Brand Cultures
Another note this early afternoon that I wanted to pass along to blog readers. Since my wrap-up on the C3 Spring Retreat last week, C3 Consulting Researcher Robert V. Kozinets wrote a blog entry detailing some of his experiences from the event.
Rob writes:
A number of great people from major corporations were involved this year, including people from Fidelity Investments, Yahoo!, MTV/Viacom, and Turner Broadcasting. Industry speakers included Brian Haven from Keith Clarkson from Xenophile Media, Matt Wolf from Double Twenty Productions, Forrester Research, and Judy Walklet from Communispace. And for me, it was a thrill to meet a who's who of fan community researchers--people who were absolutely fundamental to my thesis work and who built the universe of fan studies. These included Nancy Baym, Lee Harrington, Jonathan Gray, and Jason Mittell. I also had the opportunity this year and in the past to meet some excellent new scholars in the area, whose work is sure to open up many exciting new avenues of opportunity and insight. This people include Kevin Sandler, Derek Johnson, Gail Derecho, Aswin Panathambekar, Geoff Long, Sam Ford, and Ivan Askwith. And of course it was genuine pleasure to see my friend the esteemed marketing anthropologist and consumer culture icon, Grant McCracken, whose contributions are always elegantly-phrased and thoroughly thought-provoking.
Continue reading "Kozinets on C3 Spring Retreat" »
We spend quite a bit of time here on the Consortium's blog writing about and thinking about the relationship between producers and consumers, particularly in the media and entertainment space. As regular readers know, my own Master's thesis work at MIT dealt with how this relationship manifests itself today in the soap opera industry in particular (see here, for instance), and the energy of the Consortium and many people surrounding the CMS program here at MIT are often dedicated to these questions.
While I hold fast to the idea that companies must treat their fan communities with some esteem and pay attention to the discussion taking place around their product, perhaps even communicate directly with those fans, we also see that this desire to get closer to fan communities can quickly become a desire to control communities in many cases. It's quite a mistake to think that all fans want, through the social connections they form online around brands and media properties, is to get closer to the official productions of these shows. After all, that's one of the biggest misconceptions that caused some of the controversy surrounding Fanlib.com, which we wrote about several times in the past year (see, for instance, here).
Continue reading "Fandom, Dialogue, and Independence" »
Some of you may have read my posts a few weeks ago about a local donut joint here in town called Linda's and the subsequent discussion regarding authenticity and chains (see here, here, and here.
A couple of the Yelp users I wrote about framed Linda's against the chain of Dunkin' Donuts, and in fact I got into a longtime discussion with the guy my age while I was visiting about Dunkin' Donuts, the value of their convenience, and what he felt was the declining quality of their product, in favor of proliferation and speed.
Compare this with our discussion with Joe Pine from back last fall, in which Joe referred to the Starbucks edict that "it should take time to get a cup of coffee."
Apparently, many of the franchise-holders of Dunkin' Donuts agree to some extent, that there is a point of too much proliferation. And that's not that surprising, considering that they have quite a financial stake into not seeing the Dunkin' Donuts brand extend too far...especially out of their stores.
Continue reading "Bickering between Dunkin' Donuts and Its Franchises" »
I've gotten a few e-mails regarding the piece I wrote a few days ago about Linda's Donuts and the search for authenticity. One of them came from friend and Consortium Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken, who turns out had written some on the subject of authenticity only a couple of days prior, in response to criticisms of the Dove and Axe Unilever campaigns, which many have had problems with because of what they identify as an inconsistency between the messages of each, with Dove stressing one's comfort with their own body in their advertising, while Axe emphasizes a more narrow form of feminine beauty in encouraging teenage boys to use the body spray to attract a certain kind of woman.
Grant wrote me wondering whether we might disagree, and I didn't answer him for a couple of days, as I wasn't sure if we were or not. And I'm still not.
I read his post before I ever wrote the Linda's piece, but it hadn't dawned on me that my points about authenticity might be in conflict with his, even though we both referred to Joe Pine and James Gilmore's new book Authenticity. Of course, in academia, one has a right---perhaps an obligation--to not always agree, and Grant and I have discovered in the past that perfect agreement at the expense of others can sometimes be downright unhelpful. I'm referring here to Grant's September piece on the nature and problem of scorn.
