To follow up an earlier post, here’s another bit from a recent New Yorker story about consumer behavior and political behavior. A John McCain piece mentions one of his strategists, 37-year-old Steve Schmidt:
At other times, Schmidt comes alive as a sort of political Rain Man. During one back-of-the-bus conversation, he explained that in 2004, when he was working for Bush’s reëlection, “we targeted voters not where they lived but how they lived their lives, in the same way that credit-card companies do.” He went on, “And so we know, for instance, that among independent voters there are life styles and behaviors that identify them as Republicans or Democrats. For example, the GMC Yukon is a Republican vehicle, and Volvos and Subarus are the most Democratic vehicles. Republicans have Fiji water preferences, versus Democrats, who have Evian water preferences. You have a huge grouping of consumer data, so you can micro-target messages to common groups, finding pleasure points and anger points on issues.”
I don’t think it’s any surprise that Volvos are supposedly more Democrat-ish than Republican-ish, but what about that Fiji/Evian split? What’s that about?
TAG SALE:
A specialty ink with a graffiti past aims for the broader market.
Back in the 1990s, graffiti writer KR invented his own ink. Over time, KR’s ink has become KRINK, a brand of inks and markers (and T-shirts sold at places like Colette and Alife.)
Of course KR, now known as Craig Costello, isn’t positioning KRINK as vandal supplies, but rather as a creative tool. For one thing, the market for the street art aesthetic and influence is a lot bigger than the market of actual street artists.
Read the column in the February 24, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or right here.
Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.
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Consumed by Rob Walker on February 23, 2008
Comments Off on In The New York Times Magazine: KRINK
Core77.com has a good interview with Paola Antonelli about the Design and the Elastic Mind show that she curated for MoMA. Between that and the rave review by by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the NYT, among other reasons, I certainly hope to get up there to see the show.
Actually the review was such a rave it made me a little queasy; I don’t share “an unwavering faith in the transformative powers of technology,” and I’m more than a little tired of uncritical celebrations of capital-d Design. Even so, I recommend checking out the review as especially the Antonelli interview from Core77 . She’s so smart and articulate and passionate about what she’s doing, it’s a real pleasure to hear her talk about it.
And if any of you make it to the show anytime soon, I’d love to hear your take.
So I mentioned the other day the weird “fandom” for Erin Esurance, the animated heroine of the insurance company’s commercials. I noted that some manifestations of this fandom include “mature” renderings of said heroine, but that I didn’t have it in me to actually check those out.
Delicious Ghost, however, came upon the post and apparently could not resist doing the necessary … research. So if you want to see the NSFW images of the cartoon ad figure’s, uh, figure — here.
That was definitely the most awesome brand-in-the-news placement since the Pottery Barn Rule. In your face Konica, Lanier, Ricoh, and other makers of copiers: Top politicians looking to smear a rival for plagiarism know Xerox is the name to brand-drop.
[UPDATE: Here is what I was waiting for.]
I’m struck by this section of a brief WSJ item today concerning the news that Pepsi is going to build a 287-foot-tall Ferris wheel with huge video screen built into the side that will make its logo and branding messages visible for miles around a Meadowlands mall development:
“We don’t want a brand to just put a big sign up,” says Larry Siegel, president of Meadowlands Development. “We want them to bang people over their heads with what they are trying to communicate.”
Advertisers are looking for ways to interact with consumers more deeply. …
The piece explains that aside from the Ferris wheel, Pepsi will devote a large amount of space to Pepsi trivia and historical Pepsi advertising. This, as I understand it, is the “deep” interaction with consumers piece.
It also notes that outdoor advertising — the immense video-Pepsi-wheel being an extreme example — is booming these days because of “marketers’ desire to find new ways to get consumers’ attention.” That, I think it’s safe to say, is the “bang people over their heads” piece.
The two pieces seem dissonant to me. But perhaps the idea is that if a brand bangs us over the head sharply enough, we’ll be in such daze that we’ll believe that learning brand trivia and admiring old ads forms of deep interaction.
When and if we come out of it, I expect some new form of banging-over-the-head will have been invented in the interim.
