October 29, 2008 by jenks

how not to use condoms

I know the Trojan “Evolve” Campaign has been going on for a while now, but just recently something occurred to me that I hadn’t quite realized about it before.

The campaign started out last June, with the premiere of a commercial featuring women being hit on by a bar full of anthropomorphized pigs. It’s only when one of the pigs finally shuffles off to the men’s room, and purchases a condom, that he is transformed into a hot guy, and returns to the girl he was chatting up to find that she’s now suddenly totally interested in him.

In addition to the ad, whose message at the end reads: “Evolve. Use a condom every time,” the campaign also includes a website, evolveoneevolveall.com, driven by celebrity and user-generated videos dealing with the subject of sexual health, the Trojan Evolve National Tour, a mobile, experiential campaign “Raising awareness and stimulating dialogue about America’s sexual health in towns and campuses across the country,” radio ads that deal with STDs as Christmas gifts (“How about Herpes? It’s the gift that keeps on giving.” / “Would you like Chlamydia wrapped?” / “No, I’ll give it to her unwrapped.”) and more. All of this, hinging on the word “Evolve.”

“Evolve is a wake-up call to change attitudes about using condoms and, on a larger scale, the way we think and talk about sexual health in this country,” said Jim Daniels, Trojan’s VP of marketing. As Andrew Adam Newman pointed out in the New York Times piece, “Pigs With Cellphones, but No Condoms,” the campaign is an evolution for Trojan itself:

While Mr. Daniels does not disparage the company’s double-entendre-heavy “Trojan Man” campaign from the 1990s or similar Trojan Tales Web site today, the tone of the company’s promotions is moving away from “Beavis and Butthead” and toward “Sex and the City.”

“The ‘Evolve’ ad does a nice job of being humorous, but it’s also a serious call to action,” Mr. Daniels said. “The pigs are a symbol of irresponsible sexual behavior, and are juxtaposed with the condom as a responsible symbol of respect for oneself and one’s partner.”

Newman suggest that “The perennial challenge for Trojan and its competitors is the perception that [condoms] are unpleasant to use.” But I think, for a company that, according to A. C. Nielsen Research, has 75 percent of the condom market (Durex is second with 15 percent, LifeStyles third with 9 percent), Trojan oughtta have really known better than that.

“Over the last few years conservative groups in President Bush’s support base have declared war on condoms,” wrote Nicholas D. Kristof, in an opinion piece, also in the New York Times:

I first noticed this campaign last year, when I began to get e-mails from evangelical Christians insisting that condoms have pores about 10 microns in diameter, while the AIDS virus measures only about 0.1 micron. This is junk science (electron microscopes haven’t found these pores), but the disinformation campaign turns out to be a far-reaching effort to discredit condoms, squelch any mention of them in schools and discourage their use abroad.

Then there are the radio spots in Texas: ”Condoms will not protect people from many sexually transmitted diseases.”

A report by Human Rights Watch quotes a Texas school official as saying: ”We don’t discuss condom use, except to say that condoms don’t work.”

Last month at an international conference in Bangkok, U.S. officials demanded the deletion of a recommendation for ”consistent condom use” to fight AIDS and sexual diseases. So what does this administration stand for? Inconsistent condom use?

Kristof was posing this question back in 2003, while he could still add, “So far President Bush has not fully signed on to the campaign against condoms, but there are alarming signs that he is clambering on board.”

In the now almost six years since, the very subject of contraception has become as politicized as abortion, and the emphasis on condoms’ ineffectiveness has become a standard component of Abstinence-Only sex education. (You knew about that, right?) It’s even begun to affect mass media. In a written response to Trojan about why they would not air the pigs-with-cell-phones ad, Fox (which had aired prior Trojan ads) said “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.” CBS refused to air it, too, and didn’t even offer further comment. Meanwhile, as paid advertising for condoms is being turned away, in the past few months I’ve seen at least two TV shows where characters made a point of mentioning that condoms don’t work: Fringe, and The Practice–a show about DOCTORS for cryin’ out loud! (Clearly, “First do no harm” must not apply to the practice of TV medicine.)

As a teenager of the 90’s, I’ve never known a world where AIDS didn’t exist, and where condoms were anything but an unequivocal necessity for “safe sex” (also a 90’s-ism that seems to no longer be in use, replaced instead by the millennial “sexual health crisis”). Sure, no one was going around preaching that condoms are 100% fail-proof, but in the decade when Magic Johnson and Greg Louganis both came out as HIV-positive, I can’t imagine any TV program deliberately broadcasting (or being allowed to get away with it), the kind of message that says, “Condoms don’t work. So why bother using them at all?”

