MURKETING

Linkpile

• Filtering Reality: “After California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage passed, opponents of the measure dug up public records of donors supporting the ban, and linked that data to an online map. Suddenly, you could find out which of your neighbors (or the businesses you frequent) were so opposed to gay marriage that they donated to the cause. Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an augmented reality system able to identify faces. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.”
• FTC To Target Advertisers, Not Bloggers, In New Guidelines: “In an attempt to clarify misconceptions that the FTC now will be mining the blogosphere for unsavory endorsements, Engle said the FTC’s focus has always been on “bad actor” advertisers.”
• The Google Wave chatting tool is too complicated for its own good. – By Farhad Manjoo: “Everything you type into Wave is transmitted live, in real time.” This sounds absolutely horrible. I assume people will love it.
• Bleak U.S. job market boosts military recruitment | Reuters: “The U.S. military met all of its recruitment goals in the past year for the first time since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973.”
• Letters of Note: Savin’ It!: “June 2003: Al Franken sends the following satirical letter to then Attorney General John Ashcroft and 27 other Republicans. In the letter, written on Harvard University letterhead, Franken requests abstinence-related stories for a (non-existent) book he’s writing entitled ‘Savin’ It!’ and claims to have already received responses from a selection of prominent figures.” It’s funny.
• The Chemistry of Information Addiction: Experiment said to find neural basis for this well-known trait: “The majority of us are all too familiar with the urge to know more about the future, whether it is an exam grade, an experimental result, or the status of a new job. Prior knowledge frequently has no effect on the actual outcome of the event – we’ll get the same grade regardless – and yet we still desperately want to know. This leads to what scientists refer to as “information-seeking behavior” – our mind craves relevant information.” Of course when you’re talking about real life, much depends on the meaning of “relevant,” and “information.”
• They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?: Friend of Murketing Susannah Breslin: “Today marks the debut of “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?,” a text-and-photos essay about the adult movie industry and the recession.” Pretty interesting, check it out.

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• The Significant Objects Story Contest — in partnership with Slate! | Significant Objects: “Submit a 500-word story featuring the object pictured (a barbecue sauce jar) by next Friday (Oct. 16) at 5 p.m., and you may be the lucky winner!” Actually, you won’t be lucky. You’ll be good. Slate link here.
• Later Viewings of Shows on DVRs Brighten Ratings: “CBS research indicated about 44 percent of commercials were still viewed during playback.” Hm.
• The eternal conference call: Nicholas Carr on recent articles declaring the death of email: “Asynchrony, once our friend, is now our enemy.”

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• WTF Safeway Blog?: “I’ve seen some bad food photography in my day, but none compares to what’s on the Safeway blog.” The examples are funny.
• Buying Green Can Be License For Bad Behavior, Study Finds: Mentioned earlier here.
• Tech version of placebo effect?: “Sixty people were shown the same video clip on the same television. Half were told to expect clearer, sharper pictures thanks to HD technology: an impression backed up by posters, flyers and the presence of an extra-thick cable connected to the screen. The other half were told to expect a normal DVD image. Questionnaires revealed that the people who had been led to expect HD reported seeing higher-quality images.” Via Mind Hacks
• Great time for US consumers: America is on sale: “‘The deals out there are unbelievable,’ says Wilmes, 36, who writes the Frugal Rhode Island Mama blog, which tracks local and national bargains. ‘We can put the money I save toward something else.’ And she’s doing just that, but only when she can find another deal. Wilmes and her husband recently bought a Samsung television from Best Buy’s Web site for $1,299, about $300 less than she found at other stores. She also got free delivery and another $13 back from ebates.com, which receives commissions from online retailers for directing customers their way.”

