Marketing Pop Culture

"Ain't your mama's and daddy's super heroes"

I'm really glad Christopher Chambers pinged me about the release today of a new collection of stories he co-edited with Gary Phillips.  Those of you who know me know that I've been a longtime lover and reader of comics.  I'm currently really feeling Marvel's X-Force limited series, although Todd Kelley tells me I'm missing the boat by not checking out Ed Brubaker's work in Captain America.  And I'll pretty much buy anything that Jim Lee draws.

But enough about me.

It's great to see the idea of the super hero expanded and evolved.  And what a perspective!  In the intro, the editors provide context for the collection by placing it on a continuum of storytelling that dates back to prehistoric campfires.  Check this out

The heroes in those first stories weren't Clark Kents or Bruce Waynes or Sue Richards, with her blond extensions and perfect C-cups.  They were plain old us--flawed and scared.  Blind and groping.  Striving not to save the world, but to save one life or to right one wrong.  In the process, they save something of themselves as well.

And this, too:

Be advised, these ain't your mama's and daddy's super heroes.  These protagonists, for the most part, are products of, and grounded in, the world we butt heads against every damn day--and they hvae the means to bite back.  But isn't that what we gathered abournd the fire to hear?

In addition to Christopher, I'm looking forward to tucking into stories by Walter Mosely, Tananarive Due, the late Jerry Rodriguez, and my man Michael Gonzales.  Just got the review copy via messenger today, so I can't make a judgment on the collection right now.  But, for you fans of the genre, it looks like something worth checking out.

Additional link:

• The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows, edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers

WEEKEND PREVIEW: Music composer Wendell Hanes in Harlem--8/16

The CLIO and Addy award-winning music composer will be at Harlem's Hue-Man bookstore to promote his new book, THE 30-30 CAREER: Making 30 Grand in 30 Seconds! Producing Music for Commercials.  He has over 600 commercials to his credit, including work for major marketers such as McDonald's, Mercedes-Benz, Pepsi and Nike.  He's also won a Cannes Lion and and Andy Award.

The book--the first of a two-volume set-- is presented as "the most up to date "How To" resource in music composition for the advertising industry, featuring commentary and interviews from many of the leading names  in the ad game such as Vito Desario, Josh Rabinowitz, Bob Schriber, Karl Westman, Joel Simon, Robert Miller, Bob Nelson, Barry Walsh, Michael Montes, Roberta Griefer, and Michelle Curran as well as celebrity figures like Russell Simmons, Oleta Adams, Little X, and Wynton Marsalis."

Scoring techniques, music house profiles, musician residuals, beating deadlines, interviews with top ad agency creatives, mixing secrets are covered as well.

Hue-Man Bookstore
2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd
Between 124th and 125th Streets
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212-665-7400
4:00PM

Additional links:

• Volition Sound Branding
• The 3030 Career book
• The 3030 Career official site

Holiday weekend reading

If I weren't a dad, then the long weekend could be one of going out to eat, taking in a movie or two, seeing friends, some indie music and kicking back with a cigar and a good book.  I'd be content to end up where the day takes me.  As you can gather, that probably won't be the case.

However, there are two books that I'd like to make dents in.  The first is Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.  As many of you know, Li and Bernoff are bloggers and Forrester analysts who have been following social media and its impact on business for some time.  This book is designed to help corporate exec understand and thrive in a world that's been made over by social media.  Stay tuned for my notes and thoughts on this one.

The second book that I'm looking forward to is Grant McCracken's new work: Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture.  Many of you know that I'm a big fan of Grants, both for the writing he does over at his blog and because of his previous book, Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace (2006).  You can check out the posts I did on the book, as well as the interview he and I did by clicking here.

I know: I'm being ambitious.  Will let you know how I made out early next week.

More Green Strategy

Just to prove that there are no new ideas under the sun: A day or so after I wrote the preceding posts (here and here), I happened to visit the ChangeThis site to see if there were any new manifestos.  Turns out, there was a recent one from Andrew Winston, the co-author of Green to Gold, entitled "The Greening of Business".  I think Andrew does a great job at giving a solid overview of both the trends that have powered the green movement, not least of which are the greening of the supply chain (Wal-Mart "has 'asked' 66,000 suppliers to reduce packaging and cut back on fossil fuel use.") and increased investment in environmental markets (venture capital dollars flowing to "cleantech").

He also spends time looking at how businesses can get on the path to sustainability.  Part of the answer is really figuring out how a sustainability position creates value.

The manifesto is available for free download here.

If you want more info on the book, click here.

PODCAST: Marketing Black Books--part 1

Should fiction written by black authors be shelved in African-American departments, a move that often helps nurture writers? Or should it be presented alongside other categories, such as general literature, allowing books written by black authors to take their place in publishing's mainstream?

--Jeffrey Trachtenburg, The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2006

Race-based marketing is one way that cultural products are introduced into the marketplace.  This article prompted me to organize a discussion to explore the issue of race in the book publishing industry, especially as it impacts that marketing of books by black authors.  How effective is this strategy?  Following is part 1 of that discussion.  Subsequent installments will follow over the next week or so.  In the meantime, comments are welcome and encouraged.