Continue reading "Authenticity, Grant McCracken, and Donuts" »
In light of the previous post, I wanted to share with you an article I wrote back in the summer of 2005 for The Ohio County Times-News, for the column I write there entitled "From Beaver Dam to Boston." This deals with franchise chains and locally owned shops:
Over the past couple of weeks, Amanda and I were hosts to one of our English professors from Western Kentucky University, Dale Rigby, who was participating in a nearby writing workshop in Vermont. While Dale was here, we discussed Kentucky a lot. Dale has lived all over the country in his life: Ohio, California, Iowa and Missouri, before coming to Bowling Green.
He really enjoyed Boston and Cambridge, the chance to go to English pubs and play chess with strangers. That got us talking about the differences between the business culture and the culture of Bowling Green. Here in Boston, there are local businesses and restaurants on almost every block, each establishment with its own stories and its own history, and I think that should serve as a point of inspiration to the Bowling Greens and even the Beaver Dams I came from.
In cities the size of Bowling Green, though, there is just something increasingly generic about the city as it grows. I have worked with Bowling Green's Chamber of Commerce on various articles and know that there are many unique things about the local Bowling Green economy. But, for every Mariah's in Bowling Green, there's 10 Red Lobsters, good food but without any sense of local culture.
Continue reading "The Balance between Chains and Local Shops" »
Sometimes, your life changes when you don't have a car. I decided to work from home one day last week, to do some writing from home. Now that I live outside of Boston and Cambridge, though, out in Belmont here in the Boston area, it's not quite as easy to run out for some lunch on foot. But I had dropped my suit off at the dry cleaners' on the corner, the one who waved at us when we drove by--a move that was so Kentucky-like in nature that we decided to give that particular dry cleaners--Hemmingway--a try.
A couple of blocks away, there's a small little restaurant I noticed shortly after moving in here last summer, but I'd never dropped in. The restaurant opens at 6 a.m. each morning, but it's always closed by the early afternoon. I had driven by on the morning commute and especially on weekend mornings and seen a virtual traffic jam around this place.
It's name is Linda's Donuts, and the store touts that these particular donuts are "hand-cut."
Continue reading "Authenticity and Linda's Donuts" »
Even as television and other media forms struggle to quantitatively understand audiences as anything other than a mass of passive eyeballs, there is an increasing awareness among marketers that connecting with a brand is an active process not just for advertisers but for consumers as well. One of the ways this approach manifests itself is the movement away from traditional commercials and sponsorships and the movement toward a much different approach: branded services.
It's a concept that perhaps sounds novel and yet not all that surprising at all. Built off the backs of various goodwill and public relations initiatives that have long been a part of marketing brands, these newest moves are to offer services and experiences to potential consumers that in some way help promote the overarching brand.
Continue reading "Branded Services: The Way of the Future?" »
This week marked some significant events in the quest for a measure of engagement with and consumption of advertising. Announcements included the first round of C3 metrics, a new ad-insertion software company backed by some major players, and a partnership between Nielsen and ESPN on total audience measurement. These new developments bring them a number of new implications, but the old questions of what really constitutes engagement, and with what, remain.
A question raised in my mind about C3 is if we should be looking at engagement with TV programming or with ads, or both, and how could we be looking at those metrics in a holistic way? Although the collective effect of content and advertising may matter, there are still no guarantees.
Continue reading "Live Viewing + 3 Days via DVR + Visiting Transmedia Brand Extensions = More Questions about Engagement" »
We write rather frequently here at C3 on issues surrounding Intellectual Property (as well as things that suck, come to think of it), though, admittedly, home improvement falls a bit outside the usual area of focus. But, given some of the implications, both disturbing and humorous, of Lowes Home Improvement's recent trademark controversy, it seemed time to learn something about fence installation.
A couple of weeks ago, the register ran the story of Allen Harkleroad, a man who, after being frustrated by what appears to have been epically bad service from Lowes Home Improvement, went and did what we've all done on occasion: he complained.
On the Internet.
Continue reading "Lowes (tm) Sucks: Consumer Criticism and the Lowes Trademark Fiasco" »
The second part of our discussion yesterday with Joe Pine focused on his work with Gillmore on authenticity, which is part of a forthcoming book of his.
