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--> The Metapoll. Take it.
Things That Look Like Other Things.
Counterfunctionality (A Gallery).
MLK BLVD: Open-source photography project: Contribute to the Flickr pool; browse the blog.
"Where Were You?" Annual.
Titans of Finance: True Tales of Money & Business
. With Josh Neufeld. Now available for the iPad! Go here.
I make a real effort to avoid aggressively logoed merchandise. BUT ….
I ended up on the Tide web site today, and they’re selling T-shirts (there’s a charity angle) and if you buy one, you’re entered to win “an iPod customized with the Tide logo.”
Come on, admit it. That’s hot.
The mission of The Anti-Advertising Agency is rather strongly suggested by its name. But to be a bit more specific, it is funded by a grant from the Creative Work Fund, and “co-opts the tools and structures used by the advertising and public relations industries. Our work calls into question the purpose and effects of advertising in public space.”
Past AAA projects have included a collaboration with Graffiti Research Lab called Light Criticism (an idea that might politely be described as the inspiration for the Boston Adult Swim marketing campaign that kicked up such a fuss a few months back) and, with Amanda Eicher, PeopleProducts123, the shopdropping workshops mentioned earlier on this site.
The AAA’s CEO is artist Steve Lambert (visitsteve.com), who was most recently in the news for a project he’s developing at Eyebeam called AddArt, “an extension for the Firefox browser which removes advertising and replaces it with art.” Mr. Lambert graciously agreed to answer a few Murketing Qs. Those, and his As, follow.
Q: Of the various projects the Anti-Advertising Agency has been involved in, which ones do you think have been most successful?
A: I don’t really know for sure. To know we would have to do what is done in any marketing campaign, which is an impartial evaluation — surveys, testing, etc. And we don’t have the budget for that. I can track some things empirically, like web hits, and I can hang out near where projects are installed and gauge reactions.
But then, what is success? Our goal is rather tough to measure — to cause the public to re-examine advertising and the role it plays in public space. But I think we reach that goal with anyone who spends more than a moment looking at our work. It’s some measure of success if they look at it at all. And if they do, how much do they take away? This is what I dwell on when I think of “success.” Read more
Both Ad Age and Brandweek made mention recently of this: In Your Purse: Archaelogy of an American Handbag. Basically these researchers got 100 women to reveal and discuss the contents of their handbags. I gather these were “mall intercepts,” as they say in the trade. The site says:
“In Your Purse: Archaeology of the American Handbag” is the first exhaustive quantitative and qualitative study to delve into the contents and context of the only instrument that connects the home, where consumer needs occur, and the store, where these needs are fulfilled: in a woman’s purse.
There’s also a link to a promotional YouTube video; overtitles in the jokey intro suggest that while this all sounds kinda nutty, it’s “for science.” The project is a creation of Insightfarm, a “Market Research and Consumer Strategy Consulting firm Dedicated to Driving Business Growth through Consumer Insight.” So there’s science for you.
Maybe the results are interesting, but it’s a little hard to judge by the site or the trade coverage. Apparently it will be a book this summer. (“Innovation workshops facilitated by InsightFarm Inc.” are also available.)
Meanwhile, Fashionista has a regular “Your Bag” video feature (I’ve never watched a whole one, but I think the premise is pretty straightforward), and there’s at least one What’s In Your Bag pool on Flickr, if you want to do some research on your own while you wait for the book.
I saw this some time ago on AdPunch:
When these photographs are seen after turning the light off it gives altogether a new picture. The campaign has used a chemical that glows in the dark.
It was certainly a remarkable idea to bring this message across people in an attractive and interesting way to compel people to think in this direction. The presentation of the campaign is too very interesting and simple. The text of the campaign reads, ‘turn off the lights and reverse global warming’. The campaign was developed by The University of Texas.
What struck me about this is that the basic message is such a throwback. This is what I remember, as a kid, being the sort of enviro message in the 1970s: Poor old Jimmy Carter telling us not to be so wasteful. Even after the oil shocks, nobody wanted to hear that, and the people tossed out scolding Jimmy in favor of amiable Ronald Reagan. Green kind of faded for a decade or two.