00:00 – Overview
01:06 – Introduce the participants
01:27 – John McGregor, president JMG Books, literary agent
02:17 – Camille Hacker, editor, John Wiley & Sons
03:11 – Bridgett Davis, author of Shifting Through Neutral
03:45 – Economics of publishing
06:51 – History of the current system
08:17 – Impact of economics on an editorial POV
10:37 – 1963/64—Conglomerates start buying publishing houses
12:13 – Lingering perception that blacks don’t buy books
13:27 – Black books published straight to paperback
14:33 – An author’s expectations vs. the reality
15:58 – Book covers as indicators of industry’s conflicted feelings
16:38 – Barnes & Noble and Borders
18:08 – Does a race-based strategy really work?
18:41 – What are the “boundaries” for blacks?
19:36 – Just be grateful
20:06 – What do we mean by African American?
21:57 – AA life only understood through narrow lenses
23:01 – No salespeople of color, so sales to retailers are problematic
25:57 – Marketing amnesia
28:11 – Really, how thin are the margins?
31:32 – A surprising fact about Harpercollins’ backlist

If you missed the WSJ article, you can download and read it here

Download wsjarticle_why_book_industry_sees_the_world_split_still_by_race.pdf


MP3 File

PODCAST: Grant McCracken on Managing Discontinuous Change

I was searching for a thoughtful intro to this post, but nothing’s came my way.  Except to say that doing this interview was truly a pleasure because Grant--the author of Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace-- is a thinker and blogger from whom I’m always learning.  So, if you’re interested in dimensioning the challenge of culture that is confronting businesses and how marketing organizations must adapt in order to get ahead of the cultural innovation curve, this podcast is for you.

00:26 – Grant’s background
01:13 – Anthropology and the tools it provides marketers
02:16 – Ethnography contributes to consumer-centricity and co-creation
02:41 – Contrasting the economic POV
03:46 – Why culture matters
07:21 – Building brands by taking meanings from culture
09:40 – How most organizations view cultural innovation
10:01 – Levi’s “blindside hit”, circa 1996
11:00 – The big board concept introduced
11:45 – The big board defined
13:42 – Where to situate it within a company
14:50 – Differences between big boards and trendspotting
15:53 – Knowledge distribution
16:32 – Everyone as a listening post
20:09 – New skills required/Pattern recognition
23:08 – Harvesting chaos/Kaufman Continuum
26:28 – Watching culture will be like watching the code in “The Matrix”
28:27 – A model for the innovative company
30:34 – Avoiding blindside hits doesn’t mean recouping marketing investment
32:03 – The imperative of preparing multiple strategies
32:53 – He remembers the cultural meaning map
33:33 - End


MP3 File

Eyes on the Prize

I love listening to Dr. Cornel West because he’s brilliant.  A few nights ago, I saw him on Tavis Smiley’s show.  One of the things that West pointed out was that we should remember that Dr. King was—as his FBI file stated—the most dangerous man in America.

Now, most of us don’t usually think of Dr. King as dangerous, largely because we know him for his philosophy of non-violence.  True, but as Dr. West pointed out, this was what made him dangerous.  Here was a man who was not motivated by fear, hatred and greed.  Rather, Dr. King’s message was one of courage, love and forgiveness.  Dr. West went on to say that he was motivated by his sense of a greater purpose.  He had the courage to be who he was.  Suffice it to say that the majority of us don’t have this courage, we don’t follow our passions, and we certainly don’t live up to our full potential.  That’s what made him dangerous.

REVIEW: McConnell & Huba on "Citizen Marketers"

As part of MarketingProfs's inaugural book club, I'm participating in the review of this book.  Hat's off to CK and the MP folks for organizing it.

So: Congrats are in order to Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message.  It’s a thoroughly researched book that provides many examples of ordinary people who volunteered their time and energy either on behalf of or against a product or service.  That it touches on recent, consumer-generated pop cultural phenomenon, such as Snakes on a Plane (here and here)and Lonelygirl15 (here and here) gives it currency.

On the other hand, one of the challenges of the book is that it also feels almost entirely axiomatic.  But I’m going to proceed cautiously here, because I want to be fair.  While much of the book seemed familiar, I want to step back and try to look at the book from the position of someone who’s not as deeply involved in social media as am I.  With that said, let’s assume that the McConnell and Huba indeed wrote the book for all of those people who are just now visiting MySpace for the first time.  And, believe me, there are a lot of people in that category.

"Flock and Flow": Harvesting Chaos

One of the cool things about blogging, at least for me, is the ability to interview marketing thought leaders.  Later today, I’ll be conducting an interview with cultural anthropologist and fellow blogger Grant McCracken. As I noted in an earlier post, I share his interest in understanding how culture impacts our understanding of brands.   

Here’s one nugget from the book that I plan to probe: Successful marketing organizations of the very near future will be those that become adept at harvesting chaos.  In a nutshell, it’s about making sense of the cultural innovation that’s crackling—even now!—all across the marketplace. 

Some questions that his book addresses:

• In a time of permanent, discontinuous change, how can a company tell which cultural trends are worth following? 

• How can a company ascertain where it sits in relation to these trends?

• How can it build a long-term strategy for dealing with constant change?

Stay tuned.

Culture: The Newest Medium

Amid all of this talk about new media, culture is the one medium that’s rarely discussed.  Most people take culture for granted.  But as the marketplace—the cultural landscape—fragments into niche upon niche, culture will take on increasing importance for marketers.  Soon, effective communications planning will not only hinge on the ability to determine the right message sent at the right time via the right vehicle, but also understanding the cultural medium through which the message must travel.

Wikipedia defines culture as:

Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behaviour and systems of belief.

And, the Random House dictionary provides a useful definition of “medium”:

An intervening substance through which something else is transmitted or carried on.

Culture colors how we see the world and, more importantly, how we process communications.  On a national, regional and local level, culture determines how we frame everything.  For example, in an earlier post I’ve highlighted the work of Clotaire Rapaille, who continues to successfully document the cultural “codes” that exist for services, product categories and even concepts (like seduction, work or shopping).  His work is valuable precisely because it exposes the frames that shape our perceptions and it gets us even closer to understanding why one size fits all communications don’t work.

Perhaps it’s also useful to think of culture as a medium because we often speak of ideas traveling through it.