Just finished this excellent, excellent book.
Avoiding a Da Vinci backlash.
SCAN THIS BOOK.
MUSIC
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
MP3 --> Postcards From Italy
BOOKS
What are two of the best books written by Americans in the last 25 years?
Underworld ReviewMeridican Review
Dylan Coyle, who is 24, studies music at San Francisco State University. He has been a vegan for five years and is a careful consumer. Last year, somebody asked him what he wanted for Christmas, and he said he wanted a pair of Blackspot shoes. This was a considered choice: the shoes are made from "vegetarian materials," including organic hemp and recycled tires. They are manufactured in a "safe, comfortable union factory" in Portugal and sold by the creators of Adbusters, a magazine best known for its withering critique of the advertising business and of mindless materialism. Instead of a logo — or as its logo — the Blackspot is decorated with a rough circle meant to suggest the obliteration of branding; the shoe Coyle wanted is called the Unswoosher, in an unsubtle reference to the most famous shoe logo of all, Nike's swoosh.
The makers of the Blackspot explain their mission as being "to establish a worldwide consumer cooperative and to reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism." The first Blackspot shoe, a low-top sneaker, was released in August 2004 and has sold more than 13,700 pairs; the bootlike Unswoosher appeared in March 2005 and is selling at a faster pace (6,000 so far) than the original sneaker, according to the company. This is a pretty good showing, considering the underlying challenge: that those most sympathetic to the mission might also be those most hostile to the idea of a brand as an antidote to the ills of consumer culture. In a sense, the Blackspot is designed for those most cynical about consumerism.
Consumer cynicism is a topic of great interest to Amanda Helm, an instructor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. In connection with her research, she has conducted in-depth interviews with about two dozen consumers on the subject and has looked specifically at fans of Adbusters. Some of her preliminary findings were summarized in a 2004 article in the journal Advances in Consumer Research.
One thing she has encountered is a desire among cynical consumers not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them. At the far end of the cynical-consumer continuum, this might mean defacing advertisements, but for most it plays out differently. For example, shopping at Target because you can't stand Wal-Mart — Wal-Mart came up a lot, Helm says — thus denying dollars to the disfavored company. The marketplace itself is not the enemy in this situation; it's a tool for expressing discontent. Thus one of Helm's most interesting findings: that the cynical consumers who are her main focus "demonstrated very strong brand loyalty to the few companies they could trust."
Coyle, the San Francisco student, is an interesting example. That Christmas-list request came from Outlaw Consulting, a trend-research firm. Outlaw first found Coyle several years ago, when one of its representatives approached him in a mall outside a Hot Topic. "You and your girlfriend look like hip people," Coyle recalls being told, before getting a little cash in exchange for their opinions about some brand. Thus Coyle became a member of Outlaw's "trendsetter panel," which entailed answering questions about brands and products from time to time in exchange for small sums.
When the Christmas-list request came, he thought it would be interesting to inject the Blackspot into the corporate bloodstream. (He did get a pair, but for his birthday, and not from Outlaw.) Partly because of Coyle's wish, Outlaw included the Blackspot in a list of things that appealed to its "trendsetter panel," and this was followed by a story in Forbes suggesting that the Blackspot is one of the "hottest urban brands." According to a newsletter from Adbusters, that (somewhat critical) Forbes article "netted us another new retailer . . .and many, many Web sales." Coyle's wish was honest, but the situation was more or less what he'd hoped for. Challenging consumerism by participating in it might sound like an uphill battle, but Coyle says he thinks it can work; he is, in other words, quite optimistic.
Avoiding a Da Vinci backlash.
SCAN THIS BOOK.
MUSIC
Beirut - Gulag OrkestarMP3 --> Postcards From Italy
BOOKS
What are two of the best books written by Americans in the last 25 years?
Underworld ReviewMeridican Review
Dylan Coyle, who is 24, studies music at San Francisco State University. He has been a vegan for five years and is a careful consumer. Last year, somebody asked him what he wanted for Christmas, and he said he wanted a pair of Blackspot shoes. This was a considered choice: the shoes are made from "vegetarian materials," including organic hemp and recycled tires. They are manufactured in a "safe, comfortable union factory" in Portugal and sold by the creators of Adbusters, a magazine best known for its withering critique of the advertising business and of mindless materialism. Instead of a logo — or as its logo — the Blackspot is decorated with a rough circle meant to suggest the obliteration of branding; the shoe Coyle wanted is called the Unswoosher, in an unsubtle reference to the most famous shoe logo of all, Nike's swoosh.
The makers of the Blackspot explain their mission as being "to establish a worldwide consumer cooperative and to reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism." The first Blackspot shoe, a low-top sneaker, was released in August 2004 and has sold more than 13,700 pairs; the bootlike Unswoosher appeared in March 2005 and is selling at a faster pace (6,000 so far) than the original sneaker, according to the company. This is a pretty good showing, considering the underlying challenge: that those most sympathetic to the mission might also be those most hostile to the idea of a brand as an antidote to the ills of consumer culture. In a sense, the Blackspot is designed for those most cynical about consumerism.
Consumer cynicism is a topic of great interest to Amanda Helm, an instructor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. In connection with her research, she has conducted in-depth interviews with about two dozen consumers on the subject and has looked specifically at fans of Adbusters. Some of her preliminary findings were summarized in a 2004 article in the journal Advances in Consumer Research.
One thing she has encountered is a desire among cynical consumers not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them. At the far end of the cynical-consumer continuum, this might mean defacing advertisements, but for most it plays out differently. For example, shopping at Target because you can't stand Wal-Mart — Wal-Mart came up a lot, Helm says — thus denying dollars to the disfavored company. The marketplace itself is not the enemy in this situation; it's a tool for expressing discontent. Thus one of Helm's most interesting findings: that the cynical consumers who are her main focus "demonstrated very strong brand loyalty to the few companies they could trust."
Coyle, the San Francisco student, is an interesting example. That Christmas-list request came from Outlaw Consulting, a trend-research firm. Outlaw first found Coyle several years ago, when one of its representatives approached him in a mall outside a Hot Topic. "You and your girlfriend look like hip people," Coyle recalls being told, before getting a little cash in exchange for their opinions about some brand. Thus Coyle became a member of Outlaw's "trendsetter panel," which entailed answering questions about brands and products from time to time in exchange for small sums.
When the Christmas-list request came, he thought it would be interesting to inject the Blackspot into the corporate bloodstream. (He did get a pair, but for his birthday, and not from Outlaw.) Partly because of Coyle's wish, Outlaw included the Blackspot in a list of things that appealed to its "trendsetter panel," and this was followed by a story in Forbes suggesting that the Blackspot is one of the "hottest urban brands." According to a newsletter from Adbusters, that (somewhat critical) Forbes article "netted us another new retailer . . .and many, many Web sales." Coyle's wish was honest, but the situation was more or less what he'd hoped for. Challenging consumerism by participating in it might sound like an uphill battle, but Coyle says he thinks it can work; he is, in other words, quite optimistic.
posted by D @ 7:10 AM
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