Surely you know that Barack Obama is a relatively recently reformed smoker. While there’s no question he had to give up cigarettes if he wanted to run for president, that nevertheless seems like just about most stressful possible scenario in which to kick a nic addiction. How did he do it?
An aside in this column suggests at least part of the smoking-cessation program the candidate endorses: Obama is described as “slender, chewing Nicorette and perfectly groomed in his crisp white shirt.”
Emphasis added, obviously. Pretty good real-world product placement, no?
Via The Stump.
Lexicographical Beneficence:
Time-wasting edification for a cause.
Online entertainment improves on older forms, like television, by way of its activeness. For example, watching a presidential debate on TV is passive. Hunting for, commenting on, remixing and forwarding a YouTube video of someone being Tasered at a political event is active.
Despite the unassailable nature of this popular critique, engagement can be judged in other ways. For example, among the many time-killing activities the World Wide Web makes available is FreeRice.com. While it is surely a diverting time killer, it is more than that: it’s a self-improvement time killer on behalf of a greater good.
Read the Consumed in the March 9, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or right here.
Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.
yourself, originally uploaded by Made in Mississippi.
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Annie Kopchovsky … was a Latvian immigrant living in a tenement in Boston with her husband and three young children. Spying the unlikeliest of business opportunities for someone in her position, she boasted to the press that she intended to bicycle around the globe in fifteen months, raising money for her journey along the way. …
By the time she left Boston in 1895, Kopchovsky had attracted enough attention that the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company paid her $100 to adopt the surname “Londonderry” for the duration of her trip.
Q&A with the author of a new book about Kopchovsky/Londonderry is here.
[Thanks Sara!]
Posted Under:
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Olde News by Rob Walker on March 5, 2008
Comments Off on Murketing in history: How Annie “Londonderry” got her name
Stuart Elliott writes about the return of Alka-Seltzer mascot Speedy, to introduce the stuff to a new generation:
The idea is to familiarize the desired audience with Alka-Seltzer by introducing Speedy to them as “the good-times enabler,” [some marketer] said, “who shows up whenever guys are being guys.”
I’ve seen some of the new print ads. The translation of the above is: Speedy is now a mook.
Just reading this AP story about Jill Sobule’s effort to get her fans to bankroll her next recording session, I was a little surprised about this detail: If you donate $10, you get a free download of the resulting record, and for $500 or more, “Sobule will mention your name in a song, maybe even rhyme with it.”
I know the official response lisinopril to this sort of thing is supposed to be that it’s great that an artist can avoid the crass music business, and fans are so empowered, etc. But there’s something a little creepy about this $500-and-I’ll-mention-your-name thing. I guess it’s sort of funny. But really, is this what being an artist is about (https://www.worthingdentalcentre.co.uk/lasix-online/) now?
Anyway, according to her site as I type, she’s raised more than $65,000.
NYT has the story: “The campaign’s online sales of gear hit $1.5 million in January, up from $380,000 in December.”
I haven’t been as blown away as some people by the Obama campaign’s graphic design, but I am impressed by one T-shirt I saw on his site the other day, and that the Times story says “has been especially popular; 700 sold out within 24 hours.” It’s this one:
So on-trend it hurts! I love the shamrock peeking into the logo.
The piece also mentions what’s probably been my favorite unofficial manifestations of Obama as muse, Shepard Fairey’s portrait:
a limited edition print with Mr. Obama’s face and the word “hope,” produced by Shepard Fairey, a graffiti artist, originally sold for $25. With all 600 sold out, the pieces are now going for as much as $1,500 on eBay, Mr. Fairey said.
Fairey unveiled that print back in January, including with the announcement his concise and straightforward statement about his motivation, and his support of the candidate. Personally my favorite thing about it is the Obey Giant icon face making a discreet cameo on Obama’s logo-pin:
More here on how this image has gotten around — and made its way onto a T-shirt via Upper Playground.
Whether any of this is meaningful to the actual primary … well, we’ll learn more today.
YouTube and other online-video venues may represent a fundamental challenge to television as an entertainment medium. “In December, Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online, according to comScore Inc. — one of the single heaviest months for online-video consumption since comScore began tracking it in 2006,” the Wall Street Journal notes.
But as that story also suggests, what this really means might simply be that YouTube is a great way to kill time at work.
Plungerhead
Zinfandel; Dry Creek Valley
$18 (Savannah)
Consumano
Nero d’Avola; Sicily
$12 (Savannah)
[Note: This is the fifteenth installment in a regular Murketing feature. For previous installments and an explanation, go here. As noted earlier, it is also (probably) the last installment in this series.]
I will admit that I purchased Plungerhead because of this project. But I’m not writing about it for the reason I thought I might.
What caught my eye was the illustration: I wasn’t sure if it was interesting enough for the IRoWPaA, but it vaguely reminded me of the “loonies” on Monty Python, and there was something intriguing about this deranged-looking figure as a winery’s icon. Plus, it was visually appealing. I gave no thought at all to the name “Plungerhead,” quickly placing it in the category of “approachable because it’s so stupid – oh, I mean funny.” As you know, that’s a very common tactic among wine packager/branders these days.
If I had read the back label, I would have realized that while a packaging/design element of Plungerhead was in fact pretty important, it was not the illustration.
It was the stopper. Please continue…
I’ve been saving up a couple of interesting bits related to wine packaging that I intended to highlight shortly before publishing the next volume of The International Review of Wine Packaging and Aesthetics.
However, first I have to say this: After publishing that volume in a few minutes, The IRoWPaA will go on indefinite hiatus. While I love this project, it’s never really gotten much of a reaction, and I can only handle so many quixotic ventures at once. If anybody wants to see it revived later when I have more time, use the comments. (Better, if anybody knows a design publication, online or off, that would be willing to pick up the feature, email me. But please do not email me to say that you want me to revive it later here — I need that to be public, so I can point to the comments, or dearth of comments, when I make a decision.)
