Brand Noise

Retooling Virtual War to Help Heal

(from the New Yorker) Currently, the Department of Defense is testing Virtual Iraq—one of three virtual-reality programs it has funded for P.T.S.D. treatment, and the only one aimed at “ground pounders” in six locations, including the Naval Medical Center San Diego, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York. According to a recent study by the RAND Corporation, nearly twenty per cent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression. Almost half won’t seek treatment. If virtual-reality exposure therapy proves to be clinically validated—only preliminary results are available so far—it may be more than another tool in the therapists’ kit; it may encourage those in need to seek help.  Video  Read full article

Profile of a Music Pirate

It makes for some interesting dinner conversation when when one of your friends is an intellectual property lawyer (he used to represent Apple Records while going through the DJ Dangermouse fiasco).  The topic certainly gets people's blood going.  It represents the shift into a whole new way in which companies and consumers relate to the value of goods and services.  And like other industries before them like cars and tobacco, reveals an attempt to dictate control over how the market functions. We must go through them.  The consumer sees things differently. The struggle to change gets ugly - and often results in singling out folks for litigation. In this week's BusinessWeek an article focuses on a 45-year-old single mother who, after being sued by the record industry, is now taking the record industry to court. Tanya Andersen is going after the recording industry under conspiracy laws. She argues the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry's trade group, and its affiliates worked together on a broad campaign to intimidate people into making financial payoffs.  Read more

Smooth Move for PETA

Aretha Franklin's US$19,000 tax bill will be paid by PETA if she promises never to wear fur again. The Respect singer is close to having her Michigan home repossessed unless she can come up with the money. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have agreed to settle the bill if she agrees to their terms, which also include handing over her collection of fur coats.

PETA says it's a win-win situation. Interestingly, should Aretha accept the offer and renege on her promise never to wear fur, she will be slammed and PETA will emerge even stronger. Lots of message board controversy wondering why PETA doesn't just donate the money to a shelter. The discourse of buying a celebrity resonates far louder and sustains itself longer than a donation.

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Birth of a visual subculture

Want to trace the roots of American subculture in the 20th century?  There is no better place than the silver age of comic books as the subculture visual language that defines the secret pleasures of Boomer kids. The cultivation of visual cues is critical to the code of the fifties.  Image gains value over words and defines the struggle between idealism and disillusionment.  For Mom it is the visual vernacular of Betty Crocker cookbooks that define new ways we connect with food.  The picture is more real than the ingredients. The look of things is power - and can represent everything from the perfect apple pie (the key to your husband's heart) to...well the decline of western civilization.  Here is some interesting reading on the comic subculture of the fifties in a New Yorker review of a new book by David Hajdu titled "The Ten-Cent Plague, The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America".

(excerpt from New Yorker article) On April 21, 1954, at the Foley Square U.S. Courthouse (now the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse), in New York City,  a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged with investigating the causes of juvenile delinquency took on an imminent danger within: the comic-book industry. The hearings were televised.

“The controversy over comic books was neither a subset of the Red Scare nor a direct parallel to it,” as David Hajdu (author of "The Ten-Cent Plague") rightly says. McCarthyism was a populist attack on the élites; the campaign against comics, on the other hand, was “a kind of anti-anti-elitism, a campaign by protectors of rarefied ideals of literacy, sophistication, and virtue to rein in the practitioners of a wild, homegrown form of vernacular American expression.” Hajdu suggests that the lost war over comic books might be seen as a rehearsal for the glorious war to come over rock and roll, an evolutionary step in the formation of the youth culture that emerged in the nineteen-sixties. “Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry added the soundtrack to a scene created in comic books,” as he puts it. EC Comics died for our sins.  Read more

Happy Birthday Peace Symbol: Stories in Brand Hijack

Symbols of peace are some interesting stories in brand hijack. An easter march on a London nuclear bomb factory marks the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol. The forked symbol was designed for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and was adopted as its badge by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).  It was later generalized to become an international icon for the 1960s anti-war movement. (wikipedia)  The symbol comes from semaphore for the letters N and D.

