image management

by jenks

sex and politics

More on Lightning in a Bottle later.

First i’m trying to recover from a week in the forest. As part of the decompression process, yesterday involved a trip to the hair salon, which meant I actually had time to do nothing but sit around and read for the first time in quite a while.

“It’s the Adultery, Stupid,” An article in the current Vanity Fair, suggests that, “Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race.”

Which is pretty fascinating if you view this idea through the lens of identity. Same as we buy the brands and products that we feel express aspects of who we are, we support the political candidates who do the same. In this particular race, the touch-points for identification are no longer simply about party affiliations, policy views, or even age, but now extend to gender, race, and, as the Vanity Fair piece suggests, sex life too:

We want to know. That’s a big part of Bill Clinton’s legacy: there’s always a sexual explanation. We’re savvy. Sex completes the picture—it explains so much. Tim Russert and other Sunday-talk-show hosts might maintain the illusion that politics is, or should be, a formal dialogue about impersonal issues, with sex only a topic of surprise, scandal, and shocked-shockedness, but in real life everybody is constantly and openly speculating on the sexual nature and needs and eccentricities of every rising and demanding political personality.

It’s a point of identification and differentiation. We vote for or against sex lives.

The Hillary story is—and how could it not be?—largely a sexual one…. So what exactly is the thing with Hillary and sex, with the consensus being that she simply must not have it (at least not with her husband; there are, on the other hand, the various conspiracy scenarios of whom else she might have had it with). It’s partly around this consensus view of her not having sex that people support her or resist her. She’s the special-interest candidate of older women—the post-sexual set. She’s resisted by others (including older women who don’t see themselves as part of the post-sexual set) who see her as either frigid or sexually shunned—they turn from her inhibitions and her pain.

John McCain, with his burden of being the would-be oldest president, is helped not just by having his mother on the campaign trail but also by having a much younger wife. He is evidently still vital (that old euphemism). Even the suggestion, by The New York Times, that he might still be compulsively vital has not yet hurt him—quite possibly he gets a break because he’s an old guy. A randy codger seems harmless and amusing.

Fred Thompson, meanwhile, so vividly middle-aged—a whale of middle age—was out of the running almost as soon as his big-bosomed wife, 24 years younger than Fred, came into view and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough suggested she could be a pole dancer. And if that didn’t do it, seeing the weary way he looked at his young children certainly did—here was a middle-aged man who had sexually overreached. Rudy Giuliani offered the most gutsy sexual Rorschach test. His view seemed to be that the problem with sex is that it suggests weakness—the lowest attribute for a politician. But if you approached your sexual weakness with brazenness and bullying, you’d get credit for being tough (implicit, too, was Rudy’s assumption that there was a viable constituency of guys’ guys who had something on the side). Mitt Romney’s problem was that he appeared asexual—1950s-television-style asexual, which seemed like its own sort of fetish. All this, with a digression into Eliot Spitzer’s activities, has been the real background and narrative of the campaign.

It’s helped make Barack Obama possible.

There is next to no speculation about Barack Obama’s sexual secrets. This is a seismic shift in racial subtext. The white men are the sexual reprobates and loose cannons (while Mitt and Hillary are just strange birds) and the black man the figure of robust middle-class family warmth.

Against these middle-aged people, he’s the naturalist, the credible and hopeful figure of a man who actually might be having sex with his smiling, energetic, and oomphy wife…. He’s the only one in the entire field who doesn’t suggest sexual desperation. He represents our ideal of what a good liberal’s sex life ought to be.

The article offers that sex has become a political metaphor, and in a presidential race of unprecedented diversity, the whole election could be like some kind of subconscious cultural Kinsey survey.

We may be in trouble.

