield’s long ode to data mining in Ad Age, which strikes very similar themes about the power of algorithms.
More recently I listened to a 60 Minutes report about the recent troubles on Wall Street and beyond (via podcast). Here’s a bit taken from the news show’s online textual recap of that segment:
These complex financial instruments were actually designed by mathematicians and physicists, who used algorithms and computer models to reconstitute the unreliable loans in a way that was supposed to eliminate most of the risk.
“Obviously they turned out to be wrong,” Partnoy says. [Frank Partnoy, a former derivatives broker and corporate securities attorney, who now teaches law at the University of San Diego.]
Asked why, he says, “Because you can’t model human behavior with math.”
Hm.
What say you? Can human behavior be mathematically modeled, or not?
Not to come across like president of the Jason Zweig fan club or anything, but he has another very good column today, tying some recent research about feelings of lost control and pattern invention to some of the more conspiracy-minded responses to the current market/economic turmoil.
The research is summarized briefly in this Discovery.com article, and at more length in this recent Science Friday radio broadcast (I linked to both of these in the sidebar the other day; much earlier and unrelated Murketing post on the subject of pattern invention, or pareidolia, here). The upshot is that when people feel that they have no control over their circumstances, they are more likely to believe in false patterns and conspiracy theories and the like.
From Mr. Zweig’s column:
In a related experiment, investors who had been stripped of their sense of control by market volatility were convinced that they had read more negative evidence about a company than they had actually seen — and were less willing to buy the company’s stock.
In other words, when our sense of control is threatened, we feel the natural urge to pretend that whatever information we do have is more complete and reliable than it is. Imagining that we know what’s coming next (even if we think it will be bad) gives us a slight feeling of comfort.
Posted Under:
Consumer Behavior
This post was written by Rob Walker on October 7, 2008
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It occurs to me that I have an easy rejoinder to those who continue to insist that the last ten years have shown a notable uptick in consumer savvy. That rejoinder is: “Premium denim.”
But maybe I’m wrong about that. Interested as I was to see this brief photo essay of a Kentucky denim factory that “specializes in distressing high-end jeans,” I was really interested in what the photographer said about his visit:
I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists.
Hm. Well, I’m sure they do work very hard and have lots of skill and so on. But is the idea that seeing a lot of work go into something you thought was kind of pointless thereby redeems that thing? Would you find Crocs (or whatever it is you find absurd in consumer culture) more appealing if you knew they were really hard to make?
If this question interests you, don’t miss the spirited debate in the comments appended to the photo essay.
Via BB.
I just somewhat belatedly read this story about “design thinking,” which is described as focusing on “people’s actual needs rather than trying to persuade them to buy into what businesses are selling.” This, of course, is not a new idea, although it’s always useful, I guess, to find new ways for businesses to remind themselves about the difference between innovation and novelty.
That said, what struck me as odd about the piece was the main specific example offered.
Although a company called ServiceSource asked [consulting firm] C2 to create a written report for business analysts to read, C2’s design thinkers reframed the problem to focus on what ServiceSource was trying to tell the analysts in the first place. (ServiceSource wanted the analysts to recognize that its ability to renew service contracts on behalf of technology providers could increase those providers’ revenue.)
Wait a minute. That sounds to me like this business is “trying to persuade [customers] to buy into what [it is] selling.” Right? I don’t see anything here about ServiceSource changing its business model to better reflect customer needs it hadn’t been aware of or was under-serving. It sounds like they’ve got this service they’re peddling, and that’s that.
Rather than producing a report that would probably be tossed unread into the nearest wastebasket, C2 sent the analysts a “High-Tech C.F.O. Action Figure” — a roughly 12-inch-tall male doll dressed in a business suit that delivered a brief, recorded message when its “Talk” button was pushed. …
Months after ServiceSource’s report would have been thrown away, analysts who received the “action figures” still have them.
Huh? Is this the sort of sophisticated result of “design thinking”? An action figure that bleats a sales pitch? What’s good about that? Am I missing something?
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