The Hot List: December

So this year has really been exciting and the end is finally in sight. What's going to be popular in December? Typically we rationalize everything we've done in the entire year into one month of ego-fulfillment - it's like packing everything up and retaining the really useful and wanted things in our mental schemas. See, we'll start with a cognitive blank slate in January and look to new things, issues, and cultural artifacts to identify with.

So let's close out 2008 with the Hot List for December:

MUST-HAVES:


Q-Ba-Maze marble maze. This is an amazing piece of desk art and a real joy for tinkerers like me. Looks great and is fun to play with.


Blackberries as unnecessary consumer devices. Perfect example of manufactured need, since teenagers actually aren't so popular as to require BlackBerrys in class to allow them to check and respond to email and pings. What business coudl they possibly be conducting? Regardless, 85% of mobile sales occur in the holidays (ridiculous...? a little high perhaps?) and all the major carriers are really pushing their BlackBerry products. Expect more of these under the tree than any other year before (and they're not being given to business people)


First-person shooter games. Left 4 Dead, Resistance 2, and Call of Duty: World at War (among others) have all been seriously promoted in the last few weeks. Great gifts for the 32 year old guy with a week off work and no need to leave the house!
Leather bags are enduring and look good on anyone. Simple brown bags with clean lines and a distressed look that comes from actual full-weather use. Cole Haan for expensive ones, Buffalo or Urban Behavior for mid-priced and cheap ones.


Real Christmas trees as opposed to artificial trees. They shed and are a bitch to clean, but real trees actually have less of a carbon footprint than plastic trees (made from fossil fuels...) and don't sit in landfills for the next thousand years.


Wine from obscure American wine regions like Michigan, the NY Finger Lakes, Missouri, and the Texas Hill Country. They're local so they're not contributing significant carbon waste through long-distance transportation, they're significantly less expensive than California, Oregon, Washington, and Ontario wines, and they have rapidly improved in quality thanks to viticultural subsidization to diversify state agriculture.


Luxury tourism to less advertised Southern Hemisphere countries: Mauritius, South Africa, Chile, Brazil. Enough Australia. Enough New Zealand. Argentina is already basking in a popularity glow with Buenos Aires being named second most desirable city (after Bangkok).


ISSUES:


Awareness of Kopi Luwak coffee. Note, it will not actually be popular to buy or drink this coffee because it's priced up to $600 per pound and made from coffee beans that have been digested and pooped out by the civet cat in the jungles of Malaysia. I am not joking. It's apparently really nice coffee though!


Awareness of global issues during the holidays. A historic US election, highly publicized terrorist attacks in Mumbai, continuing war in Afghanistan and Iraq, genocide and starvation in Darfur, and general unrest for a lot of the world's population in less developed countries will weigh pretty heavily on consumers' minds as they sip their $50 cup of Civet Poo coffee. Be nice and donate to the Red Cross this holiday or another favoured charity of yours. I really like this GlobalGiving.com because you can choose what projects to support and actually have some sense of where your money is going. Check them out.



A subdued holidays – what’s there to celebrate? It's been a rough year and people have no money. Black Friday and Cyber Monday's sales were lower than expected, probably the lowest in twenty years. More people will be spending the holidays at home, watching their wallets, and spending time with family.


Christmas shopping with reusable bags, scorn for retailers who provide bags that cannot be recycled. They're cumbersome and incredibly wasteful. Even plastic biodegradable bags have problems being separated in the garbage by recyclers.



Greater comparison of renewable energies against each other. So start comparing geothermal, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. Which has the greatest cost benefits? Which has the lowest installed impact on the natural environment? It's funny because consumers aren't moving the curve for renewable energy, technologists and industrialists are. Big big companies (Exxon, Chevron, GE, Suncor) are showing more of a concerned effort at developing renewables than consumers would ever believe. Consumers though will start being more vocal about what technologies matter to them. BTW, I vote for wind, or neural energy like the Machines have been able to harness like in The Matrix!


Backlash against Dubai excessiveness. Dubai will be finishing the structural construction of the Burj Dubai, proposed construction on a tower twice the size (the Nakheel Tower), opened this luxurious Atlantis Resort on the new Palm Jumeirah, and has more construction cranes than in any other part of the world. It's not just development that's occurring in Dubai, it's a complete polarization of lifestyles there with Emiratis and expats living in opulence and undocumented workers living in squalor. But more than that, who wants to hear about an expensive nonstop party going on when the economy is in the shits? The bloom is off the rose.