    



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by jenks

sustained mystery vs. radical transparency

it’s kind of hard to write a post advocating a sense of balance. it’s easy to get all riled up and energized on preaching some kind of extreme; is it even possible to create a polemic for moderation? i’ve been sitting on this particular post for weeks, unable to summon up the oomph to do it justice, but i’m gonna try, cuz i think it’ll be useful.

there’s a lot of push for “radical transparency” in this social media culture of ours. from the free-sharing ethos of the open source community that’s defining a good deal of the new medium’s structure, to the rampant open-bookiness of the random user’s social network profile, total “openness” is being heavily bandied as a requisite for the new media era.

a few months ago wired dedicated it’s cover story to this issue, with the see-through CEO article:

Radical forms of transparency are now the norm at startups – and even some Fortune 500 companies. It is a strange and abrupt reversal of corporate values. Not long ago, the only public statements a company ever made were professionally written press releases and the rare, stage-managed speech by the CEO. Now firms spill information in torrents, posting internal memos and strategy goals, letting everyone from the top dog to shop-floor workers blog publicly about what their firm is doing right – and wrong….

of course, when considered in contrast to the long legacy of empty hype, manipulation, and even straight up coercion that we have become fed up with in mainstream media and big business it’s understandable that there would be such a resounding grito for “radical transparency” now that media has, for the first time, truly become interactive. “secrecy is dying.” the article proclaimed. “it’s probably already dead.”

but before we go get it taxidermied and hang its stuffed, antlered head up in social media’s hunting lodge, what i am proposing is that there is room for an intermediate option between the overt and the covert, one that emphasizes a sustainable (vs. radical) approach to maintaining the delicate balance between the blatant and the intriguing.

but wait…

Your customers are going to poke around in your business anyway, and your workers are going to blab about internal info – so why not make it work for you by turning everyone into a partner in the process and inviting them to do so?….Some of this isn’t even about business; it’s a cultural shift, a redrawing of the lines between what’s private and what’s public. A generation has grown up blogging, posting a daily phonecam picture on Flickr and listing its geographic position in real time on Dodgeball and Google Maps. For them, authenticity comes from online exposure. It’s hard to trust anyone who doesn’t list their dreams and fears on Facebook.

ok. i’ll tell you something else about what i and some of the rest of this generation grew up doing. we grew up going to–and some of us, producing–“outlaw” parties. you can check out groove or go or kids even, if you weren’t there for yourself, but suffice it to say these were unpermitted, unfireproofed, underground all-night events that routinely broke a whole lot of safety codes, property laws, and a slew of other legislative regulations. there was a tremendous sense of community and trust that developed within this scene which was at once superlocal and hyperglobal, and we all relied on each other to be good at keeping a secret. because if we weren’t, we would all be saving the 3 am dance for members of law enforcement. and once the cops came there was no more fun for anyone.

which is not to say that i am advocating illegal activity in business practices, but rather to point out that this generation that now publicizes its dreams and fears for the world to see may yet be able to appreciate the value in keeping certain things–as the kids say–on the DL.

the wired article does point out that, ok, perhaps:

Secrecy can be necessary – CEOs are often required by law to keep mum, and many creative endeavors benefit from being closed: Steve Jobs came up with a terrific iPhone precisely because he acts like an artist and doesn’t consult everyone. In fact, secrecy is sometimes part of the fun. Who wants to know how this season of 24 is going to end? It’s not secrets that are dying but lies.

the article tosses in this dynamic concept that secrets can be fun, and then moves right along on its radical transparency proselytizing way without giving it any more thought. it’s this kind of secret that i’m interested in. the secret that is not a lie, the secret that’s enjoyable: the mystery.

because you know why? because mystery is infinitely engaging. mystery bestows specialness. mystery can create bonds within a community, and oh, hell, mystery is sexy!

i mean, full disclosure certainly can be sexy too, but it all depends. we don’t fantasize about what EVERYONE looks like naked, dig? and that goes for companies too. sometimes we don’t NEED to know. sometimes it’s a lot more boring or disappointing if we do. sometimes it ruins the magic. sometimes it could be more captivating if you maybe put your clothes back on and sought to seduce us. think of it like a strip tease. in fact, i think we can all learn a thing or two on the subject from cabaret. but not the outdated oldskool kind. no, i’m talking about punk rock cabaret.

