MURKETING

Flickr Interlude

note: kitty drinking beer
Originally uploaded by poketo

Picture from Seoul.

[Join and contribute to the Murketing Flickr group]

On having looked at this dog

lookatthisdog
Originally uploaded by sugarfreak

Perhaps you’ve seen this, since it got the BoingBoing treatment a week or so ago and promptly “blew up,” as they say. (Or perhaps you haven’t seen it, since it turns out that often things that blow up on the Internet are not really seen by all that many people.)

It’s a very funny flier that popped up in Baltimore, was photographed by someone, uploaded to Flickr, etc. (You’ll have to click on it to really read it — sorry.)
I hadn’t intended to write about it, but I keep thinking about it. I’ve looked at it repeatedly now and it makes me smile every time.

The truth is I’ve been slightly afraid that it would turn out to be some kind of stealth promotional effort for something. Like the dog would turn out to be a character in a movie, or that this would somehow all have something to do with a new kind of energy drink or whatever. Everything I say from here on out is under the assumption that that’s not the case.

Because apart from just being intrinsically amusing, what’s good about this to me is that it’s self contained. It’s not pushing you toward something else. It’s not a way to engage you in some behavior the involves buying something or going somewhere for “more information.” It’s just there: A source of pure pleasure for the taking. No strings attached.

So far as I know, whoever did it is anonymous, and that’s good too.

I noticed in the Flickr comments that somebody put the image onto shirts and whatnot, which is a little annoying, the urge to commoditize. But I guess that’s pretty minor, and this isn’t going to become Snakes On a Plane, with various people attempting to launch careers from or read societal implications into a funny joke, and convert pure pleasure into a branding event and gradually make the joke unfunny in the process.

Somebody in the BoingBoing comments suggests this is a ripoff of something else, and there are comments in both threads that riff on it in a way that tries to turn it into a “meme.” But this seems too have tapered off quickly, and I’m glad.

Some pleasures are good pleasures because they are small. They don’t need riffs. They don’t ask for more. They involve no transaction. They just are. You just take it in, and you’re happy, and that’s it.

(And as a bonus, in appearing to be a lost-dog flier, but not being one at all, this extends yesterday’s theme of things that look like other things, which I’m still pondering.)

Things that look like other things: What’s the appeal?

I will admit to a weakness for a particular design strategy I seem to be seeing more and more of: Stuff that looks like other stuff. Past examples I’ve mentioned on this site have included a handbag that looks like a gun, a vase that looks like a paper bag, and my personal favorite, soap that looks like little hands.

I know I’m not the only one drawn to this sort of thing, because similar (https://comfortdentalcareofbrookline.com/order-clomid-100mg-online/) examples come up on the cool-stuff blogs all the time. Below are a few from the past week or so. What’s the appeal? Maybe it’s the simple fact that such objects make us look twice. Or maybe it has something to do with P.T. Barnum’s famous observation that people enjoy being fooled. Another possibility is that while these things are fun to look at, maybe nobody really buys them. (Although I’m pretty sure those hand soaps sell.) Still, I can imagine a whole store, or maybe just a section of a store, devoted to things that look like other things. I’d visit.

A tape dispenser that looks like a cassette. (Via Popgadget.)

A lamp that looks like a (huge) paperclip. Via MoCo Loco.

Salad tongs that look like hands. Via Better Living through Design.

Plates that look like buttons. Via Craft blog.

USB drives that look like donuts. Via Popgadget.

In Consumed: Getting Along Famously

Buddylube: A company greases the wheels between (the online presences of) celebrities and their fans.

In an interview with Rolling Stone published earlier this year, Bob Dylan commented that “the relationship between a performer and the audience is anything but a buddy-buddy thing.” The role of the Dylan fan, he suggested, is to appreciate Dylan music. This seems out of step with the pop zeitgeist. While the impact of digital technology on record labels gets more attention, it also affects the fan-star dynamic: online social networking tools promise us more interaction, or a more direct connection (to use the buzz terms of the moment), with artists. This version of the “buddy-buddy thing” has obvious appeal — so much so that the birth of a company like Buddylube seems almost inevitable….

Continue reading at the NYT site.

UPDATE: Nancy Baym (quoted in the column) has these interesting follow-up thoughts.

Q&A: Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of “Unmarketable”

In a rare – indeed, unprecedented — move, Murketing.com brings you now a Q&A with an (https://www.drsunilthanvi.com/phentermine-37-5-adipex/) author. The author is Anne Elizabeth Moore, who can also be described as an artist, an activist, co-editor of (recently departed) Punk Planet, series editor of Best American Comics, and a surprisingly nice person. The book is Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, and I think it’s quite good. (I should disclose that I was interviewed for the book and am quoted in it a few times, but I’m pretty sure I’d like the book if I weren’t mentioned in it, and possibly even it had singled me out as corporate shill.)