Now the enviro thing is back, but it’s not about turning lights off and curbing waste — it’s about buying as many eco-chic products as your credit limit allows. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but really: Is “turn out the lights” a message that’s going to be hyped on the cool-product blogs, where green friendly is regularly touted as the hottest trend? It’s just not something Oprah can give to her studio audience, or that Vanity Fair can photoshop onto its cover.
Not using energy needlessly is arguably another form of unconsumption, and raises the same question I’ve asked before: Can it ever feel as good, give the kind of pleasure, as consumption (eco or otherwise)?
This campaign seemed like an attempt to give uncomspution some kind of emotional currency, so I poked around for more information. But I never did find any, so it’s not clear to me if this was just a class project if an actual campaign that involves poster-ing, or something else.
Okay, your T shirt, jeans, sneakers, hoodie, and skateboard all have street cred — but what about your premium blend coffee? As mentioned earlier, I’ve become increasingly interested in the brand underground migration into mundane and bourgeois products — the XLarge beer cozy, the Supreme air freshener, etc. Via Freshness comes word of the Frank151 online store, featuring not just coffee, but Stay High Cookies and Cream bars.
Obviously, I love it.
In a Consumed about Spykes a few weeks ago, a spokesman for the Center for Science in the Public Interest commented: “We have a chance of basically drowning it in the bathtub.”
And, in fact, Reuters reports, they have.
In Consumed: Terracycle: How one company strives to turn invertebrate excrement into a hip brand.
TerraCycle is one of those tiny start-up brands that get so much free publicity that it can forgo advertising. And it’s easy to see why there’s interest. The founder is a 25-year-old Princeton dropout. Its flagship fertilizer products are packaged in used plastic bottles, many collected through a nationwide recycling program the company itself has organized. And a key ingredient in the fertilizer itself, as the label announces, is “liquefied WORM POOP.” Waste packaged in waste makes TerraCycle the “ultimate eco-friendly” product, the company asserts, putting it in line with organic and earth-aware consumption trends. “We kind of ride on the fact that all these things get a lot of press, and get people interested in the product” and the “young, hip company” that makes it, explains Albe Zakes, the company spokesman….
Continue reading at the NYT site.
Additional links: TerraCycle’s “Sued by Scotts” blog. WormWoman.com. Worm Composting Basics.
“The smarter clients I spoke to [realized] that a $2 million fine equals $120 million in publicity.”
— some marketing/PR guy, quoted in Becky Ebenkamp’s Brandweek wrapup, which also notes that Interference says the number of clients it lost as a result of the incident was none.
Elsewhere on Adrants, this:
Meredith Turner from the Rosen Group is working on a news item that will appear on a major nation news show (we know what it is, we can’t tell you but you’ve definitely heard of it) and is looking for advertising addicts. Turner is interested in “interviewing someone who can wax poetic about advertising all day long and rattle off One Show ‘Best of Show’ winners like nobody’s business.”
Rosen Group is a PR firm. A PR firm that’s “working on a news item.” Does anyone find it curious that sources for a “national news show” are being filtered so directly and openly through (and even interviewed by) a PR firm? Will the news show disclose this? Doesn’t the news show have any employees of its own who could reach out to Adrants in its search for sources for its “news item”? Who is the firm’s client? The news show itself? Or some entity that will be featured in the news item?
Maybe this is routine in TV news, but it just struck me as weird.
More evidence of … something. Via Adrants/American Copywriter.
As much as I love to make fun of people for making up phony words and phrases, that’s how much I love to make up phony words and phrases.
My great triumph to date in this area, in terms of recognition, is fauxhemian, recognized by Wordspy, and used as a song title by Sonic Youth. [
“Fauxhemians,” Sonic Youth, currently the theme song of the Murketing Journal e-newsletter.]