Do you remember that ad for some insurance company that was sort of about The Future, and opened with shots of people running around on this big weird springy stilt-shoes? Well here it is.
And more to the point, those weird spring stilt-shoes, to my surprise, are not a goofball ad agency creation of the nutty world to come. They are, apparently, real. They’re called 7 Leagues Boots.
Who buys these?
Adrants has this blip about a project called Unscrew America. It’s a campaign to get people to use compact fluorescent light bulbs. There’s a site, and some ads.
I’m kind of ambivalent about the execution — well, to be blunt, I don’t really care for it. But never mind that. What I’m interested in is that as far as I can tell this is underwritten entirely by GSD&M, not for any client or pro bono client or cause/organization or nonprofit. Just their own initiative, their own time and money.
Seems like most of the interesting or successful “good” work I see from agencies is always on behalf of some other entity — whether it’s Arnold Worldwide and Crispin Porter’s famous work, or the TheTruth or the Droga5 Tap Project for Unicef.
Nothing wrong with doing compelling work on behalf of some else’s idea or cause. But are there many other examples of an agency doing something simply to promote an idea that the agency itself believes in?
Maybe there are. You tell me.
[2/19: Please note time change below. Thanks.]
In the first of what I’m guessing will be roughly one million posts relating to my forthcoming book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Random House; June 2008*), I’m pleased to announce that I’m part of the “Book Readings” program at SXSW Interactive this year.
If you’re going to SXSW Interactive, please come by at 1:30 pm NEW TIME: 3:30 p.m. on March 8, in the Austin Convention Center.
Finally: If you know someone who is going to SXSW and might be interested, please them know. I really appreciate it.
Here is the full schedule for the readings and panels and like that. The lineup looks interesting. Hope to see some of you there.
[* Available for pre-order now via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s. Just saying. But please note: The book isn’t out until June 3, so you won’t get it, and I won’t have any copies, prior to, or even at, SXSW. That’s why this is a “preview.” ]
I was interested to learn (via Marketplace last night) about this Ad Age report on jobs on the marketing and media sectors. While the headline is about media jobs declining (shocked?), I was drawn to the stuff about commercial persuasion jobs. “Employment in advertising/marketing-services … broke a record in November,” rising to 769,000 jobs, the piece says.
Among all the ad-related job sectors, the hot spot is marketing consulting. Employment in that field in December reached a record 148,500, accounting for the lion’s share of job gains over the past year in advertising and marketing services.
In fact, the article indicates that consultancy jobs are growing so sharply that they’ve made up for job losses at ad agencies (down 10% from 2000) and PR agencies (down 11.5% since then).
I meant to mention this earlier and forgot. Probably you’ve seen it by now, but just in case: The guy who founded the band Boston told Mike Huckabee not to use the song “More Than A Feeling” in his campaign events and to drop it from the set list of Huckabee’s cover band:
“Boston has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for.”
Everything Boston “stands for”? Right.
An article in the Boston Globe looks at a “provocative study” suggesting that “enlightened management philosophies can spread from the office — and change societies.”
The data sound a bit tenuous, but the upshot is an argument that “empowered” employees may be more prone to civic engagement, and thus in building a better society and culture, etc.
Maybe so. What really interested me was a bit toward the end, when it’s noted that there’s no guarantee that companies, even profitable ones, will empower employees. (One might add that this is a particularly important point given the various waves of layoffs and outsourcing, etc., as well as the ongoing shift to less-than-empowering service sector jobs in recent years.)
A snippet:
Empowerment at work may lead to engagement in society, but employees who feel that their company pays mere lip service to participatory management are likely to become cynical about participation in civic life as well. In large corporations, where participatory management may be no more than a flurry of buzzwords and employee participation is diluted due to the sheer size of the company, the results may be detrimental.
Let me just add that the reason Dilbert doesn’t vote is of course that he’s a cartoon character. But I thought that seemed like a snappier headline than anything using the words empower or civic engagement.
Great vengeance and furious Lego, originally uploaded by givepeasachance.
The caption: “‘Oh, I’m sorry! Did I break your concentration?’ … Some graffiti I saw around town …”
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