AMUSE

Interneting at a higher level

[alyceshu]

Joan Didion as the Face of Celine - Good News of the Day

Amazing choice, Celine. Older women becoming the faces of various brands has been a trend of sorts, what with Iris Apfel and Linda Rodin reining over the pretty young things with their knowing looks and graceful aging. And here comes Joan Didion, looking ever so nonchalant about being photographed by Juergen Teller.

I read Democracy pretty recently, so I can't help but think about how life and art intertwine for Joan, how the anti-glamour anti-fashion girl, the steadfastly "writer" woman, the journalist, novelist, with her dry-eyed analyses of women who more than anything were documented or made in/famous, now sits in the seat of her stories. If Joan wrote an essay on Joan, would she describe the way her hair followed the path of the perfect pleats on her blouse, the print on the sofa, the way the blanket was folded and refolded and placed just so, and give the background of the give no fucks look Joan holds in front of the blinding flash. The under-the-radar star who so carefully could elucidate the references that composed a person's personhood, or a culture's culture, has now become (more than ever) that picture on the wall. 

[alyceshu]

Really nice meditation on branded content by Omelet LA. 

[alyceshu]

What Executives Don't Seem to Get

Just watched a panel at #AWXI Ad Week with a bunch of head honchoes of Comedy Central, PBS, WE, Amazon Instant, etc. And while it was totally engaging and interesting and dare I say it, fun? I ended feeling like there were some major things that they just did not understand. So many people in these panels have acted as though this time we are living in is something that needs to be demystified. And I understand this. For them this is new. For me and my ilk, this is the normal, the usual, the living and breathing. There is no intellectual stretch or effort for us to use any of these digital platforms. Even if I don't like Twitter I understand it. Even if I don't like Facebook I understand it.

But that's not the point. The point is to do with how these ad-supported networks have tried to address the viewer of today. The viewer that downloads a show, willing to wait well beyond the amount of time of watching multiple ads in one hour of broadcast television, to avoid ads. The Comedy Central President made a great effort, putting seasons online for people to watch at their leisure/to binge. Yet, the idea that they put their content on Hulu and anywhere else where people feel they have to pay the price of watching an advertisement to access the show they want to see or the movie they want to watch is bad! That's bad for advertising! As many panelists have said this week, content must be entertaining. Branded content must be entertaining. And that's something that few companies truly understand beyond Buzzfeed.

Beyond merely entertaining, why can't branded content or brand-supported content be educational? People watch shopping hauls on Youtube, or beauty tutorials, or cooking shows, essentially giving away their time to extended advertisements ("These are the things I bought and this is how you use them. This is why I like them."). And they do it willingly because they are learning something from them. Again, I've belabored this point before, but those going into the branded content foray need to understand that they must become a resource for the consumer/viewer. If the viewer is the studio boss, then why not give the viewer some information? Why not empower and educate the future content creator with the information to make them great? Show us more movie magic! Why do shows like How It's Made succeed? Because we want to learn about how things are made!

[alyceshu]

Advertising Week

It was the first day of Advertising Week today and I am exhausted. 

The most impressive talk I saw today was not the perfect panel moderating Sheryl Sandberg did (my god that is a woman who controls a room. She literally screamed out Katie Couric's name "Katie!" in a big auditorium and someone hurried over with a microphone so KC could ask a question about marketing to women. Nor was it Buzzfeed, even though Ze Frank drove home to me how Buzzfeed really was the branded content king because they thought in terms of identity, in terms of how people will share with each other to show that they were part of an identity be it cat owners or introverts or introverted cat owners. They think in lists! Everything you thought about Buzzfeed is real!

No, my favorite talk was from SapientNitro's Daz McColl and Mike Monello, who talked about storytelling in today's participatory culture. They just hit it, with dozens of cogent examples of immersive marketing that was not just marketing but truly (watch out, buzzword ahead) engagement. HBO's Game of Thrones food trucks brought together foodies and GOT fans and created a Comic Con-like community atmosphere. Joss Whedon sold his film on vimeo for $5 a pop, and then rewarded his most diehard fans with random fantastic thank you presents. The Blair Witch Project had a backstory that provided enough details but left enough whitespace for the audience to fill it in, making the audience invested in the story! That's the beauty of fan fiction or even the odd poetry of a well-written TV review. The fact that recaps are a popular tv phenomenon of their own shows how much more deliciously appealing shows get when we see others engage with them or we get the chance to engage with them ourselves.

