MURKETING

Another slap in the face

The Creative Class blog trashed last weekend’s issue of the NYT Magazine. But I escaped the beatdown — sort of:

The whole thing would be completely inane if it didn’t include Bob Walker’s piece on “the Donald’s” new project downtown.

Bad enough there’s no link to this site. But Bob Walker? That’s harsh.

Maybe global consumers know the difference between George Bush and Starbucks

If I had a dime for every story I’ve read about “trouble for American brands” in the global marketplace because of the U.S.’s poor reputation in the world right now … well, then I’d probably have something more fun to do than post this Business Week story about MTV Arabia:

How will the likes of Justin Timberlake and Rihanna go down in a region that’s not exactly brimming with goodwill toward Americans? Better than you might think. Middle Eastern youth may not agree with U.S. politics, but they can’t get enough of Western music and fashion. “The myth about the Arab world is that people go to bed at night hating the U.S. and wake up hating Israel,” says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a think tank in Washington. “But go to any mall in Saudi Arabia, and you’ll see kids in jeans and baseball caps hanging out at Starbucks and McDonald’s.”

Tuning out as turn on

Rolling Stone has a bunch of stuff from its “Hot Issue” online, but not the best piece in it, which is by Rob Sheffield. It’s the “Hot Mood: Not dealing with reality.”

Mini excerpt:

We keep hearing that newspapers are dying, and we keep hearing it’s because of all this shiny new aweso-media, but it’s probably just because ignoring any kind of news is now a fundamental part of the nation’s daily routine for not loosing what’s left of our shit.

It’s an amusing piece, and it’s meant to be amusing, but at the same time, I kind of think he’s on to something.

Why align yourself in public with a dog-fight organizer?

Speaking of uniforms: Three times in the last few weeks I’ve seen guys wearing Michael Vick jerseys. What’s that about? What’s the signal being sent by aligning yourself with Vick after he’s admitted to various unsavory and criminal acts related to dog-fighting? My understanding is that Vick jerseys have been pulled from stores and the NFL Shop etc., so clearly the league recognizes that the time for being pro-Vick has ended. Why haven’t these fans got the message?

I live in Georgia, and it’s pretty hard to overstate what a huge deal Vick was for the Falcons, so one theory is that it’s just residual football fandom. Basically: “Okay, dog-fighting is bad — but what a great athlete!”

Another theory is that, in addition to the above, Vick seems vaguely cooler now (to these people), for outlaw reasons.

Another theory is that these guys are, in addition to being fans of Vick, actually fans of dogfighting. Far-fetched perhaps, but somebody is a dog-fighting fan, or it wouldn’t exist.

Another theory is that it’s calculated provocation. Before Vick’s guilty plea, at least, a few voices suggested that there was some racial bias involved in going after him in particular. (Two of the three guys I’ve seen in Vick jerseys were black; all three were young to young-ish, between late teens and early 30s.) So possibly there’s some residual Vick-got-a-raw-deal sentiment. Or more abstractly, the provocation may have no particular connection to Vick, just provocation for its own sake, like Sid Vicious wearing a Swastika T-shirt: Basically, “I’m wearing this solely to piss you off.”

[Quasi-related: T-shirts saying “Vick Em” were briefly sold by a Texas Tech frat, showing a representation of Vick hanging a Texas Aggie dog mascot. These were promptly banned.]

Finally, there’s the cluelessness/indifference theory: It’s the only clean shirt on laundry day, and the guys wearing it just don’t think about or don’t really care how others around them react to Vick’s name.

Possibly there’s another explanation I’m missing. In all cases, I think it’s a weird decision.

Flickr Interlude

Virtual reality
Originally uploaded by tualatin

“Disney World. Galicia, Spain. 2007.”

Proof of membership

walker.jpg
Originally uploaded by UniWatch

Technically, this image is not in the Murketing Flickr pool, but I’m posting it anyway. It’s the JPG version of the card proclaiming my honorary position on the Uniwatch Active Roster. This weekend I got my real card in the mail from Paul “Uniwatch” Lukas. Card design is based on the uniform of a sports team chosen by the member. I chose the New Orleans Saints. See other card designs here. Very cool.

More of the recent very fine actual additions to the Murketing photo pool will be posted soon.

A book that needs a title

Maybe you’re wondering why there’s so little fresh material on Murketing lately, or maybe you’re just relieved. Well, here’s the reason.

I’ve been working a book for a while, and now it’s finally done and will come out circa May 2008, from Random House.

The broad subject of the book can be summarized in the subtitle: “The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.”