CULTURE & STYLE:


Pop music feels so good lately. Crappy stuff like Poker Face by Lady GaGa (she's hot but I still really don't understand the appeal, and how stupid does she look in this picture!) or Britney's 'Womanizer'. It's cool to be mainstream again. Consumers won't really backlash against indie stuff because everyone likes to have their individual tastes anyway (and indie music has seemed to vastly improved in the last two years), but sometimes mainstream music is mainstream for a reason - it's catchy and appealing.


The Smashing Pumpkins. They've been touring as a unified band - well, just Billy and Jimmy anyway - since May, 2008 with a really great show in Paris, and there are now more critical reviews of the dates they've bee playing in North America. Indulgent playlists, crass behavior by Billy, and what would seem like staged interactions with audience members have kinda put a damper on the hopes that this is a reinvigorated band, but they claim to be working on new music to be released as a two-disc early next year. Can't wait. Download 'Gossamer', the 33 minute version for a sonic representation of the kind of indulgence I'm talking about.



Electronica & Dance. Turntabling felt so 1986, then so 2000, then apparently it's back in a big way going into 2009. The latest issue of New York Magazine asked a bunch of teenage boys what they'd most like for a holiday gift. Unanimous responses surrounded "anything DJ-related: 'Serato Scratch Live', 'concert tickets to Chromeo', 'gift certificates to karmaloop.com', and 'DJ lessons at dubspot.com' ".



Summer Heights High. Bizarre and hilarious mockumentary from Australia that is filling the void left by True Blood following the season finale last week.


The colours crimson, gold, and black.


WAYS OF BEING:


Booking cheap getaways for January. Low oil prices coupled with American and European consumers choosing to nest over the holidays have resulted in some seriously low fares for cheap vacations down south. Apparently the cheapest time to go is in January. I just went to BelAir travel and found a 7 night all-inclusive in San Andres, Columbia for $297. Insane.


Taking a Facebook holiday on December 15th. I'm not supporting this group because I'm really not sure what it's meant to accomplish. We all love Facebook, so why are we trying to prove that we don't need it? Meanwhile it already has 793K confirmed attendees worldwide.


Conservativism at the Christmas party. Inappropriate dressing at holiday parties or dressing for the sole purpose of getting attention is in pretty poor taste. Things like kilts, unkempt hair, untied ties, ridiculous boots, or belts or chains that serve no purpose. Look for a return to classically inspired fashion because of the more somber mood this holiday season. Clean, well-pressed clothes with nice lines and nothing too flamboyant.


Giving responsibly this season. This is something I think we can all learn. What are the gifts that your loved ones and friends will really enjoy this season? What are the products or experiences or ways of showing your love that will mean the most to them and last the longest? We all have no money and it's hard to justify extravagant spending this year, so why waste money on a gift that won't be liked or that's irresponsibly expensive? Furthermore, think more about the wastefulness of gift-giving as we know it - the paper, the packaging, the shipping.

Cook a meal, write a song, knit a scarf.

These are the personalized things that will really mean something to those you love. It's also a completely postmodern and Gen Y expression of individuality.

The weekend links

Fresh PoMo content coming at cha!

BTW, I've realized how much I like The Hills. I love the mindless blather and catchy soundtrack. It's nice to just to put my brain on autopilot for 20 mins and watch an episode. Does anyone else like Audrina, Spencer, and Heidi? I think that out of anyone on the show these three have the most redemptive value! Seriously, Lauren and her mousey friend Lo are really baseless and have perpetual frowns on their faces. The latest episode of The Hills is here, Lauren accuses Audrina of believing a rumour that Lauren slept with Audrina's boyfriend Justin Bobby.

But the other day I watched an episode where lauren refered to a pool party as a "disaster". Um, no. 9/11 was a disaster. You need to get a fucking life, Lauren.

My new favourite song, AutoKratz, 'Stay the Same':



Olga's story this week about Soviet Russia having only two sizes of underwear (big and really big) was pretty funny, and these pictures from the USSR give it added context.


Required reading for B!G Associates: Canada's net integrity and online rights are basically squashed now that the CRTC has ruled in favour of Bell Canada's action to throttle down DSL speeds. So really? The ISPs are going to be able to control what we do online? Where's the freedom in that? Consider your rights as citizens of Canada and of the wired world when you read this good article. It's just really disgusting.

This is great. Graffiti artists proclaim that marketers no longer have eminent domain over what outrageous, unsubstantiated claims can be made about a product. Digital democracy seriously is a tour de force. I'm happy about this expression of consumers' rights.


The Top Ten Most Popuar Top Tens of 2008 - for those who like lists!

Dr. Spaceman is my favourite. Yes, Spe-che-man. 30 Rock's list of secondary characters is here.

