Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

From PSFK

“Americans love knowing where their things are,” says Chris McGlothlin, chief information office at Domino’s. Folks constantly tell Domino’s how much they hate not knowing when — or if — their pizza will arrive. The Pizza Tracker, used by 75% of Domino’s online customers, is an attempt to solve that problem. While current technology also could track the whereabouts of drivers, Domino’s won’t track that for security reasons.

Besides connecting consumers to their pizzas, the tracker gives the first names of workers who make and deliver their order, says Russell Weiner, chief marketing officer. As a society, “We’re not just time-starved, we’re starved for connections to others.”

Emphasis mine. I think this is an interesting case of technology redefining old and existing consumption patterns. Does a service like this diminish the joy of hearing the doorbell ring and finally getting your pizza? How does it affect the socializing aspects that used to happen between the order and delivery? Are we really better off knowing exactly when our pizza arrives?

I thought I’d revisit an old topic regarding arms race advertising. This popped up on my reader: NPR: The Thrill is Gone: How Viral Marketing Will End Up Killing Viral Marketing and the new viral campaign for the TV show House:

Bottom line: Enjoy this kind of campaign while it lasts, because in short order, we’ll all be so jaded that we’d ignore the reappearance of the woolly mammoth, convinced it’s just a scheme to market the latest Ice Age movie.

To repeat what I wrote a while back:

Advertisers are in an arms both against other advertisers and against consumers. All new advertising innovations (new media to advertise in, persuasion tactics etc.) are quickly copied by rival advertisers and they lose their effectiveness quite fast. And on the consumer front, as time goes by consumers become increasingly advertising savvy and more likely to ignore or “see past” advertising (as outlined in the NYT article).

I guess this is and always will be the advertiser’s problem; how to deal with constantly declining returns on advertising. Some brands choose to just out-spend the competition, hoping for first mover advantages in new marketing tactics by hiring the advertising talent du jour. Some brands are more responsive and consumer-centric, and move their focus away from practices to which consumers are no longer responding.

Bill Simmons is my favorite sports columnist, mainly for his funny writing style, but also for his feel for popular culture. He often mixes pop culture references into his sports columns or even writes entire columns on the subject. Here’s a recent quick interview with him, questions 3 & 5 were particularly illuminating: 5 Quick Questions with Bill Simmons

3. What’s the biggest story the media has missed this year?
The potential of Twitter. Old-school media doesn’t get Twitter at all. A lot of people still think it’s a fad and it’s totally not a fad. Cocaine was a fad. The Osbournes were a fad. Auto-asphyxiation was a fad…. well, unless you were David Carradine. If anything I think we are just scratching the surface of Twitter for better and worse: it started breaking stories last spring and over everything else, that’s why it won’t go away. Now reporters are posting scoops on Twitter before they send the finished stories into their employers. People are not seeing what is happening here. Facebook is a social network; Twitter is a media/marketing vehicle disguised as a social network.

5. Are you nervous or excited about the future of Journalism? Why?
I’m terrified. I think it’s going to hell in a hand basket. The emphasis is on quantity over quality and immediacy over accuracy; the newspapers have made it worse by trying to speed up their immediacy online over just kicking everyone’s asses with better writing and reporting. Newsmakers can control stories about themselves by selectively dispersing relevant information as well as who gets to talk to them (and for what reason). And too many writers are more interested in just saying what they have to say instead of crafting the way they are saying it. It’s a comedy of errors. I thought Season 5 of The Wire painted a bleak picture of where this is going, but even David Simon couldn’t have believed that it would get this bad this fast. I would say “nervous.”

That’s more or less the good and bad of Twitter, all in two paragraphs. Twitter’s ability of breaking and spreading news is considerable. However, I think this has had its drawbacks as well, putting and onus “on quantity over quality and immediacy over accuracy”, as Simmons so eloquently put it.

Some have already argued that Twitter will end up killing journalism, but I think this is a gross overstatement. The sad fact is that traditional news agencies have just been unable to carve up the right strategy against Twitter’s hypernovelty. The time of solely newspapers breaking stories is over; bloggers are now getting the kind of access to information traditionally reserved for the most prestigious news outlets. Grassroots journalism is doing a better job at breaking stories and faster, because they don’t have to work with the same constraints as, say, a New York Times (validity of source, brand image concerns, writing quality, legal issues). A New York Times can’t afford running many unconfirmed stories that end up blowing up in their faces. Tweeters (and blogs) by virtue of their sheer volume, on the other hand, can. The hits outweigh the misses.

Simmons hits it right on the money when he states that “newspapers have made it worse by trying to speed up their immediacy online over just kicking everyone’s asses with better writing and reporting.” The fact second opinion magazines like the Economist continue to see their subscriptions rise, not fall, is proof of this. Instead of focusing on WHAT has happened, it is time for traditional news outlets to return to reporting WHY something has happened.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the link.