As of 2006 the birth rate among 15 to 19 year-olds in the United States has risen for the first time since 1991 (that was the year of Johnson’s announcement). While teenage sex rates have risen since 2001, condom use has dropped since 2003. In other words, more teenagers are having more sex, and using less and less condoms in the process. But then, Jamie Lynn Spears or Bristol Palin could have told you that.

And so it is we find ourselves in a situation where Church & Dwight—the consumer products company that owns Trojan—is taking on what should have been the responsibility of the Department of Health and Human Services. Teenage or not, the U.S. apparently has the highest rates of unintended pregnancy (three million per year) and sexually transmitted infections (19 million per year) of any Western nation. (What the fuck?!)

“Right now in the U.S. only one in four sex acts involves using a condom,” Says Daniels. “Our goal is to dramatically increase use.” Then what in God’s name convinced the Kaplan Thaler Group, the New York advertising agency that created the “Evolve” campaign, that aligning condoms with evolution was the way to go about achieving this?

Cuz here’s the thing: The majority of Americans do not believe in evolution!

(CRAP!)

In fact, according to 2006 research in Science Magazine, out of 33 European countries where peolpe were asked to respond “true”, “false”, or “whuuuu?” to the statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,” the only country that scored lower on belief in evolution than the US is Turkey (Also what the fuck?!)

Disturbing as this unfortunate reality may be, this is the contemporary American Landscape, and pushing Trojan as “Helping America evolve, one condom at a time,” in the face of it, seems ludicrous.

Hell, why not just call the campaign “Darwin’s theory of contraception,” while you’re at it?

The biggest threat to condoms is not the perception that they don’t feel good. It’s not even condom fatigue. The biggest threat to condoms is the Christian Right’s propaganda that they don’t work, and the government’s, and much of media’s, wholehearted complicity. And it’s the same people who are waging a war on contraception that don’t like Evolution either. I don’t know about the ultimate impact that the Evolve campaign is effecting (or not), but in my view, if, as Daniels says, Trojan’s focus is on growing the market beyond the–pardon the irony here–already converted, and getting more people to use condoms, I think a completely different slogan/campaign theme would be the way to go.

September 23, 2008 by jenks

“i’m a PC. and a human being.”

Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone in the room is using a Mac except one person? Ever notice what happens when suddenly everyone starts to get on that person’s case about the fact that he’s the only one not on a Mac?

I have, and it kinda looked a little bit like this…

That’s a still from the latest ads developed by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Microsoft’s new campaign to–essentially–regain control of their identity, and it’s a pretty accurate depiction of how I’ve seen that PC-in-a-room-full-of-Macs situation play out. (Clearly, it must not be an isolated incident). In the ad, when the diver flips the white board over, the other side reads, “And I’m Kinda Scared.”

Now, I’m a Mac now, but the computer I had before this one was a PC. I’m just as comfortable using either, and I’ve got Microsoft programs running on this computer right now. I could even get a Mac that comes with the option of running Windows, anyway, if I want, so even though I’m a Mac user, I clearly don’t see my identification with the brand in terms like this–

But many clearly do. And perhaps nothing has helped to articulate the contemporary Mac superiority complex quite like those Mac Vs. PC ads. In the iconic spots created by TBWA/Media Arts Lab, which began in 2006 and new iterations are still being developed now, a casually-dressed, attractive, 20-something guy introduces himself as “Hello, I’m a Mac…” while an older, slightly overweight guy, wearing glasses and a cheap lookin’ suit-and-tie combo introduces himself as “… And I’m a PC.” The two then act out little vignettes against a stark white background in which the capabilities and attributes of “Mac” and “PC” are compared. Often the spots end up presenting various legitimate PC shortcomings in an entertaining, glib way, but just as often the focus is on the two machine-characters’ personalities, and the feature comparison ends up being almost beside the point. Mac is always self-assured and easy-going. PC is resentful and awkward. The great success of these ads,

The subtext of these ads, which has also become the subtext of the Mac user community, is that this isn’t just a tool for enabling a certain kind of lifestyle, it’s a badge of it. A Mac isn’t just about helping you BE creative, it MEANS you are creative. A PC, on the other hand, means you are a stiff, unimaginative, frustrated tool, overly concerned with work, and incapable of doing anything interesting. At least not as good as a Mac can. Oh, and furthermore, if you’re a PC user, then you may as well know that this is what other people are thinking about you, too.

