This autumn, I have been involved with something that is rather brilliant. ( I am allowed to say this without it being bragging, actually, since said brilliance is more other people’s than mine.) My company, business magazine Veckans Affärer, has joined forces with Resumé, the largest Swedish communication industry mag, and B2B agency Hilanders, to start a conversation. A conversation about where the industries that define Sweden (hard and heavy stuff like steel and paper) are heading, and what actually drives their growth in the 21th century.
This discussion, between the communication industry, top management in B2B coorporations, and the odd publicist, has been played out on – yes, yes, yes – all our platforms, of which the site b2bconversations.se might be the quickest one to access. (Or, if you’re one of those Facebook-is-the-new-Internet kind of people, well, here then.) It is in Swedish, so it’s not for everybody, but for Swedes, there is some quite interesting stuff in there.
And on the 7th December, the next step on this journey will be the B2B Conversations seminar, at the lovely Berns Salonger in central Stockholm. Big name speakers, a panel with a couple of communication people with very good resumés who will occasionally ring a funny bell of some sort (Yes, buying a funny bell is my responsibility. I haven’t yet gotten around to getting one, but whatever I choose, it will be spectacular.), oh yes, and wine. Stockholmers, I hope to see you there on the 7th. Do get in touch for discounted tickets, I’m sure I can get you some, but you have to act quickly – we close registration this week.
‘Welcome to the new WillSmith.com. In the coming months we’ll be bringing you several ways to communicate with friends and interact with content and information from around the globe.’
Do you know what I think? I think that people are so obsessed with the idea of “ordinary people” desperately wanting to Interact With Brands, that they don’t see that the logic of digital is not biased towards engagement. It’s a constant flow: visual, extremely fast, ruthless, volatile, hyperactive – and p2p. There’s where you find your bedspread for example, thrown between actresses, mega-cities, pop songs. All appropriated from other people, based on quick, aesthetic decisions. And then before you blink, it’s gone, lost in the flow.
Also, he seems terribly smug about it, probably in part due to the “Oooh! You are CRAZY!” tone of the presenter, who apparently came straight from year 2000 (“You’ve digitized ALL your music…?”). What this man’s done, obviously, is to take his bachelor’s pad to its extreme consequence, where he erases everything in it that can signify anything about him. Women (and gay men, see Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) are traditionally thought to be the family specialists in the symbolic language of consumer goods – knowing and appreciating what a pair of shoes or yellow walls say about you, compared to the traditional male stereotype who “don’t know what they want”, or “don’t care about how it/he looks”. Everytime someone gets attention in media for leading an ascetic, digital life, it’s a man – usually of the badly dressed, geeky internet start-up entrepreneur variety.
I’d say that escape from this difficulty is a part of the temptation to sell all your shirts (including, yes, the “Unidentified Robot t-shirt”).
But don’t think this is an easy way out, oh you worn-out ironic t-shirt wearers who roam the internet. Because if my research isn’t completely wrong, girls and better dressed men than you are quickly moving symbolic value online too, and you’ll be lost again. Look at this, for example:
It’s a year old, but it’s a good read. Polyvore, the site where you can appropriate designer clothes and other items by putting them together in image sets, has two million users, by the way, did you know? (In related news, Polyvore wants to make fashion more data-driven, which is yet another opportunity to ponder if one should do an Apple 1984-style uprising against the tyranny of the crowd, or try to find another level of creativity on top of the giant pile of user data. Let’s go with the latter, shall we.)
I couldn’t find an original article that didn’t require uni access, but this second-hand account will do fine as an introduction to Denegri-Knott’s research on digital virtual consumption.
Communication and consumption is mutating and converging. And increasingly it’s played out completely in a digital, immaterial space, where monetary value, brand value, symbolic value and use value don’t align in the same old comfortable way it’s done before. That’s the basic premise of my Master’s thesis, and I thought I’d share some random thoughts on it. This, below, is not what I’m researching, but it’s a good starting point for talking about modern (oh! let’s call it postmodern!) consumption – consumption of experience, access and immaterial value.
These things are now everywhere, even though I’ve more often seen them talked about than used by someone I know, to be frank. It’s sustainable and smart for the most part, so let’s go for it. One or two things can be noted from this little promotional film, however. For example, having objects you’ve collected and consumed earlier, in your home – library style – is, at least in future consultant’s speak, now totally reframed into having things “idling around”. The turn from downloading to streaming points in the same, interesting direction – the ideal of no dead meat, always staying a fresh, white, clean canvas that can experience the next thing without looking back. But that’s another (long, windling, rambling) post.
In short, I’m interested in when digital ways of consumption (especially communication as consumption) are integrated into this (unembeddable, so click here, please). It’s that great scene from Manhattan, when Diane Keaton’s character uses language basically as cultural warfare in an art gallery. Art consumption might be at the extreme end of a scale, but this complicated dance with signs is driving the vacation home barterers too. The vacation home barterers more than your average city weekend tourist, in fact, as the very idea of this form of consumption is a more deliberate sign.
And that’s what’s missing in all these consultants’ accounts of an exciting new, Negroponte-esque world of How we do it now: the Why and the What of leisure consumption on a cultural level. Which is where it gets really interesting: the crossroads between new digital possibilities and Consumer Culture, and how it affects how we build our selves with symbols. Someone who has never lived in a modern society would probably have problems grasping the idea of a p2p handbag rental.
This picture, by the way, is from the exact moment (around 0.53 in the clip) where Diane does one of the most skilful dismissive ah-eh-ah-ah’s (truly the sound of cultural capital) I’ve ever heard. Very impressive.
