Brand Noise

Daphne Guinness & the politics of fashion

In this Sunday's NY Times Magazine Guy Trebay asks:  Does stereotype trump archetype?

What does the clothes of Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, the iconic Fifties housewife and YSL’s Le Smoking femme fatale have in common? Why do hemlines goes up and down? Why does volume reign this season or minimalism proliferate in the next?

Daphne Guinness‘ short film, the The Phenomenology of Body explores the politics of fashion by showcasing the clothes of various eras on a revolving turn-table. The daughter of the Guinness brewery heir Jonathan Guinness, formally known as Lord Moyne, Guinness is also the step-granddaughter of Sir Oswald Mosley, the British fascist; the ex-wife of Spyros Niarchos, of Greek shipping fame (she married him at 19; he settled a reputed $40 million dollars on her when they divorced in 1999); and lately the subject of tabloid rumors related to her friendship with Bernard-Henri Lévy, the wealthy, and married, French writer whose intellect is almost as celebrated as his luxuriant head of hair.

Is Porn Green?

Reading an article by Rob Walker in the current of issue of Fast Company I thought of how two key trends in our culture are sharing a parallel track - Porn Normal & Green - and in the case of American Apparel, intersecting in a way that reveals a new twist on an old economic problem - namely the tragedy of the commons. The downfall of recycling programs and other well-meaning public expressions towards a common good.

The case of American Apparel offers some interesting food for debate when branding green, fair trade and sustainable products.  The strategy can be far more effective when you learn to message in one voice and, at the same time,  deliver through tangible actions in how the business is run.  The reality there are two campaigns going on.  The campaign to the die-hard anti-sweatshop hubs in the network are far more likely to respond to real actions - the ad messaging is not as important to them.   

(excerpt from Fast Company) ....building a brand solely around a company's ethical practices was not a good strategy for reaching masses of consumers. The ethical sell was too limiting. It was a niche strategy, at best. Which was why American Apparel was moving away from the ethical sell to something very different. Charney pulled out a copy of a book called The 48 Laws of Power and read me No. 13, which suggested that to get what you want, you must appeal to people's self-interest, not to their mercy.

Dodge Ball Chic

I was never really much of a dodge ball fan as a kid. My elementary school even had a dodge ball cage for the kids to play in. I invariably was the girl the guys aimed for, probably because of my propensity for distraction--The boys on the outside of the ring were always far cuter than those inside. But times have changed...My guess is that the bullies and the jocks have left the ring, and a far cooler class has taken over. Check it out, as reported by the LA Times: A little vintage, a little quirky, but completely full throttle.

Men are Twits

Twitter falls in line with the sentiment that girls blog and guys post video. An engine like Twitter facilitates the quick in and out that guys require--kind of like how old department stores used to be designed with menswear consolidated on the first floor and close to the exit, never making the guys walk through any of the girly stuff.

Because of the limited amount of characters (140) and how sore thumbs can get pushing those little keys, Twitter postings are usually space-efficient and to the point. All that's missing is location-based functionality--ideally GPS.

By following only the users you want to hear from, it limits the amount of unwanted tweets. "I quickly realized that decrying the banality of tweets missed their point," says Jason Pontin, publisher of Technology Review. "The only people in the world who might be interested in my twittering – my family, my close friends – were precisely the ones who would be entertained and comforted by their triviality."

Twitter met its Internet hipster tipping point at least year's SXSWi. This year, it was even more firmly entrenched with most attendees gaining a general awareness of their friends' SXSWi experience by constantly monitoring their Twitter feeds. When some after-show parties began to fill too quickly...frustrated groups would spin off from the long, outdoor lines to collect in impromptu "tweet-up" parties.

At the show's Day 2 keynote with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg and the audience grew bored with the interviewer's questions, causing the 23-year-old CEO to clam up and the audience to start heckling—by monitoring other attendees' Twitter feeds.

Read more.

New Study Says Boys Do Desire Real Relationships

“Let’s give boys more credit,'’ said study author Andrew Smiler, an assistant professor of psychology at the university. “Although some of them are just looking for sex, most boys are looking for a relationship. The kids we know mostly aren’t like this horrible stereotype. They are generally interested in dating and getting to know their partners.'’

