MURKETING

Flickr Interlude

The pied piper that goes by the name of Mr. Greedy, originally uploaded by crookhaven.

“Mind that child! I suggest to watch it big.”

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Stereotypes and exceptions: “When people don’t fit our preconceived notions, we tend to ignore the contradictions, until they are too dramatic to overlook. In those cases, said John F. Dovidio, a psychology professor at Yale, we focus on the contradiction — Ms. Boyle’s voice, for example. While that makes us see her as more of an individual, we also ‘find a way to make the world make sense again, even if the way we do it is to say, ‘This is an exceptional situation.’ It’s easier for me to keep the same categories in my mind and come up with an explanation for the things that are discrepant.’”
• Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism: Deadline is June 1. $10k top prize; $1k top prize for students.
• Aaaar-ticle of the day: “These are confusing times for pirate enthusiasts.”
• TV aims to embrace the recession: “A candidate for the ABC schedule is ‘Canned,’ about a group of friends who all get laid off the same day. ‘Little Piggy,’ another comedy in development for ABC, is about a husband who becomes financially ruined and returns to the home in which he grew up.” Via Recessionwire.

Flickr Interlude

Bumblebee Transformer – Highway 41, California, originally uploaded by Vintage Roadside.

“The incredible Bumble Bee Transformer outside of Lemoore, California along Highway 41. Made from a Volkswagon Beetle. His feet are the front fenders.”

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• In a digital age, vinyl albums are making a comeback: Story has been written repeatedly. But: “1.88 million sales of new LPs last year, an 89% increase over 2007.”
• America’s most frugal dad…: … lacks a basic understanding of math: “Almost 60 percent of what people put in their carts is impulse buys,” he says, “so if you go to the store for 10 items, you may end up with 16.” Um, no. And it’s odd that the editors of American Profile decided to make this innumerate comment a pullquote. But big ups on your thrifty ways just the same.
• Speaking in Code: Documentary about electronic music.

Linkpile

[NOTE TO RSS READERS: Yes, there is duplication of these links while I figure out the best way to add a daily linkpile to the site itself. Please bear with me, I will eventually figure out the best scheme and remove the duplication problem. Thank you.]

• Alleged: Americans reclassifying luxury, necessity in recession – Survey: 24% say they have “reduced or canceled cable or satellite TV subscription.” Really? Is there real data that’s consistent with that? It’s a pretty big number. If it lines up with real data, say so. If it doesn’t then admit it, so the reader understands the gap between what people tell survey-takers, and what they actually do. Not that surveys are worthless; it’s definitely worth knowing what people say. But it should be made clear where that lines up with actual behavior — and where it doesn’t.
• Espresso Book Machine – “Prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.”
• Paid to Pitch: Product Reviews By Bloggers Draw Scrutiny – “Companies see the freebies and payments to bloggers as a cheap way to boost brand buzz during the recession. But site visitors often don’t realize they’re reading a promotional pitch. Not all bloggers make clear that they are being compensated to talk up products, if they disclose it at all. The Internet is becoming so rife with paid blogging that the Federal Trade Commission, which guards against false advertisements, is examining whether it should police bloggers.”
• Apple’s Gatekeeper Role Draws Scrutiny – “Apple was hit by a complaint for allowing the sale of a game developed by a company called Sikalosoft. The game, in which players try to silence a crying baby by shaking the phone, was available for a couple days for 99 cents before it was removed on Wednesday by Apple following protests by child welfare groups.”
• bar codes – Good roundup of creative ones.
• The Future of Panel Discussions: A Panel Discussion – Potentially fun: “A participatory event in which the spectators are rotated into the seats of the panelists.”

Coke conspiracy

[Below, a post I wrote and never actually published — but I just got another very similar note from a different Buying In reader on the same subject, so I am now going on the record with my views.]

An interesting note from a Buying In reader came in the other day week. After some nice comments about the book in general (thanks again) my correspondent zeroed in on “a passing reference [in the book] that really surprised me: Coke’s monumental marketing flop with New Coke.”

It’s true, I do make a passing reference to this, not for reasons that have anything whatsoever to do with my feelings about the Coke brand, but rather to make the point that pre-Web consumers were not the mindless, passive, drooling, couch-potato dupes that Web-era gurus insist they (we) were.

Anyway, my correspondent continued, explaining that “an acquaintance” in the sugar business had a different view, which is that the whole New Coke thing was really a backdoor way for the company to phase out sugar in favor of (cheaper) corn syrup in its flagship product:

They knew that their customers could tell the difference in a side-by-side taste test. So they launched New Coke, a formula they knew would flop, fully expecting to re-introduce Classic Coke after all the original formula Coke was off the shelves, with the sneaky little switch of sugar to corn syrup. My acquaintance at [redacted] said that sales to Coke plummeted at that time.

