MURKETING

The democratization of product placement

You know what all those amateur-hour grassroots-creative videos on YouTube are missing? Paid product placement!

Luckily, an outfit called Brandfame now exists, to broker deals between people making homebrew mini-films, and corporations. They are “the premier product placement agency for video-sharing web sites.” Maybe if those Billiam guys get their product line off the ground, they can be clients.

Here’s the Brandfame site. Via Influx. I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, maybe I should disintermediate and offer a cash prize to the first person who mentions Murketing.com in a YouTube video. Hmm…

Flickr Interlude

Originally uploaded by M. Brum

I used to publish Flickr Interludes all the time. Then I stopped. Now I’m starting again, and I’m pleased to do so with an image by my Flickr pal M. Brum. More on this later today.

[Join and contribute to the Murketing Flickr group]

Yet another low-utility wristwatch

That’s right, it only has one hand. Courtesy of Coolhunting: “German watchmaker Klaus Botta’s design makes seconds and minutes irrelevant; with the Uno, be on time-ish.”

Earlier low-utility watches here, here, here, here, and here.

Q&A: Indie branding, the thesis

A few months back I got an interesting email from a graduate student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Greta Ackerman. She was working on her thesis show, “The Ironic Brand.” It centered on the indie clothing brand Barking Irons, which she’d read about in the brand underground story last year.

Surprised as I was to hear this (I’ve had articles cited in academic papers and articles and books and so on, but this was a new one for me), she was even more surprised to learn that I live in Savannah. So I was quite happy to chat with her at the time, and to check out her actual thesis show here last month. It was impressively comprehensive, exploring print ads, online material, outdoor, even direct mail. The over-arching theme was how an underground brand can sell more without selling out.

Ms. Ackerman was of course at the opening, too — but she had to come in from out of town. She’s now a designer for Merkley i.D., a division of Merkley + Partners in New York. I decided to pester her with a few quick questions about the thesis project, and she graciously obliged.

Q: Let’s start with the obvious: Why this thesis subject, and why this brand?

I’m a fine art student-turned-advertising-designer, so I’ve spent a lot of time toggling between art for art’s sake and art with a commercial purpose. People, especially design students struggling to find a voice, often harp on designers who have “sold out,” applying their design skills or their artistic vision to a corporation to help them draw a profit.

The way I see it, there’s no shame in making a living, but there’s a lot about big business and the way it advertises and brands itself that turns me off. I was attracted by a group of brands on a mission to sell without being perceived as sell-outs, who had a greater purpose than simply profit (although some profit would be nice). I wanted to find out if that was even possible, and if so, how advertising could play a role, even a nontraditional role, in that process.

Barking Irons spoke to me as a brand trying to grow without losing its integrity, but it stood out against some of its fellow indie brands because of its old aesthetic. Please continue…

Uninsu(red) gets lawy(red)

In the most recent installment of the Murketing (Journal) email, I promised to give away one of the UNINSU(RED) T-shirts mentioned earlier on this site. This was misleading. In fact, I am giving away two. The winners were Scott L. and Mike D., both New Yorkers.

Since the earlier post about the T’s, a new development: The makers have already received a cease-and-desist from the Product Red folks, according to New York Magazine’s site. Given the small scale — the shirts were available only at The Reed Space — and the overall intent of the uninsu(red) T, I’m a little surprised about this. I don’t see how it hurt or undercut Product Red, and there’s nothing offensive about it. It was promoting a discussion of health care, not pornography or something. In any case, the upshot is that the giveaway Ts are now collectors’ items, in a way. Either that, or they’re magnets for trouble from Product Red lawyers. So to the giveaway winners, congrats — and watch out!

On Geico’s ad icon shilling for some other brand

Earlier this week a favored Murketing reader drew my attention a curious magazine ad from Weatherproof Garment Company. The print ad shows a caveman in a Weatherproof jacket. Of course this makes us think of the Geico cavemen who have moved from ads to a forthcoming sitcom (see earlier Consumed on that). The tag line on the jacket ad is “Weatherman Approved.” Normally, I guess, Weatherproof uses Al Roker in its ads.

I haven’t seen the sitcom, but this post on the site that is associated with Conde Nast’s business magazine, Portfolio, says that because the show “features a Cro-Magnon TV weatherman (he’s the token minority on a local news show), Weatherproof apparently thought it would be funny to have him play the Al Roker role in its new campaign…. But who pays for [the ad]? Weatherproof? ABC? Geico? All of the above?”

I asked a contact at the Martin Agency (creator of the Geico ads) about this. He mentioned that someone was writing an article on this very subject, so I’ve held off for a few days, but I still haven’t seen that article and I need to get this off my to-do list.