Now, today, my April 2006 use of “mocketing” (as a bit of a throwaway in a Consumed column) has been recognized by the Double-Tonged Dictionary. Imagine how proud I am. Imagine!
And yet, it’s all bittersweet.
One of my favorite coinages, “phad,” has never been endorsed by any controlling linguistic authority.
And, somewhat incredibly, neither has “murketing,” which is not only a much better word than mocketing, but also easily the most widely cited word I’ve ever made up. And yet, no Wordspy entry, or entry anywhere else.
What’s up with that?
The most recent episode of The Weekly Drop was a pretty good interview with the founder of XLarge. I had some knowledge of the brand as an early Southern California player in what’s now called streetwear, but I knew less about it than I do about some other brands. (As it happens, I own at least one XLarge t shirt that I like a lot, but this is one of many examples of how my own taste doesn’t necessarily dictate my reporting.) Listening to the interview inspired me to click over to the brand’s site. I assume the T’s now on sale are from the out-going season, and some new batch of stuff is on the way, but a couple of designs stuck me as interesting for various reasons.
This item, Hi-Jacked Tee, jumped out at me. (In this and all cases, click on the image to go the item’s listing in the XLarge site’s store section if you’re interested.) Note the Arabic-ish treatment of the XLarge name. Seems like wearing this would be asking for trouble. But perhaps that’s part of the idea. Will Urban Outfitters bite this? I don’t think so.
Since I’ve been on this logo remix kick, I have to highlight this. They have a couple of t shirts with a similar theme, but I always enjoy seeing mundane products — a beer cozy, in this case — get the brand-underground treatment.
As a Warhol freak, I’m slightly tempted by this one: “Pop Cultural Revolution,” amusing.
But this one was my favorite. Apart from the sort of PE (as in phys ed, not Public Enemy) look, remixed with a rat, I’m probably feeling vaguely nostalgic about NYC. Of course, I’ve had the experience of moving away from NYC before, so this time my nostalgia has a somewhat different flavor. (The only T-shirt I presently own that’s NYC-specific is one I bought just before leaving town the first time, in 1999: Purchased on St. Marks, it’s one of those shirts that says, “Welcome To New York: Duck Motherfucker,” with a huge gun graphic. I love that shirt.)
Mostly I think I like the fact that the “XL” gets their branding done in a relatively subtle way. The fact is, I like a lot of brand underground designs, but I’m not any more anxious to be a billboard for their supposedly super-cool logos than I am for mainstream logos. I mean, it’s not like I’m idiotic enough to believe that anybody who looks at me will think I’m down with latest whateverblahblah, because I’m wearing thus-and-so brand. (In fact, in my case, the more obvious it is that I’m wearing a supercool-brand T-shirt, the more obvious it is that I’m a dope in denial.) So I like how the “XL” here presumably accomplishes whatever the XLarge crew wants it to accomplish in terms of spreading the XLarge name — but at the same time I could almost certinaly wear it without anybody realizing it was a brand at all. In a de facto sense, it’s un-logo-ed.
At least that’s my rationale for buying it. Which I just did.
The Consumed Facebook Page. I started this in connection with my NYT Magazine column, and intend to maintain it until further notice. 
Imagining implausible uses for unpopular places. A project in collaboration with Ellen Susan and G.K. Darby.
Great creative writers invent stories about thrift-store objects. A project in collaboration with Joshua Glenn.
Letters From New Orleans, by Rob Walker. 
Foreward to Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits
Introduction to Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture
Essay for OBEY: Supply & Demand - The Art of Shepard Fairey - 20th Anniversary Edition
Consumed column about Obama as muse is included in Obama: The Historic Journey.
A piece I wrote way back when for Slate is included in Sponsorship: The Fine Art Of Corporate Sponsorship/the Corporate Sponsorship Of Fine Art
Gary Hustwit's industrial design documentary Objectified.
Anne Elizabeth Moore's book, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity.
Kaya Oakes' book, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture
Elizabeth Currid's book, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City
Kim Fellner's book Wrestling with Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino
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