MURKETING

In The New York Times Magazine: Pur Flavor Options

TAP DANCE
Want to stand out in a category that’s all about subtracting? Add something.

This week in Consumed, Pur Flavor Options, which allow you to add flavor to filtered tap water.

It may seem surprising, then, that a filter maker would attempt a kind of jujitsu move on the notion of purity: What if you took water with all the bad stuff screened out and . . . added something to it? …

But if Flavor Options suggests that progress on the front lines in the marketplace is incremental, it also offers proof of just how resistant the marketplace can be to limits. At a certain point, you would think, the race to purity gets won; eventually, you cannot get purer than pure. And yet, just as you can never actually drive to the horizon, the end point of “new and improved” simply does not exist.

Read the column in the January 11, 2009, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here; The Times‘ Consumed RSS feed is here.

Consumed Facebook page is here.

“Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, Magazine, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. The e-mail address is magazine@nytimes.com. All letters should include the writer’s name, address and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished letters. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.”

To Do in Savannah: Stitch Spectacular

From Connect:

Stitch Spectacular will feature 41 pieces by artists from as far away as Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Participants were selected by an impressive jury comprising Grace Bonney, founder of design*sponge website; Kate Bingaman-Burt, founder of the Obsessive Consumption website and assistant professor at Portland State University; and Torrey Stifel, studio coordinator at the Jepson Center for the Arts. Learn more about the judges and entries at www.stitchspectacular.com.

Dimensions Gallery
412 Martin Luther King Blvd.
Savannah, GA

January 9 through February 3. Opening reception January 9, 7-10 p.m. Closing reception January 30, 5-8 p.m.

Just looking

Shepard Fairey on Obey Giant site:

The day Obama stated his interest in adopting a dog from the shelter was a slightly brighter one for the approximately 7 million adoptable dogs & cats killed each year in this country. The staggering reality is that for each one sold at a pet store or by a breeder, another perfectly worthy one is killed.  Our nations shelters are filled to capacity with all kinds of amazing adoptable animals including, as Obama put it, “Mutts like me.”

On the heels of Obama’s comment, I got a call from Pia Salk, an animal advocate who works with North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website, Adopt-a-Pet.com. Pia simply asked if I might be willing to collaborate on a way to have my art help these animals.

Read the rest here.

Earlier: The Art of Politics in Consumed.

The charm of the imperfect

Associated Press reviews the Polaroid PoGo, which is the brand’s comeback-attempt product in the post instant-film era. (I wrote about Polaroid’s unwinding of its actual instant-film business in Consumed, March 16, 2008).

The PoGo is a digital camera priced at $200, with a built-in printer — so it sort of recreates the classic Polaroid idea of the instant print. (You can see a company video here, and a demonstration video that I found too long to watch, here.)

Here’s what I thought was most interesting from the AP review:

The prints  [are] grainy and the colors are slightly off, with faces tending toward a deathly blue-green….

As a camera, it’s primitive. It doesn’t have auto-focus, just a switch for infinity or close-up shots. The resolution is five megapixels, far below that of cheaper compact cameras. Neither of these things matter much for the quality of the prints, which are small and of low resolution anyway…

That all sounds bad … but maybe not.

The imperfections and limitations of actual Polaroid pictures were, in a way, part of their appeal.

I had been pretty skeptical of this product when I first heard about it, but, oddly enough, I find the flaws to be potentially the most attractive aspect of the PoGo. I wonder if any of the Polaroid diehards will, if not quite embrace it, at least be curious enough to give it a try — and if we’ll see some interesting creations as a result.

There’s already at least one PoGo prints Flickr pool. AP says the camera isn’t on the market until March or so, but I assume the “seeding” has begun (and for all I know that Flickr pool is a murketing effort from the company). But anyway I’m more curious now than I was when I first heard of the camera. We’ll see.

Consumption, values, and “do-gooding”

The Economist’s recent(ish) World in 2009 issue included a story about “no-nonsense brands” doing well in 2009, while those “priced for status are likely to suffer.”

This sounds in-line with much of the trend-pontification about the new-and-improved “values” of the 2009 consumer.

But the piece also said this:

Any brand built around do-gooding notions of organic, social responsibility or caring for the environment may need to rethinking, according to Interbrand, a marketing consultancy, as value for money rises up the consumers’ agenda.

Now, I don’t know what exactly Interbrand said. (Couldn’t find anything on their site about it.)

But if this assertion turns out to be correct, I wonder how it squares with the idea of “values.”

My thoughts on the “new thrift” are in this earlier Consumed. My thoughts on the limits of do-gooding sales pitches can be found in the final section of Buying In.

Survey says…

So: Thanks to all who answered the survey the other day. The giveaway winner (chosen by counting how many people gave me an address and having E pick a number without knowing why) is C.C., in Butler, PA. You know who you are! I hope. Actually, even if you don’t know who you are, I’m sending the DVD to the address you provided, so watch your mailbox.

All in all it was a pretty interesting exercise, with some surprises. Not surprising of course — in fact it’s inevitable — is contradiction. Notably, several people mentioned liking the Flickr Interludes — and several named them as their least favorite part of the site (or as one respondent put it: “Flickr interlude. WTF?”)

I’m mulling the feedback, and there are a few comments I received that I’ll revisit in the days ahead.

