MURKETING

Do you like comix? Seriously?

It’s always good to see Murketing’s pal Josh Neufeld getting hype, even from an unlikely source such as the marketing blog Influx Insights: Here’s their Q&A with Mr. Neufeld, on the subject of his comix project for Smith Mag, titled A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge.

An earlier Influx Insights post said that because of this whole crazy info-soaked world we living in today, there is “a new role for the comic book,” which is to tackle serious subjects, for grownup audiences. I thought that issue had been settled at least 15 years ago, when Maus won a Pulitzer Prize. But I suppose it does still pass as an insight for a lot of people. I certainly think Influx Insights is right both in its broader point, and in singling out Mr. Neufeld — but I may be biased. Check out A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge anyway.

links for 2007-05-25

• Lawsuits: MiracleGro Sues Sellers Of “Worm Poop” For Trademark Infringement – Consumerist
  Consumerist weighs in on Scotts suit against TerraCycle (reported on earlier in the WSJ, Ad Age, and of course Consumed): “The whole lawsuit seems rather silly to us.” Sounds like the strategy noted in Consumed is working out pretty well.
  (tags: updates)
• Businessmen want to flip McJob definition
  Proposed: McJob dictin definition should be altered “reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression.” Riiiiiiiighhht.
  (tags: foolhunting)
• Coca-Cola acquires Vitaminwater maker glaceau for US$4.1 billion in cash.
  August 22, 2004 Consumed subject Vitaminwater, bought by Coke. As noted in that column’s last graf notes, some parallels can be made between Coke and Vitaminwater.
  http://murketing.com/?p=567
  (tags: updates)
• Pieces of trash sold in clear plastic bubbles
  I’ve asked before whether trash-into-art projects should count as unconsumption. No answers yet.
  (tags: unconsumption)

Rules, regulations, and the eco thing

I realize it’s lame of me to be several days late in noting an article in, of all venues, the New York Times Magazine. For whatever reason, I was a little slow to get to the “Eco-Tecture” issue from this past weekend, but was pretty interested in Nicolai Ouroussoff’s piece.

For one thing, I was glad to see that he specifically noted that there have been early waves of pop-culture eco-interest, but that (for whatever reason) it disappeared in the Reagan era:

In the late 1960s and ’70s, the Whole Earth Catalogue, with its D.I.Y. ethic and living-off-the-land know-how, encouraged a whole generation to dream of dropping off the grid. By the ’80s the green dream had faded somewhat.

More substantially, I was curious about his main point, which is that European architecture is far ahead of the U.S. in its “green”-ness. At least, he makes a pretty convincing case that this is so. And in explaining why, he basically says that European governments have imposed efficiency standards, and the U.S. government has not.

The United States has no federal regulations that would guarantee a minimal level of sustainability in new construction — or spur an ecologically attuned approach to new architecture. The LEED guidelines, which were drawn up by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group founded in 1993, are a voluntary program that is now more than a decade old. Even when they are adhered to — they’ve been adopted by a number of government agencies, most notably the General Services Administration, which oversees the construction of federal buildings — they still have little effect on the majority of commercial or residential construction. In most cases, the decision to make an efficient building still rests with the client.

Nobody likes to hear about government regulations as the solution to anything these days, and I’m sure that the various libertarian thought leaders out there have all taken shots at this and assured their followers that the profit motive conquers all, and rules would come at the expense of aesthetics and innovation, etc.

Sometimes, however, rules can inspire innovation, especially in creative fields. And on the aesthetic side, Ouroussoff not only doesn’t seem to see any problems with what rule-bound European architects have created, but indicates that they’ve moved beyond buildings that overtly look “green;” they just happen to fold efficiency into the creator’s other goals and vision.

One of the problems with the idea of eco-ness as a kind of feature that attracts supposedly trend-setting consumers is that it tends to stay too much front and center. Consider Ouroussoff’s critique of LEED standards, which have always struck me as a kind of marketing talking-point.

The guidelines often lead to a constricted idea of what sustainability means. “In Europe the guidelines tend to have to do with broader organizational ideas,” Thom Mayne, the founder of the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Morphosis, told me. “Energy consumption, the organization of the workplace, urbanism — they’re all seen as interlinked. Here, the whole focus is on how to get these points. You just check them off: bike racks, high-efficiency air-conditioning units.”

I don’t know if that’s fully accurate or hyperbole, but I found it pretty compelling. Here in Savannah, there’s a pro-green contingent that’s always talking about LEED certification. It sort of reminds me of schemes to “certify” various food products in various ways, culinating in a bright certificatoin logo, as a kind of competitive advantage at the retail shelf. The problem is, this reinforces the notion of ethics as a luxury, and makes the certified product almost certain to become a niche: People who care are attracted to this certification, people who don’t, aren’t. Wholesale change may occur eventually. But it may not.

