Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

A few posts back I proclaimed the Star Wars mashup of the Whistle Tips Bub Rub to be the most obscure yet somehow relevant pop culture mashup I’d ever seen. Well, I think we have a new heir to the throne.

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 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.