n 2004 the dresden dolls were just this odd little cult duo from boston on their first US tour. at their L.A. show matt hickey, the dolls’ booking agent, said to me: you know, no matter how big they may ever get, it’s really important that you should still be able to feel like you are just discovering them. that idea has stuck with me ever after, and i think it’s immensely valuable advice to anyone responsible for the development of a lifestyle brand.

in the years since that conversation, the dolls have gone on to tour the world with panic! at the disco, nine inch nails, and many other major acts. the last time i saw them perform was about a year ago at the orpheum theatre in LA and i’d say that that sense of intimate discovery remained intact even when thousands of people now knew the words to all their songs.

how do you cultivate this intimacy? you keep things mysterious.

the lore around the relationship between the duo is the stuff of cult-rock mythology at this point, rife with tensions and speculation. but sustained mystery is not the exclusive territory of celebrity, where it is, in fact, more often than not mismanaged. it’s also the very same sort of element that induces alternate reality game enthusiasts to willingly participate in an obscure adventure, trusting that each discovery will lead them to an even greater enigma. in a certain sense our whole fetishized infatuation with celebrity can itself be thought of as one giant pop culture ARG–but that’s enough philosophy for one post, i think.

instead lets head over to psychology land. after all, this whole mystery thing is how people fall in love, and the result of eliminating its terrific tension can ruin an otherwise great relationship. (think brand-consumer relationship too!)

in her excellent book, mating in captivity, esther perel, a couples and family therapist and self-identified “cultural hybrid,” offers some refreshingly counter-intuitive (to american intuition, that is–perel was raised in europe, educated in israel, and now practices in NY) insight on how to “reconcile the erotic and the domestic.”

Intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of increasing isolation…. but I am not convinced that unrestrained disclosure–the ability to speak the truth and not hide anything–necessarily fosters a harmonious and robust intimacy.

The mandate of intimacy, when taken too far, can resemble coercion. Deprived of enigma, intimacy becomes cruel when it excludes any possibility of discovery. Where there is nothing left to hide, there is nothing left to seek.

It’s been my experience as a therapist that the breakdown of desire appears to be an unintentional consequence of the creation of intimacy. Our ability to tolerate our separateness is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship….Desire thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. It is energized by it.

An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness.

we appreciate mystery not for the end goal of its destruction, but for the enjoyment of its process–its revelatory discovery, its furtive sharing. mystery isn’t about being shady, it’s not about deception, nor is it mutually exclusive with making things more accessible, safer, or better explained. there probably isn’t even one right way to sustain it–do too good a job of it and you run the risk of ending up in the dangerous territory of exclusivity. but mystery is incredibly powerful, and has the capacity to engage and captivate us all like nothing else. we shouldn’t ever discount it or think that complete transparency is really a viable substitute. sustained mystery, when pursued consciously and wielded carefully is an effective strategic approach in its own right.

    



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by jenks

inside/out culture

improv everywhere is a NY-based outfit dedicated to causing “scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” while similar to “flash mob” style escapades–large numbers of people appearing in a public place and then disappearing suddenly–improv everywhere’s goals for its “missions” extend beyond just organizing fun for the participants, but also focus deliberately outward to all the various bystanders caught along the way:

“We bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.”

i just watched a video of their latest mission, the MP3 Experiment Four, in which participants all downloaded an MP3 of an “omniscient voice,” all convened in a park in lower manhattan, pressed play at the same time, and were all simultaneously guided through something like a cross between a game of simon says and a scavenger hunt.

what i found most fascinating about the whole process was the relationship that develops between the people “in” the game, and the unsuspecting random strangers who get caught up in it by accident. at one point everyone listening to the mp3 was instructed to point to the tallest building they could see. below is a picture from improveverywhere.com where someone not part of the experiment decided to join in and point as well, presumably without any idea as to why or at way exactly he was pointing, simply playing along with what everyone else around him was suddenly doing. (perhaps he wanted to see what the point of pointing was all about? maybe there would be a prize? or maybe it was just a case of monkey-see-monkey-do?)