As I told my correspondent, I have read an awful lot about Coke and its rivals — whole books, many chapters, many many articles — and this was news to me. Also it sounded like an extraordinarily complicated, expensive, and risky way of changing an ingredient.

I turned to Snopes. While I hadn’t heard this rumor before, Snopes had. And in fact it turns out there are a number of theories suggesting that in way or another, the New Coke debacle was no debacle at all — the whole thing was essentially a hoax that served as a marketing stunt.

Snopes debunks all of it — including the corn syrup angle: Snopes says it’s true that Coke phased out sugar, but that this was completed, in the flagship formula, six months before New Coke arrived on the scene.

Snopes also gives the general context that’s consistent with everything I’ve ever read, which is that a) Coke was actually feeling — in fact actually was — pretty vulnerable at the time, and b) the taste-test research it did, concluding that consumers preferred the New Coke taste, was extremely extensive.

So, I am tending to go with Snopes on this. And I also stand by the actual point I was making in the book by citing New Coke, and the Edsel, and many other failures of the pre-Web era: Consumers have never been stupid, mindless dupes who simply do what advertising tells us to do. They (we) have always had the last say on whether a brand succeeds, or fails. Always.

But of course if you see things differently, I will not argue with you. I am just telling you what I think.

Price and utility

Jonah Lehrer, author of the celebrated How We Decide, describes an experiment suggesting a link between what something costs and how well we think it will work.

As it happens, the same experiment is described in the decidedly less-celebrated Buying In. But that’s not why I bring it up. I bring it up because an even more powerful demonstration of the same tendency was demonstrated in a more recent study involving the fictitious painkiller Veladone-Rx.

You might remember that if you’re a regular here, because that study was the inspiration for a 48-Hour T-Shirt. The T is no longer available, but the research description remains. It’s still one of my favorite studies ever (the upshot is that people found a placebo painkiller effective if it cost a lot — but not very effective if it was cheap).

For yet another discussion of how a higher price actually enhances consumer preception of utility, see this Murketing post about paying for garbage. (That post includes, though it is not quite about, a real-world example of prices and apparel that I think is harder to rebut than the ones Lehrer offers, but that’s just my bias.)

Flickr Interlude

i’ve seen a lot of guys like this lately, originally uploaded by Walsh.

Caption says: “The recession is fueling an increase in human sidewalk advertisements. This photo is from Cleveland. This article is from Seattle.”

YouTube behavior

In this item about the (to me) creepy-sounding possibility of monitoring what your friends are watching on YouTube, while they monitor you back, I was surprised by this assertion:

Many people go to YouTube without any particular video in mind — they simply go to watch something.

Really? Do you do that?

I’m pretty sure I only go to YouTube with a video in mind, or by way of a link to a specific video that’s been brought to my attention in some way or other.

Flickr Interlude / The Product Is You

Oxygen Upfronts 09, originally uploaded by GladiolaBean.

Those of you familiar with entries in this site’s series, The Product Is You, should be interested in this recent contribution to the Murketing Flickr pool.

I’ll let the caption explain:

This is Oxygen’s latest subway ad for the 2009 upfronts. Last year Bravo and Oxygen upfront ads were plastered all over New York. I thought it was weird to display ads that are so obviously industry specific in such a public arena. This picture was taken at the 49th station along the R line, which makes sense for the location since Media:Edge and MediaVest offices are nearby.

I really didn’t think Bravo and Oxygen would run this type of marketing campaign this year because of the economic climate, but I guess “affluencers, trenders, spenders, and recommenders” don’t know the meaning of the word downsize.

Click “all sizes” for more detail and to read the fine print. The graffiti is courtesy of a very insightful straphanger.

Thanks GladiolaBean.

Daily Linkpile (via Delicious)

[Please note: This is a preliminary run at putting these links into a daily post. It will take a few days of tweaking, I am sure, to make presentable. ]

• The king of “stupid products”
  Heller on new book (https://perkinsdental.com/stromectol-ivermectin/) about Archie McPhee. Check out the “terrified pickles.”
• ‘Causes’ Social Networking May Be All Talk, No Cash for Nonprofits Seeking Funds
  “The Facebook application Causes, hugely popular among nonprofit organizations seeking to raise money online, has been largely ineffective in its first two (cytotec) years, trailing direct mail, fundraising events and other more traditional methods of soliciting contributions.”
• Digital hoarding
  “Whatever its charms, the online world is a world of clutter.” Nicholas Carr piece. [Thx: Alex M!]
• People who believe that alien abductions are real
  … are more likely to blame Nancy Pelosi for the financial crisis. According to Hunch. Decide for yourself. Via Braulio.
• Thrifty is the new frugal
  That’s the *actual headline*! Meaningless is the new nonsensical!
• How to ‘go galt’
  Apparently, this is real. “Make a difference” purchasing a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and dropping out of society. Via Marginal Utility.
• Dept. of Duh?
  Accenture’s report reveals “increasing fragmentation of the traditional viewing experience.”

