Joel alerted me to Vanity Fair’s share tool. I deal with two social networking sites, Facebook and Linkedin, and I am already facing social networking fatigue.
But the intriguing question is, do all these options mean VF gets or doesn’t get social media?
My friend Eddie Tejeda, has been working on an awesome site called, “LittleSis” which is an “unvoluntary Facebook for powerful Americans.” The relationships of politicians, their donors, CEOs, lobbyists, non-profit directors are made transparent through a combination of crowdsourced labor and accessing public databases. The site is a project of Public Accountability Support from the Sunlight Foundation.
It’s sort of like playing “Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon,” except with American elite, like Madeline Albright who is connect with soon to be former FCC commissioner Kevin J Martin. Their connection? The Aspen Institute.
Image source: Amazon Windowshop
Am I the only person who missed this? This month Amazon launch Windowshop Beta, a CoverFlow-ish interface for shopping. This flash based interface allows you to search new selections, which are added each Tuesday. Browsing is controlled with the space bar to zoom in and the arrow keys to navigate, giving it the user experience of an 80s PC video game (that’s not a bad thing.) However, the categories of “Best selling,” or “New releases” have limited appeal to me.
I’m not a user of CoverFlow, mostly because most of songs don’t have images attached to them, so the UX is pretty lame for me. But I think that some of the Silverlight interfaces and visual search engines like SearchMe and Riya are showing promise. Clearly, Amazon is trying to emulate the browsing experience of the brick and mortar store. However, just like I only browse certain sections of a book store, it would be great to have that kind of granular control in Windowshop. If you could combine some search, and narrow the selections down to topics or areas of interest, and then browse through 100 or so titles, we would *really* have something to write up in here.
My friend Alex sent me this link to this recent JC de Castelbajac video, which reconsiders his recent runway show as LEGOs. JCDC is known for incorporating popular culture imagary into his couture, but this is taking the concept into new levels. The Anna Wintour as a plastic toy is just too good. Below are screen grabs, a still from the animated show, the actual Spring/Summer 2009 show, as well as, Ms. Wintour. I’ve let you go to the site watch the entire video (which I highly encourage) and find Kanye West in the first row. In the confusing time of economic uncertainty and post-election optimism. The show itself leans toward the hopeful, with rainbow colors and plastic hats. Obama’s portrait even makes a showing. Amidst the gloom of two wars, the shrinking global economy, and pummelled stock market, is this the perfect time for play and reinvention?
Image source: cultureby.com
On Saturday, I got to hear Grant McCracken speak at the AIGA GAIN conference in New York.
I documented that I was going to the talk in my usual way of writing a quick note in twitter, which gets dumped into my facebook status.
“At AIGA, just heard Grant McCracken say smart things on design & culture, and the role of the anthropologist”
I got two quick responses from friends of mine who are working on their dissertations in anthropology, who basically asked what is the role of the anthropologist?
Of course, their requests had a bit of tongue and cheek, who am I to tell anthropologist what is their role? And I hope that they understood, that the talk was about the role of the anthropology within the context of design and culture. Nevertheless, the question is worth a response, because it is an interesting one, and perhaps the answer is not so obvious, although it is after hearing the talk.
During his talk, in a conference room mostly full of designers, McCracken refers two kinds of practitioners of anthropology. Anthropologists with an upper case A, and anthropologists with a lower case a. McCracken is an Anthropologist (PhD U Chicago) just as my friends are training to be Anthropologists. As well, there are many anthropologists (I would count myself in that group) who have the opportunity to practice anthropology in their work. For designers, that practice is decoding culture and explaining it back to the design or marketing client. Although many in the Field (uppercase F) might have a problem with that, McCracken does not, and in fact encourages it. Although, it must be done in a smart way.
Decoding culture is crucial to the designer, because “culture provides infrastructure” to how we understand the world. McCracken divides culture into the “above” (Malcolm Gladwell, Coolhunters, trendsetters) and the “below” which is all the rest. Culture below is more hidden, and is made up of the assumptions people make in their construction of their worlds. The culture below is so obvious to the individual that they don’t even realize it exists. It remains in the domain of the unknown, until the anthropologist enters and maps out assumptions that. He cites the example of what makes a Harley more than “just” a motorcycle.
What does this have to do with design?
