Brand Noise

The Chaste Vampire Generation

Time Magazine this week looks into  fiction phenom, Stephenie Meyer. Meyer, 34, is a huge success at selling books, but she's becoming something more. People dress up like her characters. They write their own stories about them and post their tales on the Internet. When she appears at a bookstore, 3,000 people go to meet her. There are Twilight-themed rock bands.

But it is the rare vampire novel that isn't about sex on some level, and the Twilight books are no exception. What makes Meyer's books so distinctive is that they're about the erotics of abstinence. Their tension comes from prolonged, superhuman acts of self-restraint. There's a scene midway through Twilight in which, for the first time, Edward leans in close and sniffs the aroma of Bella's exposed neck. "Just because I'm resisting the wine doesn't mean I can't appreciate the bouquet," he says. "You have a very floral smell, like lavender ... or freesia." He barely touches her, but there's more sex in that one paragraph than in all the snogging in Harry Potter. Read more

All Over the World, Teens Crave Empowerment

Last season, Frontline/World ran a story from the Middle East that introduced viewers to the fastest selling comic book in the Arab world, The 99. The comic features characters with super powers based on the concept of Allah's 99 attributes, including wisdom and generosity, as taught in the Koran. Its creator, Naif al-Mutawa, is a 36-year-old from Kuwait who was educated in the United States and who, as a boy, devoured Marvel comics and the Hardy Boys mysteries.

Reporter Isaac Solotaroff followed al-Mutawa as he marketed his comics throughout the Middle East, hoping to spread a moderate, modern image of Islam to the world. In this update, Solotaroff catches up with al-Mutawa in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the comic creator is trying to sell his work to the largest Islamic country in the world, a country that accounts for one in six of all Muslims worldwide. An ensuing documentary, Wham! Bam! Islam!, is in the works. Go, Isaac!

Even more compelling will be to see how the Islamic comic fans evolve. Will the cosplayers take it to the next level? Spirituality already underlies many a Manga. And, apparently, you can even see lotsa hijabi girls in Malaysia attending cosplay events. Could cosplay become the common ground the world needs? Can kids who think change the world? In our own research we've found the cosplay kids to be some of the most open-minded serious global thinkers. It belies the initial impression often viewed simply as kids in costume. These are not the Star Trekkies of past generations.   

Joy Division Zune

Cool Gen X news.....Microsoft is readying a Joy Division edition of its Zune MP3 player to coincide with the June 10 release of an eponymous DVD about the band.

Apple..Stop acting like a stalking ex-girlfriend

Just when I get through writing nice things about you Apple, you go ahead and remind me of your lingering flaw.  Stop fooling yourself that I am going to start using and upgrading Safari on my computer.  The laptop you sold me is already overloaded with every graphics, video and sound editing tool known to man.  I don't have room for your weird little browser - I moved on... to Firefox - she understands me better for that kind of stuff.  sometimes you have to reach down deep and let go if you want to stay friends.  Let it go Apple - I'm not buying into Safari - stop having it show up on my Software Updater every 2 weeks.  The stalking is really weirding me out and eroding our relationship.  Can't we get past this?

Being Young in China

Young & Restless in China tracks the lives of nine Chinese Gen X'ers over four years as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing faster than any in history. Raised under communism they are now making their way in China's blazing capitalist economy. Their stories of ambition, exuberance, crime and corruption are interwoven with moments of love, heartbreak and passion. Together they capture the changing values, hopes and dreams of a pivotal generation.

Haagen-Dazs Promotes HoneyBee Buzz

Haagen-Dazs demonstrates some interesting and relevant green marketing with with their "Help the Honeybees" campaign.  Haagen-Dazs uses the campaign to warn that decline of the honeybee could become a big problem for the premium ice cream maker's business. According to Haagen-Dazs, one-third of the U.S. food supply - including a variety of fruits, vegetables and even nuts - depends on pollination from bees.

The campaign works well in promoting a real environmental cause, while also emphasizing the premium and natural positioning of the brand.  It is tied well to the value of the brand and plugs the consumer into what goes into quality ice cream.  Pretty basic.  Real flavors need real fruits - and that needs honeybees.  The campaign includes a new flavor launch called "Vanilla Honeybee" to further promote the cause.

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.

Read more.

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.

Disenfranchised Young Brits Lead to Societal Migraines

Britons are frightened of their own young, reports Time Magazine. On any given Saturday night, in any town center across Britain, it's easy to see why. "It usually starts outside McDonald's — that's the hot spot," explains one London youth. "You might go with one mate, then you get a phone call. Give it an hour, there'll be 10 people there, with nothing to do. Intimidating people is something to do, a way of getting kicks. Like, 'Oh my God, did you see how they ran?' "

Compared to other cultures, British kids are less integrated into the adult world and spend more time with peers.

Meantime, The Independent reports that a 15-year-old boy, Brendan Harris, was convicted of kicking and stamping to death a young   woman in Stubbylee Park, Bacup, because she was dressed as a Goth. Harris had denied the murder charge but pleaded guilty to causing grievous   bodily harm to Mr. Maltby after drinking two litres of cider, a bottle of   Stella Artois lager and "quite a lot of" peach schnapps.

Interestingly, the solidarity kids everywhere find in Goth culture alleviates the disconnection. It's when kids can't find a connection and begin following a ring leader that the troubles begin.

(Photo: Fathers' Protest Sign.)

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