As subscribers to the Journal of Murketing newsletter know, the title is still under discussion. (I’d been calling the book “I’m With The Brand,” but that’s been basically nixed.)

In the newsletter’s most recent installment I asked for feedback about four titles now under consideration. Thanks to the generosity of Random House (and some surprisingly good guesswork on my part as to how much feedback I’d get), almost all of the newsletter readers who weighed in will get an advance galley of the book next year.

Sadly I have no such incentive to offer you here — although maybe there will be other giveaways in the future, we’ll see — but I would still be very curious to hear any reactions you may have to the four titles being considered:

In all cases the subtitle, again, will likely be “The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.” If you have opinions, suggestions, etc., please leave them in the comments. I truly value your feedback on this.

* * PLEASE NOTE: Do not email me about this. I beg you, put your comments below! Be anonymous if you want! But I’ve already given the email feedback to the publishers, so put your thoughts here where they can see them if they want. Thanks!

Back to more posting very soon.

In Consumed: Trumped

Trump SoHo: The Donald comes downtown — and maybe, these days, he belongs.

There was a time when the name “Trump SoHo” would have sounded like an oxymoron or a punch line. That time has passed. A 46-story, $3,000-a-square-foot condo-hotel with that very name is climbing into the skyline from a section of Manhattan once considered so hopeless that it might as well be razed to accommodate an expressway. Of course, some people still won’t accept the idea — like the neighborhood residents and preservationists who recently converged outside a promotional party for the project, waving signs scrawled with slogans like “Earth to Trump: Get Out of SoHo Now!” Donald Trump thanked them for the free publicity and claimed that although the building won’t open until 2009, there are already 3,200 purchase applications for its 400 units….

Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site.

Flickr Interlude

COCA-COLA 001
Originally uploaded by hytam2

The caption: “His name was Ernie and he drove the fastest Coke truck in Sri Lanka.”

aNYthing update

I heard something about this a month or so ago but had not had time to confirm:

It’s official: Aaron Bondaroff aka A-Ron, no longer has anything to do with aNYthing, the very brand he created and that was profiled extensively in both the New York Times Magazine and the Post, not to mention numerous magazines and blogs. The ‘Downtown Don’ apparently didn’t have any kind of deal ironed out and somehow managed to hand his entire company over to an investor he took on.

See the Complex post for a bit more, including talk of a trademark infringement lawsuit.

A-Ron’s new(ish) online home is The New York Glob.

I’ll try to get a bit more on all this in the weeks ahead.

I only see clockwise. You?

[Thanks Shawn!]

Flickr Interlude

the masterplan
Originally uploaded by s_p_a_c_e_m_a_n

The caption: “Economy vs. Sustainability.”

What can we conclude from the new Radiohead release?

So today is the big day: The Radiohead release that the music-and-marketing blognoscenti have been spazzing about for a week. As you know, the former EMI band is currently label-free, and has offered consumers a chance name their own price for the band’s next album, In Rainbows, which is available for download today. I can understand the excitement: Any excuse to beat the Big-Labels-Are-Over drum (Thom Yorke has mused that “the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs” a label), plus there’s the consumer empowerment angle. It’s a paradigm shifter, y’all!

Is it? Well, it’s definitely an interesting experiment, and I’m be curious to see how it works out, like everybody else. This morning I named my price. Based on my past experience of Radiohead, I guessed that I would like approximately one song. You can’t hear samples in advance, and you have to buy the whole set of ten tracks anyway, so I went with $1, or about half a British pound. The transaction fee added another half-pound, so really I ended up paying around $2. (Despite reports that the site’s servers were overwhelmed, I had no problems. After one listen, I like the track “Bodysnatchers,” and ambivalent-to-against the rest.)

Perhaps this experiment will tell us something about the future of the music business, but there are some pretty important caveats that are worth keeping in mind. The caveats, and the stuff that I think is actually noteworthy, are after the jump. Sorry for the rambling post. Please continue…

Flickr Interlude

Specialisation
Originally uploaded by robokow

The caption reads: “One of the things that I find different in Istanbul, compared to most European cities, are the shops. You find *many* shops specialised in just one thing.”

Annals of unfortunate product placement

The Smoking Gun says:

Every company wants its name and logo to be recognized by U.S. consumers. You know, brand equity and all that. Still, most firms could probably do without their employees (or customers) getting popped while wearing clothing bearing its name. As was the case with the 18 recent arrestees pictured in the mug shots on the following pages.

Pretty good. But remember: Innocent till proven guilty.

Via Adfreak.