Because of the way the hamster takes his red hood off in the beginning, that’s why.

Whoever made this ad really did their homework. The amount of details in this ad is almost staggering, and they all contribute to the authenticity of the aesthetic.

Three Wolf Moon is/was a rather ugly t-shirt that became a somewhat inexplicable viral phenomenon. It’s a somewhat kitch and unremarkable t-shirt that was on sale on Amazon. But when somebody posted this review on it…

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women

Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

… all hell broke loose. In a very short period of time, it got more than 1000 similar “reviews” and spread quickly thanks to Digg and people sharing the Amazon link on Facebook. I’ve seen more than a few photoshops where famous people have been depicted wearing the shirt, including Barack Obama.

Well, fast forward to today and look what I found on /Film:

There’s just something about mashing up obscure internet phenomena with Star Wars, I guess…

I mean sure, it underlines a bit too clearly what its message is “about”, but the use of imagery and contemporary cultural cues (especially local) is commendable. Rooney’s part was especially touching.

Hat tip to Kaarle

What distinguished this structure was an architecture designed to maximize the visibility of inmates who were to be isolated in individual cells such that they were unaware moment-to-moment whether they were being observed by guards in a central tower. More than a simple device for observation, the panopticon worked in conjunction with explicitly articulated behavioural norms as established by the emerging social sciences, in efforts to transform the prisoner’s relation to him or her self. This disciplinary aspect of panoptic observation involves a productive soul training which encourages inmates to reflect upon the minutia of their own behaviour in subtle and ongoing efforts to transform their selves.

The panopticon is the famous prison design by Jeremy Bentham that Michel Foucault used as the ideal metaphor for modern societies need for discipline and normalise through observation. Foucault argued that this type of “control through observation” was not only a feature in prison, but all hierarchical structures such the army, schools, hospitals and factories. Though the panopticon design itself was actually not commonly used, thanks to Foucault it has remained iconic.

What struck me was how I recognized from this idea how people’s awareness of being monitored making them reflect on the minutia of their own behavior. I have more than have a few friends who have become camera shy because they know that any images taken could end up on Facebook with their name on it. Some people even immediately remove all photo tags of themselves as soon as they appear. As Facebook has become more mainstream and people are befriending more broadly (relatives and colleagues instead of just university buddies), it has caused many people to dial back on their candidness when it comes to how they represent themselves online. As evidenced by Facebook’s recent changes, the functionality of the site is intended to leave more and more user information open to the whole world, and in some cases you have to go a rather strenuous process to hide your personal information.

The overall trend in all social media seems to be about openness. Some people seem to embrace it, especially the more extrovert and dare I say egocentric ones. But some are put off by this trend of, as so eloquently put in the article, “groups which were previously exempt from routine surveillance are now increasingly being monitored.” Naturally, it’s a bit of a stretch to compare Facebook to the panopticon prison. So much of this Facebook surveillance is just us learning to “be” on Facebook, but as long as the technology is enabling this surveillance (and increasingly so), we should at least be mindful of it. As we are becoming more digital each passing year, the notion of escaping the digital gaze might become more or less socially impossible. I’ve heard a few predictions that in the future your online presence is what works as your reputation or even resume. “If you’re not online, you don’t exist”, the thinking seems to go. It’s already happening as many companies are already googling any new job applicants and going through their blogs and social media profiles.

Just be mindful of what Facebook (and social media in general) is becoming, or rather that you are being watched more and more on Facebook. At least you don’t want to end up on a site like Failbook before you get it.

Article: Haggerty, Kevin; Ericson, Richard. “The surveillant assemblage” British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 4 (December 2000) pp. 605–622

So you may have heard about the global Playstation 3 meltdown (or ‘ApocalyPS3′) earlier this week when a small error in the system’s internal clock as it relates (I assume) to leap years rendered many systems unplayable for a whopping 24 hours.

I imagine I don’t need to tell you, some people flipped.

The conspiracy theories flew, and the fury and threats boiled over, and it was quite the spectacle to behold if you cruised by some gaming forums in the heat of it. I’ll admit, I was personally thankful that I’d finished Heavy Rain the night before. I’d have probably been a little irritated to find that I couldn’t sit down to play it after work. But man oh man… forget corn, we need to get our scientists working on a way to harness nerd-rage as a renewable energy source.

We laugh, but I think this speaks volumes on how we relate to technology and gaming. In the deep end of things, it can even come to this:

What are you supposed to do when Forbes ranks your city as the most miserable in America? Rally city supporters and create a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign.

That’s what Positively Cleveland, the Ohio city’s convention and visitors bureau, has done after Forbes proclaimed the city as the country’s most miserable last Thursday. Tami Brown, Positively Cleveland’s vice president of marketing, says the day the article came out, the bureau commissioned a local improv troupe to put together a video poking holes in the miserable title. In the video, actors gripe that there are too many sports and live entertainment options in town, and that commutes are so short they don’t have time to do their make-up in the car. There’s also a funny bit where upon hearing that Cleveland has been called the most miserable city, a group of Cleveland people jump up and cheer – which of course, doesn’t make them seem all that miserable.