during another part of the experiment participants were instructed to see if they could give a stranger a high five as the group walked from one location to another. anyone on an NYC-street knows what a high-five is all about, although it’s definitely not the kind of thing one expects to get from a random passerby. yet when so many people are doing it it becomes apparent that it’s not just some weird isolated incident, but that there is some kind of underlying code going on for this group that you are not aware of.

living in a polyglot, globalized world we’re prepared for the constant encounter with cultures and behaviors unlike our own, to the point that these different cultures around us have become almost like exhibits in a museum. vividly on display to us, but not to be touched by the tourists. in the same way we tend to just tune out the advertising that is not specifically directed at us and our culture. but is there a way for a message to manage to catch the attention and the interest of people outside of the group for whom it was specifically intended? like the way that the results of the instructions in this MP3 experiment swirled strangers up in a kind of cultural dust devil as it passed by. for a moment all the “tuning-out”–especially necessary in a place like new york–couldn’t stop an unexpected bit of strange behavior from compelling you to interact with it.

interesting stuff to consider especially in terms of how it applies to marketing messaging. how are the people on the “outside” interacting with a message targeted to a specific group? and even if they are passing it by without so much as a high-five, what are they hearing in it about the community for whom it is intended (and the brand)?

MP3 Experiment 4
Part 1:

 

Part 2:

    



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by jenks

“getting” web 2.0


(not everyone’s a great photographer. da’s ok.)

one of the projects i’m currently working on involves cleaning some wreckage from a web 2.0-style mess that was never resolved, and is coming back to haunt the client. it’s not huge, but it’s a template, i think, for ways in which web 2.0 messes get made in general, and may point to helpful tips in avoiding even bigger spills.

1. NOT EVERYONE GETS / WILL GET / SHOULD BE EXPECTED TO GET WEB 2.0
it’s easy to hallucinate that once we outgrow the infancy of this whole online community development/management process, everyone will just intuitively “get it,” but that’s about as likely as all of us who have never known a universe without cameras being born innately expert photographers. unlikely. community management is a skill. everyone complaining about how all those old geezers don’t “get” web 2.0–what’s going to be the excuse when there are people younger than you coming up not getting it? ok, by “get it” i mean, “trained in it.” specifically how it works from the back end. obviously everyone wants more participation and interaction, but that’s the “front end” of web 2.0. that’s like in the front end of photography everyone does, in fact, now understand what to do when there’s a camera pointed at them. that part’s pretty simple. “getting” the back end of web 2.0 is about understanding how to enable, manage, and not accidentally carelessly wreck these delicate processes. that’s the kind of thing that takes training, much like any other SKILL. are there 700-level college courses on “community management” required for that marketing degree yet?

2. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GET IT. IT’S OK.
ok, there may also be a little bit more to it than just training. one of my best friends jokes that i’m so right-brained i lean. if you and i ever go out to dinner with a lot of our friends i am the last person, literally, you’d want to be asking to figure out who owes how much and how much each person needs to put in for a tip. i don’t get math, and despite what all my high school math teachers insisted, that’s OK. see? now you know, and you will never expect to rely on me to calculate anything for you. it’s ok.

3. IF YOU DON’T GET IT, DON’T MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT IT.
you wouldn’t send out a press release without a publicist’s involvement, so why the fuck would you make decisions about web 2.0-related issues without first consulting an expert? it’s probably because you’re not aware that there is an “IT” to it that you don’t “get,” i guess. i’ve heard that saying “i didn’t know what the speed limit was” is a great approach to take when getting pulled over. this is perhaps the point we’ll get to after the infancy is over. people will at least recognize that there is a concrete, specific “IT” that they may or may not be getting.