For the uninitiated, here’s a short description of what is transmedia storytelling. Henry Jenkins and Transmedia Storytelling:

A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms. A story like Heroes or Lost might spread from television into comics, the web, computer or alternate reality games, toys and other commodities, and so forth, picking up new consumers as it goes and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper. The fans, in turn, may translate their interests in the franchise into concordances and wikipedia entries, fan fiction, vids, fan films, cosplay, game mods, and a range of other participatory practices that further extend the story world in new directions. Both the commercial and grassroots expansion of narrative universes contribute to a new mode of storytelling, one which is based on an encyclopedic expanse of information which gets put together differently by each individual consumer as well as processed collectively by social networks and online knowledge communities.

An apt metaphor that Jenkins has used is the art of “world building”, creating a storyline where readers can jump in and contribute at any point or from any medium. Transmedia storytelling has usually been about expanding one cultural franchise into new media channels, as stated above. However, what happens when you start expanding cultural franchises into other cultural franchises?

Inglourious Basterds and True Romance: Bonded by Family Blood

Quentin Tarantino has been building universes since day one. The characters of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Death Proof talk about one another while eating at the same restaurants (like Big Kahuna Burger). Characters jump from one feature to another, and family relations might be mentioned in one script, but not seen on screen until another movie down the line. And at the Austin premiere of Inglourious Basterds, The Playlist learned that this film is, not surprisingly, related to True Romance, in a way that detail-oriented fans probably already suspect.

Fans of True Romance remember Saul Rubinek’s character, the producer Lee Donowitz. (Based by director Tony Scott, in a not too subtle manner, on Joel Silver.) In Austin, Tarantino said that Lee’s father is Eli Roth’s Inglourious Basterds character, Sgt. Donnie “The Bear Jew” Donowitz. Donnie is a violent, slightly unhinged individual, and some elements of that character were perhaps passed onto his son, who in True Romance is proud of his film Coming Home in a Body Bag.

I think this goes beyond just mashing up two cultural franchises in a one-off piece (like Aliens vs. Predators or Superman vs. Batman). This is more nuanced, more sophisticated and requires a higher level of literacy and dedication to Tarantino’s works. Tarantino’s works are currently confined only to the cinema medium, but I think this cross-referencing could be expanded to other media, easily. If transmedia storytelling is about creating “worlds”, as Jenkins states, then the next step might be about creating universes.

Sascha Baron Cohen’s new pseudo-documentary Brüno has been getting worse reviews than its predecessor, Borat. Most pundits feel that this is due to the film’s similarities, that the joke is sort of “played out” now. But having finally seen Brüno last night, I have a different opinion on why it was weaker (and it was) than the previous film.

Much of Borat’s interestingness stemmed from Borat talking with regular people, who often ended up showing their true colors in the process. Most of the interactions played out like a good qualitative interview: Borat was the researcher getting people to spill their guts, in their own words, with well-timed priming. Borat was the true outsider, wanting to learn about the American way of life, and people obliged. All Borat had to do was to nudge them into the right direction, and people would reveal their deep racist, homophobic or antisemite feelings. Often, it didn’t even require much.

Brüno, on the other hand, is almost a case example of bad anthropology. The spotlight is almost always on him, never on the people he’s interviewing or interacting with. Brüno is flamboyant. He’s irritating. He doesn’t get people to open up, he pushes them and pushes them until they lose their temper and reveal something about themselves. And most of the time, the results were predictable and uninteresting. People were genuinely uneasy with him, just waiting to get out of the situation. Most of the time, I ended up feeling sorry for Brüno’s “victims”, unlike in Borat. Only a few episodes felt free-flowing and enlightening (the talk show and the baby pictures), the rest was just shock humor.

I definitely think Cohen can make another film like this (more makeup and a new character and people won’t know who it is), but he has to tone it down and give the spotlight back to the people he’s interviewing.

Here’s a column on the Superman franchise that ties together two previous posts of mine, one on Barack Obama and another on how culture has a tendency to swing back and forth sometimes.

Here’s the thing: I firmly believe that now should be Superman’s time. As The Dark Knight took all of our Bush-era worries and concerns and made them into an action movie, so should Superman be around right now to embody Obama’s (still-resonant, even a year after campaigning) message of hope and positive change and being the best we can be. Instead of using Superman’s inherent positivity against him, or thinking that it pushes him out of step with today’s world, focus on the way in which he personifies that which we want to believe in, and the people that we want to be. If we elected a president because we believed in the ideals of Yes We Can and Hope and Change and all those buzzwords, I refuse to believe that we wouldn’t want to see a movie that sold us the same message but with added punching, flying and action.

(I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; Star Trek’s success comes as much from it being positive and colorful and optimistic escapism as it being a good movie, this time around. Superman has those qualities in spades.)

