In Consumed: Lifebuoy: A brand shows its social responsibility to the poor — by selling to them.
“Corporate social responsibility” often means leveraging the concern (or guilt) of the affluent on behalf of those less fortunate: Sell to first-world consumers and redistribute some of the profits to address third-world problems. But a case has been made for a different strategy that involves selling to the poor themselves. In a speech last month, for instance, Harish Manwani, the chairman of Hindustan Lever Limited, pointed to his firm’s marketing Lifebuoy soap to India’s sprawling underclass as an example of its efforts to bring “social responsibility to the heart of our business.” Please continue…
The NYT obit page brings news of the passing of Edwin Traisman, who “helped invent iconic foods.” Should food be “invented”? Today, we might say no, but he worked in a different era, and I’m not here to judge. Anyway, the obit mostly focuses on Traisman’s contributions to McDonald’s fry uniformity, but this is what I’d like to know more about:
While he was at Kraft, from 1949 to 1957, Mr. Traisman led the team that combined cheese, emulsifiers and other ingredients into the bright yellow sauce called Cheez Whiz.
Imagine the excitement of being in on the Cheez Whiz team. It must have been the Manhattan Project of bright yellow sauce invention.
Posted Under:
Obituaries,
Sustenance by Rob Walker on June 9, 2007
Comments Off on Not cheese. Cheez.
Posting will probably be light this week, because I’m not in the home office. Where I am is, obviously, none of your business.
Posted Under:
Uncategorized by Rob Walker on June 5, 2007
Comments Off on The opposite of Twitter
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“where does the stereotype of the moody, sullen, sexually irresponsible and financially incompetent adolescent come from? Dr. Epstein says most adults would behave that way, too, if they had no responsibilities, no rights, and money to spend.”
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“Brother Ali is a minority, but not in the ways you might expect. First, he’s a white rapper in a genre filled with mostly black artists. Second, Brother Ali is an albino.”
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Howard Kurtz puzzles over social networking: “It almost seems like the point is to collect a long list of names rather than establish relationships outside your immediate circle.” No shit.
Posted Under:
Uncategorized by Rob Walker on June 4, 2007
Comments Off on links for 2007-06-04
In Consumed: Wine chains: Turning a purchase requiring specialized knowledge into something for Everyman — everywhere.
Consumer sophistication is on the rise. Just look at what we drink. Not coffee from a can or mass-market beer, but complex lattes and fine pinot noir. When there is a great enough thirst for sophistication (or anything else), something becomes inevitable: a chain of relevant franchises. Or in the case of wine, a couple of them: one recent list of fast-growing franchises included both Vino 100 (with about 60 locations open) and WineStyles (about 110 locations)….
Continue reading at the NYT site.
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More skepticism regarding recent Consumed subject Credit Covers: “If we really wanted to throw off our consumer shackles, we certainly wouldn’t be embracing these embarrassing designs.”
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Freakonomics observes: “If your goal is to call attention to a serious issue that people are deeply conflicted about on moral, medical, and legal grounds, I’m thinking that a theatrical hoax is kind of a suboptimal way to accomplish it.”
Posted Under:
Uncategorized by Rob Walker on June 2, 2007
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A while back, I was on the thesis committee of a RISD grad student who was working with QR codes. I had never hever heard of them at the time, but was definitely intrigued, both by the technology and his work with it. I’m not sure what ever came of his projects, but I was pretty interested in seeing another take on using such codes in the context of consumer objects: A Parsons student named Julia Vallera converted chunks of her diary into the code, and printed it on a T-shirt. If you have, say, a mobile phone with the right technology, you can use it
to scan the barcode on the shirt. The scan will translate the barcode to reveal the profile of the person wearing the shirt. You can see the person’s age, name, interests, or whatever they chose as their profile.
All the QR codes used in this project are excerpts from my diary. I printed them on tee shirts and bags knowing they would be seen by hundreds of people. The idea of presenting something as private as a diary to the public in a code that requires specific technology to read is a contradiction. The message here is still private to a certain level, but presented in a very public way.
That’s from her explanation of the project, here. (She points to QR code generators here and here, and mentions this company, I guess in Milan, that does something similar, but I found their site too annoying to deal with.) According to her site, she’ll make you a QR code shirt, based your 250-word-max entry, for $20.