This discussion began with Pine describing the three aspects of a product that make people determine it to be inauthentic: the first would be in terms of popularity, in that products often become less authentic as they become more mainstream or taking into account mainstream interests; the second would be in terms of machine, as the lack of human crafting usually causes people to view a product as less authentic; and, finally, there is the aspect of money, in which the more lucrative a product is or the more the creation is perceived to be driven by profit, the less authentic it is.
Continue reading "The C3 Team's Talk with Joe Pine (2 of 2)" »
Joe Pine of experience economy fame joined the C3 team and a few other interested folks for a discussion of his work yesterday afternoon, prior to his planned colloquium yesterday evening, for which the podcast will be available in the coming weeks. (Update: The podcast is now available here.)
C3 has encountered Joe's work on the experience economy in the past, although many of the arguments made there have become part of the ways in which may in the media industry think. On the other hand, Joe pointed out that, often, the problem was that the idea gets implemented in quite opposite ways in which it was intended.
For the next couple of posts, I thought I would share some observations based on our conversation yesterday, with this post focusing on our discussion of the experience economy, and the next one focusing on our discussion of authenticity, a subject which Pine and Gillmore are about to release a book on.
Continue reading "The C3 Team's Talk with Joe Pine (1 of 2)" »
Last month, we got an e-mail from The Gold Group about an interesting project they had completed on behalf of SIGG Switzerland, which is an aluminum bottle manufacturer with its US offices based in Stamford, Conn., who are concerned about building their brand as being eco-conscious. The company solicited user-generated ideas, "crowdsourcing" a new design for their bottles. Based on the study, Gold wants to emphasize that the "wisdom of crowds" can generate interesting results, no matter which buzzword you use. The winning bottle design was produced and sold by the company.
A report that Jeff Greene, Executive Director of Client Services for the Gold Group, wrote, focused on the question, "Do social media outreach effects really produce word of mouth engagement? And, if they do, what are the most effective components of social media that should be incorporated into a campaign?"
Continue reading "SIGGART: Trying to Emphasize the Importance of Nimble UGC Campaigns" »
Earlier this month, I wrote a series of posts about what was then titled "New Site," the joint NewsCorp/NBCU online video venture.
As of late last week, New Site's real name was announced: Hulu. "Why Hulu?" asked the President and CEO of Hulu in an open letter posted on the site. "Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself...strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building." Funnily enough, I've heard similar things said about network branding campaigns. What's going on?
Continue reading "Would You Hulu? New Site Gets a New Name, But the Old Brands Are Conspicuously Absent" »
So, what's NBC to do, in light of what I wrote about earlier today?
The domestic and international markets are crowded with American programming, which is incredibly diverse. Even though NBC is the oldest American network, it did not enjoy a monopoly on American popular culture on television as the BBC did for many years, making an overall brand building exercise easier.
At the same time, NBC grew much more like the BBC, with interests in network TV and radio with a bigger and more general audience than Turner networks had, at least initially. As such, it is caught in an interesting situation: build out the overall brand, or concentrate on known "sub-brands" as it expands internationally.
Continue reading "NBC Acquires Sparrowhawk: Conglomeration Marches On, But Where's the Brand Going? (2 of 2)" »
Yesterday NBC Universal announced that it acquired Sparrowhawk Holdings, a global portfolio of cable television channels that will give NBCU a greater presence in markets in the US, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East with the Hallmark Channel.
Although the exact amount of money changing hands was not disclosed, one report put the figure around 175 million pounds, or just under $353 million. As you may have read in my post earlier this month about New Site, the joint venture between NBC and FOX to create a legal aggregator video streaming site for their content, Providence Equity Partners also has a 10% stake, worth about $100 million, in that project as well.
Why is this significant?
Continue reading "NBC Acquires Sparrowhawk: Conglomeration Marches On, But Where's the Brand Going? (1 of 2)" »
As many of you know, we have been doing a significant amount of research here at the consortium recently in regard to social networking. While some of this has ben for a white paper shared internally in the consortium, our musing on social networks has appeared multiple times here on the blog in the past several months (see here, for instance).