According to my contact, not only was Geico not involved in the Weatherproof ad, they didn’t know about it until the Martin Agency pointed it out. So Copyranter is correct in guessing that this is not a tie-in: “It’s just bald, blatant, shameless appropriation.” And certainly paid for by Weatherproof alone.

It’s not immediately clear whether anybody can own the idea of a caveman, and even if ABC or Geico could claim some kind of intellectual property theft, they’d be pretty crazy to do so.

Reader Braulio wondered what I thought about all this. Here’s my answer.

First, I think it’s a fairly astonishing tribute to the icon status of the cavemen. Clearly Weatherproof assumes that pretty much everybody is up on the cavemen, or the ad would make no sense at all.

Second, if it’s true that this is a reference to the idea that one of the sitcom cavemen is a “token minority” on a news broadcast, then it seems pretty weird for Weatherproof to have him stand in for Al Roker. What, exactly, is the parallel we’re supposed to draw?

Funny — but keep it away from children

A peg-puzzle product titled “Branded,” from Atypyk: “Because it’s never too early to learn what’s important in life.” Via Counterfeit Chic.

Weirdly appealing: Rubber vase

It’s a vase. Made of rubber. Designed by Henriette Melchiorsen, at Scandinavian Design Center. Via Better Living Through Design.

Excellent illustrator

Okay, I’m almost caught up with stuff I wanted to post about but haven’t had time for. Here’s the last one: Pascal Blanchet. Wonderful illustrations. Via Drawn!

Scraptastic? Perhaps.

And in another bit of unconsumption news, Everyday Trash points to Made From Scrap, a San Francisco organization that does workshops on repurposing plastic bags into “wristlets,” old T shirts into pillows, and that sort of thing. I have slightly mixed feelings about this kind of thing, but they seem to have good intentions, and maybe it engages people in the underlying issues. Also, learning to do stuff like this is better than just buying the repurposed objects, I think.

“Pay as you throw”

I’ve been meaning to get back to posting on unconsumption topics again, and here’s a good one: Cities reducing garbage with “pay as you throw” schemes. IHT columnist Elisabeth Rosenthal explains:

The basic concept is this: The more you throw away, the more you pay…Economists and environmental scientists say that communities have long made it too cheap and easy to dispose of trash, giving consumers the wrong incentives. Why shouldn’t garbage disposal be billed like gas or electricity, related to usage?

“Somehow garbage became viewed as a right rather than being conducted under a user fee system – and that has had terrible consequences,” said Lisa Skumatz of Skumatz Economics Research in Colorado.

Studies have shown that “pay as you throw” programs achieve the desired effect brilliantly. In a recent study, the amount trash in 100 communities that adopted the concept immediately went down by about 16 percent, Skumatz said.

One-third of the savings come from increased recycling, one-third from more composting and one-third from people relying more on items that are reusable or have less packaging.

Maybe there’s some counter-argument that makes this a bad idea, but it sounds pretty smart to me. Then again, it’s a systematic response, not an individual-empowering one, so I’m not sure how easy it would be to get people excited about it.

Pleasing thing of the day: Paper dolls etc. by Wool and Water

This person’s work is pretty cool. Her name — I learn from Craft’s blog — is Amy Earle, a maker of paper dolls and other things. Here’s her blog, and here’s her “Wool and Water” Etsy store. Enjoyable.

Skullphabet #1

A free font, from Skull A Day. Via How.

Your cutting board is bourgeois. Here’s a more expressive one.

Another ideal canvas for expression: Remind yourself of your excellent taste while slicing onions with a $38 laser-engraved cutting board. Or maybe you better just order in and gaze at it while you dine, so you don’t mess the thing up.

Elsewares says: “The design actually interacts with the natural grain of the wood, creating a little scene. Each one is unique, not to mention really fun to look at.”

Marketing strategy: “extended nude scene” with Natalie Portman

So the WSJ has a story today about Wes Anderson’s short film, to be released via iTunes later this week, that’s sort of related to his next feature, opening this weekend. Amid all the implicationizing about technology and marketing and so on, I think it’s safe to say that the key phrase in the article is: “The short co-stars Natalie Portman, who appears in an extended nude scene.”

Okay, well, now, that’s probably going to get some attention.

Further research, conducted strictly on behalf of you, the Murketing reader, leads to this Time Out article, which describes the short film.

The WSJ piece says that the short will be distributed free on iTunes, and I guess I’m kind of wondering how they’re going to do that without getting some, you know, complaints from the various cultural voices who tend to oppose things like the widespread distribution of “extended nude scenes.”

[Update: I see now that Peter Kafka is ahead of me on the point about the soundness of the marketing strategy.]