The book is described as “both a scathing critique of of corporate marketing’s dalliances with the cultural underground and a highly entertaining depiction of the absurdity produced by” some of those very dalliances. The description is accurate.

Plenty more on that below in the Q&A, along with interesting observations about 1) how indie culture has changed, 2) whether the argument that corporations are “funding cool stuff” holds water, 3) whether the revolution might take the form of a handbag from a DIY/crafter, 4) the “soul crushing” experience of explaining the book to professional marketers, 5) the surprisingly bad payoffs of “selling out,” and 6) why it’s really important for some things to remain truly “unmarketable.” I know it’s long but please read it all anyway – especially if you are, yourself, in any way involved something that you think of as sub-, or counter-, or indie culture. Take your time. It’s important. amoxil Thanks.

Q. I bet your publisher asked you: “Why did you write this book?” Or maybe not. But if they did, what did you say? And what’s the real answer?

A. No, in fact my editor really never questioned why I would do this book at all, and I believe on at least two occasions I had to ask her why I was writing it. At which point I think the answer was pretty much “because now you’re legally obligated under the contract you already signed,” so there it was.

The short answer to why I wrote it is that I apparently have a space in my brain where I store my discomfort with popular modes of activism, and where I was turning over projects like Dispepsi for years, just chewing on, well, the fact that a bunch of Bay-Area troublemakers kind of made a soft drink commercial unpaid. That is crazy. Why would they do that? And then when I read No Logo, and as I watched marketing change clearly as a result of that book, something clicked. My book does collect about six years of research and thought into these issues that I couldn’t even really get activists to discuss too deeply. Which I do, totally, understand: they are too damn busy to also be constantly re-theorizing their methods. Anyway I guess that space in my brain got filled up and it had to go on paper so I could start thinking about, like, my cat again.

Conceptually, the book kinda came together when, in 2005, Nike SB — long reviled by the skateboarders I’d grown up with — appropriated the image and ethos of the stridently anticorporate band Minor Threat, a part of the Dischord Records crew in DC. Some kind of circle seemed to close at that point. I started to suspect that maybe they were co-opting the underground’s strategy for debating intellectual property rights issues, called copyfighting sort of informally. At which point I just felt like, this has got to stop.

So then I stopped it. It’s over, now that the book has been written. Ha ha ha ha ha.

What’s different about “indie” culture (or whatever you want to call it, you know what I mean) now compared to 10-15 years ago? Please continue…

Flickr Interlude

Surprise
Originally uploaded by zinetv

New merch for Nike metafans

NikeTalk, the massive sneakerhead chat community (claiming 64,000+ registered users), is finally selling branded merch, Freshnessmag reports. So if it’s not enough for you to express your Nike fandom by wearing Nike products, or by communicating with others about Nike products, you might want to get a product that commemorates your participation in communication about Nike products. In other words, you will be not simply fan, but a fan of  the form of fandom in which you are participating. A metafan.

In other news, Freshness also notes the new round of Nike T’s commemorating all things Dunk-y. Maybe it’s just me, but they seem pretty weak.

J.K. Rowling loves your fandom! Until you try to monetize it

According to this A.P. story, the author of Harry Potter has “expressed support” for fandom-driven efforts like The Harry Potter Lexicon site — “a fan-created collection of essays and encyclopedic material on the Harry Potter universe.”

But apparently a book collecting material from the site is a different matter: Rowling (and Warner Brothers) are suing to block its publication.

In the lawsuit — filed on Halloween — Rowling claimed that the print version of the Lexicon would improperly interfere with her plans ambien to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, one that would include new material not in the novels.

“I cannot, therefore, approve of ‘companion books’ or ‘encyclopedias’ that seek to preempt my definitive Potter reference book for their authors’ own personal gain,” Rowling said in a news release issued by Warner Bros. The film giant owns all the intellectual property related to the Potter books and movies.

It’s pretty easy to see the difference between the two sorts of “companion” books being discussed here, and it’s hard to believe that a fan-created one would really undercut sales of an official version with Rowling’s name (tramadol) on it.

Building a digital picture clock, with your help

The World Clock Project says:

We find it intriguing to see a picture of a clock that is located thousands of miles away, but one which tells us the exact time of where we are right now. So we’ve set out to collect as many pictures of clocks as possible from as many different people as possible from around the world. Our goal is to gather enough pictures to account for all the minutes of the day. Upon accomplishing that, we will create a “digital picture clock” for the community.