Tied into those comments on social networking, though, are questions regarding social marketing, especially as we think about how brands co-exist in these online spaces. There are always a variety of opinions on what this means for users, what the correct balance between marketing and a lack of commercialism is, and...on the business side...what constitutes a worthwhile investment and what does not.
Continue reading "Social Networking and Social Marketing" »
I've had the pleasure of being connected recently to some intelligent folks over at Peppercom, a public relations company that serves a variety of interesting clients, from The Columbia School of Journalism to Netflix to Panasonic to Tyco.
Ed Moed, who is one of the co-founders of Peppercom, wrote a piece recently about the public relations industry, focusing on the dangers of the way quantitative metrics are understood for measuring corporate reputations in the public relations industry.
Considering all that we've been writing lately about metrics in relation to the Nielsens, engagement, and both the television industry and the success of Web advertising (look here), I found his perspective on the dangerous assumptions always backing what are accepted as "hard numbers" to be illuminating.
In short, he looks at a recent study which measure company reputations on the basis of the amount of positive press that company has received. Ed's point, however, is that articles touting the release of some new product or service doesn't necessarily mean that readers, or the media itself, views those companies positively, just that they gave them some positive coverage.
Continue reading "The Problems with Measuring Reputation in the PR Industry" »
For those who are interested in the mixing of brand planning and content distribution, brand exemplar Harley-Davidson shows once again how to make open content a meaningful part of the brand experience and to engage proselytism in the process.
It all hinges around the big bike rally in Sturgis, which--despite my uber-masculine lifestyle--I had forgotten was even coming up until a storyline on As the World Turns saw a kidnapping plot move toward Sturgis, as the kidnappers might be headed to the big bike rally.
Of course I should have remembered that this time of year equalled Sturgis from those terrible Road Wild pay-per-view wrestling events that WCW used to put on, held live from Sturgis and featuring a crowd full of bikers who both didn't pay to be there and didn't really have any product knowledge...Oh, and the 1998 Road Wild was one of the worst PPV events I've ever seen, especially with Jay Leno in the main event.
But that's a tangent. My point is that, while WCW didn't seem to get anything about Sturgis culture at all, Harley-Davidson has found another way to tap into that American cultural milestone in a way that meaningfully extends its brand.
Harley created a gadget that can be incorporated onto anyone's Web site that both featured a live feed from Sturgis, with the window branded by Harley-Davidson, as well as a variety of packaged videos from the motorcycle rally as well.
Continue reading "Harley-Davidson Provides a Window into Sturgis" »
Earlier today, I was on a conference call espousing about how important a reminder it is to temper all this discussion about a transformation of journalism with the realization that the brand names of the most respected news, magazine, and industry publications still carry a lot of cultural cache, whether we want to proclaim the era of print as dead or not.
This was all driven by the news from a few news outlets recently that Second Life was losing steam and that it wasn't the business opportunity some thought it was. I wrote about those issues earlier today.
But this has been a longheld debate, whether it is Axel Bruns in Gatewatching or Dan Gillmor and his book, We the Media. I agree with both that there is something transformational in involving the collective intelligence of everyone by getting them involved with the news-gathering and reporting process and that it leads to a better information in the process. There has always been something a little murky about the intense "professionalization" of journalism, and it seems that the credentials of being a good journalism means that "the proof is in the pudding," so to speak. If we are to believe in a system where the best writing rises to the top, anyway, doesn't this mean that credibility still has to be gained on a micro-level, even in a much more decentralized news world?
Continue reading "The Importance of News Brands in a Convergence Culture" »
Over the past few days, there have been a couple of interesting ideas batted around by C3 consulting researchers and alumni on a couple of issues that I thought might be of direct interest to the wider C3 readership. With all that is happening in the fan fallout from Harry Potter, the repercussions and new business deals stemming from the upfronts, and all the issues we've been covering more regularly, I thought that pointing the way toward a couple of those pieces might be beneficial.
One is an issue that I've been following from afar. I've never been an avid Simpsons viewer, although I appreciate its place in popular culture. It's not even that I have any aversion to The Simpsons, but I've just never become a regular viewer. Nevertheless, I've been paying attention to the promotion of The Simpsons Movie, both in the transformation of 7-Eleven Stores to Kwik-E Marts and in the competition for deciding which Springfield is the home of the Simpson family.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Jason Mittell had published a piece on the Springfield competition. Now, Grant McCracken has weighed in on the Kwik-E Mart cross-promotion.