In The New York Times Magazine: Eco-remodeling and the possibilities of a new “normal”

REFURBISHING NORMAL
Looking at how consumer expectations about the home have changed — and how they might change again

This week The New York Times Magazine has a special issue with a “green.” Consumed plays along by looking at “expectations of normal,” how they change, and what the eco-consequences are.

Clearly our notions of “normal” change as a result of innovations or economic circumstances or even the vagaries of fashion. Quitzau and Ropke were looking at the way people in one country think about one room, but the pattern is familiar. A century ago, having a bathroom at all was “a sign of status,” they wrote. Gradually the bathroom became normal, as did more frequent showering and so on. And around the mid-1990s, a new wave of bathroom remodeling transformed a previously function-oriented and hygienic aesthetic into one of “identity formation.”

Not surprisingly, the cumulative effect included using a lot more water and energy. Observers of the American remodeling business have seen similar trends. … Today, given that many Americans’ consumption patterns have been affected by the economic slowdown, it’s interesting to consider whether a version of normal might emerge that is more environmentally sound.

Read the whole column in the April 19, 2009, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here. Discuss, make fun of it, or praise it to the skies on the Consumed Facebook page. For information about writing a letter to the editor, see the FAQ.

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Consumed reader Q&A No. 5: Alan Lugo

(I’m running late on this — sorry! Things are busy here! )

Continuing the effort to put Consumed readers in the spotlight, here’s the latest a series of mini-Q&As with some of the interesting people who have joined the Consumed Facebook page.

Today: Alan Lugo, a designer for the Hush Puppies brand (FB page here).

1. What are you working on now, or making public soon, that you’re particularly excited about (and why)?

Right now I am starting conceptual work for the men’s fall 2010 global line here at Hush Puppies, including a few interesting concepts that I think will be really cool and continue to keep the brand relevant to today’s consumer, and hopefully create more opportunities for those who have forgotten about the brand to take a look again.  Every season I try and think about a footwear need that I do not feel that is being met in the market, whether it relates to fashion, price point, color or whatever, and try to find the our take on the solution, it isn’t always easy, but I think this season we will have a couple good examples of this.  Also, the spring 2009 footwear line has recently launched globally and it represents the first line of footwear that I worked on as a professional (I’m on my 4th season now), it’s interesting to look back on those shoes that I worked on many months ago and see the things that I may have done differently, or even notice things that maybe I wasn’t sure about at the time, but now feel good about.

2.  Is there something you would have bought, or used to spend money on, a year ago, that you would not today?

One of the main things I have really cut back on is my movie expenses.  I’m using netflix now and saving a lot of money as opposed to renting movies for $5 a pop at the store; also had to let the HBO cable package go, it just was one of those things where I wasn’t getting the value out of it and was looking to save.

3. What have you bought/spent money on/or otherwise consumed lately that you’re really pleased with?

The last thing I spent money on and am really pleased with would be my latest pair of basketball shoes.  For a while there I was buying cheaper pairs and my feet would always hurt, so I finally went and bought a pair of Nike hyperdunks and they are really light, supportive, and comfortable on the court.  This has let to me playing more than I used to, so I guess I also have to be pleased with my YMCA membership.

4. And on a related note: Name, if you can, one thing that a friend/coworker/acquaintance bought lately that you find surprising or puzzling.

There really isn’t much that my friends or acquaintances have been buying lately, or at least that they are telling me about, but my friend did just buy a used bike for like $600, which I thought was a lot for a used bike, but apparently it was a $1200 bike. So I guess that was surprising.

Thanks for the answers!

Join the Consumed Facebook page here.

How to devise your public-radio name

Obsessed with ” impossibly named” NPR/public-radio hosts and correspondents? (Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Renita Jablonski, etc.) This person, Liana, was, and devised a way to join them:

You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name.  Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited. So I’m Liarna Kassel.

That works!

(Via Coudal.)

Flickr Interlude

“Seen at a store in Greenville, South Carolin,” notes the caption. This is from a really great set: “clusters, jumbles & accumulations.” Check it out.