In The New York Times Magazine: Brawndo

THIS JOKE’S FOR YOU:
A satirical product from a dark comedy crosses over to reality.

It’s interesting to consider the Brawndo project as metasubversion, making it possible to express knowing amusement at the absurdity of American commerce by buying something. But maybe the message is simply that cautionary tales about dumbed-down culture are a futile endeavor: show us an argument that we will buy anything, no matter how idiotic, and we say, “Awesome — how much for that?”

Or maybe the lesson is something else altogether….

Read the column in the March 4, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

Previously on Murketing: about Brawndo; about imaginary brands. Even more imaginary brand links here.

Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.

Brought to you by the letter F


We were speculating the other night, while watching 30 Rock, about the sub-plot involving a (fictional) reality show called MILF Island: When did it become okay for the big networks to use acronyms that encompass the F-word?

Now I see that print ads for Gossip Girls do the same: OMFG, says this one. So I guess F is in!

Or maybe this has been going on for a while. MILF is certainly such a widely used term that I guess nobody really notices it any more. And I’m certainly not one to complain about profane language. But I’d hate to be asked by somebody’s child — or, really, my parents — what MILF or OMFG stands for.

Possibly the networks involved are getting a complaint or two, but also possibly not. NBC is even selling MILF Island T-shirts.

WTF, right?

In The New York Times Magazine: Obama art (or, Barackists: Part 2)

THE ART OF POLITICS:
Does pro-Obama creativity say more about the candidate or his fans?

As noted here Friday, this week’s Consumed is about Obama as muse.

Creative types have backed politicians before, but the outpouring of Obama-promoting creativity, free of charge and for the campaign’s benefit, has been remarkable. Does it say more about the candidate — or perhaps about his supporters?

Read the column in the April 13, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

Consumed archive is here, and FAQ (includes feedback/contact info) is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.

Further (failed) experiments in TiVo-proof advertising

While I normally enjoy The Hater, today I’m annoyed: I had managed to live in happy ignorance of the Alicia Keys “minisode” series on behalf of Dove until now. Not only that, I watched the trailer. Apparently what comes after decades of annoying ads punctuating vapid TV series is a seamless blend of these varying forms of awfulness, toggling back and forth one to the other so that you cannot tell whether you are hating the entertainment or hating the ads. Hater says:

Now I have to be grateful that every commercial isn’t a 5-minute long tiny sitcom about Alicia Keys and company navigating their early 20s in the big city with the help of friendship and Dove deodorant? Thanks, Dove. The bar is so low now it’s underground.

That’s funny. But not funny enough. So if you’d like your day ruined, too: here.

YouTube: A threat to television, or to water-cooler chatter?

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.

Today in dissonance: Deep interaction vs. being banged on the head

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.

Confession of a horserace fan

Jack Shafer’s fine piece in Slate — In Praise of Horse-Race Coverage — gives me the inspiration, or maybe the intellectual cover, to admit something. Everybody knows that campaign coverage is ridiculous: Too little focus on substance and policy, too much emphasis on image, personality, and “the horserace.” Even after reading Shafer’s piece, I would not really disagree. But even so, the fact of the matter is: I love the horserace.

I don’t mean to suggest that I think it’s all that useful in making a decision about who to vote for. But as Shafer says: “Even if the press corps had abandoned substance, no voter is more than a mouse click away from detailed policy papers and unfiltered campaign speeches by the candidates. If you’re not an informed political consumer this year, you have nobody to blame but yourself.”

What I love about the horserace is the story, or the stories. Not the supposed meta-story that various observers are always trying to extract from the drama, the Big Meaning about What Americans Want. (That story is always the same: “This is the greatest country in the world – and it’s in desperate need of fundamental change.”) What I find riveting is specifically the most horseracey of the horserace stuff: The tactics, the machinations, the personal dramas, the surprises, the petty spats, the cheap shots, the armchair psychoanalysis, the endless deconstruction of a certain remark or background image in a political spot that may or may not have a hidden double-meaning, etc. It’s like a soap opera, or a serialized 19th century novel. Such great characters! Clinton, Obama, Romney, Huckabee – all would make a fine protagonist in a tale of triumph or heartbreak. And that’s what they are! Only one will see his (or her) dream realized – but at what cost? And as for the others: Their hopes will be dashed! I empathize with (almost) all of them at one point or another, including people I wouldn’t vote for on a bet.