Continue reading "Reverse Product Placement, The Simpsons, and the Value of the 7-Eleven Brand" »
I wanted to mention a few news stories that passed my eye over the past few days that I thought would be of particular interest to C3 researchers and readers, especially taking into account links between online initiatives and traditional television and print properties.
The news includes a new deal between TV Guide and Maven Networks for powering broadband video content for TV Guide's Web site, a cosmetic change for the brand of Court TV to the new truTV, Joost's deal with VH1 to show a sneak peek of the premiere of I Hate My 30s online first, and Bravo's deal struck to do its advertising deals minute-by-minute with Starcom USA.
TV Guide and Maven Networks. TV Guide's choice to hire the technology provider to power its broadband video on its Web site indicates an increased effort to make TV Guide a brand based on more than the print product it is most closely identified with, especially as paper guides have become all but obsolete. Find more at The Boston Business Journal.
Continue reading "New Industry Deals Demonstrate Shifting Media Landscape" »
I have mentioned here previously that I write about differences in my former life in Kentucky and life on the East Coast in a weekly column for The Ohio County TImes-News called "From Beaver Dam to Boston." I was in the process of writing my next column when I realized that it might be of interest to readers of the consortium as well, so I thought I would share it here:
My wife and I made a grave mistake. Seeing that I study media technologies, branding, popular culture, and the like, one would think I would be more in-tune with the craze that was taking the country over on Friday, June 29, but I suppose that I'm not as "in touch" as I would like to fancy myself.
Last Thursday, Amanda's laptop battery just quit working. The battery decided it didn't want to charge anymore, so when the computer ran out of energy, the only way that she could use it was to have it plugged into the wall. The battery had a little "X" in the middle in the spot where it usually tells us how much of her battery is charged.
Apparently, it was a problem with the MacBook model, one that they caught but which many users had not fixed in time to stop the computer from, as the genius at the help bar in the Apple store told us, "self-cannibalizing" itself. He claimed all one would have to do is switch out the batteries, but I can't help but wonder if there might be deeper issues that need to be resolved in cases of self-cannibalization.
Continue reading "The Apple iPhone and Brand Fandom" »
For the final post in wrapping up a look at the body of work the C3 team has aided me with in putting up here on the site, I wanted to point the way toward a few concepts that have been articulated publicly here on the Convergence Culture Consortium site through the blog in the past year to direct people to the posts explaining them in further detail, as well as terms or concepts from Henry Jenkins' work, and those of us at the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, that have made their way into our posts from time-to-time.
1.) Immersive Story Worlds. This is a concept that I developed in conjunction with my thesis work on looking at the current state and the future of the soap opera industry. The idea was to outline a category that explains narratives which are serial by nature, which have multiple creators, a sense of long-term continuity, a character backlog, contemporary ties to a deep history, and a sense of permanence. I included portions of my thesis outlining this concept--and how it relates to the Marvel and DC Comic Universes, the world of pro wrestling, and daytime serial dramas--here and here.
2.) Transmedia Storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is meant to indicate texts in which the story develops through multiple media platforms and in which new content in another platform is not simply a redistribution of the same content that has already appeared elsewhere. We have a whole category of posts about the topic here.
3.) Cross-Platform Distribution. As opposed to transmedia storytelling, cross-platform distribution is simply the reappearance of content from one platform in another, such as making broadcast television shows available in VOD, cable shows available on YouTube, etc. We also have a whole category of posts on this topic available here.
Continue reading "Concepts from the C3 Weblog" »
Perusing through April's edition of The Journal of Popular Culture, I found a particularly interesting piece by UT-Austin Assistant Professor of Advertising Sejung Marina Choi and Michigan State University advertising professor Nora J. Rifton focusing on the celebrity in American television advertising.
Their work is based on the definition of the celebrity spokesperson set forth in C3 Affiliated Faculty Grant McCracken's 1989 Journal of Consumer Research piece "Who Is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the Endorsement Process," in which he he writes that a celebrity spokesperson is "any individual who enjoys public recognition and who uses this recognition on behalf of a consumer good by appearing with it in an advertisement" (p. 310).
