MURKETING

Don’t Look Back

I meant to mention this earlier and forgot. Probably you’ve seen it by now, but just in case: The guy who founded the band Boston told Mike Huckabee not to use the song “More Than A Feeling” in his campaign events and to drop it from the set list of Huckabee’s cover band:

 “Boston has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for.”

Everything Boston “stands for”? Right.

Why Dilbert doesn’t vote

An article in the Boston Globe looks at a “provocative study” suggesting that “enlightened management philosophies can spread from the office — and change societies.”

The data sound a bit tenuous, but the upshot is an argument that “empowered” employees  may be more prone to civic engagement, and thus in building a better society and culture, etc.

Maybe so. What really interested me was a bit toward the end, when it’s noted that there’s no guarantee that companies, even profitable ones, will empower employees. (One might add that this is a particularly important point given the various waves of layoffs and outsourcing, etc., as well as the ongoing shift to less-than-empowering service sector jobs in recent years.)

A snippet:

Empowerment at work may lead to engagement in society, but employees who feel that their company pays mere lip service to participatory management are likely to become cynical about participation in civic life as well. In large corporations, where participatory management may be no more than a flurry of buzzwords and employee participation is diluted due to the sheer size of the company, the results may be detrimental.

Let me just add that the reason Dilbert doesn’t vote is of course that he’s a cartoon character. But I thought that seemed like a snappier headline than anything using the words empower or civic engagement.

Flickr Interlude

Great vengeance and furious Lego, originally uploaded by givepeasachance.

The caption: “‘Oh, I’m sorry! Did I break your concentration?’ … Some graffiti I saw around town …”

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In The New York Times Mazine: Stardoll

DRESSING UP
It’s just like paper paper dolls — only digital, global, mercantile and branded.

In Consumed, head of Stardoll.com Mattias Miksche an answer to anyone made uncomfortable by commercialization in this girls’ world. “We have a list of 1,200 brands our users have asked us for,” he says, from aspirational names like Dior to quotidian ones like the Gap to “the most obscure Ukrainian jeans brand.”

Up next: the ability to design their own digital apparel — and, if they like, sell it.

Read the column in the February 17, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or right here.

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

Annals of weird fandom: Erin Esurance? Really?

Through a series of clicks that started I’m not sure where, I ended up encountering this post, and this one, about what Esurance (which is an online insurance outfit of some kind) should do about the fans of its ad icon, a cartoon hottie named Erin.

The questions are the usual stuff about how Esurance should leverage the fandom. (“Find someone who can assume the persona of Erin Esurance and engage your clients with experiential marketing.”) But really, isn’t the more interesting question: What are these people thinking?

Are they really, truly fans of Erin Esurance? If so, what is the nature of that fandom, precisely? Is it just kind of kitschy? Or is this page of fan art from DeviantArt — I don’t have it in me to go through the process of seeing the blocked “mature” examples — an indicator? I’m not criticizing anybody here: If you want to draw pictures of an animated advertising mascot in her underwear, you know, that’s really your business.

But I admit I’m more curious about what motivates these fans than I am about what, if anything, Esurance ought to do about it.

Express yourself … or whoever

One of my favorite topics is the flipside of the supposed confessional, privacy-indifferent nature of Web expression: The amount of Web expression that is not only un-confessional, it’s somewhere between self-marketing and flat-out lying. So this story in today’s WSJ about people who crib from the profiles of others on social networking or dating sites made my day:

Online daters feel pressure to stand out and believe they must sell themselves like a product, say researchers at Georgetown, Rutgers and Michigan State universities who are conducting a joint study of them. “You are not making money off of somebody else’s work; you’re just trying to market yourself,” says self-confessed copier Jeff Picazio, a 40-year-old computer-systems manager in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Businesses have even cropped up to sell people elemements of a marketable personality. One, the WSJ says, “offers 12 ‘proven’ profiles for $4. Sample: ‘There is a shallowness, a fakeness to much of the “‘singles scene.”‘”

Worth reading.  

Can’t “average people” do green things?

I’ve been brooding for a couple of days now about Treehugger’s recent post, 4 Reasons Why Recession is BAD for the Environment. It’s a perfectly reasonable post, but this is the bit that’s bothering me:

Average people, when money is tight, will look for less expensive products (duh). Right now, that usually means that greener products won’t make it.

