Diffferentiation

"Integrated marketing" is a tired cliché. How to be original now that everybody says they do it? It's a duh concept to begin with.

Global Warming

Things I don't believe: the globe is warming; anybody can really measure whether it is or is not; man makes the earth warm; we could do anything about it if we wanted to; fanatics want to cool the earth and not use the issue to denigrate the U.S.; a warmer earth is a bad thing; people would rather fix real environmental threats than worry about abstract concepts; I'm a luddite.

The high cost of "natural"

Reading about Grey Gardens and its current owners, Sally Quinn and Ed Bradlee in the NYT.

"Ms. Quinn envisioned a garden that preserved the spirit of the Beales' Grey Gardens. 'I wanted it to be wild. I wanted it to be just on the verge of being over the top,' she said. 'I wanted it to look like it happened by itself. I didn't want it to be manicured in any way, because the house isn't that way.' "

Do you know how expensive it is to replicate complete neglect?

Thin line

The line is razor thin between profundity and banality. And obscurity. An artist I like, Jenny Holzer, proves this point every day with her tweets. Unfortunately, she is banal more often than not.

I'm back

It's been a few months since I posted (or even looked at this site). I don't recognize one single thing I wrote. In fact, I wonder if someone has been posting on my site.

Pentimento

Stuff on top of stuff. Collaboration over time.

More Reality Imitating Clichés

Was driving the other night, rounded a bend: a deer in the headlights. Acted scared, paralyzed. Later, I was driving through the Lincoln Tunnel. Insufferable traffic. Finally, I saw the end in the distance -- the tunnel was bathed in light, the outside dark so it was dark at the end of the tunnel. But same difference -- knowledge there was something better down the road.

Why do we say it?

There's obviously no such thing as "unimaginable."

Cause and effect

Everything is the result of everything else.

Nobody has a clue

History happens, we react.

More reality

Reality is a constant, only its disguises change. And people see the same things in different ways and change their opinions about things. They are all right. Non-reality is also reality. Duh, duh, duh.

Life Imitates Clichés

Took a shower in the morning yesterday. Looked at the clock on the wall -- 10:30. Looked again about 10 minutes later. Still 10:30. Looked in the kitchen: 10:40. The clock in the bathroom had stopped, stuck at 10:30. But it was right at the time I first looked. And it would have been right again at 10:30 PM. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

More Life Imitates Clichés

Today I watched ducks dive under water, then pop up about three seconds later. The water just dripped off their backs like water off a duck's back. Later, I let my sleeping dog lie rather than wake her -- I didn't want her in the driveway as I backed out.

"Authenticity"

Authentic: of undisputed origin; genuine.

Authenticity molded by the hands of professional (or amateur) marketers, is perceived as inauthentic. Inauthentic does not sell today (ever?). In the land of YouTube, actors who pretend to be "caught in the act of doing something real, i.e., something authentic, are obviously inauthentic. Marketers present in the style of authenticity. Things are, quote authentic end quote. Something like Colbert's "truthiness." Viewers often watch things like YouTube (at least me) not because they think the action is real but because they are amused by what goofy things people will perform just to get seen. And by how many people tune in to watch something mundane. Mundane must be the new exciting. Witness Facebook and blahgers.

Will inauthenticity, the straightforwardly commercially-invented offering, one that does not pretend to be original, now be perceived as authentic? Is inauthenticity the new authenticity?

Murketing

Rob Walker uses the term "murketing" (murky and marketing) to describe the merging of the "increasingly sophisticated tactics of marketers who blur the line between branding channels and everyday life" and the widespread "consumer embrace of branded, commercial culture." Truth be told, we not only love to buy, we love to sell. I wonder if we do this to keep people (including ourselves) employed? A noble intention.

Brands

Taken verbatim from Rob Walker, author of "Buying-in," on his site, Murketing:

"There’s a widespread tendency to think 'branding' just means logos and slogans and ads. I see branding more broadly, as the process of attaching an idea to a product. That idea lives in consumers’ heads and can come from an ad campaign—but it can also come from direct experiences. It doesn’t matter if the advertising for a drugstore chain depicts kindly pharmacists going out of their way to help—and the actual experience you or I have at that chain in real life involves a dirty store and a rude pharmacist who makes you wait around for no reason and screws up your prescription—well, the idea that gets attached to that drugstore chain’s brand is going to be the one that comes from real life.

... the one message I try to get across to companies is that maybe it’s better sometimes to stop worrying so much about reshaping your image and start worrying about reshaping the reality of your business. In the book, I bring that up specifically in the context of 'ethical' issues such as sustainability or labor practices.* But the same point holds true for what you’re talking about. Some companies spend absolutely astronomical sums on creating a customer-friendly or creative or 'cool' (or whatever) image through brand campaigns—and then they pay the workers on the selling floor so badly that they couldn’t care less, or outsource customer service, or whatever, and the net experience is bad. And customer loyalty evaporates—yes, precisely because the emotional reaction to a real experience can trump the emotional response to marketing..."

No faster way to kill a bad product than good advertising. No better way to miss the point than to think, "It's the logo, stupid."

Long Tail and Shelf Life

Has the demand curve flattened as choices and access to those choices have exploded? Do the many little guys now have a chance to dislodge the few big guys? Or do people still want to do and buy what most other people do? Do we like the bandwagon or jump off of it? I say short-tailed big bodies still beat long-tailed small-bodies. A crowd draws a crowd. We like social validation. We like to participate in what others are participating in. Read Lee Gomes in the WSJ.

However, it is also true that when something big sticks around so long as to become predictable and boring, it will be slowly knocked off its perch by a fresh, growing replacement. The crowd will cross the street to see something newer, better, more special. Is shelf life growing shorter in the new world? Read Noah Brier about Metcalfe's Plateau.

Nada

More Life Imitates Clichés

Today my hand was caught in a cookie jar, one used as a container for packs of Splenda. Oh yeah, on my way out to drive my car I sneaked past my dogs napping on the kitchen floor. I did not want them running in front of my car, so I let sleeping dogs lie.

Life Imitates Clichés

Today on the farm. Watching ducks, I saw that those with the same feathers stuck together, the ducks were in a row and there was one ugly ducking. I had a pebble in my shoe that was annoying but not debilitating. Our kitchen was so hot I had to get out.