Meanwhile, though, I do have those two interesting bits to share. Both come from the blog of How Magazine.
First: Wine Pocket, “constructed of industrial wool felt collected from factory excess.” Personally I haven’t had call for a wine pocket, but maybe you do. Here’s what the $29 item looks like:
Second: How’s blog pointed to this Portfolio article, which says:
To make their products stand out, many winemakers are taking clever, daring, and sometimes even radical approaches to labeling. They’re putting as much attention into what’s on the bottle as what’s in it.
There’s also a slideshow. Clearly I agree with the premise, since it’s kind of what IRoWPaA was about. The piece mentions Yellowtail and “critter” wines, which was the subject of an April 23, 2006 Consumed, and the slideshow has an image of a wine called Plungerhead, which is a subject of the next and final volume of IRoWPaA, coming along any minute now.
Everyone (well, everyone in the narrow slice of the marketplace that may or may not “lead” trends) appears to be going nuts for Nau.
In the last month or so, a couple of readers (not publicists) have emailed me about the apparel brand; it’s steaily been getting business press attention (and attention) as well as eco-blog praise (and praise); Coolhunting touted it earlier and is now involved in some kind of special promotional sale in New York this week (see below); and this past week PSFK published an interview with a Nau founder. (“We began Nau because, as far as we knew, there were no other companies in the apparel market designing product combining beauty, performance, and sustainability,” etc.).
Of course I’ve not been to an actual Nau store (locations in Boulder; Chicago; Tigard, OR; and Bellevue, WA) or laid on eyes on the brand’s garments (as opposed to pictures of the garments). But I’m intrigued by the level of interest. If you have any info or opinions I’d love to hear.
And if you’re in New York, the brand is having a sample sale at the Openhouse Gallery (201 Mulberry Street, NYC), “VIP Night” March 5, everybody else March 6 through 9. If you go, again, I’d love to hear about it.
SCARING UP DEMAND
How a food panic can change our habits — for a while, anyway.
Just about a year ago, tainted food killed more than a dozen dogs and cats around the United States, and a massive recall involved more than 100 varieties of edible pet products from a range of big-selling brands. As the crisis snowballed, there was a lot of talk about how the recall had given a boost to the sellers of natural, organic or raw pet foods, as panicked consumers sought safe alternatives.
In fact, such brands reported that sales had doubled or tripled or better, while news accounts said that mainstream brands were scrambling. A fundamental shift in mass-market consumer behavior seemed to be under way.
Was it?
Read the column in the March 2, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.
Martha Stewart will be doing an Etsy-focused episode this Friday. While Etsy was at the center of the Handmade 2.0 story, what I’m really pleased to hear is that one of the featured creators will be none other than Bethany Shorb/Toybreaker, the maker of hand-silkscreened ties, interviewed here in Murketing.com way back in August 2006, in this site’s very first Q&A. Big congrats to her, and Murketing remains a fan of her ever-growing line, and ever-expanding business. Check out the latest from her Cyberoptix Tie Lab here. Her Etsy shop is here.
Update March 3: Video of Etsy chief Rob Kalin on Martha Stewart. He does a good job; his energy level strikes me as quite a bit higher than when I met him, but that’s important on TV. Plus I’m quite confident that Martha is more fun to talk to than I am. Anyway, also featured in the segment was The Black Apple, mentioned in the Handmade 2.0 story — and according to this segment, she will be on the Martha show herself later this month. Impressive! Finally: Amusing to see a Toybreaker tie modeled by none other than Matthew Stinchcomb.
Before this site existed, I did an occasional email newsletter called The Journal of Murketing. (I still do an email newsletter, actually, but it’s different than the old one.) In a December 2003 edition of the old J of M, I had this item:
[ ] The current hit song “Hey Ya,” by Outkast, and its video, are probably the best boost for the not-so-cutting-edge Polaroid brand in ages. “Shake it like a Polaroid picture,” goes a key lyric, and the video includes scenes of mass Polaroid-waving. Even when this kind of thing happens organically, you can count on branders to pounce, and Adweek reports that Polaroid marketers are now developing (chortle) a scheme “to build on the song’s popularity and channel that into a guerrilla campaign.” The idea is to get Outkast to use the cameras onstage, and to put cameras “into the hands of ‘Polarazzi.'” This fictitious class of people is of course made up of celebrities and under-30 “trendsetters.” “The plan,” writes Adweek, “is to hit high-profile events on New Year’s Eve as part of ‘The Polaroid Ambush.'” And its goal is to get consumers to use the cameras in “real, natural ways,” which apparently is always something that’s best accomplished through just this sort of transparent gimmickry.
I guess this scheme did not rebuild Polaroid after all. As you know, the company recently said it would stop making the last iterations of its instant film. (Also: A couple months after the above, Polaroid put out a statement saying actually you should not shake a Polaroid picture: “Shaking or waving can actually damage the image.”)
Anyway: Will you miss Polaroid? Brand Autopsy is asking.
This is a new bottle opener.
It’s part of Alessi’s “Dream Factory.”
Core77 and Notcot — both sites I enjoy and respect — say “stylish,” and “beautiful.”
Murketing.com — also not a bad site, really, all things considered — wonders aloud: Seriously, why is this thing necessary? Who needs a high-design bottle opener, for crying out loud?
What do you say? Is this an example of progress and innovation, aesthetic or otherwise? Or is it mere taste-appeal novelty?
[Previous entries in the informal “Your X is bourgeois” series here and here.]
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