Kama sutra clothing adverts. Um, yeah Ana, but they're wearing clothes! Doesn't this completely defeat the purpose??



Are you up do date with your Flash drivers? If so, then go here, awesome interactive flash site. I highly recommend. It's like flying around little golden glass bubbles and there's tremendous spatial depth and graphic detail. Wow. Mr. Doob rocks.

London subway cars get a new life as an art studio. Cool idea. I wonder what the TTC is doing with all their old buses now that they're getting a new fleet? I really liked those curvey Orion buses, they actually had horsepower.

This really creeps me out. Shadows of St. Petersburg is a collection of time-motion photographs in the Russian city of people moving around. It just looks so spectral and dark.


R2D2 and C3PO tell me why it's not cool to smoke. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that George Lucas is a huge sellout with a dry lakebed of creative ideas.

And finally, for no other reason than it's Sunday night and I'm tired, here's animals yawning!


Lucy and Kevin, I haven't forgotten to write a blog post about why I think pandas are the world's most useless species because they have no will to live or basic survival instincts. I just need to think more about how to tie this in to contemporary consumer marketing.

Ooh my liver!

Wow, so last night was the Canadian Marketing Awards. I crashed it with my agency buds and we all had an amazing time. This was my second time at the CMAs, and my expectations of the night were wholly met:

- Wasted marketers
- Overpriced drinks
- Mainstream retro dance hits

Even though the Bright Ideas Group didn't have a table at this year's event (next year, next year...), it was relatively easy to walk into the event unimpeded.

Max's Guide to Crashing the CMAs:

1. Dress to impress. Suit and tie for the men, nice hair and makeup and cocktail dresses for the women.

2. Look serious and concerned about results, campaign results that is. When walking into the venue, you must look like you belong.

3. Find the side entrance. Finding the side entrance complete obviates the need look serious or dress to impress!

So anyway, here are a few of my observations from last night.


Lots of crazy fun! You get to see all your clients, former and future employers, and low-ranking marketing wannabes (myself) whooping it up and having a really unpretentious good time. I really loved dancing with everyone and just partying like it was going out of style.


Lots of booze! See above picture....


Lots of embarrassment! There were countless women staggering around drunkenly and lots of guys looking really sweaty and messed up. Through the grapevines I've heard stories from the CMAs of sexually inappropriateness between client and agency on the dancefloor and coke sniffing in the bathroom stalls.


Lots of meaningless awards! I'm not too sure about the validity of the actual awards ceremony. I actually participated in a winning project last year for digital marketing excellence of 2007. Why did we win? Our client was on the judging committee!


Lots of networking! I handed out a few business cards that I probably shouldn't have because it likely makes me look like a spineless social bottomfeeder, but oh well.

Anyway those are some of my reflections. Can't wait to crash the upcoming agency Christmas parties!


Oh, and I got a delicious Burrito Boyz burrito after...yum.

A case against waste

Last night I subscribed to AdBusters because I'm intrigued by the ways that marketing is being challenged to be a more sustainable business model. It's a magazine devoted to smart consumerism and debunking, demystifying, and deflating the hype, nonsense, and bullshit marketers (like me) spew. It's about framing contemporary consumerism within the panoply of the human condition and our interaction with mental and ecological realms.

Marketing is a constructed business. Historically it has manufactured needs and exploited emotion and the id of consumers to belong, to be recognized, and to be real. Advertising went mass, communicating in broad brushstrokes that if you didn't buy the product, you were somehow unfit as a consumer, a parent, a citizen. Marketers leveraged screamingly loud platforms for their voices to be heard, barging their messages and the brands they were shilling deep into intimate corners of the consumers life and making ad logos, slogans, and images so pervasive that a deafening white noise soon blanketed consumers from the moment they woke to the moment they went to sleep.

And it added costs to everything we buy.


Things cost money for two reasons: 1. to cover the fixed and variable costs of product/service production; and 2. to represent the intangible perceived value of the product to the consumer above and beyond what it actually cost to manufacture.

These secondary costs (the ones that we really don't need to pay for!) have become extravagant and fat. Mass marketing is not cheap. It's not effective. Brands that have intangible perceived value are not inexpensive to maintain. Think of them like an old sportscar that you drive for your daily commute all year round - maintenance and upkeep is costly!

So when marketers clamor for lucrative global ad budgets, they're gasping for a share of a market that is built on continuing a cycle of unnecessary spending, unnecessary advertising, and generally poor results.


Why isn't there a push for targetability?

AdBusters doesn't shun marketing. Rather, it argues that marketing needs to be smarter and better executed.

Enough sales pitches. More relationship building.

Enough lifestyle manufacturing. More development of real consumer identities.

