MURKETING

No-time watch time

So, this is sort of what I had in mind when I suggested that the time has come for watches that don’t tell time. This is not a bracelet. It’s clearly a watch. Or rather, it is something that uses the watch form, to be a not-watch.

I’m personally not drawn to the gimmick of the giant word “NOW,” which strikes me as ham-handed design at best. Really, how many times could you wear this $50 item? It’s more of a gag than idea. (I’m also not a fan of these Hercules-style watchband that certain phad-leaders seem to favor these days, but that’s another story.) Even something like “TOO LATE” would have been funnier — or more my taste, anyway.

Still, it’s a start, and it’s making use of the watch face for a graphic idea, not the old and mundane business of hours, minutes and seconds, which none of us have time for anymore. That’s what I’ll say in favor of this item: It’s very now.

On (not in) the bag

Interesting post on the Elsewares blog about a company called Mobi working with Todd Oldham on some snappy-looking sandwich bags:

The problem is that this product has nothing at all to do with design. It’s just packaging (which, like all packaging, ends up in the trash). I’m climbing up on my soapbox here, but I don’t think design is about making things look different with shapes and color, but about creating innovative solutions. Even if these bags were made of recycled plastic (they’re not), aren’t they just non-biodegradable garbage waiting to happen?

The company itself replied to his post, saying that it is shifting “biodegradable plastic” in the near future, and insisting that these bags are “recyclable.” Elsewares likes the biodegradable plastic news, but checked into whether plastic sandwich bags can be easily recycled, and found mixed answers.

My own take on this is that I remain suspicious of things like snappy-looking sandwich bags. When will the general strategy of adding “good design” to mundane objects run its course? I guess when it stops being such an easy way to jack up margins. Which hasn’t happened yet.

Product of the day

“This is actual soap … shaped like little hands!”

Oooookaaaayyyy.

Via Popgadget.

On the Whole Foods CEO’s masked comments

Some online reaction to the Mackey thing.

“This is behavior unbecoming of a CEO no matter the size of the company,” says Brand Autopsy. “This foolishness makes me want to question Mackey’s character and judgment.”

“It’s inconceivable that someone who fights off the wolves of Wall Street every quarter would resort to hiding behind an online mask,” says Church of the Customer.

On the other hand, the often-tough Chews Wise says it’s “more in the category of a stupid dog trick.”

Croc On

Consumed: Crocs: A trendy shoe marches on despite detractors — or maybe because of them.

In the summer of 2006, Crocs wearers ranged from children to senior citizens, from the image-indifferent to the celebrity chef Mario Batali. The suggestion of ubiquity was probably magnified by the fact that seeing one pair of the oversize and often brightly colored footwear felt like seeing five. The Washington Post noted the “goofy” shoes were spreading “like vermin,” and Radar Magazine anointed the “hideous” items “summer’s most unfortunate fad.” The good news for critics was that fads fade and that the Croc thing seemed to be at a peak. But a year later Crocs still have traction; in fact, the company’s sales through the first quarter of 2007 are roughly triple what they were for the same period in 2006, and imitations and knockoffs abound. The shoes might still end up as props at the kitschy ’00s-themed parties of future college students (worn with trucker hats for the guys and huge sunglasses for the ladies). But it may be that Crocs have a foothold not just despite critics of the shoes’ appearance but because of them…. Please continue…

Simpson imaginary brand addendum

Unbeige pointed out that I failed to point out the absence of Duff Beer in the Simpsons imaginary brand promotion the other day. I just got email from somebody that, among other things, made me aware of the above product: “This Simpsons collectible is a full sized replica of a can of Duff Beer, the ONLY beer served at Moe’s Tavern. The lid screws off and reveals a set of Simpsons playing cards.” The same online store also sells Duff T‘s etc.

Just so you know.

Appropriate conduct

Not knowing very much about the Los Angeles graffiti scene, I’m really not sure how to judge whether this L.A. Weekly cover story is on the mark in touting the significance of a crew, or collective, there called The Seventh Letter.

With more than 100 members operating under the Seventh Letter banner, names like Revok, Retna, Saber, Push, Rime and Zes are just a few to watch as they fast become L.A.’s modern muralists. The Seventh Letter’s roots go back nearly 20 years, when the collective’s founder and leader, Eklips, a legendary writer in his own right, started the AWR (Art Work Rebels/Angels Will Rise) and MSK (Mad Society Kings) writing crews while bombing around the Motor Yard in Los Angeles.

Okay. Well, anyway, nowadays they have a brand, and do a bit of client work as well.

Having done paying jobs for Adidas, Boost Mobile, Nike and Scion, Seventh Letter members may get heat from other artists for selling out, but they refer to their opportunities as “buying in.” Why let a junior designer in an ad agency attempt the crew’s style when the real guy can do it better and faster and offer the product a little credibility?

“When a company hires or sponsors a Seventh Letter writer, they know they are going to get a professional, someone who can conduct themselves in an appropriate way,” says Eklips.

Here’s the site, if you want to hire or sponsor them, or just check out the many pix, including a Juxtapoz collaboration.

Consumer-generated ads to the rescue

Exciting news! The global warming crisis will soon be solved. Why? Because Current TV is having a consumer-generated ad contest, that’s why. “The way nations and societies make up their minds in the modern age has much more to do with mass advertising than many of us purists would like, but that’s the reality,” Al Gore informs the New York Times. “Since we face a true planetary emergency, we have to give the planet a P.R. agent.”