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• Blogged and Sold: “The more we are sold to — and, believe it, we are being pitched every minute — the more immune we are to it all.” That’s exactly what the marketing industry experts always say. Probably because it’s what they want you to believe it. And why not? It’s certainly easier than thinking.
• The Biking Life: Is It the Fault of Hipsterization or Social Media?: “Biking in the U.S.—much like, for example, shopping at farmer’s markets—constitutes an identity many people want no part of even though it offers an ostensibly healthier and/or saner way to live. You have to become one of “those people”; you enter a peculiar spotlight and invite all sorts of assumptions about what you are like.”
• 31 Unbelievable High School Mascots: Somebody could make a serious business out of this. Via Coudal.
• FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials: “Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”
• On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic But They’re Not Very Critical: Great WSJ piece, if you missed it.
• Mirror Moves: A Review of Rob Walker’s Buying In: Thoughtful writeup on Generation Bubble. I’m amazed to be getting attention for the book of any kind, and cool that it’s actually well done and interesting (for me at least) to read.

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• Will consumer spending really stay down?: Mr. Surowiecki questions the CW on fundamental shift in consumer behavior. Regular readers will guess that I share his skepticism. Although maybe my line of reasoning is slightly different. But the column is good, and so is his extra (link-rich) material on his NYer blog.
• One nagging thing …: Journal “has invited some of the world’s leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don’t understand about themselves.” Interesting stuff.

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• Music-industry suit still lives better than you do: Record biz crumbling? Check out the tasteful details of this Warner guy’s pad before you decide. Sadly online version doesn’t note context: “Lives with his German shepherd in his six-bedroom Upper East Side town house.”
• The Usefulness Of Cranks: Mammoth but incredibly great essay/review by Jackson Lears on environmentalism, progress, America, etc.
• How Long to Form a Habit?: Study claims: “When we want to develop a relatively simple habit like eating a piece of fruit each day or taking a 10 minute walk, it could take us over two months of daily repetitions before the behaviour becomes a habit.” Via Mind Hacks I think.
• Regretsy: “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.” “Regretsy, the dregs of online crafts.” Via Coudal.
• Robots and Monsters open for donations: “The charitable art project that offers custom-made robot and monster drawings, has relaunched. Here’s how it works: you donate a set amount for an original robot or monster drawing, and supply three words or phrases that one of the artists will interpret as they see fit to create your drawing.” Via Josh G.
• Is the Internet melting our brains?: The argument: “Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that’s been displaced.”
• Questioning Accidentalism: “Accidentalism, in other words. provides the perfect backdrop for the liberation mythology promoted by many of the web’s most ardent proponents, which is built on the idea that old technology put us in chains and new technology is breaking those chains.”
• Maine Statutes Dish | Significant Objects: “17 §3951. Abandonment of airtight containers (REPEALED) 15 peanuts.” Story by Ben Katchor.

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• Campaign gives a toast to sherry: “A campaign to make sherry cool.” Sigh.
• Side-effects from placebos can be drug specific: “Side-effects from placebo were almost as common as from the actual drug, but most interestingly, were specific to side-effects you would expected from the comparison medication.”
• Lost In the Supermarket: “The exaggerated displays of utility on display in the Supermarket are themselves a middle-class form of conspicuous consumption. Veblen describes how a rich man’s cane is a symbol of his membership in the leisure class precisely because he will never need to use it. The grip strips on a toothbrush and easy-pour spouts are exactly the same. They symbolize effort we will never have to exert.” Via Marginal Utility
• Basketball Trophy | Significant Objects: “I am in daily prayer that in Christian spirit only you will see this appeal, and know of our plan to transfer the ownership of this darling golden statuette of high monetary value into your home.” Story by Cintra Wilson