Enough mass media. More targeted messages that actually mean something to me, to you.

So here's my pledge to change the world:

ONE:
I'll be that marketing guy who doesn't spend time on crappy projects which don't mean anything to consumers.

TWO:
I'll be that marketing guy who's ultimate promise is to the client's customers, and not the client.

THREE:
I'm going to make the case for better, smarter, faster, and more relevant marketing.

FOUR:
I'm going to make the case for eliminating wasteful spending that contributes nothing to the overall relationship customers develop with the brand and the client's own equity.

FIVE:
And I'm not going to do work that I wouldn't personally want to see or feel is relevant to me.

It's a gift to work on the rare client account when both parties are eminently passionate about the project. Unfortunately these are rare. But I'm as much a consumer as I am a marketer. I love consumers, they are my peeps.

So my final promise is this, never ruin marketing for the consumer.

Ask me later how I plan to implement all these goals...

Intriguing marketing costs paradox

Ok, first answer this question:

If a product costs $15, but you're able to find the exact same product sold elsewhere for $10, what are you going to buy?

....the one that costs $10, obviously.

Ok, what if you're paying fees or added costs in the $15 that you don't need. Let's say that the product's true price is $10 but the fees cost $5.

....you'd still demand to pay only $10 because you're unwilling to pay for the added fees.

So why are consumers willing to put up with paying for the added costs of marketing?

Think of our $15 product like a cd. How much does the artist actually make on a $15 cd? Probably only 10 cents because the balance is record company profit and expenses for marketing, production, and distribution.

And consumers are getting wise to this.

Now think of it like buying cereal. You'll always purchase Count Chocula. For your entire life you're going to purchase Count Chocula. If you never saw another Count Chocula ad in your life you'd still buy it.


So why are you paying a price for the cereal that includes marketing expenses? It's really unfair when you think about it. You're not receiving any benefit from the advertising for Count Chocula, so why are you paying Post cereal for the expenses it incurs when marketing to others?

Let me repeat this cause it's important- why are you paying Post cereal for the expenses it incurs when marketing to others?

This is the weird scenario that's been floating around my head for a while.

Consumers are going to demand greater measurability of the costs of production for them, not some overhead costs that may/may not include them. With greater sophistication and fragmentation of buyer behaviors, consumers are seeking to maximize the value to them of everything they buy. It's not only smart consumerism, but it's also saavy financial management.

I'll happily pay your price for the product, if I know that I have fairly incured the costs you shouldered to produce the product for me!

This is why no one is buying records anymore. Because they are willing to pay the least amount possible (free) and still receive the product.

But what about marketers?

Their costs are actually increasing because we're on a weird cusp where absolute targetability is not yet a fully internalized expense. The value per customer created from a CRM program has not yet dropped enough to equal the value per customer from running mass advertising.

Targeted customers are valuable, but expensive (per person). Mass customers are of poor value, but talking to them is cheap (per person).

So our action items? Think about this marketing paradox:

1. Consumers are not willing to pay more than they have to, and they're angry at having to pay unnecessary marketing expenses in the products they buy.

2. Marketers are faced with a declining margin for marketing on the products they sell. If consumers were previously willing to pay $5 to shoulder the costs of being sold, now they're willing to pay $0.

THEREFORE, how can marketers continue to target the valuable customers? This is expensive. How can they continue to build relationships with customers when their actions are under greater scrutiny, from both their clients and their customers, to reduce costs and be measurable?

Just something to chew on. Comments are appreciated here with any insights.

BTW, Count Chocula is scary delicious.

The weekend links

I'm trying something different today. Each link title and description is going to be no longer than three words. It's meant to get me to express the most central, critical piece of the message but still get you to click through to the site!

In other news, my backache last weekend turned out to be the flu. I'm infirmed and very breathy when I speak because the virus has ravaged my throat. Also, tonight is the season finale of True Blood - I really hope that things start picking up. The plot of last week's episode was so rambling and unresolved.

Ok, on with the show:



Watch. Video. First.


Does. Not. Compute.

Awesome. Marketing. Bullshit.

Gorgeous. Phones. Lust.

Obama. Marketing. Lessons.

Detroit. Dollars. F*cked.


Hideous. Boots. Goodbye.

MP3s. From. YouTube.

Japanese. Handbag. Contents.



Sexist. Commercials. Ever.

Worst. Website. Habits.



Hilarious. Idol. Reaction.

Have a great week, all!