This essay's premise is that, while work has already done on the effectiveness of these celebrity endorsements, there are still questions about "what constitutes those images and how the deconstructed elements influence advertising effects (p. 305). By focusing on Grant's work about how meaning can transfer from the celebrity to the product in the endorsement process, the study's raison d'etre is to create a quantifiable scale to measure the image of the celebrity and to understand how the image affects credibility.
Continue reading "Understanding Celebrity Endorsements and Meaning Transfer" »
YouTube has launched two interesting recent initiatives, one encouraging its continuing process to be seen by media producers as a platform for the cross-distribution of extant media footage, and the other encouraging viewers to submit user-generated content for a contest. The two fronts demonstrate the continuing ways in which the Google-owned video platform is trying to deal with its positioning as both a forum for sharing video and a legitimate business model worthy of the hefty investment the company has made in it.
With National Geographic, YouTube has formed a partnership for short videos that the company has created for its Web site and now will allow for sharing among YouTube users as well. The content is available here.
Continue reading "YouTube Expands Role in Providing Branded Channels, Encouraging User-Generated Episodic Content" »
Several of the researchers in C3 have just finished or are in the process of finishing their Master's thesis projects, which means many of us now have the prospect of graduation staring us in the face. Here at C3, we have had the great opportunity to not only work academically as researchers while graduate students but also to interact with the media industry and work with folks at our corporate partners on a variety of initiatives, meaning that a majority of the people coming out of C3 are interested in maintaining a relationship to both academia and the media industry moving forward.
But, as job hunts loom on the horizons and as colleagues start to land jobs elsewhere, we all have to consider what it means, in both the industry and academia, to come away with expertise in issues such as understanding fan communities, transmedia storytelling, new advertising models, and the variety of other focuses that C3 research has taken.
Continue reading "Media Industry Jobs in a Convergence Culture" »
Here at the C3 blog, I write a lot about media fandom and brand fandom, but not as often do I write about fans of media technologies themselves. Of course, some major media companies have developed their products as lifestyle brands as well, such as Apple, but I'm referring here to the fascinating campaign that has been getting some attention of late by HD DVD fans to support that format vis-a-vis Sony's Blu-ray format for high-definition DVD releases.
For those who have not heard about these campaigns, see a Web page like HD NOW Online, a site that features a petition for greater support of Toshiba's HD DVD format with a petition that has thousands of signatures on it. These fans of the HD DVD format are asking that more studios support the HD DVD format with more releases, touting it as "the best and most consumer-friendly next-generation video format" which is available "at one-half, to one-third, of the price of the 'other brand.'"
The HD DVD format dropped below the Blu-ray DVDs in the first quarter of the year but has since risen again, thanks in part to an organized support system for the release of HD DVD products. (See this commentary for more on HD vs. Blu-ray DVD sales from the slant of HD DVD activists.)
TelevisionWeek's James Hibberd provides a fascinating account o what he calls a staged "group buy" of new HD DVD titles in the past week, as proponents of the format wanted to give it a boost in sales for those who keep close track of the numbers. He writes, "The group claims to have purchased nearly 1,000 HD DVD titles from Amazon.com and, temporarily at least, catapulted HD DVD sales past the rival Sony Blu-ray format."
Continue reading "Toshiba HD DVD Users Rallying in Support Behind the Format They've Invested In" »
I recently had some e-mail correspondence with B. Joseph Pine, who co-authored the influential book The Experience Economy with James H. Gilmore. Pine had read our recent series here on Kellogg's and the way the history of the marketing of breakfast cereals, including a multi-part look at the way modern breakfast cereals are marketed in the store and through Web extensions.
The series, called The Cereal Serial is available here, here, here, and here.
Pine pointed me toward a restaurant idea, launched in 2004, that makes particularly interesting use of this "experience economy" mentality, called Cereality.
In short, Cereality is a Cereal Bar, a breakfast shop decorated vaguely like a kitchen, with shelves and a pantry that features cereal boxes. The company calls their product "a new choice in fast food," serving cereal to customers and allowing them to choose from among their favorite cereal brands. The Web site touts that "Pajama-clad Cereologists fill the orders. And customers choose and add their own milk, just the way they like it."