The data also suggest that teenage boys will be receptive to parental messages about the importance of getting to know a girl and respect within relationships, even if they act otherwise. “Very few parents really talk to their sons about relationships,'’ Dr. Smiler said. “We know that many parents do have these kinds of conversations with girls.'’

The report, published in this month’s Journal of Adolescence, paints a far different picture of teen boys than the stereotype of testosterone-fueled youth. Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego surveyed 105 10th-grade boys whose average age was about 16.

Read the whole story.

Worth Watching: Girls Rock! The Movie

Sci Fi Programming Proves Girls Go For Details

Once considered a network exclusively for sweatpants-clad men residing in their parents' basements, [The Sci Fi Channel] has in recent years been attracting increasing numbers of female viewers. Ghost Hunters, which is entering its fourth season in March, actually draws more women than men-once unheard of for the Sci Fi Channel specifically or science-fiction programming in general. Other shows on the network, like Eureka, are also skewing female.

The network's increasing appeal to women is no accident, but rather orchestrated by its president, Bonnie Hammer, who focuses less on interplanetary warfare than she does on so-called "Earth-based" dramas.

These are shows with complex characters, romance and elements of the supernatural—all of which resonate with women in focus groups.

Read more.

US Girls Playing Indian Arranged Marriages

Online research of nearly 2 million gamers by Indian gaming portal games2win has found that girls aged between 13 and 17 years make for almost 80% of its US traffic. What’s intriguing is that these girls are playing games related to Indian customs: dolling up like brides or playing roles in an Indian arranged marriage.

games2win CEO Alok Kejriwal says: “Our research has found that an average user would be on our site for over 10 minutes, which is almost like watching half of uninterrupted telecast of a soap opera on TV.”

Girls love to engage in stories. Girl gamers are no exception. Indian culture offers an exotic fantasy appeal that girls don’t get from American pop culture. Reason why manga and anime are so appealing. American teens are too old and too cool for Disneyana, yet they still want the dramatics.

Read more.

The American Male: Not So Pretty in Pain

Growing pains are painful. And those pains are becoming increasingly evident as we move into a more Creative Class society. Hardest hit is the ideal American male and how he relates to Gen Y. As Gen Y moves toward a new standard as to what is okay male-wise, they’re see-sawing from Queer Eye to Man-vertising. The bumpy ride rambles over ambiguity, macho myths, sensitivity, intellect, prowess, et al. The good news is: the process is necessary.

It will be curious to see how it all evolves.

No more Marlboro man. Artist Richard Prince wrangled that identity in 1977 when he pilfered a bit of pop culture by rephotographing Marlboro ad images and presented them as his own.

No more jocks. Thanks, OJ, Michael Vick. The rest of the world views our athletes as criminal. Or so that’s what I overheard while eavesdropping on a conversation at Doma.

Canadian Club is trying to recapture an ideal of the 60s/70s via its campaign entitled “Damn right your Dad drank it.” Candid imagery calls to mind the confident thinking indie man of the era. The era of the “player,” one of the first in which women were celebrated.

But who identifies with this male? Gen X? Gen Y? Gen X may possibly relate. For Gen Y, the closest male they know to that era is Austin Powers.

Dr. Seuss had no idea of the precedent he would set when he first used the word "nerd." Apparently, his intent was to denote “a combination of school success, precision, unselfconsciousness, closeness to adults and interest in fantasy.”

Yet this isn’t the first time we’ve questioned the ideal male. In 1889, Mark Twain satired the reverence for Medieval knights, favoring industrial smarts over chivalric braun.

Conde Nast Gets in Step with Facebook

Why fight what’s already working? It’s more important to be the one who is empowering consumers. Conde Nast is beginning to catch on:

Flip.com launched in February as CondeNet's effort to target teen girls with an ambitious social media site. Less than a year later, the digital arm of Conde Nast is reversing course to embrace a distributed media strategy and converting the destination site into a series of applications that will live on social networks, starting with Facebook.

"It's hard to carve out enough time from those girls [because of] Facebook," said Sarah Chubb, president of CondeNet. "Why fight it and try to build your own social network when there is one that is open to things being built on top of it?"

By abandoning a destination strategy, CondeNet hopes to draw an expanded audience from the peak of 300,000 users the site attracted.

Flip already has a series of applications on Facebook that have proven moderately popular.

Read the whole story.