MURKETING

Shopdropping, lifted

Here then, my final bit on the subject(s) of backlashes, word-of-mouth, and the allegedly forthcoming “world in which consumer engagement occurs without consumer interruption.”

A couple of months ago, I got an email from someone named Jessica, which said: “Hey. First, I think you have a great site. I work for Travelistic.com and we have a new video online about shopdropping.” She passed on the link, which she encouraged me to post, forward, or whatever. “It seems that shopdropping is a project that’s becoming an international trend,” she added, “and definitely deserves attention!”

Travelistic turned out to be “a site that lets you explore the world through video. We host all kinds of travel videos, including user uploads, professional content, and tourist board videos.”

The video on Travelistic that Jessica pointed me to was made at a recent workshop led by Steve Lambert of the Anti-Advertising Agency, which described shopdropping as “a tactic used by artists and activists to clandestinely place objects in retail stores. ‘Dropped’ objects are usually versions of consumer products altered or recreated to detourn the retail experience. Shopdropping is a fun and easy form of culture jamming, gently subverting dominant cultural forms to create new meanings.”

On the Travelistic site, the video was headlined “Culture Jamming 101.”

I looked back at Jessica’s email, and noted that her address ended not in Travelistic.com, but in Industryninefive.com. This turned out to be “a high-energy creative think tank and advertising agency.” High energy! I like that! What else can you tell me?? I checked the site.

We could tell you we’ve crafted online strategic branding campaigns for global Fortune 500 companies, and handled the positioning and PR for multi-national accounts. But all of that seems a bit too limiting. We manage every aspect of promoting your business from conception to execution. In a word, we are ideas.

Okay, that’s enough. Stop.

Whether or not shopdropping is becoming an international trend, it was certainly never intended to be repurposed for a word of mouth advertising campaign. But I have to say, this approach seems to have been at least somewhat effective. I know that the day I after I got the email from “Jessica,” the Consumerist had a post that, while snotty and dismissive of shopdropping as a tactic, did link to Travelistic. (They didn’t mention a press release or email from “Jessica” or anyone else, so maybe they found it some other way; I don’t know.) If you Google “shopdropping,” the Travelistic “Culture Jamming 101” link comes up just ahead of a link to the Anti-Advertising Agency’s site.

(Also, there used to be a comment from a certain “Jessica” on the AAA site, which said: “Hey I just saw a video about you guys on Travelistic.com. This is the first I’m hearing about shop dropping, but I think it’s great! I’m definitely going to start downloading and dropping. Check out the video,” followed by a link to Travelistic. The comment has since been deleted*.)

Here, then, is another glimpse of what we may have to look forward to in the post-TiVo era. The 30-second ad might be less effective, and more rarely seen. But that just means everything else under the sun becomes potential fodder for “buzz”-building. Even videos of culture-jamming workshops.

Excited?

[* Mr. Lambert did not know about “Jessica’s” efforts until I brought it up. I hope to be able to share some of his thoughts about this and other subjects in a forthcoming Q&A on this site.]

Kleening up

I guess this is negative word of mouth week here at Murketing. While I was away recently, somebody from Not An Alternative sent along this Youtube link, of some activists prankishly inserting themselves in a Kleenex marketing stunt.

The marketing stunt was the Kleenex “Let It Out Tour.” This involves the brand showing up in various cities, and inviting regular old folks like YOU to sit in front of a camera, tell a story that makes you want to cry, climaxing with you actually weeping into your Kleenex. Or something like that. The site says: “Here’s your chance to participate. You might even be featured on letitout.com or included in future let it out™ commercials from the KLEENEX® Brand!”

It’s not clear to me how much this is a ripoff of Jet Blue’s ripoff of David Isay’s work, but that’s another story. Either way, it’s a complete mystery to me why anyone would want to participate in something so transparently phony. But I guess plenty of people do.

Anyway, when the tour arrived in Times Square late last month, activists associated with the Greenpeace project Kleercut were among those to get in front of the camera. After telling a standard tear-jerker, they would then say another thing that makes them sad is the forests being wiped out to make Kleenex. Obviously these confessionals won’t make it into an actual Kleenex ad, but videos made by the pranksters have gone up on YouTube, and have gotten some circulation on the Net.

Could this spark a massive consumer backlash against Kleenex? I doubt it.

But that’s not exactly what the activists have in mind, or at least it’s not the whole picture. As one of the activists in the video explains: “A lot of their money that they spend on PR is put into campaigns like this. If we can show the shareholders that the money they’re using for this PR isn’t effective, and they’re wasting a lot of money, it’s gonna cause shareholders to hopefully back out and demand cleaner, more forest-friendly products.”

Persuading shareholders? Why bother with that! If it’s true that one determined detractor can do as much damage as 100 positive mentions do good, then shouldn’t they simply ignore the shareholders and fight directly in the marketplace?