4. NOT EVERYONE IS GOING TO KNOW THAT YOU DON’T GET IT
if the receptionist screws up and accidentally transfers someone over to you who was supposed to have gotten connected to the sales dept., and you happen to be a graphic designer, are you going to pretend like you know anything about pitching? probably not! you’re probably going to let the person know you’re not quite the right dept. to be talking to, and as quickly as humanly possible, i’d imagine, get that call away from you to one of those sales people who’s actually equipped to handle it. i hope you see where i’m going with this. just because you’re approached to make a decision about something that you don’t “get” doesn’t mean you ought to. you wouldn’t want the sales folk mucking around with your design.

5. WHOEVER YOU HIRE TO “GET IT” OUGHT TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO FIX IT
this one deserves a whole other post unto itself. maybe a whole other blog. maybe a whole other graduate-level college course, and to be honest, i’m actually pretty exhausted from this day, and from this entry…. but i’ll say this: the web seems to be  almost catholic in its obsession with sin and repentance. so if you done sinned, finding yourself a good priest is the way to go.

    



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by jenks

the new and improved enlightenment lifestyle

as a marketer you realize that it’s not so much that you’re really setting anything up for sale, it’s that everything already IS for sale, and you’re just helping it along. so it’s not so much that i’m bothered by the selling of “enlightenment,” (there’s been buddha statues on-sale for millennia, and what are THOSE selling?) but rather it’s that i find the whole “enlightenment lifestyle,” kinda… icky.

today on the website for the san francisco green festival conference i discovered a publication called what is enlightenment magazine, published by enligntennext, which is “defining the contours of a new revolution in human consciousness and culture.” (it’s essentially not doing anything different than any punk band or public enemy-era hiphop act professed to be doing. it’s just targeting a different audience.)

my first encounter with companies targeting this demo was when we were soliciting sponsors for LIB and were approached by the “enlightenment card”:

http://www.enlightenmentcard.com/images/splash.jpg

(in case you’re wondering, yes, the card IS real, no that ad is NOT a joke, and we said “no, thank you” to the offer.)

while on the one hand, i’m trying to think of where else do sheltered caucasian people get to evangelize a brand of appropriated cultural imperialism with such tactless self-righteousness and get away with it, on the other hand, from a technical standpoint, i’m completely impressed.

this is everything i preach about identity marketing in action.

in robotics, there is a theory of the “uncanny valley“:

The hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being’s, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely-human” and “fully human” entity is called the Uncanny Valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is “almost human” will seem overly “strange” to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction.

maybe there is an uncanny valley in the process of identity expression as well. the more a brand or a product makes it easier for people to express their identity the more palatable it is, until maybe it hits a certain point where it becomes so blatant that its appeal suddenly drops off. however, as this brand’s identity-expressing qualities continue to become more innate and nuanced, and less overt it once again becomes appealing. maybe it could be called the uncanny “wannabe valley,” the place in brand authenticity/relevance that will likewise “fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive human-brand interaction.” (cuz brands are robo–i mean, people too.)

one of the explanations for the uncanny valley phenomenon is that the robots stuck in no-man’s land elicit revulsion because they look “dead,” and biologically we’re wired to have an aversion to corpses, cuz stickin around doesn’t bode so well for the immune system. (makes you wonder tho if necrophiliacs collect weird lookin robots). but when it comes to identity, the brands (and people) stuck in the uncanny wannabe valley turn us off because they’re “fake.” in a similar sort of way, biology may have led us to respond with distaste to “fake” people (and by proxy brands now) because they are untrustworthy. from a social selection standpoint, they may even be community saboteurs.

the funny thing in all of this is that there’s nothing actually WRONG with the enlightenment card except its name. if you have to have a credit card, why NOT get one that’s gonna let you earn points towards, like, trips to spas in costa rican rain forests, right?

while no doubt one person’s fake is another person’s orgasm, it just feels like confusing a lifestyle for an expression of “enlightenment,” is kinda, um, you know…. BOGUS!

    



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