The designer must consider more than the cultural relevance of her creative output. She must also consider the people who will see, hear, try, and her designs. The successful designer will have an intimate knowledge of her end-user/audience/market and the culture surround the products and services that use in their daily lives. She will then use that knowledge to create a relationship with that person.
McCracken began with the question, “who owns culture in the corporation?” His claim is that designs probably don’t, but they should. And today, the answer is probably nobody, which makes that there is an opportunity for the designer to lay claim to that corporate group.
What does this have to do with the Anthropologist overall or in training? McCracken often talks about the missed opportunities of Anthropologists because, they could provide insight in a post-modern world of flatten hierarchies (high-low, East-West) where known cultural structures are eroding. In their place is an ad-hoc, but quite real, infrastructure of culture that is ripe for mining. Although they may not be the traditional domain of Anthropology, these cultural norms have a huge influence on the every day lives people in a post-industrial, consumerist culture. There is a great need for these changes to be explained back to the corporations that are creating that culture. Whether for the corporation or academia, there is an opportunity for both Anthropologists and anthropologists to weigh in on the issues of the bagginess or skinniness of jeans, the identities of our vehicles, or personalities of our beverages.
Perhaps, there are Anthropologists in training who are already tackling these issues. If that is true, that would be great. For those who are designer or marketers who are (aspiring) anthropologists, there are also many opportunities as well. For both parties, McCracken has just created a blog conpendium on how to be an anthropologist for hire.
Image sources: nymag.com, nytimes.
Not the freshest topic, but worth recording, Vogue India’s August’s spread has a 16 page of photo editorial with average India people wearing luxury accessories. What’s the issue with average? When 465 million of 1.1 billion Indians survive on US$1.25 a day (according to the World Bank,) having them wear US$10,000 Hermes bags and US$200 Burberry umbrellas, came off, at best, a little tacky.
New York Times quotes the Vogue India editor Priya Tanna: “Lighten up… fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful… You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously… We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world.”
The quote is most interesting in comparison to Vogue Italy’s July issue, dubbed the Black Issue, whose editorial was shot by Steve Meisel and only featured black models. The issue included established models such as, Alek Wek, as well as new comers, like Jourdan Dunn. The issues sold out quickly and required an unprecedented second printing. Although, I wonder if other people had my first reaction flipping through the magazine: the first half of the magazine, were mostly ads, featuring white models. The difference was striking and adds poignancy to the statement made by the Vogue Italy editors.
The problem is that the fashion industry is itself an agent of fashion, trends, and the new. 2006 was the year of eco-fashion, when Elle’s green fashion issue was the fashion magazine that made mainstream headlines. The next green issues were yesterday’s news, even if the importance of sustainability is ever present. These magazine and luxury brands are trying to sell aspiration. Clearly, magazines such as Vogue need to clarify the messages they are hoping people to aspire towards achieving. This point is especially important in a country such as India, whose struggles with balancing their raising middle and upper class with highly visible poverty. As luxury continues to grow as a global obsession, fashion and fashion publishing obviously has an obligation to consider its social responsibility, in a way that exists beyond the realm of “the moment.”
It’s funny how ideas come together. I’ve been slowly making my through Grant McCracken’s book Transformation. This morning on the train, I came to his section on the post-modern transformation of man, in particular on the absorption of hip hop culture into the wider mainstream (read: non-African American.) The chapter coincided with Absolut’s viral campaign feature a KW pill that turns you into Kanye West, entitled “Be Kanye,” which I first noticed it as a guerilla ad on the subway.
Image source: bekanyenow.com
The tension between the authentic and the simulated is a major theme of his book. Here, the transformation and exchange is at its most literal, take a pill and physically turn into West. Instead of “being like Mike” (or West) the transformation is complete and actual. The amazing part is that obviousness of the gesture, instead of the usual implied subtext that Rob Walker discusses, the promise of transformation IS the text. Their only gesture to veil the promise is through the parody of an informercial, there is not real pill, just drink Absolut. I wonder how much further would a marketing campaign take the suggestion of the literal transformation.
In a very nice comment, Frank mentions a link to weakening relationships from buzz marketing, and digs into deeper branding versus innovation, which is another important part of Lucas Conley’s argument in OBD, which I only briefly mentioned in my original post. Marketing has become more focused on brand positioning and re-packaging then developing new and useful changes to the products.