Wonder how the rest of the week will pan out. This one day there's been a lot about how branded content can tell an authentic story.

If you can't tell, there's been a lot of buzzwords. I'm branded out. 

[alyceshu]

Brands being #Brands on 9/11

Today is a day of commemoration and quiet reflection. We will #NeverForget. pic.twitter.com/3HIdjL0tCr

— Ty Inc (@TyInc)

September 11, 2014

Don't do what Ty Inc did, and what countless other brands have done today, which is use this as an opportunity to advertise the product! A praying American flag beanie baby bear?! What kind of brandfuggery is this? Who in the world would see that post and think, wow, thank Ty! I didn't know how to express my grief on this 9/11 anniversary, but your bear has really given me a way of channeling my emotions towards the tragedy of this day! I must have it! My kids must have it! We must never forget!

What are brands supposed to do? We are delighted when they do quick, off-the-cuff responses a la Oreo and the Super Bowl. At this point we expect them to be socially responsible, or at least appear to be socially responsible. We just want them to make us laugh, know us, cater to us, engage with us, but still make us feel like we have privacy, autonomy, and can't be controlled. 

9/11 tweets are such an emotionally exploitative ploy to make brands seem human. As brands become more than just logos, catchphrases, and ads, they must still toe the line. Sure, respond in an amusing way to a customer's tweet. But don't think that consumers forget that the brand is human invention.

[alyceshu]

Branding the Hermit

Lost My Mind from Quality Peoples on Vimeo.

In my post on Personal Branding I wrote that: 

"Yet there are plenty of people who would rather not have a brand at all. People who unknowingly find themselves branded by their desire for nonconformity and isolation. Unbeknownst to them, they are owned by the brands others place upon them — and so it makes sense then, for you to take ownership of your own brand, doesn’t it?"

Quality Peoples, a purveyor of surfer clothing, is the perfect example of a company branding the "desire for noncomformity and isolation". 

"Wealth. Traffic. Pollution. Noise. Modern life. Sometimes comforting, sometimes cacophonous. The hermit sacrifices convention and convenience for one goal: a life of simplicity. A love affair with the sea, uncoupled from the constrains of constructed time." -- Lost My Mind, A Short Film by Quality Peoples

Who is this hermit? Is he somebody who will buy artfully faded and patterned casual clothing, filter his pictures with #vscocam, and spend $49 on this pineapple t-shirt?

Quality Peoples has done a beautiful job with its branding. The videos are reminiscent of Kinfolk on the beach, provoking a mixture of jealousy, wanderlust, and plain old lust. I watch it and I want to be this mysterious hermit, Instagram incarnate, the kind of person who constantly has an awesome photographer at hand. They've captured, really, what so many people my age want--authenticity, beauty, and a kind of aesthetically pleasing freedom. 

Yet, they must tie their tees to the figure of the hermit, a character that connotes a true dismissal of social mores--somebody who would not care what kind of t-shirt they wore. 

They gloss over the fact that their hermit is not a hermit at all, but Leo in The Beach, or the countless other souls losing themselves at the Full Moon Party. They take gap years from their real lives, as though living is something you put on hold while you do something more fun.

The image above shows the model standing in the middle of the street, experiencing the world around her. That dog, and that man on the bike are nothing but the background to the world that spins only in reference to her.

"Let's get feral. Let's get lost." is one of their tag lines. And yes, that is wonderful copy that fits their image, but their version of getting lost is a curated experience, wholly self-aware, and concerned with the aesthetic of adventures rather than the adventure itself.

[alyceshu]

Identity CrISIS

What happens when your brand has the same name as a violent, militant group

Let's be real here, how many people see an establishment called Isis (which in my mind would be one of those heavily scented shops that sells eccentrically printed clothing made from linen and stretch jersey and a large selection of soaps--isis, lower-case i), and thinks, "man, those assholes must be affiliated with that violent, militant group beheading babies! I'm never getting my patchouli from them!"

CBS Money Watch has found two companies formerly named Isis that have rebranded to put distance between them and those images in the media of men looking disapprovingly at the camera while holding AK-47's on dusty jeeps. 

