MURKETING

Pig in

Amusing to see this item named a favorite “Graphic T” by Omiru this morning. “Totally retro,” it says. Perhaps so. But we’re big on the pig here at Murketing HQ, so let me just say: To get the very coolest Piggly Wiggly T designs, you have to go to an actual Piggly Wiggly grocery store. They good news is they’re a lot cheaper than the $37 item pictured above.

Brand summation of the day

To my knowledge, I never signed up for the Colette newsletter. It just shows up in my inbox. But that’s cool, because today it included a bit on a bag they’re selling, co-created by Married to the Mob. Married to the Mob is described this way:

Symbole américain de la sexy bitchy attitude des temps modernes.

I have zero command of French, but that sounds pretty good to me.

Looks like it’s an edition of 10, priced at 850 euros. Here’s the link. The Colette site blasts music upon arrival, fyi.

Decrunched

In Consumed: Bear Naked: Getting past the granola image — with granola itself.

One of the sturdy clichés of contemporary brand-building is the importance of avoiding an image that’s too “crunchy” or, worse, too “granola-y.” That’s particularly true — and maybe particularly challenging — for businesses that want to transcend green or health-conscious consumer niches. But it’s really challenging if what you’re selling is, in point of fact, granola.

The founders of Bear Naked were conscious of this when they started selling their product in 2002. It was “an enormous issue,” Brendan Synnott says, and for the first two and half years of the brand’s existence, he and Kelly Flatley didn’t even put the word on their packaging. “I used to hate being called granola,” he says. “You hear ‘granola,’ and you think hairy legs and Birkenstocks. That was the reputation.” …

Continue reading at the New York Times Magazine site, by way of this no-registration-required link.

Labels (again)

There’s a very cool one-pager in the current Brandweek, and unfortunately its coolness can’t really be appreciated in the text-only online version. It’s a breakdown of the different iterations in the design of … a wine label! And of course seeing the pictures is what’s most interesting.

But the overall label strategy is interesting, too. Jim Edwards writes:

In February, The Amazing Food Wine Co., New York, will launch “Wine That Loves.” The brand takes the guesswork out of pairing wine with food. Thus, Wine That Loves Pizza, Wine That Loves Pasta, Wine That Loves Roasted Chicken, and so on. …

Challenges: Critics will say it’s wine for dummies. The bottles won’t carry the wine’s year, varietal or regional information beyond the country of origin—information most wine drinkers consider crucial. …

I’m impressed that the firm that did the design, Lippincott Mercer, was willing to share the early rejected attempts. It’s really interesting to see how the look evolved.

Edwards also notes that “wine packaging is experiencing a design revolution.” Agreed. If we spot Wine That Loves in any of our local shops, we’ll review the label.

Flickr Interlude

Flickr photo by soundfromwayout

Flickr Interlude

Flickr photo by suzerain

“Stuff”

The new issue of a magazine called 52nd City, published in St. Louis, has the theme, “Stuff.” The editors write:

Most of the submissions we received for this issue dealt with tangible stuff and lots of it. Maybe because we have so much room out here in the Midwest we hang on to stuff a little longer. There were multiple stories reflecting on stuff left behind after someone dies. Stuff collected and stuff purged. Not being able to let go of childhood stuff, gruesome as it may be. Stuff in the bottom of a purse. Stuff found in junkyards. eBay stuff. Sports stuff. In fact, we didn’t have room for all the stuff we wanted to use, so the website is teeming with extra content this issue.

I haven’t seen the issue, but some of the, er, stuff they put online is cool. Such as: “Streetside Pick Up,” by Elie Gardner, and Ari Holtz’s essay “The Burden and Gift of Possession,” which is about getting rid of stuff (a topic of interest to me, as you may recall). So take a look.

Via Ecology of Absence.

From the trades…

Uni Watch offers a pleasing selection of ads from old issues (1950s — 1970s) of Scholastic Coach, a trade mag, with comments from Uni Watch design director Scott M.X. Turner, and Uni Watch head coach Paul Lukas.

“The Ad Generator” …

… is described this way:

The ad generator is a generative artwork that explores how advertising uses and manipulates language. Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly.

Here’s the site. About one out of every five of the resulting “ads” are interesting. That’s not bad, though. It’s part of a thesis project by Alexis Lloyd. Via MetaFilter.

Quiz

So here’s the question I should have asked at the end of the other day’s entry about manufacturing in the U.S. and lux products and automation of manufacturing and all that.

Okay. So, let’s say you want to Buy American, you like the idea of Things Made in The United States, possibly because that means they are likely to be Sweatshop Free. Well, what about a product that’s made in United States — but in a completely automated factory?

That is, there’s no worry about exploited labor, because it’s all robotics and machinery. On the other hand, it still represents a threat to blue-collar employment, or at least it does nothing to help the manufacturing laborer in the U.S., at all. There’s no suffering — but there’s no solidarity.

Does it matter? Ethical plus, ethical minus, or ethical wash?