I know that everyone says consumers are more tuned in to green issues these days, but I think it would still be pretty tough to win this fight in the marketplace. However, it’s plausible that these activists can amass data (how many hits, how many views, etc.) that could be packaged as evidence that there’s a potential backlash. Convincing shareholders to believe in that backlash might be a challenge, but it more likely than trying to convince the public at large.

Coming tomorrow: One last post about word of mouth, backlashing, and murketing.

God and chocolate

Beliefnet today has some material about spirituality and spending. A list of seven tips includes advice on “How to perform random acts of kindness.” (“Create a Random Kindness Budget that you give a few dollars to each month,” etc.).

All pretty straightforward, except that that particular entry ends with:

Recommended: Give the gift of chocolate by L.A. Burdick.

Is that a sponsored link? Why that particular chocolate? Is it more spiritual than other lux chocolate brands?

Weird.

Anti-Urban

Speaking of negative word of mouth:

One thing I’ve noticed that many independent artists/entrepreneurs have in common, even when their work and cultural contexts vary widely, is a dislike of Urban Outfitters, which they all assert is a stealser of ideas. Now BoingBoing points out a blog that’s basically about this very theme: “UrbanCounterfeiters.com.”

The most recent post there is from March 17, and recounts a protest at a Vancouver location of the chain.

This seems to be the only way to get through to them – the ground roots approach, hitting individual stores and real people instead of their corporate headquarters where we’ve been virtually stonewalled – so we’re going to be handing out these pamphlets in front of the majority of their locations across the United States and Canada over the next few months. If you live in a city that has an Urban Outfitters store in it and you have a couple of hours to spare for the cause, please send an e-mail to urbancounterfeiters@hotmail.com

Worth keeping an eye on … See the site itself for more.

What to pack?

The mother of a 19-year-old soldier (actually he’s indirectly referred to as both a Marine and a soldier, which are two different things) bound for Iraq writes about what he’ll be taking with him:

Each soldier is limited to a knapsack and two sea bags — what civilians would call duffels. Space is tight. Once Greg packed his firearms, there was hardly room for any of the other paraphernalia that might make seven months in Iraq bearable, assuming that such a thing is possible.

I am not there for the send-off, but confident that he made room for his iPod. “I would lose my mind without it,” he told me during his last visit home. “What makes you think you won’t lose your mind anyway?” I wanted to ask. But that is exactly the kind of thing I can never say.

My husband reports that Greg took a stack of DVDs to play on his laptop, another piece of electronic equipment that he presumably managed to cram into his bags. But I have few details. I do not know, for example, whether he chose comedies or combat films to while away the downtime, if such a thing exists.

Here’s the whole essay.

Patterns on the diamond

The Sunday open thread on the always-interesting Uni Watch blog noted that “Padres broke out their desert camouflage uniforms.” Since I wasn’t quite so tuned in to team uniform variations in the pre-Uni Watch blog era, I didn’t know the Padres had such uniforms. I also wasn’t sure why they had such uniforms. I’m still not sure when it started, but here’s the “why” explanation from a Padres press release from 2006:

Saturday’s 7:05 p.m. matchup with the Mets marks the Eleventh Annual “Military Opening Day” presented by Northrop Grumman Corporation. The Padres will continue their custom of donning camouflage uniforms, this time wearing a desert pattern worn by troops serving the Middle East. Five thousand half-price tickets, offered to the military community until 24 hours prior to Saturday’s game, are available by presenting a valid military identification card at the Padres Advance Ticket Windows at PETCO Park.

This is an interesting convergence.

One Uni Watch commenter sticks to the aesthetic context, pronouncing the uniforms “friggin’ hideous.” Another goes with the context of, you know, the war: “I guess you have to live in San Diego to appreciate what those camo uniforms mean to us. The Padres do not wear them as a gimic, like so many teams do in the minors. They represent a serious appreciation for the vast military population that is found in San Diego.”

I’m not sure what to say about it. It never really occurred to me that defense contractors would do baseball promotions. But I guess I can’t come up with any reason why it shouldn’t happen. It just all seems a little jarring. Maybe it’s just me.

Update: Mr. Lukas (who I should have checked with, now that I think of it) fills in some details:

“The Padres have been doing the camo thing since ’99 or so, as a tribute to the city’s large military population. It used to be a once-a-year thing; now they do it a few times during the season. Back when it started, they’d just have a camo jersey but stuck with their regular caps, helmets, underlsleeves, etc., so nothing matched. Over the years they’ve slowly added an olive-drab cap, olive undersleeves, olive helmets, etc. They’ve also switched from the green jungle camo to the tan desert camo.