I don't want to get into the politics of ISIS, the group, because due to my previous incarnation as a student of international relations I have a lot of opinions that do not necessarily have to do with branding. 

But it is interesting to see how four letters connect the militant group with a Florida real estate development group, a mobile payment platform, a university feminist group, and a pharmaceutical company developing ALS drugs. While the former two have decided to change their name, the last two have not.

For Isis the mobile payment platform, changing the name is a pretty shrewd move. Rather than face Google search oblivion, the fledgeling company has decided to rebrand and in doing so funnel to themselves some of the media attention ISIS thus far commands.

And while it's understandable that a real estate development company might not want people to think it does shady dealings with ISIS, the move to rebrand seems expensive and drastic for the benefits.

Understandably, a company doesn't want its brand name to be associated with something negative and oftentimes consumers will choose arbitrarily to dislike brands because of their names, logo, or color scheme; however, ISIS is constantly in flux, adding territories to its sovereignty, and not tied to the name that it has been given and which it has smartly exploited. 

It grates on me because it seems like another way for companies and news outlets to underestimate consumer intelligence. At the same time, it makes perfect sense and is another example of the fickle way of consumer behavior. Sometimes, all it takes is that gut feeling. 

"The brand is an emotional thing," said Lida Citroën, the principal of branding firm LIDA360, told CBS MoneyWatch. "When companies choose their names, they do so because we want that consumer to feel something." She added, "When something like this potentially could be damaging, it has to be considered."

[alyceshu]

Brands Must Do: Seamless Virtuality

In today's NY Times Sunday Review, Richard Kearney posed the question: Are we losing our senses? In our increasingly virtual world, are we losing touch with the sense of touch itself? And if so, so what?

Citing the replacement of sexual contact with digital mediation and a "materialist" culture with "immaterialist" culture, Kearney posits that we are entering the age of "excoriation", "where we obsess about the body in increasingly disembodied ways". 

"For if incarnation is the image become flesh, excoriation is flesh become image."

Though Kearney comes from a philosophical standpoint, it's an important consideration for those interested in branding. The shift towards the digital space over the physical is more and more a shift towards an experiential marketing that envelops a complete segment of the digital world in a way a brand can not in the physical. 

This can be seen in the difference between a brand's online presence and a brick-and-mortar store. While individuals go through the world, they carve out a personal nook in a public space, aided by technology. The commute to and from work becomes a personal space insulated by individually chosen music, literature, and--on the web--lifestyles. When we walk back from work, we might be interrupted by going into a retail store, marveling at the displays and going through the decorous motions with the retail staff. When we walk back from work, we choose to distract ourselves in with a brand's Instagram. The digital space is a seamless transition, a welcome escape during our everyday routine, rather than an unwelcome intrusion into the movement of our day. 

Hence the appeal of digital marketing and social media. Online, brands become resources for interesting articles, beautiful images, and momentary diversions from the stink of garbage wafting up from the sidewalk. Online, brands can become friends in the online sense--present, noticeable, and easy to stay connected with. 

Online media companies reap the greatest benefits from this. Refinery29 and Manrepeller are two extremely successful forms of online branding. They provide helpful content in a very human way. In contrast, the hair salon promoters standing at the corner of Madison and 42nd fail when they physically reach out to touch my hair, comment on how lovely it is, and then hand me an inconvenient coupon and demand action. 

The online brand requires a slower rapport than the offline brand does--yet, it builds trust in a way that a chatty salesman can't. It builds trust on my terms on my own time. 

The difficulty is that to build that slow rapport requires quick, real-time effort. Brands need to be tireless in their posts to keep up with those cursory glances of bored commuters. This isn't necessarily saying that we have all become zombies glued to our screens; in fact, rather than carnal alienation, as Kearney would put it, it is a means of becoming more deliberate in the virtuality to which we do decided to commit. 

Most importantly, successful brands should dedicate themselves to creating seamless virtuality. Build a voice and generate useful, expert content in lieu of pop up ads, sidebar and banner ads. Shy away from trying to trick the customer through Google ads, Facebook ads, and Yelp ads. Instead, acknowledge the customer as being knowledgeable and engage, engage, engage.