As Conley states, when entire product categories such as laundry detergent or paper towels have been improved to be effectively the same, long standing brands such as Tide and Bounty (which I have used for decades, mostly likely because they are the ones I grew up with) are left with marketing strategies to differential themselves. I will admit that some of the packaging strategies are useful improvements, and while I like the form factor of the glass ketchup bottle, Heinz squeezable plastic one does work better. However, for each of these useful cases, we have dozens of brand extensions. Conley cites the five (and counting) versions of the Swifter, as an example.
This feature creep, where new add-ons clutter shelfs with orange juice with calcium, Kleenex with aloe, and toothpaste with breathe strips. A second related effect is that customers get used to a product, only to find them discontinued with new product lines when they try to replace them. How many more blades that they fit on a razor? I wouldn’t mind if 5 or 6 or 7 are available, if they would still make the older models (with a mere 2 blades) that I liked and are increasingly harder to find.
All these marketing efforts come at the price of true innovation advances in the underlying technology of these products. However, innovation is of course, hard. It is not at all surprising that marketing is chosen over innovation. These kinds of changes are risky and costly, and more new products are failures than successes. For every iPod, there are zunes, Newtons, and new Cokes. These risks make companies more defensive and concerned about protecting market share. But why can’t a paper towel be a paper towel until sometime better comes along?
What are we, as consumers, to do? It’s hard when use your purchasing power when companies discontinue the
When Apple releases a new product, Apple fans exception industry shattering, paradigm shifting innovations on the scale of the iPod. The light-weight mini-laptop Air got some harsh reactions. But the funny thing is that people don’t remember that the iPod didn’t instantly create the American mp3 market or change the way we conceptual our entire music collection as mobile. Rather, it took time for people out exactly what the iPod was.
Similarly, while Apple is predicted to sell 10-13 millions iPhones this year, Nokia sold 115.2 million of the 294.3 million phones sold globally in the *first* quarter of 2008.
Image source: bn.com
I’ve recently finished, OBD Obessive Branding Disorder - The Business of Illusion and The Illusion of Business, by Lucas Conley, who write for Fast Company. I’m way behind on blogging, so I’ll keep the book review short, and will reference the book in some other posts that have been brewing in my brain.
Conley discusses branding and marketing along similar lines as Rob Walker’s Buying In. However, he takes a much more explicitly critical view of the current practices of today’s marketers, where as Walker writes from a more description perspective. One of Conley’s most interesting passages is on “buzz agents” that are paid to push products to friends and acquaintances. His concern is that when any stranger or worse any trusted friend or family is a potential marketer, the value of our entire social network are at risk. This risk is exacerbated by coupled with findings from the American Sociological Review from 2006 cited by Conley. The General Social Survey (GSS) which measure people feelings and social perceptions, found three times the number of people who stated that they didn’t have anyone to discuss important matters, than 20 years ago. The study also reported only half of the participants claimed to have two or fewer close friends and a quarter claiming having no confidants at all. Therefore, not only are we getting more isolated, the trust of the people we do interact with is decreasing as well.
Telecommunications encourages people to seek out relationships over space, and makes it easier to avoid those in their immediate surrounding. Further, as mobility increase and people move across states and countries to attend school or to find work, traditional face to face social networks are weakened. Just as Walker states that we use brands to create our own identities, Conley states that we form communities based on brands.
One side distraction of the books is its, at times, loose use of statistics to bolster arguments. In one early section, describing how US companies are replacing innovating with marketing. This is a troubling observation, reveals in the way company reshape, repackage, reposition, and retire their products rather actually innovate. Conley cites that the number of hours worked in the US is decreasing while they are increasing in the countries, many of which are in Asia. This idea would only be relevant if more hours worked translated to more innovation, which is may or may not be true. While I agree that sacrificing research and development for more marketing and brand positioning is bad for long term business practice, confusing links to data is distracting.
Overall, OBD is a good read. He notes the ironic end point, that anti-branding voices such as Ad Buster and Naomi Klein, author No Logo, are established brands themselves. I appreciate that Conley attempts to tackle the idea of how to rethinking the brand which surrounds us. Although he doesn’t provide an actual roadmap to encourage social and corportate change, which may not even exist. If brand are inescapable, then what are people who agree with Conley to do?
Ray Cha works in New York and lives in Brooklyn.
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