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• A whopper of an illusion is being shattered by Burger King ads: “During a live webcast Oct. 20, NASCAR star Tony Stewart will be hooked up to a polygraph and asked: Does Tony really love Burger King’s Whopper sandwich? The webcast will be the climax of a monthlong campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky — “The Truth About Tony” — that seeks to demonstrate that Stewart actually, really, truly loves eating Whoppers.” LA Times muses on the celebrity endorsement. Sort of interesting.
• Giftcards galore: GraphicHug also says: “Gift card designs these days are becoming fancier and fancier and I feel like Target has single-handedly reinvented the idea of a gift card.” Another earlier Consumed topic! Some sort of harmonic moment with GraphicHug today.
• Keep Calm and Carry On: GraphicHug says “this is a current image that needs to be questioned.” Consumed readers will recall that the design was not popular when it debuted in WWII, and was never widely used.
• Key To Subliminal Messaging Is To Keep It Negative, Study Shows: “Negative words may have more of a rapid impact.”
• Illustrator Sara Antoinette Martin: Nice stuff. Coolhunting Q&A.
• … with a bullet.: “Americans usually buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, according to the National Rifle Association. In the past year, that figure has jumped to about 9 billion rounds, said NRA spokeswoman Vickie Cieplak.”
• LVMH in the recession: Doing fairly well, the Economist says. Possibly because more of its customers are actually rich, not pretending to be. “Much of the [lux] industry’s rapid growth in the past decade came from middle-class people, often buying on credit or on the back of rising house prices. According to Luca Solca of Bernstein Research, 60% of the luxury market is now based on demand from “aspirational” customers rather than from the wealthy elite.”
• Are You A New Yorker Who Is Choosing To Buy Less?: Consider taking this survey for Kirsten Firminger, a graduate student in the Social Psychology program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Click for details. “The purpose of my research is to get a better understanding of how people learn to buy less and what barriers and supports people have encountered while trying to voluntarily buying less.”
• Prada Hits Milan Fashion Week Mixing Rich and Poor – WSJ.com: “I wanted to describe the current world,” Ms. Prada said while chatting backstage, wearing her traditional ironic motherly look—a dusty pink pencil skirt under a navy blue sweater and sequined knit tights. “There are the rich and the poor.…There is nostalgia.” Why do people take Ms. Prada seriously? Are these supposed to be the “ideas” that animate high fashion? Because it sort of sounds like a sixth-grade book report to me.
• Jay-Z: A Master Of Occult Wisdom? : NPR: Surprisingly interesting.
• Consumerism: By-product of international finance?: “It may be that international capital flows have driven our consumerist microbehaviors much more than we know; that it wasn’t just personal ignorance, irresponsibility, cupidity, greed and covetousness that drove the housing bubble and the boom in consumer debt; but instead those moral motives came after the fact, after our fate was sealed by the wash of investment coming in from overseas. We didn’t want consumerism, but someone had to sop up all those Chinese exports.”

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• Free will: Not an illusion after all?: “Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn’t exist is being challenged.”
• Girl Talk profile in GQ.: By Paul Tough. June 08 Consumed on Girl Talk here.
• Etsy Handmade Moment: Promotional Video Contest: DIY ads by DIY makers for the DIY marketplace.
• The growing ambitions of the food police: “Today’s morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator. They’re more likely to berate you for outdoor smoking than for outdoor necking. It isn’t God who hates fags. It’s Michael Bloomberg.” That’s a great line, Mr. Saletan. Also an interesting piece, even if I don’t quite agree. (I think taxes on junk food would be a great source of health care funding.)
• Merge Records: A Q&A looking back at two decades in the guitar-hero industry: By Todd Pruzan. Interesting.

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• Mass hysteria, crazes and panics.
• Poppytalk: Affordable Art {afternoon edition}: Working Woman: “This afternoon’s affordable art pick goes out to Working Woman and her ‘Kitchen Art’ series.” Nice.
• Vintage Roadside Visits: Cowboys and Rayguns: “Earlier this summer we were introduced to the artwork of Brian Burton. We thought it would be fun to ask Brian a few questions about his creations offered on his website Cowboys and Rayguns.” Neat stuff.
• The Dark Side of Cooperation: “Pro-cooperation instincts rely on dangerous conformity.” Interesting point, although backed by bizarre example suggesting that in a disaster, food and water and other resources should be distributed on the basis of ability to pay. (The wording used is “the basis of who values them most,” but obviously everyone would value food and water close to equally in a disaster, but some would have more resources to expend obtaining it.) Still, as I say, the overall point is sort of interesting and worth a read.
• Who Blogs?: Some data. Dunno how reliable.
• Goodwill shops see recession boost in sales: Story says: “The Goodwill image is changing. With a fresher look, an emphasis on customer enjoyment and brand-new clothes on hand from dozens of corporate donors, the stores are becoming shopping destinations.” Consumed on Goodwill from last year is here.
• Retailers try to get personal with shoppers: “Stores are also presenting more information about products — how they are made and why they cost what they do.” Yeah, right. Will it actually break down the profit margin? I suspect the “information” will in fact be an artful pitch. Fine Corinthian Leather, that sort of thing. (For different views see comments on the Consumed Facebook page about this article.)
• History of the Super Soaker: Thx P.F.
• Ocean ‘Deserts’ Becoming More Lifeless: “These vast stretches of barren sea could affect the marine food chain, and ultimately impact global fish stocks.”