[alyceshu]

Personal Brands

Is it that people are becoming more like businesses or that businesses are becoming more human? It's a two way street and both sides are colliding towards the other.

Improve your brand is one of those trendy aphorisms the internet likes to spout these days. A quick Amazon search for "personal brand" shows pages upon pages of books all claiming to teach you how to "reinvent your personal brand," and "define your brand, imagine your future." These self-help books have taken it farther than before, with methodical strategies for people to not only improve themselves but introduce the efficiency and glossy images of corporate brands into their lives. It's not just reputation managing, or life revamping. It's the open acknowledgement of a very real shift in the way we today think of ourselves and who we must show we are rather than who we must be in order to become successful.

Blame it on the internet, blame it on Millenials, the idea of personal branding is a scary exhortation that echoes a dystopian ideal. Personal branding forces humans to live through strategy and fear the exposure of their more base selves. Though in this case, most of the time perhaps it's not the base selves we are worried about, but the boring selves, the selves in sweats who have just spent three hours watching House Hunters in a morass of self-disgust. 

It makes it seem like there is only one self and that one self is the branded career self. The self of polished resumes, smart suits, and well-timed business laughs. Or it's the self of curated roguery, the blond frosted tips and voracious appetite of Guy Fieri, or the luscious locks and white suits of Jared Leto. It's a self displayed through Wikipedia articles, confessional blogs, personal web sites, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook likes, and the perfect Valencia-hued Instagram post. We are our public image, and it seems the only way to deal with it is to treat ourselves like a brand.

Yet there are plenty of people who would rather not have a brand at all. People who unknowingly find themselves branded by their desire for nonconformity and isolation. Unbeknownst to them, they are owned by the brands other place upon them -- and so it makes sense then, for you to take ownership of your own brand, doesn't it?

Brands imply value. The first brands were physical burns from those who wanted to show ownership of something or someday else. Today's brands are symbols of a different kind of ownership. Ownership of space on the kitchen and bathroom counters, in closets, in bodies, in our conversations, on our public profiles. Our personal brands are made up of brands! 

Companies and agencies recognize this, and we recognize this, and we mix our identities with the identities of those brands we consume. Brands become more personal, and people become more corporate.  

My only suggestion? Don't let the brands brand you, and don't believe that your brand is you. The difference between people and brands is that people don't have to be simple. Brands do.

[alyceshu]

Lincoln Takes a Ride on the McConnaissance

Let's be real here. Does anybody really think Matthew McConaughey when they think Lincoln? Not the 16th President, though I'm sure McConaughey would kill it in a biopic, but the town car, or as they've newly rebranded, "The Lincoln Motor Company". 

In their transition from Lincoln town car to the American luxury brand, Lincoln has jumped onto the barreling forward power of the McConnaissance. The spots, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, are a true and blatant throw back to "True Detecetive", from the long shots of McConaughey and his cheekbones driving down long, pastoral roads, to the couch philosophy about "living in your moment", and the "tone, mood, and silent moments in between the dialogue". 

A few things of note in this video. 

He describes the Lincoln MKC like a football coach describes a good line back, "good shoulder and hips, good athletic stance";

He equates loving driving with being from Texas aka a true American;

He drops the word authenticity, minimum two times in a 1:43 minute spot. 

To be fair, I started out being doubtful of the collaboration. Why would McConaughey agree to this? A big bag of cash, withstanding, the more I looked into it, the more it made sense in an almost brilliant way. Lincoln's taking advantage of the fact that McConaughey made the same brand transition it is now trying to make; B-list romantic comedy love interest banging bongoes to tuxedo-clad Oscar-winning serious A-lister. Lincoln's looking for a McConnaisance of its own, and to achieve it, Lincoln's letting McConaughey drive around in a car and ad-lib some things about being McConaughey. And honestly, the more I think about it the more I am impressed with how much they thought about McConaughey not just as the obvious Oscar-winning choice, but as a strategic one. Touche Lincoln, touché. 

Innovation/Originality/Novelty

The campaign is a consummate car campaign, ergo shots of the car, shots of the driver, shots of the sunset, shots of the road, cityscapes, and so on. The ads themselves haven't come out, but if they continue the way of the teaser, it's going to be many minutes of McConaughey's extempore drawling, which is a departure from the usual voiceover man of God over a bird's eye view of the car. 