What about the constant wrong turns of the horserace press, which is forever headfaking and reshuffling the story of what’s supposed to happen next and how it’s all going? I love the wrong turns! That’s where the suspense comes in. Sometimes the narrative veers so drastically and so quickly — yesterday’s “conventional wisdom” is proven so wildly wrong — that it’s like a soap opera that has to be implausibly revised because one of the lead actors just got a movie deal and left the show. Or, to go a little more highbrow, maybe the horserace press functions as a kind of unreliable narrator. Either way, it’s part of what keeps me engaged.

Anyway, Shafer makes a better case than I ever could about why anti-horserace critiques are wrongheaded. You can check that out and decide for yourself. I guess I could say I’m glad that he’s staving off any threat to the horserace I enjoy so much — but really, we all know it’s never going away. So figure out who you want to vote for… and then enjoy the show.

Movie prop, swag, product you can buy

I have not seen the movie Juno. Maybe you have? I gather there is a scene in which the title character speaks on a “hamburger phone.” A phone that looks like a hamburger. I also gather that some actual hamburger phones were manufactured as swag for “select critics.” In poking around I see that Film Junk predicted just days ago:

A quick search on E-bay turns up an endless supply of these cheap novelty items, but I can guarantee you we’ll start seeing the officially licensed version in stores soon enough (probably when the movie hits DVD).

Perhaps there is no need to wait. It looks as if a site called Sourcing Map is selling them right now.

I’m not sure I get what Sourcing Map is, since the site bills itself as “a new way of getting merchandise from factory floors to retailers’ doors quickly and inexpensively.” Does that mean you have to be a retailer to buy from them? Not that I want one of these phones, I’m just curious. Also I notice the burger phone page says: “This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 05 December, 2006.” That’s odd, but maybe it’s a mistake.

I wonder what the story is with these phones? Who designed them, and did they suspect all along it would have an afterlife as a real-world product? Was it designed for the film, or did it already exist? If it’s something that was in the script, and then executed as an actual prop and then a working item, does the script-writer get royalties for phone sales?

In The New York Times Mazine: Yo Gabba Gabba

FAMILY VALUES:
How parents and their kids come together around a children’s show — and its collateral merch.

This week in Consumed, I write about Yo Gabba Gabba. Perhaps you’ve heard of this show aimed at the preschool audience and airing on Nickelodeon. It is also said to be Big On The Internet, with grownups forwarding around clips, and forming an audience that might be bigger than the one watching on television.

In part, this trans-generational appeal puts the show in the same category as what Salon once called “kindie rock” — culture for “hipster parents,” as well as their kids. (Billboard just published a related article.)

I was interested to learn that Yo Gabba Gabba is produced by a company that also happens to have an ownership interest in Kid Robot, the “designer toy” boutique/company. This arrangement means that as an entertainment property, Yo Gabba Gabba is particularly well positioned to make the most of its dual audience with its collateral product. As the production company’s president says: “I challenge you to find another preschool show that four months after going on the air is actually selling adult apparel at Barneys.”

Read Consumed in The New York Times Magazine here.

The Wire, explained

The Hater summarizes the critical consensus:

It’s the show that’s done more for art and humanity than all art and every human ever. In addition, it’s the only show that is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and everything that you want it to be. The Wire can inspire, move, and cure most ailments if applied directly. If you are barren, The Wire will give you child. If you are hungry, The Wire will give you bread. And if you are lost, The Wire will find you and hold you to its breast until someone who isn’t a television show comes along to claim you.

Fan creativity image of the day

I’m ambivalent about Battlestar Galactica, but I do like these posters, via ffffound.

And with that, I wish you a happy holiday. See you later.

The case for too many cable channels

Joe Nocera had a quite interesting column in the NYT over the weekend, on the subject of cable channel choice. Specifically, he looked at the argument that most cable consumers would be happier if they didn’t have to pay for a huge bundle of channels, just to get the handful they really want.

I know this is something I’ve long believed. And earlier this year, a Nielsen study concluded that the average American household gets 104 channels — but watches only about 15 of them with any regularity. That number, 15, has held steady as the number of choices has climbed. So wouldn’t we be better off if we didn’t have to pay for scores of extra channels that seem to exist only so that we can flip past them?

But Nocera’s counter-argument is pretty interesting: Basically, he contends that an a la carte scenario would cost consumers more, and would end up limiting choice.

Take, for instance, ESPN, which charges the highest amount of any cable network: $3 per subscriber per month. … Suppose in an à la carte world, 25 percent of the nation’s cable subscribers take ESPN. If that were the case, the network would have to charge each subscriber not $3, but $12 a month to keep its revenue the same….