Is Superman damaged goods? To an extent, yes, but he shouldn’t be; there’s nothing wrong with the character, or the concept, when done right, and I think that the audience is more ready for what he’s selling now than they have been in years. What damages him most, perhaps, is the attitude from his owners that he’s a problem that they don’t know how to solve. The first step to stopping him being damaged goods is to stop treating him that way.

Continuing on a theme from a previous post, from Time:

In the old days — like, until yesterday — movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. But in the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers tweet their opinions on a film to millions of “followers.” Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the new weekend.

That appears to be the lesson from the studio estimates issued on July 13 for the weekend box office. Brüno, the Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy in which an Austrian fashion journalist shoves his flamboyant gayness in the faces and other body parts of unsuspecting Americans, won the weekend with $30.4 million, a bit above most industry expectations for an R-rated provocation whose star was unknown to the mass audience until his Borat became a surprise hit in 2006, earning more than $260 million at theaters worldwide on an $18 million budget. Yet Brüno’s box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film’s brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers — and that their tut-tutting got around fast. Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect.

The Twitter effect might be a tad overstated. To me it’s more the “Facebook status effect” than anything, but since tweets are public it’s easier to measure buzz this way. I already speculated in the earlier post that Hollywood is going to battle this “Twitter effect” by banking on more sure things, like sequels and (comic) book adaptations. But I’m sure there’s another way, one that’s more dynamic and not too much on the nose. Perhaps film studios will scale down on mid-level film budgets (especially advertising) a bit and look for the new “Juno” time and time again? Maybe this new age will bring a new polarity of 200 million dollar superfilms and a huge selection of indies, that some make it big and most don’t?

Thanks to Jani for the tip.

Via /Film:

Though the shortfilm is funny, it also plays on pretty contemporary social norms that are being reshaped currently.

When is it okay to talk, for example, the latest episode of Lost?

After how many years is a film considered common knowledge? (the Usual Suspects)

How big a faux pas IS spoiling, actually?

Thought I’d feature something funnier this time. I’m a bit late to the party as this campaign is already a bit old, I need to decrease my draft-to-published number. Via American Copywriter:

That is Denny’s new ad promoting their All Nighter offering or campaign. And yes, as American Copywriter noted in his blog, the unicorn is indeed high.

Of course, the unicorn plays the role of the stoner to a T. Overall the campaign plays well with modern nuances of the fast food diner. The boys (uh, mythical creatures) have been to a rock concert, and have come to gorge some fast food as their buzz is coming down a bit. The works in the sense that Denny’s isn’t making an ass of itself by trying to be cool and “speaking like the young people do”.

But why the unicorn, the T-Rex and the leprechaun? The main reason would probably be that the campaign is going for a quirky, “WTF?” effect. I guess it does make it potentially more viral. But what I have been thinking about is that with make-belief characters like that, you can say pretty much anything. It’s the old ventriloquist effect: the puppet can say anything, but the person is playing the straight man role. A regular stoner being high as a kite in a Denny’s probably been too much for the bosses at Denny’s. A stoner unicorn? Hilarious!

The campaign deserves some major points though for having profile pages for all the characters on Facebook. The content there is top-notch contemporary and “on character” all the time.

This is a continuation of my last post on Hollywood’s new business model. I’m thinking about writing an academic article on the subject, so any interesting links or data is very welcome.

I just saw the new Terminator film yesterday. While it was not really my cup of tea, the tone of the movie was considerably different from the previous films. The film was dark and rugged, in its own way “realistic” even. This is the new aesthetic Hollywood has embraced when making these all these sequels and prequels for familiar franchises. It goes without saying that the phenomenal success of the two new Batman films is a major reason for this, but I think the Matrix trilogy also played a part in this resurgence.

It seems that Hollywood has gone a bit mad even for this new aesthetic. If you search for the keyword “reboot” on Slashfilm you’ll find a LOT of familiar titles being in development. One interesting case is one of Fantastic Four, which came out in 2005 (with a sequel in 2007), and it is already being rebooted. From Slashfilm:

Marvel has changed the game, and the way studios are looking at superhero properties. Fox now wants to reboot the series in a tone described as “less bubble gum” and more in the vein of Marvel’s Iron Man than Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

It’d be interesting to clearly identify when the cultural balance “tipped” towards this darker take on superhero myths. I’m sure there was latent demand for “less bubble gum”, as Fox put it, films even before Batman, but Hollywood was doing just fine before it. It could also be a simple case of demographics: a lot of moviegoers (such as myself) who grew up reading the comic books we’re now seeing on the big screen are just too old for teen pop art, and maybe Hollywood has understood that. I’m sure the recession and general pessimism about the world’s state have contributed to the aesthetic as well.

I’ll definitely keep an eye on this.