  Emotional Appeal

Imbuing patriotism has always worked, and Lincoln does it in a way that is surprisingly un-Ford of it. It's subtle, almost, despite the Texas name-dropping, and the very clear "American brand" statement. Points for McConaughey's casual execution. Just a guy talking about what he likes, y'know?

Aesthetics

Again, nothing too special here. McConaughey almost blends in with the leather of the car. I like the long shot of him smiling into the sun. Besides that, Rufn as director has not innovated too much on the dominating theme.

Effectiveness

In terms of effectiveness, yes, this definitely is going to change the Lincoln brand. Just thinking about McConaughey and Lincoln together creates this image of kind of a rough American pioneer who has gone through the social carwash and emerged with a sparkling veneer. And it works.

Personal Attraction to Ad

I'm not the hugest fan of McConaughey, but I have watched his rise with admiration. Car ads are not really my thing possibly because driving is not really my thing.

[alyceshu]

Heritage Farm Chickens and Farmer's Market Fodder

Hit up some Brooklyn Farmer's Markets today. Attracted to a sign that said "Heritage, Free-Range Chickens", I asked how much they were.

"$20 a chicken, that's the deal this week!"

I don't doubt that the farmer's chickens were great. Even in their vacuum packs they looked appetizing, though maybe I was just hungry. Had they just said "Chickens" I probably would've been skeeved out by the bare bones presentation, chickens packed into the kind of red cooler my dad fills with Heinekens and Poland Spring bottles. 

Yet that hastily typed Word document, font 75, elicited my attention and for a moment there, in between when my roommate ran off to get vegetables for the chicken lentil curry he was envisioning (I have a meat cleaver now! It means I can butcher the whole chicken!) and when the head of the stand (the headstand) said "$20 a chicken", I wanted to spend my money on "Heritage, Free-Range Chickens".

Even after he said "$20 a chicken", I wanted to spend money on "Heritage, Free-Range Chickens", pleading with my roommate about the chickens' pedigree, its great childhood, how well-fed. Alas, he brought me back down to earth (this, after he had spent $9 on five heirloom tomatoes) and I left the stand--but not before I spent $1.50 on some iced mint tea. 

Now, it probably cost $1.50 to make the liters of mint tea that farmer had sold. And when I bought it, I could not help but feel incredibly silly for shelling out $1.50 on some water and tea leaves when I rejected the $20 Heritage, Free-Range Chickens, which had probably cost a fair amount not to treat badly. 

The thing is, the big corporations, agencies, retail stores, and farmers have all caught on, and the amazing thing is that the consumer, we with the reusable bags and the voracious taste for fresh peaches, drink the Kool-Aid, fully aware that we are being swayed by buzzwords and branding. By taking part willingly, we don't feel cheated. We just drink our iced tea and move on to the next stand.

Innovation/Originality/Novelty

Heritage, Free-Range Chickens were the only chicken sellers out of all the stands of the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. Points for being the only one, and points for Heritage. 

Emotional Appeal

Seeing $20 Heritage, Free-Range Chickens made me think about NSA Foods, the supermarket down the block from me that has a letter taped on the door listing all of its sanitation short-comings, most notably in meats. This singular image of that letter is probably what made me want to spend money the most.

Aesthetics

All-caps Helvetica on white, laminated paper. 

Effectiveness

Yes. 

Personal Attraction to Ad

I had chia seed pudding for breakfast, and quinoa for dinner last night. Prime Farmers Market fodder.

[alyceshu]

Terminix: Effective Storytelling

I write this while scratching a mosquito bite on my right eyebrow, one of numerous swollen prizes won during my brief wait outside while my roommate went to get something from the car. My roommate met my histrionics with typical indifference, saying I was always so dramatic about mosquito bites. 

The new Terminix spot called "Death to Mosquitoes" plays into the dramatics of those cursed with sweet blood or type O blood or "being a girl" or the kind of blood those flying bitches love to suck. 

Using a Kim Possible animation style with some Dr. Seuss rhymes, the spot tells the harrowing story of a family plagued by mosquitoes and the successful intervention of Terminix's new highfalutin sounding "Attractive Targeted Sugar Bait". Basically you spray this Terminix sugar stuff onto a plant and draw the mosquitoes to it, allowing them to gorge on poison and die (!!!).