And that’s one of the most popular channels on cable….

For smaller networks, the cost per subscriber would be far higher. This would drive up the channels’ own promotional expenses, and (Nocera contends) force them to lower the price of admission to advertisers, as they would have smaller audiences and “lose the casual viewer — a.k.a. the channel flipper.” Many would likely fail.

So we’d end up with fewer overall choices — and probably higher cable bills anyway.

I found this surprisingly convincing.

But on the other hand … if it’s really true that lots of cable channels would die out if they weren’t buffered from the actual marketplace by cable-company bundling, well then, why shouldn’t we just let that happen? Why should this form of business get special treatment? It’s not like the Speed Channel or whatever is performing some kind of public service. The massive number of choices available to us on the cable dial implies significant niche-level demand — but maybe that’s not really the case. (In a related point, the variety disguises the fact that five or six huge companies control almost every single channel, and they all use their popular offerings as leverage to get their more dubious ones into cable packages.)

I also wonder if it necessarily follows that advertising rates would fall. Don’t advertisers balance the desire for a large audience against the desire for specific, targeted audiences? Isn’t that the whole payoff of cable advertising? How much do they really want channel flippers? Seems like those channels that really did have enough of a consumer following, when exposed to the actual marketplace, would be attractive to advertisers for precisely that reason.

Having thought about all this for a day or two, I still wonder if there isn’t some other solution that would involve giving the consumer more of a choice about which channels they’re paying for — maybe a bundle of 20 channels would cost $X, and 50 would cost $Y, but there would be flexibility about which 20 channels. (This could be tweaked so that something really popular like ESPN would count twice or something.)

It would be interesting to see what people would pick, and how much it might turn out that some might value the feeling of lots of choice (100 channels) even if they don’t actually exercise a lot of choice (that is, they still watch 15). There is that “you never know” factor — maybe there will be something great on the Speed Channel some day! Although the more we use DVRs, the less that’s really relevant, right?

Anyway, on those occasions when I do find myself flipping past the surprising number of televised poker matches and whatnot, I do find myself thinking that cable could use some Darwinian competition.

In Consumed: The Pretenders

Guitar Hero: A rock-star fantasy that demands a different set of skills.

It’s a familiar enough scene: The kid walks in, straps up and does his best to recreate some classic rock song. Maybe it’s the Rolling Stones, maybe the Sex Pistols. He makes mistakes, but still, as he bobs his head and appears to lose himself in the music, he looks like a rock star, and maybe even feels like one. Or he does these things to the extent possible while standing in the middle of a Best Buy, staring at a monitor, playing Guitar Hero III, the video game….

Continue reading at the NYT site.

UPDATE (11/27): Kottke reaction to the pretend factor: “If you don’t know the difference in the first place, does it matter?”

In Consumed: Wild West: The Prequel

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: How a marketing strategy turned into myth — and influenced filmmakers for more than a century

Generally I post the column without comment, but if you happen to be reading this one outside the context of the actual New York Times Magazine, you might wonder: Buffalo Bill? What’s that about?

Here’s what that’s about. Several times a year the Times Magazine has special, themed issues. One of these is the annual Hollywood issue. This year the sort of sub-theme of the Hollywood issue is “The West.” When we have these issues, I’m supposed to “write to theme” — meaning I have to come up with something that makes sense both for my column, and for the special issue.

This can be a challenge, especially for the Hollywood issues. But often what I try to do is use it as an opportunity to do something different with the column, something that pushes the boundary of what Consumed can be. Thus, for this issue, I wanted to write about the pre-Western Western: The Wild West shows presided over by Buffalo Bill, presenting a quasi-mythologized “west” to millions of people in the U.S. and Europe, well before Hollywood existed.

Here’s the column:

The western genre and the Hollywood mythmaking machine match up so nicely that it’s hard to imagine one without the other. But the hunger — and the market — for a reassuring romantic national creation story as a pop-culture staple did not wait for the movies to be invented. In the late 19th century, even while the frontier was still a place and not a memory, “Wild West” shows traversed the United States and even Europe, drawing millions of spectators who paid to witness the western idea acted out as entertainment. As Larry McMurtry once put it, “The selling of the West preceded the settling of it.” …

Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site.

And after you’ve read it, you might be interested in the following bonus material that I didn’t have room to address in the column: Read more

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?