Personally, I’ve always been completely impressed that Mac has been able to brand a conformist white box into a symbol of creative and individual expression. But the idea is that your white box gives you entry into a whole network of other creative individuals, (just like you), and it’s that community association that bestows identity. A good friend of mine, who is a fashion designer, belly-dancer, serial entrepreneur, and has more tattoos and crazy hairstyles than the majority of the creative class, is a dedicated PC, and one of the major reasons for her choice is that she finds the idea inherent in a Mac–that you need this thing in order to express that you’re “hip”–to be a huge turnoff. A Mac doesn’t just bestow hipness to its users, it kind of subsumes it from them too. Perhaps she’s wary of this kind of accessory watering down or co-opting her own particular kind of hip. Either way, she says she feels like no one else has this line of thinking. It’s a turnoff “Only only to me,” She says, “I think PCs are just fine, and a lot more bang for your buck,” but everyone else she knows seems to have no problem with this aspect of their Macs.

It’s to let people like her know that there’s more of their kind out there, and to establish that their computers can, in fact, represent their creative, dynamic, interesting identities, that CPB took the direction they did with the new Microsoft ads.

Here’s one. You should watch it before reading further:

I think what’s really interesting here is that the ads say NOTHING about the product, or the features, or anything technical whatsoever. The sole purpose of the ad is to explore the diversity of PC users. I’m trying to think of another example of an entity trying to redefine its own identity by working to undo the stereotype of its “fans,” and I can’t think of one. (Anyone got one?) It’s pretty intense.

In a post titled, “Huh. Those Mac Ads Aren’t As Funny Any More,” Michael Arrington wrote:

Those Microsoft commercials aren’t particularly engaging, and they don’t make me want to go out and buy a copy of Vista. But what they do is show lots of fascinating people saying that they use PCs. They highlight the fact that many people may be somewhat offended by the idea that they can’t be interesting or cool if they don’t use a Mac.

Suddenly, Apple looks a little elitist. I mean, they were elitist before, but in a way that made you want to be a part of the club. Now, they just seem a little snobby.

If that’s what Microsoft and their pushing clients to the edge advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky were aiming for, it’s brilliant.

According to the New York Times, CPB “Relishes efforts to transform perceived negatives into positives.” (See also announcing the onset of an “SUV Backlash” to help promote the US launch of the Mini Cooper–before any such backlash had yet begun at all, positioning the Mini’s uber-compactness as an alternative to the gas-guzzling hegemony.)

you just bought a knockoff from Sinistyle Designs

My friends over at Skin.Graft Designs just discovered some way shady thief has been blatantly recreating exact replicas of their original clothing designs and selling them on Second Life.

Skin.Graft Designs Originals:

Sinistyle Designs counterfeit knockoffs:

Skin.Graft Designs Originals:

Sinistyle Designs counterfeit knockoffs:

This is the first I’ve ever heard of anything like this, though I’m getting the feeling it might be happening a ton.

If you are a designer in the same community as Skin.Graft, you might wanna check out the rest of Sinistyle’s “inventory” to make sure yours designs aren’t in there too. I know I got a saddlebag belt JUST like this from a vendor at Lightning in a Bottle this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the stuff Sinistyle is selling is 100% knockoffs.

So lame.

In case you’d like to look fabulous in your FIRST life, feel free to get in touch with the wonderful folks at Skin.Graft Designs.

September 2, 2008 by jenks

the new oldskool

My dad is an inventor. He’s got a bunch of patents, from two different continents, and an EPA award. He talks to me on instant messenger sometimes, which I find pretty impressive since he’s 76 years old and English is not his first language by more than 50 years. That half-century was spent in the USSR, the better part of it, trying to get out. Most of the people he knows his age barely know how to turn a computer on. But my dad likes on-switches. He likes buttons and technology and science and new ideas. He retired from a career as an electrical engineer but he can’t just retire from curiosity and coming up with ideas. Which is an awesome thing, unless you are unable to find other people–and especially people your age–to connect with, who share your interests.

It used to be that the way you would stay connected to your industry was through your job. Whether it was access to news about industry developments, or access to participating in the course of those developments, it was all pretty much granted by your employment. Once you retired–or were laid off at a certain age and couldn’t get rehired–your access was essentially denied. Perhaps, for a lot of people, who might not have been particularly thrilled about the careers they had ended up in, this would sound like a fantastic relief, but for those folks that had spent their lives passionately engaged with, and consummately fascinated by their field of work, being suddenly cut off from that entire world wouldn’t be quite so wonderful.

I’m not an expert on the institution of retirement, nor does my knowledge of the general senior citizen population extend beyond my parents and their friends, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that we have been living in a society where the options for what people over the age of 65 are expected be interested in are SLIM. They have definitely not been encouraged in any way to retain the interests they had when they were younger, or to think that they ought to. It’s as if once individuals hit senior citizen age it’s assumed they will simply want to trade in the things that had been exciting to them before, like handing back an access card to security once you’ve left a building, and instead discover their new interests lie within a finite selection of age-appropriate leisurely diversions they’d had nothing to do with before. To me the idea that an infinitely diverse array of identities would develop uniformly homogeneous interests simply by virtue of having lived to a certain age is about as accurate for teenagers as it is for senior citizens, and I think that this misconception will be completely undone by the social media generation.