Lifeblogging is insanity

In Florida, 19 year-old Abraham Biggs killed himself on a live webfeed in a forum while people watched and chatted about it. Apparently, he was bipolar and overdosed on drugs. He must have been in an incredibly tortured place mentally to think that killing himself was preferable to continuing to live, but the fact that he chose to do it online for a crowd of virtual voyeurs is really bizarre. It's such a nadir of web 2.0 postmodern life.

So I did some digging. Abraham Biggs had a profile on Justin.tv, a social networking site with channels of users and uploaded video content. The lifeblogging channels are actually addictive and it's curiously intimate to watch complete strangers stare blankly at a computer screen and respond to the adjacent chat window. The users chatting (giving orders) in the forum can be really funny too.

This is Trucker Cam. It's called Over The Road Truck Cam.

Trucker Cam is a live feed from the front dash of this trailer truck via a cellular modem. When I tuned in at 7:00pm on Friday, he was driving through Tulsa, Oklahoma going 60 mph and blasting DJ Tiesto. What's really terrifying is that as he's driving, he's talking back to the chatroom!

Wow, so are these the new cultural mutations from Web 2.0 into Web 3.0?

Integrated marcom and your ignorant friends

You know those people who say they hate marketers and never pay attention to ads? The ones who extol their imperviousness to calls-to-action and freedom when it comes to making their own decisions as consumers?

Imagine how much it stirs an anger deep inside you to just shake them and scream "it's not about selling you on something you don't need, it's about engaging with you in a relevant way that articulates the value proposition!"

Well, imagine how nice it would feel to hear that same person who pooh-poohed marketing talk about what a cool new P2P marketing strategy they interacted with. The same person who selfishly says that they're uninfluenced by marketing messages is now oblivious to the fact that an experiential campaign has made a real mark on them.

In Sydney, Australia, a social networking campaign has been launched to increase tourism to Alberta. It uses online social networking forums and street-based 'experiences'

A number of these unique mammals have been exported to Sydney, Australia, where they will be displayed in cages at Sydney’s Darling Harbour Nov. 20-22. On display will be: Western Party Animal—also known as Extremeous Winterous Dudeous Maximus—the Elusive Skier/Snowboarder Dude, and the Great Outdoors Lover. Every hour a “zookeeper” will bring one of the “animals” out of its cage to answer questions and interact with the crowd.

That's really cool.

It's also a terrific example of a integrated marketing campaign. Alan Middleton argues that with an increasing number of marketing campaigns utilizing different distribution channels, it's more important than ever to "integrate communication systems across this ever-increasing rane of target groups, distribution outlets, and media." Furthermore, "while the creative message will be strategically and conceptually similar, each medium will have create developed to optimize the message, and the role of the medium, and its contribution to the target's buying system."

BTW, how funny is it that Rogers is one of Canada's top marketers, as written in this week's Marketing Mag - a Rogers Media publication!

Shameless!

Evolution commercials tell a great story

Commercials must have a natural storyline that's understandable and can be followed easily by the audience. There are a lot of really artistic spots that do this and although I question how effective these commercials were at actually contributing to an increase in sales, they're gorgeous to watch and really inventive.

JOHNNY WALKER



SATURN



GUINNESS



The Guinness clip is fantastic - I like how the product is clearly presented from the beginning and as the commercial progresses the audience is left guessing about not what the product is, but where the guys are going to.

The Saturn clip is eyecatching, but I really don't see the link to the brand. It's also probably too sexual for the blobby functionality of most Saturn cars.

The Johnny Walker clip confuses me. The commercial has nothing to do with the product or the lifestyle. It has to do with a tagline. How can you tell? Well, let's say we kept the tagline 'Keep walking' but that the brand wasn't Johnny Walker, but rather Nike. Or maybe some life insurance company. There's nothing unique about the premise but still it won a bunch of awards for the direction, CGI, and music. Bizarre.

New Star Trek movie trailer

The trailer for the new Star Trek movie is out and it looks like a really fun movie. Not necessarily profound or cinematically deep, but just really fun.

Pajiba says it's gay, and maybe the prolongued looks between teenage Spock and teenage Kirk are a little drawn out and excessive. See for yourself:



But regardless of how good this movie is, we all know that Captain Picard is, and always will be, the finest officer in Starfleet...

Sexiest avatars ever

This is too funny. Here's a story from the UK, the link is at the bottom. A couple got married then got divorced on SecondLife because the woman caught the guy virtually cheating with another woman in the game.

Ok first, here's what their SecondLife avatars look like:

On the left is the wife, in the middle is the husband, and on the right is his mistress.

Ok, so she looks like Kate Beckinsale and he looks like Lucas Rossi, the guy who won RockStar Supernova.


And here's what they actually look like. Gird yourself!
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Remember this when you make a new friend online!

The link is here.