Rian Johnson, the writer/director of Brick, has a new movie out called The Brothers Bloom, and it comes with a pretty neat idea:
I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before, and Johnson admits the same at the beginning of the commentary. But for the man who came up with the idea to make a movie cocktail out of mixing film noir with a high school flick in his first feature, doing something new is the name of the game. In fact, at Brick’s opening night screening, at the Arclight in 2005, Johnson gave out little “Brick Talk” booklets that provided a glossary to guide viewers through the movie’s particular slang world:
Also something I’ve never seen done before, or since.
The director’s audio commentary for The Brother’s Bloom is essentially the sort of thing you’d expect to find as a DVD bonus feature, and the idea is, of course, that you’re not listening to it the first time you watch the movie. Johnson jokes that it’s all just a ploy to get you to pay your admission a second time, but really, this idea has the potential for something much more. After all, interesting though it may be to listen to the director divulge all the subliminal symbolism and literary allusions embedded in the movie (hey, what can I say, I was a film student), it’s just a starting-off point for what this sort of audio “bonus track” could really be.
Think of it like 3-D (which is, in its 21-century digital reincarnation, once again all the rage) an extra “dimension” to how a movie can be experienced. It could be a supplemental soundtrack, or a character’s voice-over adding new meaning to the action, or even a layer of hidden clues — or puzzles — in a larger Alternate Reality Game around the movie. Who knows?
In the commentary, Johnson even toys with a social experiment: to see who else in the theater might be listening to the commentary track, as you are, he suggests all listeners cough on his cue.
Ok, so it’s probably smart to keep the encouragements for vocal “outbursts” in the theater setting to minimum, but this idea certainly presents a lot of possibilities in terms of how the traditional movie experience — which has more or less been the same for the past, like, 80 years — can be expanded and reimagined.
While traditional media budgets have kept shrinking in the wake of the recession, according to recent Forrester Research, “53% of marketers are determined to increase their social media budget, and 42% will keep it the same, a total of 95% of marketers are bullish on social media marketing.” Just two years ago, “Social Media” was still something that most marketers felt needed to be justified. The absence of a simple answer to the complex question of “how to measure the ROI of Social Media,” was consistently invoked as a means to dismiss it. (As if the effectiveness of traditional media was oh so much more trackable in contrast.) But times are definitely changing. Speaking at Ad Age’s Digital Conference last month, Unilever CMO, Simon Clift admitted, “I’m convinced fat media budgets help make people lazy,” adding that he encourages thinking about what could be done without a media budget altogether to inspire alternative, social media ideas.
While some companies are clearly on the right track, lately I’ve been seeing how that dismissive attitude of two years ago is being replaced by a new frenetic trendiness. With everyone rushing to get this latest campaign accessory, it seems “Social Media” has become the new “Viral“–a term that gets thrown about much more frequently than what it actually means is understood. Everyone just knows they need to score some “Social Media”…. Whatever it is.
The problem, of course, is that “social media” is not just a new flavor of media, it’s not even really MEDIA, in the way we think of the word, as just another channel to push messaging through, at all. When you’re saying “Social Media” what you are actually referring to are:
SOCIAL NETWORKS / SOCIAL NETWORK SITES / SOCIAL PLATFORMS
Think: Online destinations where people connect, communicate, and share with their friends.
Example: Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
BLOGS / BLOGGERS / THE BLOGOSPHERE
Think: Just like “The Press.” I.e. Writers, video-makers, podcasters, and other content creators, as well as the websites where they post their output.
Example: You’re at one right now.
SOCIAL TOOLS / SOCIAL APPLICATIONS:
Think: Digital tools that facilitate the sharing of content and help drive adoption.
Example: Embeddable video players, embeddable music players, embeddable widgets….pretty much ANYTHING embeddable, really. See also, the “Forward to a friend” button.