Personally, what interests me about this project (and that RISD student’s exploration of these codes) is that I think it kind of neatly encapsulates a lot of things about contemporary consumption in general these days. In an era of underground brands and so on, a lot of logos are becoming less like conspicuous symbols, and more like secret codes — exactly the kind of secret codes that the consumer wants to be asked about, in fact. Public/private, if you see what I mean. Using actual QR codes just makes the process more explicit.
Anyway, this was part of a Parsons class dealing with mobile phones and identity. Via Textually.
Pretty interesting story today in the WSJ about what I feel obliged to call the democratization of outsourcing. Don’t want to edit your own wedding video? Find someone in a lower-wage economy to do it for you.
Some early adopters are figuring out how to tap overseas workers for personal tasks. They’re turning to a vast talent pool in India, China, Bangladesh and elsewhere for jobs ranging from landscape architecture to kitchen remodeling and math tutoring. They’re also outsourcing some surprisingly small jobs, including getting a dress designed, creating address labels for wedding invitations or finding a good deal on a hotel room, for example.
Will Lou Dobbs haul some of the early adopters onto his show to lash them for behaving like soulless multinational citizens robbing Americans of good jobs? Will the trend industry become radicalized when someone notices that some of these bargain-priced workers are designers?
Here’s the story.
Posted Under:
World News by Rob Walker on June 2, 2007
Comments Off on Personal outsourcing
Barbie, Hello Kitty.
Posted Under:
Uncategorized by Rob Walker on June 1, 2007
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Agenda Inc.‘s list of favorite things for the month included this YouTube Video of Andy Warhol eating a burger. After enjoying that, I spent a minute or two seeing what other Warhol artifacts are on YouTube. I watched only one: This short clip, in which Warhol gives the greatest interview of all time. I’ve seen it before and it always kills me. An absolutely perfect 30 seconds.
Posted Under:
Artists,
Pleasing by Rob Walker on June 1, 2007
Comments Off on “Um, yes.”
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“What is left of the city he came to love?”
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Carrie McLaren, not a fan of the product in last Sunday’s Consumed: “To the guy who sells this crap: You want to be carbon neutral? Stop breathing.”
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Posted Under:
Uncategorized by Rob Walker on May 31, 2007
Comments Off on links for 2007-05-31
A week ago I got an email blast from The Future Perfect about “An exclusive launch of Lladró Re-Deco by Jaime Hayon. Today, the Colette newsletter says:
Lladró presents the Re-Deco collection, inspired by the classic figurines such as girls, flowers and animals, but designer Jaime Hayon’s imbuing them with novel finishes and tones and intertwining the pure white of the porcelain with a platinum touch. … And don’t miss the world premiere of the new Lladró candle collection available on the colette eshop.
Back in January, I noted with some surprise the presence of Lladró figurines in Golden Globes goodie bags, and a comment on that post confirmed my own basic assumption: “I don’t know anyone under 65 who collects Lladro.”
So, is Lladró reinvigorating the brand for a hipper, younger, customer who takes cues from tastemaker retail like Future Perfect & Colette? Is it working? Is this a new version of a sort of forward-thinking camp? Can it all be traced back to something Andrew Andrew did in 2004 (see penultimate item here)?
I’m not sure. Interested in hearing more about the new new Lladró, I replied to the Future Perfect’s (unsolicited) blast, twice, but never heard back.
The winner of the contest in the most recent installment of the Journal of Murketing email newsletter is: Shawn of Iridesco.
Possibly more interesting than the contest, and certainly more interesting than the fact that (with one exception) all of you failed to win it, are the details of the prize package. The explicit purpose of this contest was to draw praise and attention to Mr. Josh Neufeld, becauses he deserves praise and attention. Even if you didn’t win the contest, you can still enjoy his work by checking out his ongoing series A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge. Or by clicking links below that will lead you to places where you can buy things.
The prize package consisted of:
Issue Number Two of The Vagabonds. (Mr. Neufeld provided Murketing with several copies of the issue some time ago, perhaps thinking that I would keep one and could give the others to really cool people who would enjoy them. I did that with a few issues, but still had one left to give.
Titans of Finance. I have a bunch of these, for obvious reasons.
Drawn Bits, a collection of comix and writing related to comix.
A Titans of Finance postcard.
Pretty good, huh! I’m sorry that you didn’t win! Except for Shawn, I mean. Who did win.
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“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveals there are 107 registered “hippie” trademarks that peddle products or services somehow strategically aligned with Day-Glo paint and paisley.”
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“A 37-year-old woman suffering from an inoperable brain tumor wants to donate a kidney before she dies and will choose the recipient from among three contestants on Dutch national television”
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