Brand Noise

Tried and Texted Approach Gets Consumers Talking

A new scenarioDNA piece published in Admap, January 2009...[Recession] means using an authentic organic approach to understanding the consumer in their world. Unfortunately, for some brands and agencies, it means taking shortcuts on research. Find the whole story.

Comics Survive Clooney in Hollywood

(excerpt from Time Magazine)  Times weren't always so flush in Toontown. In 1997, "George Clooney killed comic-book movies," says Mark Millar, (a Scottish writer who consults for Marvel Comics on more mainstream fare, like Iron Man) Joel Schumacher's joyless Batman & Robin, in which Clooney legendarily donned a bat suit complete with rubber nipples, left fans feeling abused.

Graphic novels--long comic books for grownups--have always had mostly cult appeal. Last year's most successful, the 13th volume in a Japanese manga adventure series--Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto--sold 80,000 copies, far short of 2007's hottest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, which sold more than 1.5 million copies. The point of the comics was largely their transgressiveness. "They're the last pirate medium," says Mark Millar. "They're the last medium for a mass audience where you can do anything you want."

At first, it was the family-friendly superheroes who made the leap to multiplexes, with the help of directors like Bryan Singer and Chris Nolan. Slowly, lesser-known comic books got a shot. Some, like Sin City and Hellboy, became modest box-office successes by adhering to the distinctive spirit of their creators. Others, like Road to Perdition and A History of Violence, attracted audiences with sophisticated stories that few people knew were derived from graphic novels.

Rural Blues Band Befriends R. Crumb & Daughter

John Heneghan and Eden Brower of NY’s East River String Band are reviving rural blues. “Before radio took over in the mid-1930s, music was really interesting — people weren’t hearing each other. Now, you can hear the most popular thing on the radio and then everybody copies it. In the ’20s, music was different from state to state, county to county.” Robert Crumb, the iconic cartoonist and 78 record collector has befriended the band, along with his daughter, who is also an artist. Crumb has traded records in their apartment, sat in on their shows and, most recently, drew the cover art for “Some Cold Rainy Day.” Definitely something to be said for the days before mass influence. Has the envelope for innovation been pushed beyond its limits? Read more.

Network Nation

We are a bit obsessed with networks here at scenarioDNA.  Our job is to flesh them out and focus their potential for our clients. A great article in this week's NY Times Magazine by Dalton Conley of NYU's Sociology department touches on the power of networks in relation to the Democrats struggle with articulating their "New New Deal".  Dalton identifies the root of the problem as not recognizing the fundamental cultural shift.  We live in stark contrast to post-WW2. 

(excerpt) Government and big business had an understanding, famously embodied by the line, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Employers, in turn, agreed to pay their (male) employees a living wage and provide generous benefits.......Today, by contrast, the most common model of social organization is crosscutting social groups. Less than a quarter of families still fit the traditional nuclear model. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of households with two or more adults have multiple breadwinners.

...perhaps we need to reimagine these nesting dolls and instead think of the social contract along the lines of a computer network or the hub-and-spoke airline network in the U.S. In such “scale free” networks, distance has been collapsed by long links that allow you to skip between any two points in a couple steps. The government’s role is less as a backup provider — in case one link of the nested chain breaks down — and more as honest broker and resource hub across groups.  Read more  [image Corbis]

Quote of the day: Rob Walker

Marie and I went to the PSFK mini-event on Friday celebrating Rob Walker's new book Buying In.  He brings home some of the key issues connected to what we do here at our little planning shop.  The importance of culture - understanding it is key to how brands will need to grow in this new era.  He also shared a great impromptu quote that reflects some of my own caution when it comes to some of the technology hyperbole in post-dot-com-thinking...referring to the impact of social networks...

"I wouldn't call adding Obama to your Facebook friends activism exactly"

Culture and people come before technology.  This is crucial for brands to understand today.  Especially if they want to integrate a digital strategy. The "network" is the people - Facebook is just one facilitator of it.   Sometimes we forget that. We need to look for people that are actually doing something.  Sometimes the technology makes it far too easy to wash over the real behavior and celebrate the easy and inconsequential.  I think the audience did not expect to hear this.

The Contrast of Gen Y to Boomer

(from Reveries.com) According to Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow in a new book tittled After the Baby Boomers the key differences between Gen Y and Baby Boomers include that the younger generation is "spending more time in school, remaining financially independent on their parents longer, marrying later in life, having kids later (and fewer of them) and changing jobs more often."