As I argued in my Kanye West post a while back, thanks in large part to the Internet marketing communications has changed from a brute force approach of bombarding people with a predisposed message until it sticks to something more dynamic where you adapt to what’s “out there” in terms of what’s your brand’s place in culture. To use an analogy, it’s branding by aikido, not by karate. I think you can see the change in thinking in Clevaland’s case as well. Instead of trying to “fight” their new infamous title, they decided to engage it head on, by embracing it and then giving it a meaning makeover.

The sixth and supposedly last season started yesterday in the US (the parts are available in Germany always one day later), however in the last couple of days / weeks a few marketing gigs have already taken place. Such as this one: you can book a flight on Oceanic 815 from Sydney to L.A. on kayak.com – for a horrendous price, of course. Quite a nice idea!

I think this is a step beyond amusement parks like Disneyland, “a miniature Paris in Las Vegas”, and other oft-used examples of hyperreality. And it’s not really alternate reality gaming, cosplay or siteseeing either, it’s something else. I just don’t know what to call this.

But I know Jean Baudrillard would approve.

Lately I’ve stumbled upon two similar examples, which further highlight this trend, but in different ways. The first is an example of just plain ignoring copyright. The way the Internet has opened up commerce is that there’s now a supplier for pretty much everything you could wish for. Take this Ironman sticker I just ordered for my laptop from China. There’s no possibility that a company like Marvel (which holds Ironman’s property rights) could keep track of all of these sellers to shut them down (especially since it’s in China), and the thing is, small retailers like this usually have these great niche ideas such as this that probably wouldn’t make out of the corporate boardroom. They’re creating a unique product that I feel benefits Marvel and Ironman more than it hurts them in lost revenue. (Hat tip to /Film, again).

The second example is closer to the t-shirt example: going around copyright by obscuring your references and use of intellectual property. A graphic designer called Albert Exergian has created some really cool minimalistic movie posters for TV shows. Again, he’s not using anything that could compromise him for legal action (save for the trademarks) so he’s flying under the radar in that sense. But I can really appreciate the creativity that came from these legal constraints. He’s given all these TV shows a unique twist, sort of riddling them.

I think we’ll be seeing more of ventures like these that both challenge copyright but also challenge the consumers’ levels of cultural knowledge. I guess you could call it “piracy done with style”? Or something.

Via /Film, again.

This kind of ultra-condensed video editing is something that I’ve seen pop up every now and then. It relies heavily on the audience being familiar with the material, and it’s made for the “snack” era.

Anyway, happy holidays and have a great new year!

Very recently there have been two rather important books written relating to the subject either directly or indirectly. The first one is “Chief Culture Officer” by Grant McCracken, which came out just over a week ago. The second one is “Netnography” by Robert Kozinets, which is still in print. McCracken’s book argues for the necessity to create an organization that “gets” culture, or at least have somebody in the organization who does. An organization should be aware of its and its brands’ place in culture to manage its meaning (and most of all, not to mismanage it!). Kozinets’ book on the other hand is – as the name suggests – about how to do ethnographic research online. It’s intended for researchers and companies alike. Of course, Kozinets’ book also has some arguments as to why a company should do this kind of research, but as a general rule I’d say that McCracken’s book is more about the “why” and Kozinets’ is more about the “how” of uncovering a brand’s meaning.

I haven’t had the time to read either book completely (there are free previews available, check the sites), so apologies if the following arguments are featured in the books and I seem like I’m passing them as my own (I’m not). Also apologies for either author if they felt misrepresented in the the “why/how” categorization above.

In the past, only a few companies (usually big ones) actively engaged in ethnographic research. To some degree it was a matter of a unappreciation for cultural aspects of the brand, but for many companies I’d guess engaging in ethnographic research may have been just too costly or time consuming to do. You’d need to commission a research team, arrange the interviews or field work dates and then wait a rather long time for them to decode the findings and write a report, and even then you couldn’t be sure you had enough data. And sometimes you’d have to do is in multiple locations if you were a global brand. To put in simple terms: it just wasn’t worth the ROI for many companies.

This is where a method like netnography comes in. If anything, social media sites offer an almost endless stream of different and rich cultural meanings – especially for brands – that can be accessed quite quickly. If a skilled researcher spends an afternoon scouring through social media sites, he or she will have at least a preliminary feel for a brand’s meaning at the end of the day. This I think is another benefit of netnography for companies: to be able to do scale your qualitative research projects from “quick and dirty” with limited but somewhat relevant results to large scale meaning mining. I have my reservations about Twitter, but its value in getting a quick feel for your brand’s meaning is invaluable. Twitter really is zeitgeist on tap. Status updates on Twitter (or Facebook) are what McCracken calls “phatic communications” or to quote McCracken:

This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.

I suspect both McCracken and Kozinets would cringe if the principal arguments for buying their books were “doing qualitative research is faster and cheaper now”, but I think this is an important perspective as well. If anything it’s a good additional selling point to get your company at least consider taking qualitative research more seriously. If you need more convincing about the importance of qualitative research, I’m sure both books have more than plenty compelling arguments. My guess that in the future companies will have a netnography team or a “cultural social media team” sitting next to the social media customer service team they have in place.

Here are the book covers to help you spot them on the bookshelf.