MURKETING

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Diesel’s new watch: Style trumps functionality: Yes, another example of counterfunctionality in the watch world, a favorite topic of mine, as you know. “The watch face is perplexingly blank; but two micro-clocks on each side of the casing provide a total of four timetelling indicators.” $365.
• Product Displacement, continued: Follow-up on Eyecube contains other interesting examples.
• Cover versions – a set on Flickr: Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books. Super! Via Listenerd
• On the electric guitar: “It is the symbol of liberation for the very practical reason that the guitarist can wander around while playing. He can smoke, spit or even sing while he plays. Electric guitarists.. are the dancers among modern musicians. Even Madonna has occasionally adopted a guitar as the necessary pendant of strutting musicianship. It is better to dance a bit with a guitar (Keith Richards) than dance a lot without one (Mick Jagger).” I don’t agree with everything in this essay, but the guy makes some pretty interesting observations.
• 25 logos with hidden messages: Via coudal

Imaginary brands as “product displacement”

As some of you know, I have (https://comfortdentalcareofbrookline.com/order-zithromax-500mg-online/) a particular fascination with imaginary brands — it’s a subject that’s come up in Consumed (here and here), and on this site, and in my Delicious links. So I was extremely interested to learn of this Tumblr blog, curated by Gladys Santiago, documenting what she calls  “product displacement.”

This involves the use of imaginary brands as, in effect, stand-ins for real brands we already know. For instance, above, a bucket of Colonel Likkin’s Southern Fried Chicken. I don’t have to tell you what that stands in for. Apparently it was used on the TV show Pushing Daisies. Other examples: Coffee Bucks on Scrubs, and TitTat candy on My Name Is Earl. (The Product Displacement blog also documents instances of unbranding — as when the logos are removed from cars and so on — but I’m not going to address that here.)

Santiago (who I got to meet, briefly, the other night at the Blowing Up The Brand event) explains the parameters of product displacement here. And here she argues that some product displacements are “arguably more clever and memorable than even some of the most exhaustedly planned brand integration strategies. ”

It requires no stretch of the imagination to recognize “Tit Tat” and “Coffee Bucks” as stand-ins for real brands, but that recognition allows audiences to engage with product placements in a manner that is significantly more encompassing than simply spotting a branded product onscreen.  Referencing these product displacements to their real world counterparts requires audiences to actively draw upon their cultural capital and awareness, therefore they have more resonance than a strategically placed can of Coca-Cola or character mindlessly raving about his/her T-Mobile phone.

Ultimately, product displacements have the opportunity to flatter the intelligence of viewers, especially if they are parodic and satirical in nature.  I particularly like My Name is Earl and Scrubs examples because they provide an allure of audience members being in on a private joke that mocks Kit Kat and Starbucks.

Pretty interesting!

Oh, and Santiago has also created this massive Flickr set of “deliberate and unintentional” examples of product appearances in scripted shows.

UPDATE: Follow-up  posts worth a look on Eyecube, and AdFreak.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• What Lucha Libre is about: “In the heart of the fight card, a deeper conflict played on the racial tensions and stereotypes of a downtrodden immigrant audience. Among the wrestlers, the vilest of the vile were the members of La Legíon Extranjera, the Foreign Legion, gringos who openly disparaged the spectators, their language and their country. The invasion, in this sense, referred to the chance for the Mexican heroes to drive out the Foreign Legion.”
• As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive: “Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.”
• The Optimist Conspectus: “Simply a survey of optimism; a series of answers to a deceptively-simple question: What are you optimistic about?” Via Swissmiss.
• Shift From Spending to Saving May Be Slump’s Lasting Impact: “This is not because Americans have suddenly become more financially virtuous or have learned the error of their free-spending ways. Instead, these experts say, Americans may have no choice but to continue pinching pennies.”
• Pimp That Snack: Totally disturbing site gives DIY instructions for making immense versions of Twix, Kit Kat, other junk food. Courtesy of Rebecca W. on Consumed’s Facebook page.
• Product Displacement: Fascinating tumblog. More on this later.
• The Surprising Satisfactions of a Home Funeral: Pretty interesting.

Just Looking

The current Giant Robot brings my attention to the work of Masakatsu Sashie, and I like it a lot.

Do I like it enough to reverse my decision to let my GR sub lapse? Well, no. But still. Really good stuff. I’d love to see it in real life. Meanwhile, check the artist’s site.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Custom Jewelry Line Celebrates Scars: Company called It’s My Scar renders your scar as a bracelet, ring, earrings or necklace.
• More downturn entertainment: Families compete to avoid financial ruin. And you can watch!
• Retailers play to the faithful: big spenders: “Luxury brands’ exclusive events (and maybe a charitable donation or two) entice elite shoppers more effectively than price-slashing sales.”
• Permanent-change-in-shopping theory questioned.: “Scholarly research has consistently shown that most Americans think their countrymen over-consume, but don’t think they do personally.”
• Mobile Phone Orchestra: I was skeptical. But this actually seems sort of amazing.

In The New York Times Magazine: Cheetos Giant

BIG CHEESE:
Is largeness its own reward?

We think of ourselves as sophisticated creatures, and the many brilliant minds of the consumer-industrial complex often think of us that way, too. But sometimes what we want seems pretty simple. Sometimes, we just want something big.

A case in point, perhaps: giant Cheetos….

Read the column in the May 10, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

Thanks…

… to those who came out to the Blowing Up The Brand event last night. Great to see some old pals, meet some new people, and it’s always a highlight to get meet readers I’ve been in touch with only via email etc. (And it’s always a drag that some conversations/meetings are shorter than is ideal.) I owe some of you some correspondence now and will get to that in the next day or two, but I wanted to also thank Melissa Aronczyk and Deveon Powers having me. Good luck with today’s events!