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• Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition: Somebody has made a ROFL about the about the guy who yelled during Obama’s speech last night.
• Dope Packaging: Blog collects branding on heroin bags etc.
• World of Warcraft’s strong bonds: For Schweitzer, 27, a Bakersfield resident, the Dread Pirates replaced the co-workers, family and buddies who someone his age might typically draw on in a difficult time like a divorce. He confided in them over his headset. “The only people I had to talk to about it were guild people,” he recalled recently. “All of my friends are in Dread Pirates. I don’t really have any others.”
• Cat Mug | Significant Objects: “Its only redeeming aesthetic feature, the patina of mold we were never able to wash from the right side of its nose, at least offset its louche, ridiculous, wall-eyed gaze.” Story by Thomas McNeely

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• Craftzine.com blog : Book Review: <em>Yarn Bombing</em>: Looks great.
• Sub Pop X Nike: Apotheosis of something. Also: A bummer. Via Listenerd.
• Praying hands | Significant Objects: “The North Americans refused accusal. Constructed great cities and gave their names to them and let them crumble and then walked away.” Story by Rosecrans Baldwin

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• ‘Wire’ writer says adverts kill TV: “Television as a medium, in terms of being literate and telling stories, has short-changed itself since its inception. That is because of advertising.” Um: Nay-doy-ay. That said, I remind all those who agree with this obvious statement that in the Webby world, more cultural content is ad-supported than ever. Just saying.
• Advertising to Advertisers : Links to Network Upfront Pages: For all you fans of the Product Is You series.
• Narcissism in Gen Y: Is it Increasing or Not?: “Much of what my research uncovered was inconsistent with Strauss and Howe’s theories. At least in terms of psychological differences, generations do not occur in cycles; instead, the changes are primarily linear, with each generation taking the previous generations’ traits to the next level.” Some caveats though, in this writeup.
• “SJI” reimagined to address current health-care crisis « NO NOTES: All the same old questions /  I answered 20 times before / Did they ever hear of computers? / This is what they were invented for …
• Ziggy Heart | Significant Objects: “Have you ever hated someone solely for her dumb benevolence?” Story by Todd Levin

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• Virtual economy: As real as real: “The virtual world we studied appears to behave in the way a real economy does. The people there are as rational (or irrational) as we are offline.”
• Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture: “The self-reported demographics of Wikipedia contributors — more than 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, around 70 percent under the age of 30.” So when the gurus say “here comes everybody,” perhaps it’s worth asking: Who, exactly, is “everybody”?
• American Icons: The Wizard of Oz: Best Studio 360 ever? Perhaps. Only shortcoming is no mention of Zardoz.
• The Myth Of Multitasking: “You may not be getting as much done as you think.” Long Science Friday segment.

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• The Mayor of Sneakerdom: Village Voice cover story on sneakerheads.
• Recession Prompts Many Americans to Reduce Time Spent Volunteering, Study Finds: “Sixty-six percent of those surveyed said that, as a result of the recession, Americans were more concerned with looking out for themselves. Only 19 percent said people were doing more to help others. The findings amounted to what the report’s authors called ‘a civic depression.’” I thought we were finding new values? What happened to that?
• Ultimate Fighting magazine: To launch soon. Earlier: Consumed on mixed-martial arts “lifestyle” brands.
• Danielle Distefano: ‘100 Ladies’: Pretty great. I wanted the one in the wrestler mask, but it’s already sold.
• Device | Significant Objects: “Then we would return to our apartment, plug in the item pictured above, and stare at it transfixed until one or both of us passed out on the thrift-store couch, our nametags still affixed to our wrinkled knit shirts.” Story by Tom Bartlett.

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