Last night I went to a presentation unveiling the proposed new master plan for downtown development. One suggestion was offering financial incentives to builders and developers who choose to get LEED certification. That’s nice for possibly inspiring some piecemeal efficiency improvements. But I’m not so sure that’s the goal we should be aiming for.

links for 2007-05-24

• NPR : Army Specialist in Recruitment Ad Killed in Iraq
  “Army Spc. Astor Sunsin-Pineda of Long Beach, Calif., enlisted straight out of high school and was featured in a recruitment ad on Spanish-language TV. He was killed earlier this month by a roadside bomb.”
  (tags: war advertising)
• Make-It-Yourself ‘Star Wars’
  “In essence, Lucasfilm is going to legitimize and streamline a pastime that has become increasingly popular on the Web.” Now they can “monetize” it, an expert observes.
  (tags: fandom)

Go logo

I make a real effort to avoid aggressively logoed merchandise. BUT ….

I ended up on the Tide web site today, and they’re selling T-shirts (there’s a charity angle) and if you buy one, you’re entered to win “an iPod customized with the Tide logo.”

Come on, admit it. That’s hot.

Q&A: Anti-Advertising Agency CEO Steve Lambert

The mission of The Anti-Advertising Agency is rather strongly suggested by its name. But to be a bit more specific, it is funded by a grant from the Creative Work Fund, and “co-opts the tools and structures used by the advertising and public relations industries. Our work calls into question the purpose and effects of advertising in public space.”

Past AAA projects have included a collaboration with Graffiti Research Lab called Light Criticism (an idea that might politely be described as the inspiration for the Boston Adult Swim marketing campaign that kicked up such a fuss a few months back) and, with Amanda Eicher, PeopleProducts123, the shopdropping workshops mentioned earlier on this site.

The AAA’s CEO is artist Steve Lambert (visitsteve.com), who was most recently in the news for a project he’s developing at Eyebeam called AddArt, “an extension for the Firefox browser which removes advertising and replaces it with art.” Mr. Lambert graciously agreed to answer a few Murketing Qs. Those, and his As, follow.

Q: Of the various projects the Anti-Advertising Agency has been involved in, which ones do you think have been most successful?

A: I don’t really know for sure. To know we would have to do what is done in any marketing campaign, which is an impartial evaluation — surveys, testing, etc. And we don’t have the budget for that. I can track some things empirically, like web hits, and I can hang out near where projects are installed and gauge reactions.

But then, what is success? Our goal is rather tough to measure — to cause the public to re-examine advertising and the role it plays in public space. But I think we reach that goal with anyone who spends more than a moment looking at our work. It’s some measure of success if they look at it at all. And if they do, how much do they take away? This is what I dwell on when I think of “success.” Please continue…

Bagged

Both Ad Age and Brandweek made mention recently of this: In Your Purse: Archaelogy of an American Handbag. Basically these researchers got 100 women to reveal and discuss the contents of their handbags. I gather these were “mall intercepts,” as they say in the trade. The site says:

“In Your Purse: Archaeology of the American Handbag” is the first exhaustive quantitative and qualitative study to delve into the contents and context of the only instrument that connects the home, where consumer needs occur, and the store, where these needs are fulfilled: in a woman’s purse.

There’s also a link to a promotional YouTube video; overtitles in the jokey intro suggest that while this all sounds kinda nutty, it’s “for science.” The project is a creation of Insightfarm, a “Market Research and Consumer Strategy Consulting firm Dedicated to Driving Business Growth through Consumer Insight.” So there’s science for you.

Maybe the results are interesting, but it’s a little hard to judge by the site or the trade coverage. Apparently it will be a book this summer. (“Innovation workshops facilitated by InsightFarm Inc.” are also available.)

Meanwhile, Fashionista has a regular “Your Bag” video feature (I’ve never watched a whole one, but I think the premise is pretty straightforward), and there’s at least one What’s In Your Bag pool on Flickr, if you want to do some research on your own while you wait for the book.

Eco turn ons and turn offs

I saw this some time ago on AdPunch:

When these photographs are seen after turning the light off it gives altogether a new picture. The campaign has used a chemical that glows in the dark.

It was certainly a remarkable idea to bring this message across people in an attractive and interesting way to compel people to think in this direction. The presentation of the campaign is too very interesting and simple. The text of the campaign reads, ‘turn off the lights and reverse global warming’. The campaign was developed by The University of Texas.

What struck me about this is that the basic message is such a throwback. This is what I remember, as a kid, being the sort of enviro message in the 1970s: Poor old Jimmy Carter telling us not to be so wasteful. Even after the oil shocks, nobody wanted to hear that, and the people tossed out scolding Jimmy in favor of amiable Ronald Reagan. Green kind of faded for a decade or two.

Now the enviro thing is back, but it’s not about turning lights off and curbing waste — it’s about buying as many eco-chic products as your credit limit allows. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but really: Is “turn out the lights” a message that’s going to be hyped on the cool-product blogs, where green friendly is regularly touted as the hottest trend? It’s just not something Oprah can give to her studio audience, or that Vanity Fair can photoshop onto its cover.

Not using energy needlessly is arguably another form of unconsumption, and raises the same question I’ve asked before: Can it ever feel as good, give the kind of pleasure, as consumption (eco or otherwise)?

This campaign seemed like an attempt to give uncomspution some kind of emotional currency, so I poked around for more information. But I never did find any, so it’s not clear to me if this was just a class project if an actual campaign that involves poster-ing, or something else.