COMMUNITY WEBSITES:
Think: Any website that helps support a specific community by enabling connection, communication, and sharing between its members. Community websites function in many ways like social networks but are usually centered around a specific community focus.
Example: Nikeplus.com, Mystarbucksidea.com, TheShadowbox.net, Ted.com,
COMMUNITY FEATURES Think: Interactive features that support online communication, sharing, and community connection.
Example: Comments, forums, profiles, video sharing, photo sharing, content rating, Facebook Connect, etc.
Thus, when you’re saying something like “We’ll do Social Media outreach,” what you actually should be saying is “We’ll do blogger outreach.” (Which, by the way, is called PR.) When you’re saying something like “We’ll promote it on Social Media,” what you actually should be saying is “We’ll promote it on social networks.” And when you’re saying something like “We’ll just add some Social Media,” what’s actually important to realize is that Social Media is not just a budget line item, it is now an integral component of strategy.
Joe Rospars, the man behind Barack Obama’s election campaign’s new new-media effort, explained in an Ad Age interview that the campaign succeed not because it used the latest technology, but rather because of its “holistic approach that integrated digital tools into the overall strategy.” That Ad Age entitled this approach of mixing the old media with the new, “The Secret” to the campaign’s success, is telling of where the industry’s understanding of what Social Media is and how it works is at. The most effective social media strategies do more than just utilize newfangled networks, features, tools and whatnot, they absolutely incorporate the digital resources into the complete, overall strategy.
So, forget the word “media.” Think of Social Media like messaging tone or demographic research–a critical element in the way a campaing is planned and in defining the direction it will take. Approaching it as something that can just be added on at the end is like building a house without electrical wiring. And tacking on a generator at the end is as pretty lousy substitute. Social Media isn’t just the wiring for one house, it is the whole electric gird, and you need to be putting a plan in place for how your campaign will plug into it from the very beginning. That’s what you’re actually saying whenever you say you want to use “Social Media.”
As consumer spending and ad budgets continue to decrease, it’s not unreasonable to think we may be entering a “post consumption economy,” as Ed Cotton of Influx insights describes it:
This latest downturn, recession, depression, or whatever you like to call it has gotten people scared.
There’s simply no way to see ahead to work out when this is all going to be over and life and business will return to normal.
However, there’s certainly an expectation from most people that things will eventually return back to normality, with the only question being when this will happen?
What if their expectations are wrong?
What if we are going through a giant “RESET” and there will be no return to normal, just a new post-depression era.
There are some signals already that suggest this might be the case; the shift from negative saving for US consumers, to the current 5% of income, is a big change that might not be temporary. The fall off in credit and the push to saving means a lot less disposable income floating around the system and therefore a much more challenging time for brands trying to chase these dollars
While it’s definitely not business as usual in these times, before we get too far ahead of ourselves down the “post-consumption” rabbit hole, it’s useful to remember that the underlying socio-psychological desire we all have to express our identities has not in any way been dismantled recently. We may be spending less and saving more, but we nevertheless still seek ways to express aspects of our selves, and the things we purchase still serve to fulfill that desire. Of course, the way we make purchase decisions now is changing, and for brands, adapting to this more challenging consumer landscape requires a more attuned understanding of consumers’ needs, and more strategical approaches to connecting with them. To that end, here are five directions I think brands should focus their energies and resources towards in the current climate: .
In our latest research: Social Media Playtime is Over, we found that 53% of marketers are determined to increase their social media budget during a recession, and 42% will keep it the same, a total of 95% of marketers bullish on social media marketing. Why? The reasons are obvious to some, it’s inexpensive and the opportunity to benefit from cost-effective word-of-mouth, are promising.
The problem revealed in the research findings, however, according to Adage’s B.L. Ochman, is that many brands “Are not integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. Instead, they are ‘experimenting’ with isolated tactics and hoping that they will take the place of long-term strategy. Furthermore, social media is [considered] more of an after-thought than a marketing line item.”