I understand what they’re getting at, and that many “ethical” products cost more, etc. But I feel like it’s become too routine to equate the consumer role in addressing environmental or sustainability (or whatever) concerns with simply buying products. And in particular, with considering eco-ness as something like a luxury.

Too often I think people trying to build eco-businesses get caught up in chasing the high-end, moneyed niche, and using the quasi-lux positioning as a hook. I know some people think it’s good when green-ness and “status” become intertwined, but I’m not so sure. “Status” is a fluid concept. It can spark backlashes as easily as emulation. (Grant McCracken has explored a similar point here.) And it can seem optional — if you’re buying green for status, not because of something more tangible, it’s much easier to stop.

Selling eco as a luxury or a status marker may or may not build a profitable business, but when it does, it tends to be a niche business. And the more this approach is used, the more it ends up creating a broader impression that consumer ethics is itself a luxury good — and something that “average people” just can’t participate in.

I suspect there are other ways to participate in the general idea of environmental responsibility that have nothing to do with buying anything at all, let alone status-buying. That’s what I had on my mind when I posted the other day about consumer behavior and the potentially grim economy: That maybe non-shopping activities — unconsumption, if you will — would be a good thing to think about.

Completely self-serving post regarding Consumed readers

Anybody in a position of power at the NYT ever look at this site? If so, I invite such persons to please take at face value the following from Edelman’s blog:

I had lunch today with Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan of Undercurrent, a digital consulting firm advising Fortune 500 companies on Generation Y. I learned that on a Sunday morning, Gen Yers are inclined to sit on their beds checking out news on a wireless basis, from the Drudge Report to Treehugger.com to Gawker to Seth Godin. The Sunday NY Times is also on their list for the Sunday magazine, for Rob Walker’s Consumed column, but also to check out Walker’s blog on NY Times.com….

That’s right! Gen Y is buying the Sunday Times specifically to read my column! Okay, maybe it’s not true — but can you prove it’s not true? (And hey Josh Spear, I now forgive you for never publishing that “wish list” thing you asked me for over the holidays.)

I’ve added a comment (not yet approved, so it’s not there as I type this) to the Edelman post clarifying that Murketing.com actually cannot be found on the Times site. Other Times Magazine contributors such as Virginia Heffernan and the Freakonomics team do blog on the Times site, but not me.

I can instead be found here, at Murketing.com. But I assume you knew that.

Flickr Interlude

barbershop “make you beautiful”, originally uploaded by greg.7sins.

[Join and contribute to the Murketing Flickr group]

Reborn dolls revisited

I already mentioned this after Coudal.com linked to it a month ago, but because both BoingBoing and Make have highlighted the recent-ish documentary about reborn dolls, I’ll mention it again: Reborn dolls were the subject of this February 4, 2005 installment of Consumed, probably in my top ten personal favorites from the column’s history.

Here again is a link to a clip from the doc from Britain’s Channel 4; interesting.

Yes, this site was down all day yesterday

It was a hosting problem. And yes, it was frustrating and annoying. I was considering a “consumer rage” post about this, but I’ve calmed down. Somewhat.

More on ethics, consumption, and crafting

Vanessa at Etsy’s The Storque has written a thoughtful response to the Jean Railla column What Would Jesus Sell?, published here a few weeks back. Vanessa’s thoughts have gotten lots of comments over there, too much for me to attempt to summarize, so check it out. I’m just interested to see the discussion is continuing.

And because to so some extent it’s a subject dealt with in Buying In, I’m glad to see how much interest there is in the topic in general.

More on Honest Tea & Coke

The other day I linked to this Chews Wise (Sam Fromartz, author of Organic Inc.) post about Honest Tea‘s new relationship with Coca Cola. Two updates on that. Marketing Profs blog offers a few other examples of niche food/beverage brands, particularly with some kind of organic or other feel-good hook, being bought giants. (It also notes that Clorox “quietly” bought Burt’s Bees recently. I’m not sure how quiet that was, but here’s a huge New York Times story on the subject from a month ago.) The blog says:

On the positive side, the mega food companies also greatly expand distribution for their acquired brands, and have the ability to market with much deeper pockets. They sometimes even allow their new baby brands to influence some of their business thinking. While it is now au courant to become green or more natural, for example, the insights and influence corporate giants are getting from their newly acquired brands has actually begun to effect change in their thinking. . .and that’s a good thing.

Second, Mr. Fromartz has gone direct to the source and done a quite interesting Q&A with Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman. I recommend checking out the whole thing, but a few things I want to highlight here.