Check it out here. You can email your own clock pix or use the related Flickr group.

LieSpace!

I’ve long contended that most of the stuff we read about how people are so “confessional” online is a bunch of hooey. MySpace and its ilk aren’t about confessing. They’re about presenting a marketed version of yourself — better looking, smarter, cooler, etc.

And what better summation of this could there be than the fact that everybody’s “friend” Tom has evidently been lying about his age. He wasn’t 27 when co-founded MySpace, he was 32. Soon he’ll be 37, a veritable geezer! Thumbs up, Tom.

Chris Anderson attempts to fend off PR spam

Chris “Long Tail Guy” Anderson lashes out at lazy PR people in this post, going so far as to list the email addresses of those he’s blacklisted. The comments to the post are interesting: Some criticize Anderson for leaving the addresses out there for spam bots to harvest. And one guy explains how he spends thousands of dollars to by email lists to promote his photography business. (As the replies note, that money may not be well spent if the lists include people like Anderson, who as editor in chief of Wired is not a relevant contact.)

I’m sympathetic to Anderson’s point of view, in that I get a ridiculous amount of PR email from people who clearly have no idea what I write about. In fact I recognize several of the addresses on his blacklist. I try pretty hard to be accessible because I like hearing from readers, and actually I like hearing from anybody who has a good, relevant idea for me. And I’m not slagging everyone in PR here — I do have regular contact with some very clever people in that line of work, who actually understand what I’m interested in.

The trouble is figuring out a way to be accessible without being overwhelmed by static. I used to publish an email address in the Times Mag for Consumed, but I had to have them take it out, because basically the address was getting added to so many PR blast lists it became useless, drowning out the feedback from real readers in a sea of off-point flackery. Pretty sad.

So I don’t know if Anderson’s post is the best solution to the problem, but I do think it’s a problem.

Flickr Interlude

Free Smells
Originally uploaded by prblog

How to soften the truth about your company’s defective products

Blog Neuromarketing mulls the way the brain processes specific numbers and percentages differently, keying off the discussion of “framing” in Jason (not Philip) Zweig’s book Your Money and Your Brain. Zweig’s point is to help regular people understand how the different ways we think about absolute numbers and percentages can lead us astray. Neuromarketing approaches the subject from a, uh, different angle.

There are times when marketing and public relations people do have to address negative topics, as when dealing with press coverage of a company problem. In these cases, I’d recommend percentages. “Only 1% of our laptop power supplies have actually caught on fire” is, from a framing standpoint, better than, “Only 1 out of 100 …” Bad news is bad news, but people will be less likely to visualize their legs getting scorched if they don’t imagine themselves as “the one.”

Great!

More counterfunctionality?

Here — maybe — is another example of the counterfunctional value discussed in yesterday’s Consumed. It’s a bookshelf that rocks back and forth. Core77 says:

Julian Appelius‘ Topple bookshelf leans ever so slightly on its rocking base–5° to be exact–when books are stacked on, creating the perfect amount of tilt to add some extra stability. A bit ironic, yes, but it works!

One might fairly wonder what the upside of this approach is, over, say, a perfectly stable bookshelf. To echo Jonah Berger’s point in the column, regarding watches that do a less-than-optimal job of telling you what time it is, this seems like another object whose main value is that it “provides more information” about the owner. And part of that value is that not many others will swarm in to buy the thing and water down its identity value, because most people will want a shelf that doesn’t move.

Speaking of that line about counterfunctional watches “providing information” about those who wear them, Marginal Utility has this amusing reaction: “Exactly, it screams loud and clear that you are an idiot.”

Murakami’s subject: “Our pervasive culture of branding”

From the L.A. Times writeup on the Murakami show at MOCA:

Murakami has spoken about the kudzu-like proliferation of ultra-cute imagery in Japanese culture — Hello Kitty, say — as a colossal index of repressed confidence in the wake of a militaristic nation’s humiliating battlefield defeat 62 years ago. Even death now seems infantilized, as in his remarkable paintings of a skeleton whose mushroom-cloud shape is horribly adorable.

The conceptual debt to Andy Warhol, here and everywhere in the show, is obvious. But the squeamishness induced by Murakami’s distinctive brand of Pop Art is entirely different.

And I emphasize brand. Murakami is the first major artist, Eastern or Western, to make our pervasive culture of branding a primary subject, rather than simply exploiting it.

Worth a read. I would love to see this show, but I doubt it’s in the cards. At least Bobby Hundreds has posted a bunch of images here.

Bonus Update: Eric Nakamura (Giant Robot) blogs about the gala and the goodie-merch.