A fashion blogger’s product wish-list for Fall 2010
Any item seen and desired, but not yet decided on or affordable can be “placed” in this personalized area (the wishlist), achieving a liminal status where they are not yet owned by the would-be buyer, but neither are they not owned. Their digital virtual image remains in the “possession” of the individual providing pleasure as an item that when acquired will fulfill his/her wishes of the consumer. Although much focus has been on the economics of the “long tail” that such functions promote (where consumers consider goods well outside the most popular that physical retailers stock and display), the implications of such practices are that consumers are invited to seek out and want more and more obscure commodities and to promote these to each other as objects of desire.
From Janice Denegri-Knott & Mike Molesworth’s 2010 article “Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption”.
OK, so I’m trying to make some kind of order in my mind, the first little step in writing my Master’s thesis. I just feel the need to get everything one can do online to engage with a brand down on one place, in a neat table. Just a fraction of these interest me right now, but it’s still good to see it all together. What glaringly obvious actions have I forgotten? (I will fill in more examples where possible, when I get around to it.)
A little taxonomy of online brand value building and destroying by consumers (non-media brands) other than “just” consuming. V 1.0
(Yes, two examples from the world of Barbie. There could be more. I got a bit sucked in to the Barbie universe the other day, although it was all in the name of research so it wasn’t wasting time really, and discovered that both Barb and Ken are on Foursquare, too. He’s apparently rambling about all over America reminiscing (a little bit creepily) about when they were dating. Get over it, Ken.)
Oh! Apparently, it’s Christmas. I’ve been working so much I’m caught a bit off guard here (Christmas? Now? In mid-November?), but anyway, it’s that time of the year when you might feel the urge to read up on stuff. Not me, no. I’ve, frivolously, bought this pile of cheap French nonsense. Which I will happily peruse accompanied by a sickly sweet non-alcoholic eggnog like the ones my father used to make me (Brilliant stuff. Just like the early beginnings of a sponge cake, in a glass.) and some deeply unsophisticated music, to compensate mentally for a semester of late night afterwork master course reading.
But YOU, my darlings, I’ve got some grand plans for you. You’ll spend your holidays reading clever stuff on communication, digital culture and futurology, going back to work enlightened and inspired. Someone has to do it. Why not start here:
1. A classic article Grant McCracken: Culture and Consumption. A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods
Grant McCracken’s 1986 article on how cultural meaning moves in a consumer society. One of the best accounts I’ve ever read on how products, signs and style get their meaning, and why and how that meaning changes.
2. An interesting blog Top Trends
Slightly silly name for a good blog by futurist Richard Watson, a man who advises organisations such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and McDonald’s on the future. Which means that what he says is probably good enough for you, as well. Judging from his blog, mr W also seem to have the advantage of being a consultant on the future who’s actually reflective and, yes, rather nice. Instead of a raving mad technophile dressed like some horrible little man from your technical support department.
3. Heavy stuff in a small book Adam Arvidsson: Brands. Meaning and Value in Media Culture
I’m not a great fan of critical theory in general, but frankly often find its self-righteous accusations a bit of a detour. But if you as an advertising professional can stand a bit of Capitalist Conspiracy and a galloping sense of being Part of the Problem while reading, don’t miss out on Arvidsson’s clear and sharp history of adland trends and rhetoric, and his analysis of how brand value is created in the digital age. Very clever.
The relation between brands and Spotify is a bit confusing in its, well, non-innovativeness. A ground breaking product, in which there’s been placed (1) radio ads and (2) banner ads. Mhm. Occasionally, in Sweden at least, they’re used to entice the listener to connect over play-lists or song choices (but aren’t those experiments less frequent now?), but I haven’t seen much use of Spotify’s potential as content carrier rather than just ad space.
So the campaign for Hurts which runs now is quite interesting. Hurts are, if you didn’t know it already, a Mancunian electro pop duo who (1) look good (2) dress up and shave, (3) are, or are styled as (in pop music, who cares?), hopeless romantics and (4) duet with Kylie. Alas, they would be perfect pop group, if they didn’t insist on sounding like Talk Talk.
Anyway, they’ve collaborated with Manchester novelist Joe Stretch, making an interactive story of sorts, called ‘Don’t Let Go’. Narrated by Anna Friel, the actress, each chapter is a track, and you’ll find the code for the next one at the end of each. Or actually codes, because it offers you alternative actions for your hero. And if you’ve chosen wisely and get through the whole experience (‘to stop arch villain Guy Lockhart from distributing his heartbreak cocktail and condemning humankind forever to a loveless, empty existence’, no less) without getting killed, you’re rewarded with the perhaps not so grand price of a preview track. It starts here, by the way.
Now, there’s something about this … Besides its obvious video game flirtations, it reminds me of, yes, hypertext fiction! The last time I was buried in Communication Studies literature, mid-2000s, the fascinating but elusive hypertext novels could still be described in old editions’ discussions on digital media. For some, inexplicable, reason, hypertext fiction – in which you could, yes, choose a path in the story with the help of hyperlinks – was thought to be an important element of entertainment in the future. Oh well.
The retro-hypertext idea aside, plus points for innovative media use, quality and execution. Some minus points though, for turning it into a promotional contest (with a price that requires real fandom for it to be desirable). It sort of puts the story in brackets, doesn’t it, transforming it from literature to copy. Why not trust the short story, let it be just that (hyperfiction or not). Soundtracked by the Hurts’ music, it would add more layers of the right kind of connotations to the band without the comp element. All in all, though, nice work. In other Hurts promotion media news, an equally nice promo box in line with their lovely Drones Club aesthetics, complete with comb and sheet music (images from Popjustice).