Innovation/Originality/Novelty

The ad is a throwback, so in terms of novelty, it's not exactly innovative. Yet in today's day and age, it's a novelty to find an ad that tells such a well-crafted story, in couplets to boot! 

Emotional Appeal

Terminix really gets into the anxiety bite-sufferers get during the summer, invoking shattered family serenity as a consequence of mosquitoes. 

Aesthetics

The ad reminds me of Kim Possible meets Fairly Oddparents with a big dash of graphic novels. The mosquitoes look sufficiently evil. The animation is especially great when the skeeters get bloated, and the writing is delightfully clever when it drops in the Shakespearean soliloquy.

 Effectiveness 

For mosquito haters, Terminex is spot-on. I wanted to run out and buy it in a second. For those who don't find it to be so much of a problem, the ad isn't quite up to viral. 

Personal Attraction to Ad 

I am extremely personally attracted to this ad. In fact, I could just barely manifest more fully the target market if I were a bit older and owned a home. As is, I practically went out and called Terminix for my apartment. 

[alyceshu]

New York Tough

The new Proctor & Gamble "New York tough" campaign that's taken over the subway has driven home to me that I'm a P&G cash cow. I've got Costco-level Dawn, Febreze, and Crest stolen from my parents' house in huge quantities all over my flat. The campaign is a departure from the usual. For the first time, P&G is wantonly flaunting its domination of my home good, with a unified ad campaign for eight brands: Bounty, Crest, Dawn, Febreze, Head & Shoulders, Pantene, Secret, and Tide.

The ads feature the hashtag, #NYTOUGH, and present a particularly reductive take on New Yorkers, mentioning pizza ("Garlicky pizza breath is tough. Crest if tougher."), and the subway ("humid subway stations are tough. Pantene is tougher."). A quick search on Twitter shows mixed reactions, predominately from brand strategists uninvolved in the making of the campaign commenting on it. 

Strategy-wise, it's an interesting tactic to consolidate the P&G brand rather than differentiate the particular brands within P&G. Instead of having Pantene compete with Head and Shoulders, P&G products compete with Unilever or S.C. Johnson products. It leverages the benign images of the eight largely inoffensive brands to architect a similarly benign and inoffensive image for the wider P&G brand. 

The unified aesthetic look and messaging really emphasize that you could smell like P&G products at all times, with their special proprietary blend of chemical scents. It's a bold move for P&G to openly show that its brands are part of one conglomerate. The Awl's John Herrman is understandably concerned, saying that "it's also a much broader advertisement against that idea that consolidated ownership...is notable at all."

And here's where we get into the whole jumble of notions of consumer awareness and participation. In today's age of marketing, where consumers knowingly play large roles in brand strategies, is it really so bad to expose the illusion of choice? Or will the intelligent consumer better appreciate this type of transparency? 

Innovation/Originality/Novelty

Being as none of the other big companies have done this, it's pretty original. The geotargeted effort is always appreciated, but the ads themselves are not innovative, with mediocre copy, and over-stereotyping of New Yorkers.

Emotional Appeal

Again, geotargeted campaigns trying to relate to New Yorkers can either be brilliant (see Manhattan Mini Storage), or fall flat (see Airbnb's hollow attempt to appeal to New York's  sense of neighborliness). While #NYTOUGH seeks to appeal to the "resiliency" of New Yorkers, it does so in possibly the most trivial way possible.

Aesthetics

Plain, but clear. The copy makes sense (unlike PayPal's unfortunate subway campaign), but isn't going to wow anybody. It matches the products--plain and functional.

Effectiveness 

P&G has not released what it hopes to achieve from this campaign, so it's difficult to judge how effective it will be. In terms of virality, P&G would benefit from engaging more with consumers with the #NYTOUGH hashtag, perhaps inspiring more wry banter like this Twitter exchange (https://twitter.com/DanHopp/status/496440772024336384). Maybe even admitting, that New Yorkers are tougher and letting New Yorkers contribute why?

Personal Attraction to Ad

Although I have used products from every single one of the eight brands P&G has put forward, I also use them as an afterthought. I've never gotten particularly excited about my Dawn dish soap the way I would, say, Dr. Bronner's.