Your brow is furrowed because all this talk of “mass advertising” and PR agencies sounds kind of old-think, am I right? Well, unfurrow now. Current TV will tapping the creativity of the masses, who will be incentivized to submit their home-made 15, 30, or 60-second TV spots by the possibility of winning a brand new car! The winner will be announced in November, and after that the awesome power of advertising will kick in, hip us all to the problem of this global warming thing — which, really, has hardly gotten any attention — which I can only assume will be promptly solved.
The Times story includes a quote from Butler, Shine honcho Greg Stern. (NYT doesn’t mention it, but that agency was a user-generated-content pioneer, with its Converse Gallery campaign.) “The idea of turning to consumers to spread the word is very smart,” Stern says. “It might even preclude the need for an ad agency.”

He sounds kind of relieved.

The bomb

I had never heard of Squidsicle until seeing an image of a grenade decorated with LV iconography on Counterfeit Chic today. The post describing what it is begins, “Remember those three inert grenades I bought?” I’ll let you read the rest of the explanation there.

Obviously I’m now quite interested in Squidsicle.

Strange moments in DIY tinkering

According to the winning entry in the Instructables Office Supply Challenge, you may be able to fix your broken iPod by popping it open sticking a folded business card inside. I have no idea why this would work. My iPod isn’t broken, so I’m not going to try. But maybe yours is. Are you out there Stay Free?

“Bizarre and ill-advised”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out: The WSJ has a story this morning about the fact that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey used to be a regular on Yahoo’s stock boards, talking up his own company, and trashing competitor Wild Oats, all under a fake name — “rahodeb.” Kind of like Lee Siegel. He didn’t do this two or three times, he did it for seven or eight years. One amusing example has Mackey writing, under a pseudonym: “While I’m not a ‘Mackey groupie,’ I do admire what the man has accomplished.”

Sheesh.

The Journal story is inconclusive on the legal implications. I go along with a securities law expert quoted saying that, “at a minimum, it’s bizarre and ill-advised.”

So what will happen? Even if there’s no illegality, I can imagine a negative-publicity feeding frenzy that causes Mackey serious problems.

I can also imagine that people will shrug it off because he generally seems to be a good CEO with impressive values, and this whole incident has only come to light by way of the FTC’s not-very-convincing argument that Whole Foods should be blocked from buying Wild Oats.

Although I’ve never reported on Whole Foods, I think all in all it’s a compelling company, and Mackey is a compelling CEO. But he was spectacularly stupid to do this. There’s just no reason for it, and reading that he was hyping is own stock, calling Wild Oats a “bad company,” etc. … that’s just gross. Plus his response to the whole thing on the company site isn’t very impressive. (Example: “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me,” he writes. Uh, no shit. That’s part of the problem.)

I guess we’ll wait and see what happens next.

Crocs Consumed

Dedicated Murketing readers will recall the recent-ish post about Crocs. Well, this is one of those instances where noodling around on this site led to a Consumed column, on the subject of Crocs, to be published this Sunday. Thanks to those who offered feedback to the earlier post.

Also, I have no idea if this will work but this is a link to the column that goes out to Times Select types.

Digg the social media murketing landscape

From an interview with a guy who runs something called Subvert & Profit, which “makes a business out of gaming social media site Digg for paying advertisers.” Basically, advertisers pay the company to get its secret team to Digg stories onto that famous social-media site’s front page, or at least as close as possible.

Q: Is [your company] the future of online advertising?

A: Our type of business will certainly become a larger part of advertising, potentially off the Internet as well. Forget about social media for a bit, and consider that S&P pioneers a mixture of two quickly rising paradigms: crowdsourcing and undercover marketing. Gaming social media sites is just a subset of that mixture.

Q: Does it work for your advertisers? How much are clients paying on average? For how many eyeballs?

A: Our system has successfully placed a good deal of content on the front page of Digg. At this point, 2 out of 3 advertisements are successful, and we’re getting better. Ultimately our attempts are at the mercy of the Digg community. The average client buys 70 Diggs, though some clients prefer to gamble by purchasing 10-20, hoping that regular Digg users will carry them the rest of the way. We haven’t collected enough data from satisfied advertisers, though I’ve heard a story on Digg gets roughly 10,000 visitors. Once a blog I run under another name got over 30,000. All of this translates to organic marketing that is an order of magnitude cheaper than most other forms of Internet advertising.

Simpsons, Kimpsons, and imaginary products

The insane Simpsons movie marketing attack is getting a lot of attention, but I have to mention two aspects of it. One is the strategy of making over certain 7-11 locations into Kwik E Marts stocked with the various fake products that are part of the show’s universe. It is definitely the most fully realized experiment in imaginary brands that I’ve ever seen. Here’s a set of images of the NY Kwik E Mart from Freshness. Here’s an overview of the imaginary brands on offer (via this guy, who’s got a list of Simpsons marketing tactics going).

The other interesting thing is that there’s a Vans artist series tied to the movie. Actually, that’s not really so interesting by itself, but one of the artists invited into the collaboration was Murketing favorite KAWS. One of the things KAWS is known for is his “Kimpsons” imagery. (Examples below and here and here.)

Some intellectual property owners might see something like that and send a cease-and-desist. Others are clever enough to do nothing, until the day comes to send a contract and a check. An image of the KAWS/Simpsons/Kimpsons Vans (among others from the series) at Complex.

The end of insignificance

I’ve made the point in passing that we might well pity the future historian, dealing with the awesome morass of personal documentation that is one of the hallmarks of the present. The scrapbooks, the professionally edited DVDs of a million weddings, the limitless digital self-data. Science fiction writer Charles Stross has a more upbeat view about it:

Some time after our demise, this information will be available to historians.

And what a mass of information it will be…

They’ll be able to see the ephemera of public life and understand the minutiae of domestic life; information that is usually omitted from the historical record because the recorders at the time deemed it insignificant but which may be of vital interest in centuries to come.