Goldman specifically mentions the distribution issue noted above as a major plus for his company in the new deal. I can’t tell you how many times this comes up when I interview startup entrepreneurs — you can have all the clever marketing and awesome consumer evangelism you want, but without distribution, you’re limited.

Most interestingly, Goldman even cites McDonald’s as “an example of the kind of account that we will now have access to,” meaning they can at least get in the door for a meeting, because of the Coke connection. It might seem surprising that a successful new beverage can’t do that on its own. And I’m not in a position to say with certainty whether it’s 100% true all the time. But it doesn’t surprise me at all; it’s quite consistent with stories I’ve heard before, in plenty of categories.

Then Goldman offers another example: Wal-Mart, he says, is a place where Honest Tea “should be.” Fromartz of course brings up the obvious question of how Honest Tea loyalists might respond to their little brand popping up in such places. Goldman:

We’ve gotten a lot of emails, mostly positive but some negative. One of the most important points is I’m not trying to excuse or rationalize what Coke sells. They’ve obviously been successful at it. But if people think their product is unhealthy, then their desire should be to see more Honest Tea available wherever Coke is sold.

Guest Q&A: Davey Dance Blog

[As noted earlier, Murketing.com today brings you the first guest Q&A, suggested and conducted by Ada Puiu, a senior at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. Take it away, Ada…. ]

I was introduced to the Davey Dance Blog by a friend, last spring. A 27 year-old Minnesota native, David Fishel came up with an idea involving a basic formula: historical monument, Canon Powershot, and an improved dance to a pop song. His first video was posted last March — leaning tower of Pisa to the Beatles’ classic “Don’t Let Me Down” — and 43 entries later, his dance blog has gained quite a following. (It sure spread like wildfire for a while among friends of mine). His most popular YouTube posts have topped 10,000 views. He also posts on Vimeo, and of course his own site, www.daveydanceblog.com. He’s been featured on a France 2 Channel program dealing with Internet celebrity, as well as in the New York Metro. And he’s even started spawning fan videos!

Personally, I love that he does what me and my friends have always wanted to do – dance our hearts out to our favorite songs, in public. Plus, I tend to really dig his music choices. So while there’s no real message behind the videos (short of some tonge-in-cheek song selections), I keep checking his site because it’s amusing and fun and funny — and pretty brave. So I was curious to find out more about him and why he does this. — Ada Puiu

Q: What do you hope people take away from your videos? More importantly, what do you take away from not just doing them, but making them public?

I really don’t have a defined message or purpose with the project. But I think people have responded to the images of a guy simply having fun in public, which is great. They can see that I surely do not have any kind of formal dancing skills, but I think that certain moments of emotion translate through the movements. I guess the most I can hope people take away from the project is a smile.

For me, the reactions from people are the most rewarding, both the Internet comments and also seeing how people at the locations cope with a man dancing to music on his headphones. I am drawn to the fact that the people who see me dancing live have no idea what sound (if any) I am moving to, and then occasionally their reactions are captured in the video, which is displayed synced to the music for an entirely different audience. The implementation of a performance and the documentation operate almost as separate works in the way. I guess I like that.

Q: In some of your videos, there’s an interesting sense of irony with your song selections (like “Milkshake” at Harvard Yard; link here). How do you decide where to film and how do you pick the songs? Read more

Murketing seeks help, part one: Q&A subjects and interviewers

Quite frequently in the eight years that I’ve been writing online (going back to the Slate days), I’ve heard from students, graduate and undergraduate, pursuing their studies in a range of fields from design to marketing, cultural studies to anthropology, journalism to business. I’m always pleased when this happens, and it frequently leads to interesting interactions.

For a while now I’ve been wanting to encourage more such interaction in a way that benefits not just me, but such students, and readers of this site. I finally did something about it — took a first step — after an exchange with a student at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto: I asked if she’d be interested in contributing a Q&A to this site. And after a little back and forth about potential ideas (all her ideas, not mine) we settled on something, which will be published here later today.

I’d like to make such Q&As a regular thing here on Murketing.com. And so:

1. If you’re a student involved in a project or research that you think would be of interest to Murketing readers, tell me about it.
2. If you are aware of such a project or research, and would be interested in putting together a Q&A with the person who is doing it, let me know.

As examples check out this Q&A, and this one, both involving student/class/school projects.

Use murketing AT robwalker DOT net, and put something like “Murketing Help” in the subject line.