“I’ve always found the whole thing very odd. Like, what if a player wants to be, shall we say, a conscientious objector?”

Card design callback

In an interesting quasi-response to, or riff on, or whatever, my prepaid-phone-card design Consumed, New York design studio Iridesco posts a breakdown of designs for a ring tone card.

Influence and reality

A little more than two years ago, I did a Consumed column about Splenda. In the few years it had been on the market, the stuff had become the top-selling sugar substitute, with annual sales of more than $175 million. The brand’s tag line was the mysterious “made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar.” Among those unimpressed by this confusing claim were the makers of other sugar substitutes, as well as the Sugar Association. The makers of Equal had sued Splenda parent Johnson & Johnson, and the Sugar Association had started an anti-Splenda web site.

Right after the column appeared, I got an email from someone at a consulting company that tracks “online buzz,” chastising me for failing to check in with him before writing the column. Basically their data showed that the online buzz on Splenda had turned negative, largely as a result of the Sugar Association campaign. “The Sugar Association is really executing some effective reverse marketing….. What was once positive grassroots enthusiasm [for Splenda] seems to be turning negative.” The implication was that I’d made a fool of myself by writing about Splenda right when it was about to collapse in popularity, as the online buzz revealed. The “data,” I was informed, “underscore tremendously the crisis that Splenda is in.”

I checked back with this person six months later, in September 2005. I asked if there had been any decline in Splenda sales. “We don’t track sales – we only track the consumer buzz online among the hundreds of thousands of most engaged and influential food/nutrition consumers,” I was told. And the buzz among these people was still “very mixed,” with a lot of negative chatter about potential Splenda side effects, etc.

Interesting, I guess, but my editor is always pestering me for actual facts, so I forgot about the whole thing — until seeing a story in the WSJ on Friday. The Equal vs. Splenda trial is about to begin; the issue is whether Splenda marketing has misled consumers. And that’s an interesting issue, which maybe I’ll write about later.

But what jumped out at me was the fact that Splenda is still the top-selling sugar substitute, with sales of $212 million in 2006 – which is a 21 percent increase since I wrote that column.

Some “crisis”! Now I understand why that consultancy doesn’t track sales: Because the reality of what’s happening in the marketplace doesn’t sync up with the “influence” that it’s supposedly quantifying. After all, what do rising sales say about negative buzz among among “influential food/nutrition consumers”? If the “influential” consumers are buzzing negatively, and sales go up – then who, exactly, are the influential consumers influencing?

I’m astounded that consultancies can peddle this line that they’re collecting valuable, insightful, predictive data about online “buzz” — that ends up having absolutely no correlation to what happens in offline reality. But I probably shouldn’t be astounded. Maybe I’m failing to grasp how an “influential” consumer is defined. Maybe the key is to remember that they don’t necessarily have all that much, you know, influence. Except among certain consulting firms, and, perhaps, their paying clients.

Consumed, “Consumed”

So I finally get noticed by the mainstream media. Devastating takedown? Or yet more proof that “Gawker has become almost impossible to read“?

Who cares. It’s just another disappointment: No link to this site at all! Thanks for nothing. Gwankers.

Not Necessarily Toast

In Consumed: Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster: How makers of a decades-old appliance still find new ways to catch consumer interest.

In a recent issue of The M.I.T. Sloan Management Review, Michael Schrage, a business writer and an M.I.T. researcher, challenged the thinking of a prominent Columbia Business School professor. More specifically, he challenged what Bruce Greenwald, whose work focuses on finance and investing, has said about the fate of all innovative technologies: “In the long run, everything is a toaster.” That is to say, even the most impressive breakthrough eventually becomes mundane, with all producers offering more or less identical versions of the same item and competing largely on the basis of price: innovation runs its course, and the thing becomes a commodity.

Schrage’s article, “The Myth of Commoditization,” argued that not only is this not true of technological breakthroughs, it’s not even true of toasters. “Heated bread lacks the high-tech cachet of multicore processors or polymerase chain reactions,” he wrote, but the “technical evolution” of toasters offers a “case study in profitable innovation.” The Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster seems to offer pretty good evidence in his argument’s favor….

Continue reading at the NYT site by way of this no-registration-required link.

Related links: American Heritage history of the toaster; “Cool Tools” hype for the Egg & Muffin Toaster.

* April 14 Update: Selected reactions from elsewhere:

1) Glass House.

2) Marginal Utility.

Annals of empowerment

Catching up on some reading that I fell behind on after being away for a few days, I see that Bob Garfield invited the readers of a recent issue of Ad Age to ponder “a post-apocalyptic media world substantially devoid of brand advertising as we have known it…. a world in which consumer engagement occurs without consumer interruption.”