Friendster, the first social network site I ever knew, can’t be older than six or seven years. Myspace is even younger. Youtube can’t be more than four of five. Facebook wasn’t even a serious contender in this space until like two years ago. And already, according to Universal McCann’s Comparative Study on Social Media Trends, April 2008:

57% of active online users (people using the internet every day or every other day) have joined a social network

73% have read a blog

45% have started their own blog

39% subscribe to an RSS feed

Social Security might be nonexistent by the time my generation retires, but all these tools for social connection and personal expression available already–and who even knows what future iterations are coming in our lifetime–mean that what we will have are the resources to facilitate continuing our specific interests, and to retain our individual identities far beyond what was ever an option for the general populations of a certain age before us.

According to boomj.com, a social network site geared specifically for folks born in the two generations from the mid-1940’s to mid-1960’s, right now 41 – 64 year-olds comprise about 80 million people in the US. These are arguably the oldest generations to have already been affected by social media, and there is no doubt that they will expect a dramatically different kind of experience once they “retire,” than the generations before them. All those people joining social networks and writing and reading blogs will continue to expect access to pursuing the interests which shaped our identities and, perhaps the course of our lives, well past where our grandparents could expect to get cut off. (Not to mention, access to pursuing new interests that previoulsy weren’t accommodated for “old folks.”)

Clay Shirky, In his 2005 TED Talk, pointed out that the #1 most popular interest group on meetup.com–a service that allows people to find others in their local area who share their same interests and affinities, and organize offline group “meetups”–is stay-at-home moms. When the site was first founded its creators had NO idea that this would become the most active group on the site, with the most members and the most chapters. But as Shirky explains, “In the suburbanized, dual-income United States, stay at home moms are actually missing the social infrastructure that comes from extended family and local, small-scale neighborhoods, so they they are reinventing it using these tools. Meetup is the platform, but the value here is in social infrastructure.” (After watching that TED Talk I actually helped my Dad find some science-y/tech-y meetups in Boston–and if anyone knows of others, give me a shout, I’d love to pass the info on).

Whether it’s stay-at-home moms or seniors, no doubt the impact of these kinds of tools is just as meaningful to any group that has been lacking the social structure and access to stay connected to both their interests, and to other people who share them. As the social media generation matures perhaps the very concept of what our “golden years” are all about will be altered.

And on that note, meet Ivy, at 102, the oldest person on Facebook. From The Daily Mail:

Ivy Bean is a great-grandmother with a difference. At 102 years old she has joined the social networking revolution and become the oldest person on Facebook.

The former mill worker, who was born in Bradford in 1905, showed an interest in the website, after hearing care workers at her home talk about the phenomenon.

Although Mrs Bean currently only has nine Facebook friends, she said she ‘loves being online’ and is hoping for many more.

The world has changed radically during Ivy’s lifetime. When she was born Henry Campbell-Bannerman was Prime Minister of Britain – the first to ever officially hold the title.

At that time telegrams were the fastest way of communicating and a national telephone network was still seven years away. Ivy would have to wait 46 years until the first computer was invented.

Ivy retired at 73, a few years after her husband passed away, aged 75. She is living at Hillside Manor care home in Bradford which she moved to at the grand age of 101 after her last care home closed down.

Care home manager Pat Wright said: ‘We try to keep all our residents independent by letting them use the computer.’

Ivy, second from left, competed in the Bradford Over 75s’ Olympics.

August 6, 2008 by jenks

post-war trade launches!

A quick little break in the traveling silence just to mention that Post-War Trade, the “democratic future of merchandising” dreamed up by Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls, and produced by Katie Kay–indisputably two of the savviest, sassiest lasses I know, whom it was my pleasure to introduce a few years back–is now, finally, up and running as of yesterday!

Post-War Trade is a unique merchandising concept using the talent of fans and artists the world over. From toothbrushes to pillowcases, coats to ukuleles, Post-War Trade is the modern answer to band merchandising. Every item is designed and handmade by a talented artist, who shares in the profits from their sale. This creative model supports the designers and creators that help make Punk Cabaret a reality and insures that The Dresden Dolls can offer merch as unique as their music.

Good stuff to think about for anyone that’s still confused about ways the music industry might make money, especially now that you can actually Sell Music on Anything!

Amanda and Katie – Congrats on the launch of such an auspicious endeavor. Very excited to see this grow!

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you just bought a knockoff from Sinistyle Designs

post-war trade launches!

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