I must say the most salient comment, from my point of view, was: “I wonder how you do this site without $$$ compensation.” This gets directly at the reason for the survey in the first place: I enjoy the site, but I simply can’t justify spending as much time on it as I do.

Also there were several suggestions about adding outside contributors in various ways that I found extremely helpful, and that I’ll revisit in the days ahead after I’ve thought them through.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested, some highlights after the jump. And obviously if you’d like to offer feedback about this feedback, feel free. Read more

PR Corner: Pitching a coinage

Peddling a coinage that supposedly summarizes a trend is a stalwart promotional tactic. Today, for instance, I got a pitch that was built around this coinage: “deepre(ce)ssion.”

“There is a thin line between the play on words ‘deepre(ce)ssion’ and ‘deep recession,'” the pitch continued, going on to say that whoever these people are, they are a great resource for expertise for a story “on any subject relating to the oncoming deep recession.” Noted.

But I must say, “deepre(ce)ssion” is the worst portmanteau I have encountered in some time. I’m not sure how it qualifies as a play on words, nor do I understand what idea it is trying to communicate. It’s also not fun to say.

It is portmanteau that has failed.

It is a coinage manqué.

It is — yes! — a portmanqué.

Flickr Interlude

0697_DXO, originally uploaded by jobbyz.

Blogs and books

James Surowiecki, on his NYer blog, asks:

Has any regular blogger—someone who’s posting a sizeable amount of content every day—written a great book (whether in terms of critical acclaim or public influence)? I realize that’s a completely old-media question (why, after all, should books be the criterion of anything?), but I’d still be interested to hear people’s answers.

Unfortunately there appears to be no way to leave a comment, or contact Suroweicki, so I’m not sure how he’s going to get answers.

Anyway, I would say that a few things that leap to mind are that Julie/Julia book (blogger who cooked from Julia Childs cookbook and wrote about it), very well-reviewed and sold well; that book by the waiter who ranted anonymously on a blog, I think that was well-received, and sold welll; and I guess the stuff white people like blog/book, I think that has done well and people like Kurt Andersen think that it’s “smart.”

Maybe none of those count as critical acclaim and public influence, I’m not sure. But those are the ones I can think of.

In general, publishers have thrown a lot of money at bloggers, but most of those efforts have not been successful.

My (sort of) data-driven Top Ten songs of 2008

Later this week I’ll come back to the survey I posted the other day (so you still have time to weigh in if you want), but today I am going to reprise something I did last year: my quasi-data-driven list of the 10 best songs of the year just ended.

First the list; then, after the jump, for those curious, an absurdly long breakdown of related personal-listening data that (partly) shaped the list, and some mild observations about the problem with “best of the year” lists.

1. “Poison Dart,” The Bug featuring Warrior Queen
2. “Count It Off,”  Saturday Knights
3. “Albert Goes West,” Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4. “Da Feelin’,” Nightmares On Wax
5. “Get It Up (Radioclit mix),” Esau Mwamwaya, Santogold, M.I.A
6. “Bag of Hammers,” Thao
7. “Ooh Yeah,” Moby
8. “Thinking About You,” Irma Thomas
9. “You Want the Candy,” The Raveonettes
10. “Play Your Part (Pt. 1),” Girl Talk

Okay. So I’ll quickly acknowledge that Cousin Lymon is going to give me shit about the Raveonettes and Moby, but the explanation that follows should not be taken as defensive! Read more

Ingenuity and progress update: iFart

So maybe you already knew this, but I just noticed that the number-one selling paid app for the iPhone is: iFart.

It makes a variety of fart noises.

There’s a YouTube demo here, if you need one. The app costs 99 cents.

According to WiredNews, sales hit 10,000 a day in late December. Also this:

That’s pretty impressive, considering Apple previously didn’t believe fart applications met the standards of the App Store. In September, Apple rejected a similar novelty app called Pull My Finger on the grounds that it had “limited utility.” Just recently Apple reversed that decision and approved a number of other fart apps as well.

Take note that there are “a number of other fart apps.” I suppose that when trendmeisters earnestly ruminate on the new downturn-era insistence on only spending on things that have real value and utility, they’re talking about … iFart. Therefore, I look forward to the digital sneeze-powder or 21st century fake dog-doo that will lead us back to better economic times.

In The New York Times Magazine: Drank

SLOW PITCH
An ‘anti-energy’ drink’s novel image: chic … or shameful?

This week in Consumed, a beverage containing allegedly relaxing ingredients such as valerian root, melatonin and rose hips, but that skips the health-store image in favor of one striving for  hip-hop chic — and whose name  happens to echo slang for sipping prescription cough syrup.

This has attached some controversy to Drank, as well as to a rival drink called Purple Stuff, made by a different Houston company. “One of the most asinine things I have ever seen,” a public-health professor commented in one Houston Chronicle article that also included complaints from local religious figures and rappers. Not surprising, right? “I’m a little shocked” at the criticism, Peter Bianchi, the inventor of Drank, told me. “We’re not advocating drug use at all,” he continued, but merely offering an innocuous beverage to anyone who feels a little stressed out — carbonated counterprogramming, as it were, to the firmly established “energy drink” category.

Read the column in the January 4, 2009 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

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

“Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, Magazine, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. The e-mail address is magazine@nytimes.com. All letters should include the writer’s name, address and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished letters. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.”