One noted upside of these differences is that, because of an "extended adolescence ... divorce is less common." He says they see marriage more as a "capstone" than a "starting" event. He also says that this slower path to adulthood gives them "more of a chance to finish their education and ... if they're middle class, a chance to decide from experience what kind of career they want." One downside, he says, is that they are sometimes "paralyzed" by "all these choices -- whom to marry, what kind of education to get, what kind of career to pursue." Another is a "dependency" on parents for such a long period of time.

Recommenders Weaken Content's Long Tail

In an article from Knowledge@Wharton referencing a new paper titled "Blockbuster Culture's Next Rise or Fall: The Impact of Recommender Systems on Sales Diversity"  by Kartik Hosanagar, Wharton professor of operations and information management, and Dan Fleder, a Wharton doctoral candidate....Recommenders -- (perhaps the best known is Amazon's)  -- tend to drive consumers to concentrate their purchases among popular items rather than allow them to explore and buy whatever piques their curiosity 

The authors argue that online recommenders "reinforce the blockbuster nature of media." And they warn that, by deploying standard designs, online retailers may be recreating the very phenomenon -- circumscribed media purchasing choices -- that some of them have bragged about helping consumers escape. read more

Let Them Live Their Manga Dreams

Last Sunday, we had a last-minute dinner with friends. As would be expected, the conversation went from kids to family to work. That’s when the conversation shifted to panic.

Our good friend is a book editor. Our good friend was invited to her first book reading on Second Life. Our good friend does not do Second Life. We debriefed her not to hover above the event. We didn’t want anyone flaming out at her. Practice the night before was definitely in order. We think we helped. Maybe not.

Then we got to thinking: here’s an editor from a major publishing house entering Second Life for the first time—Why are publishing houses not more involved with Second Life? For serial-type genres like Manga and graphic novels, Second Life is a natural outlet. The experience begins as immersive.

The audience maps culturally to that kind of media. If a Manga series extended into a Second Life world, readers could develop their own characters and build the title’s mise en scene. If they develop interesting enough characters, those characters could be brought into the print editions of the running series.

Please Look After This Bear

We here at scenarioDNA carry a big torch for Paddington Bear who will celebrate his 50th in 2008. Sadly, we read this on Brand Strategy's blog. We hear you, Brand Strategy! Paddington is not the kind of bear who sells out...a fierce hard stare from "Darkest Peru" to those behind this:

"Paddington Bear (for tis he) is renown for his love of marmalade sandwiches...So why is he being used to promote Marmite? Aside from sharing an opening syllable, the two condiments could not be more different...To mix an iconic lover of marmalade with a divisive, savoury brand such as Marmite is both inauthentic and just as plain wrong as putting both in the same sandwich."

Read more.

Meantime, Warner Bros. Pictures on Friday said it was bringing Paddington Bear to the screen in a live-action family comedy. David Heyman, producer of the "Harry Potter" movies, will produce the film while writer Hamish McColl, who penned "Mr. Bean's Holiday," will adapt the 11 "Paddington Bear" books published between 1958 and 1979 for the big screen.

Read more.

Pictures say 1000, at Fall Fashion Weeks

At this year's New York Fashion Week, Elle Macpherson Intimates has a digital installation at 1035 6th Avenue. The installation is activated by human movement, allowing a peep of intimate female portraits. Dressed in Elle Macpherson Intimates, each woman shows off a special quirky skill to a private audience.

Check out the demo video.

"Self Portraits" is the reinvention of the "Intimate Stories" 2005 campaign which captured photographically the idea that everyone has a precious and personal story. The concept, refreshed for 2007 and directed by Gary Freedman of Sydney based creative collective Glue Society, was shot in New York by Australian photographer Max Doyle.

Meanwhile, in London, M-A-C has partnered with BoomBox founder Richard Mortimer to produce a photographic montage due to launch in limited quantity at London Fashion Week.

To celebrate the launch of this BoomBox book, a fleet of 20 M-A-C BoomBox livery black cabs will be circulating London Fashion Week ferrying the international style media to and from shows and hanging at all the best parties.

In case you’re not hip enough to know…BoomBox is a roving London-based dance party that started in June 2006 at the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen.

Read more.