This is the latest installment of the “chaos scenario” he’s been pushing for a while now, and of course the Internet is a big part of it; the online video boom that’s taken off since his original chaos piece two years ago is underscored.

I always have to remind myself that Garfield is writing for the trade, not for the rest of us. And maybe he’s correct about What It All Portends for ad pros. (Although I have to say, most of the marketers I deal with don’t seem to be trembling in their limited-edition sneakers, but possibly they’re just in denial.) Yet when I read for the zillionth time that the “consumer is in control,” and the Webby world will be devoid of commercial interruption, all I can say is: Have you ever been on the Web? Cos I’ve kinda noticed some ads there.

And speaking of online video, I see that Lonelygirl15, the wildly hyped fake video diary, has cut a sponsorship deal, with Hershey. Of course the savvy forward-thinking types who made Lonelygirl15 a hit, or at least the subject of many articles in the “mainstream” media, won’t stand for commercials. So:

In a video posted on March 20 on the official Lonelygirl site, Lg15.com, the show’s main character Bree is seen offering her friends a piece of Icebreaker’s gum, and a close-up of the product is shown.

According to Brandweek, this is a “sophisticated” example of “branded entertainment.”

As a non-member of the ad trade, it kind of sounds to me like consumer interruption. It sounds like consumer interruption that can’t be avoided — because it’s embedded in the entertaintment. It sounds like a glimpse of a world in which ads aren’t segregated into 30-second chunks or double-page magazine spreads that consumers can focus on or ignore as they please: If I feel like engaging with Lonelygirl15, but I don’t feel like engaging with Icebreaker’s gum, I’m basically out of luck; I have no “control” over this scenario at all.

But what do I know? A co-creator of Lonelygirl15 sounds quite pleased. “It’s empowering,” he comments, “for us to have a major international brand like Hershey’s treat us like they would any other major entertainment property.”

Thinking like a champion

How will LeBron James decide whether to join the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 2008? Will it be a matter of patriotism? The champion’s desire for the gold medal? The raw need to compete at the highest level, with the best of the best?

Possibly. Or maybe it will just be a matter of what’s best for the brand called LeBron. ESPN notes:

Jeopardizing his spot on the Beijing roster would be a huge risk for James, who has been studying Mandarin as he seeks to become even more of a marketing and pop icon in China. There’s are financial implications, too, for James, who would lose more than $250,000 in endorsement bonuses from Nike, Coca-Cola and Upper Deck if he failed to make the 2008 Beijing roster.

Studying Mandarin! Not even Jordan did that.

Consumption fact of the day

[Venezuela] led Latin America in per capita consumption of beer in 2005, at 83.3 liters, even slightly surpassing consumption levels in the United States, according to the research firm Euromonitor International. (The Czech Republic topped the list, with per capita consumption of 160.5 liters.)

— NYT

83.3 liters = 2,816.71 ounces = a little more than 70 forties
160.5 liters = 5,427.15 ounces = a little more than 135 forties

‘Where Were You?’

Now available, my first zine since the “Letters From New Orleans” ones (which of course later became an actual book).

SFN Products: 008: Where Were You? (2006)

“Where Were You?” has nothing whatsoever to do with marketing, consumer culture, advertising, design, or anything else I write about on this site. But this is, after all, my site.

In a giveaway promotion for Journal of Murketing email subscribers a few moments ago, the three available “promo” copies were snapped up in less than 30 seconds! Doesn’t that make you want one? Even if one of the recipients admitted that he assumed any givewaway at all would go fast and replied before he even know what he was getting a free copy of? Well, doesn’t it?

It’s only a dollar, plus another dollar shipping, so that’s practically free anyway.

“Where Were You?” is a 44-page booklet, priced at $1, plus $1 shipping.* It’s an “edition” of 30 copies only. And what is it?

No longer available!

Or at least, not here. The last couple of copies will be sold only through www.robwalker.net. Click on “Spring 07” if you go there.

Package Deal

In Consumed: OpenX: How to solve a problem that consumers hate? With a product, of course.

Nobody likes those incredibly hard-to-open, clear plastic packages that hang from retail pegboards, trapping your new purchase inside, clearly visible but seemingly unattainable without a long struggle, a sharp implement and possibly an injury. Nevertheless, this packaging method is pervasive and shows no sign of disappearing soon. Here’s a case, then, in which the marketplace simply ignores consumers.

Actually, that’s not true. The marketplace is not ignoring consumers at all. In fact, in a recent roundup of the worst packaging, Consumer Reports noted that “a cottage industry has developed among manufacturers looking to cash in on packaging angst.” One prominent example: OpenX, a $5 device designed specifically to help people cope with seemingly impregnable plastic casings….

Continue reading here. (Problems with the NYT Magazine’s RSS feed continue, so that’s actually a link to the Boston Globe, which also publishes Consumed.)