Also since I talked about Twitter, I had to do a quick search this morning to see if any of you were tweeting. And you can guess the answer.

(Thanks also to Mobile Libris — a very fine business that I endorse.)

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• “Guitar Hero” could become reality show.: ???
• Recessions make high-end marketers creatively desperate.: “They’re just changing the slogans.” Exactly.
• Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again: Onion: “According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, 98 percent of Americans no longer appreciate President Barack Obama’s attempts to break down the economic crisis into simple terms they can understand. Instead, many say the president should have the decency to insult their intelligence by using complex jargon to confuse and deceive them, perhaps even implying that the subprime mortgage fallout was just a big misunderstanding that resulted from a clerical error.”

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Choice blindness: “Role of ‘narratization,’ the ability of the mind to make a coherent story out what’s happening, with you as the main character, even when it’s clear that the outcome was determined externally.” Interesting writeup with several good links.
• More on attention: “It may be possible to improve your attention by using pulses of light to directly synchronize your neurons.” Yikes! Anyway I’m surprised that so far in the writing about Rapt I haven’t seen mention of Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” idea. But maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention.
• Lunch Bag Art: Pretty amazing, no? Via Amy Shaw/ Unconsumption.tumblr.com.
• Mass media helps Web media again.: This item mentions in passing that Twitter has grown *40 percent a week* since Oprah hyped it.

Just looking

Steve Lambert has images & even a video added to his site in connection with his current show in Los Angeles. Cool stuff, check it out here.

Me in NYC: Reminder + new development (won’t mention it again, sorry)

As mentioned repeatedly: Talk + book signing at NYU’s Blowing Up The Brand, Friday night. Details & RSVP here.

Also: At the end of the 8:20 pm Saturday screening of Objectified at IFC Center, I’ll join director Gary Hustwit for a brief audience Q&A.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Attention grabber: Marginal Utility adds another thought to the just-linked Laura Miller essay, addressing the possibilities of “unremembered pleasures.”
• Why can’t we concentrate?: If you can focus long enough to read this, you may learn something. “While it’s one thing to accommodate more information, it’s another to engage with it fundamentally, in a way that allows us to perceive underlying patterns and to take concepts apart so that we can put them back together in new and constructive ways.”
• Studying “The holier-than-thou effect.”: “Long known that people tend to be overly optimistic about their own abilities and fortunes — to overestimate their standing in class, their discipline, their sincerity. But this self-inflating bias may be even stronger when it comes to moral judgment, and it can greatly influence how people judge others’ actions, and ultimately their own.”
• Multi-Platform ‘Mackenzie Blue’ Arrives: Brands mentioned, but author says no paid deals.
• Default Avatars critiqued: By Social Images: Seeing Is Believing.
• Ambivalent Parenting 101: Latest from Adult Education: Brooklyn’s favorite useless lecture series. Tuesday May 5.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• YouTube: Placement Police: Cracking down on unauthorized (by YouTube) murketing: “Kevin Nalty, a marketing director at Merck & Co., who produces a series of sophomoric videos on YouTube under the moniker ‘nalts,’ recently received a slightly scary e-mail from YouTube about one of his videos containing brand messaging.” By the way, why is Merck posting “sophomoric” videos? Why does that make sense?
• Wasting Time: Priceless: I don’t disagree, but why is this a Web-specific issue? Same is true of watching TV or looking out the window, no?
• Depression Scares Are Hardly New: Argues that measures suggest three previous periods when there was more fear of a new depression than there is today: 1974/1975, 1978-1982, and 1990-1992. I find this genuinely surprising. In particular I don’t remember any talk of a new depression in 1990-1992 at all — bad economy, yes, but depression talk? That just doesn’t line up with what I can recall.
• Might become a ‘Super Fan’ of a popular movie franchise 4 the rest of my life.: HRO on fandom: “Sort of prefer ‘wasting time on the internet’ because we are all trying to get vulnerable and ’show the world who we are.’”
• Michelle Obama: Sneakerhead: Spotted rocking $540 kicks.

In The New York Times Magazine: Digital goods

IMMATERIALISM
With more of life lived online, spending on things that don’t seems more normal.

I’ve actually been scooped by Core77 in posting my own column! Embarrassing. Anyway, Consumed this week is about immaterialism and digital goods — why people buy things that don’t exist.

Consuming things made of bits might sound weird, but actually it offers a lot of the same attractions that make people consume things made of atoms. Facebook’s digital gifting is one relatively mainstream example.

Other examples, and the case for what it all has in common with buying things that do exist, in the full column in the May 3, 2009, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page. For information about writing a letter to the editor, see the FAQ.

Consumed archive is here. The Times‘ Consumed RSS feed is here. Facebook users: Become a Consumed “fan” here.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Conceptual Consumption: "Especially useful for explaining why people choose certain types of apparently negative experiences." Via Mind Hacks.
• AT&T Queried on Targeting Ads: "After criticizing Internet companies for gathering behavioral data on consumers for advertising, AT&T Inc. is coming under scrutiny itself for using such practices in its marketing."
• Product placement makes inroads on Broadway: "In a move that could offend theater purists, there are at least seven signs for Molson Coors Brewing Company products on stage, including five for Coors Light."
• Sponsored seats generate revenue for MLB teams: The "Coca-Cola Corner" at the Boston Red Sox' Fenway Park and the "Bud Light Bleachers" at the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley Field. Etc.
• Can-opener that looks like a can: From the 1970s.