Continue reading "Cereality as an Interesting Example of an Experience Economy" »
I've pointed out in the past that, whether one is interested in fashion or not, studies of clothing brands can identify some very astute observations about brand meaning and brand communities in general.
That's why I was particularly interested when I saw a review for Mark Tungate's Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara in the October 2006 version of The Journal of Popular Culture. The reviewer, Joseph Hancock from Drexel University, provides some nice details about Tungate's book, which I haven't read.
The book, published in London, focuses particularly on European brands and is written by a former journalist for the World Global Style Network. Hancock writes that the book provides "original insights into the world of trends, haute couture fashion, photography, modeling, and popular culture" (905).
Continue reading "Fashion Brands and Branding Style: Looking at Reviews for Mark Tungate's Book" »
Earlier today, I wrote a piece which focused on the work of Suzanne Freyjadis-Chuberka and girl gamers' interest in Guitar Hero.
The piece appeared as part of a February special issue of Flow, the scholarly journal of television criticism out of UT-Austin, which focused particularly on video games.
Another fascinating study from that same issue of Flow is written by Elliot Panek of neighboring Emerson College, who writes, "Who Are Wii? The Study of Console Fandom."
Panek focuses on the brand communities surrounding gaming platforms, asking some intriguing questions: "Why do these objects mean so much to so many? Is console fandom something like other forms of media fandom? Is it akin to brand fandom, or something more like people's love/hate relationship with televisions?"
Continue reading "Positioning Console Fandom Between Brand and Media Fan Communities: Reaction to an Essay from Elliot Panek" »
I've never seen a site quite like this one. If you haven't checked out Caveman's Crib, it's definitely worth a look, especially if you've enjoyed the recent Geico advertising campaign.
It's a visual indication of one of the oddest success stories in recent television advertising. It's the story of the Geico plans for a one-time commercial that has turned into a continued advertising campaign for the company that has now developed into transmedia extensons taking on a life of their own.
It all reminds me of an argument we've had about the 30-second spot for a long time and its assured demise. That hyperbole, some of which I've taken part in myself, exists alongside ad campaigns that are more vibrant than ever. But it emphasizes a message--people are still interested in commercials that are exceptionally compelling, that build a brand-based entertainment property, in this case, that entertains, that you stop your DVR for.
Insurance has always been a particularly tough nut to crack when it comes to creativity. The service companies like Geico provides is, first of all, one that most Americans despise having to pay and that many feel is a leach on their wallets, sucking money for no return. After all, the only way your car insurance is of great use to you is if you have a lot of wrecks...and if you have a lot of wrecks, no one wants to give you insurance.
Nonetheless, Geico has built its brand by emphasizing its low prices while creating ads that, while they don't completely take the focus away from the insurance, are entertainment-based rather than service-based.
Continue reading "Caveman's Crib: Developing Branded Entertainment for an Insurance Company" »
The number of brands extending into Second Life in one form or another continues, with AOL launching its major foray into the virtual world.
AOL's site within Second Life, an island "for fun engagement and interaction around AOL content," features movie trivia, interactive competition areas for Second Life avatars to play lone games or in groups to win Linden dollars, and even skateboarding, according to the beta for the site.
AOL Pointe launched as a beta in late January and then launched as a full site at the beginning of February.
Reports from Tateru Nino on Wagner James Au's New World Notes site, providing first-hand coverage of Second Life, covers the beta test run at the time of AOL Pointe's launch.
For Tataru, the the AOL Pointe island gets a strong review. Tataru writes, "I was expecting a big business branding-exercise that would leave me with a bit of a foul taste in my mouth, and in that respect I was a bit disappointed-- within a few minutes I was entertained and engaged. There's no mistaking that it's AOL, but this doesn't seem to be basic push-marketing or marketing at all, in the conventional sense. Could this be someone 'getting it?'"
Tataru hypes the site as a theme park, feeling that it's providing for a niche that is missing in Second Life with that themed atmosphere and a wide variety of theaters and other public screens for media content to play on-demand in the virtual world, as well as traditional linear channels playing within AOL Pointe.
Continue reading "AOL Pointe Getting Strong Reviews in Second Life" »
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