Christian Teens Descend on Times Square

Some 300 young Christians gathered in Times Square for the first Teen Mania event this year, the Recreate ’08 rally, to reject the mainstream culture that they say is destroying their generation.

Teens during the rally showcased how they plan to “recreate” entertainment, fashion, the arts, and the Internet by featuring original graffiti art, dance, art mosaic, and videos they created that send positive messages.

In addition to the mini-expo, teens also tried to change the culture by sending a list of their top eight concerns to all the presidential candidates after the rally.

Among the top concerns of Teen Mania teens are: youth exposure to Internet pornography; the AIDS pandemic; human trafficking, media glamorization of drugs, sex and alcohol; abortion; and freedom to practice Christianity.

Following the rally, more than 10,000 teens gathered at New Jersey’s Izod Center for a two-day Recreate ’08 event featuring New York Yankees’ pitcher Mariano Rivera, six-time Grammy Award winner Kirk Franklin, the David Crowder Band, Bishop T.D. Jakes, and Teen Mania founder Ron Luce.

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SIRIUS Indie Talk Engages The Blogosphere

On Wed., Feb. 6, the morning after Super Tuesday, SIRIUS Satellite Radio will launch Indie Talk (channel 110), a talk radio channel that will serve as an uncensored, unfiltered forum for independent thought and opinion. The channel will feature veteran actor and political maverick Ron Silver. Silver, like Indie Talk, represents the intersection of liberal and conservative, and the intersection of entertainment and politics.

Indie Talk will stay on pace with today's frenzied news cycle by airing "blogcast" news updates every 20 minutes -- reporting the freshest headlines and buzz as it unfolds on the blogs. Additionally, Indie Talk will feature "The Blog Bunker," a cutting-edge roundtable featuring a selection of the over 100 million bloggers around the globe.

Svedka_Girl on the Election Bandwagon

To ensure that No Cocktail is Left Behind, Svedka_grl and her inner circle will host exclusive invitation-only, election results viewing parties in New York City with comedy news site 236.com at Merc Bar as well as in Washington D.C. on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008. Additionally, post-voters in New York will be invited to "Join The Party" up close and personally on Svedka_grl's Straight Shot Express bi-partisan campaign party bus. Svedka_girl was introduced a few years ago.

Expanding on Social Software Behavior

Google.org's technology project to help save lives in the event of natural disasters or public health threats is set to launch Thursday.

The project, called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is a nonprofit organization that ambitiously aims to help communities around the world use Web and communications technology to identify and warn others of outbreaks like Avian flu or disasters like Hurricane Katrina. That technology, which will include social software Twitter and Facebook, will be used to coordinate rescue responses and help save lives.

"We're not talking about pulling the red phone out of the bottom drawer here," said Eric Rasmussen, president and CEO of InSTEDD and a former adviser to U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, referring to Twitter and Facebook. "We're talking about using ubiquitous, free software that is repurposed when necessary to fit into a humanitarian need."

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Ugly Marketing Award: Citizen Soldier

I went to the movies this last week to catch the new Guy Ritchie flick Revolver.  (That's a whole other post in itself - how the mighty have fallen)  So I buy my ticket and I grab what appears to be some extra paper from the teller.  What's this? Hooah...it's a scratch ticket promoting the National Guard.  Politics aside is this really the best way to be presenting a brand like the National Guard? In the midst of what is obvious, even to the most cut-off, a serious challenge in getting people to pay attention and empathize with the mission at hand.  Hell, the scratch ticket didn't even work.  The printer that was used messed up the overlay, so it doesn't even scratch off as expected. The micro site also does not work. When a brand is in trouble, stooping to "trash" stereotypes of scratch tickets and NASCAR seems like pure desperation.  I think there is a better story to be told here.