Since new media budgets have generally been small to begin with, (three-quarters of marketers surveyed have $100,000 or less budgeted for social media marketing), it’s not surprising they are easier to sustain, and even expand upon in this economy than a behemoth ad spend. But the big difference between the traditional advertising model and social media is that the latter does not really function as an isolated “campaign.” Social media strategy is an ongoing process that is integrated into the brand’s overall messaging and a defining aspect of its identity. In a time when consumers are becoming hyper-conscious of finances, all the advantages of social media (that are not offered by advertising) become more pronounced. If we now need to be much more discriminating about how we spend our money, personal endorsements (or denouncements) from real people (and particularly those in our social networks) will have much greater influence on our purchase decisions. So will the way a brand handles consumer engagement. Understanding social media as a strategy rather than a gimmick or “add-on” will go a long way to extending reach, impact, and customer retention in the recession. .
Last summer I spent weeks shopping for an anniversary present for my wife. I searched all my usual retail sources but couldn’t find anything that hit just the right note. Then I went to Etsy—an ecommerce site where artisans sell unique handmade goods—and found the microstore of ClockworkZero, a woman who turns old electronics gear into steampunk accessories. Presto: ClockworkZero’s stuff was both gorgeous and geeky, precisely the vibe I craved. I came away with a necklace made from a vintage vacuum tube.
The economy may be cratering, but people are stampeding to handmade goods. Why? The Etsy guys attribute their success in part to customers tiring of cookie-cutter products. “The ’90s were the period of wearing big-box names on your chest,” says Adam Brown, who heads up Etsy’s cooperative advertising program. The site’s popularity may also be a reaction to the slightly sour, rummage-sale feel that taints eBay, progenitor of the modern microbusiness.
As Virginia Postrel wrote in her superb book The Substance of Style, Americans have become more discriminating over the past few decades. In the ’60s and ’70s, we worried about getting good-quality stuff, she says, because mass-market manufacturing was often of such poor quality. But most products these days are decent: the bargain-basement TV you get at Best Buy will last 15 years. So now we’re focusing more on aesthetics, beauty, and uniqueness.
And we are also focusing on personal meaning. We don’t just want a beautiful and unique product, we want a personal story. NYU Sociologist Dalton Conley writes about the very importance of having a story to tell about the things we own (like the one Thompson recounted about his search for his wife’s present) in his book Elsewhere U.S.A.:
Individuals are led to try to give their totemic objects of choice a personalized spin, embodying them with particular knowledge or histories that bestow status on the owner. It might be the handbag fashioned by garbage pickers in Manila’s slums: The fashion statement rests both in the political stand, of sorts, taken by the owner and in the pleasure of telling how such a bag was obtained (especially if one cannot yet order them online). Or it might be the ability to talk about wine “intelligently.” Or maybe the simple wooden table that was serendipitously purchased at a roadside house sale when your rental car broke down in New Hampshire, that comes with a great story about the old lady who sold it to you while being pestered by a presidential candidate seeking her vote in the 1992 primary. Or the willingness of the Prius owner to boast about the greatest mileage per gallon she has ever achieved with her hybrid car that she hacked in order to be able to recharge the battery from a wall socket.
Often the social value rests in the aura around the product with which we imbue it.
If you’re thinking about brand development during the downturn that last sentence is gonna be crucial. “Consider the numbers,” Thompson writes. “Etsy has 2 million users buying nearly $90 million worth of stuff annually. Its sales have increased twentyfold in the past two years.” When all products are of equally good quality, and custom-made objects are both affordable and easily accessible, it’s the brands that can offer us the most meaningful and distinctive story that will provide the greatest “value,” and as we are forced to deliberate our purchases ever more stringently, they’ll be the ones we’ll choose to buy. .
3. SUPPORTING COMMUNITY
(This is also part and parcel of #1.)
When everything else is uncertain (and nothing says everything’s uncertain like putting the word “global” in front of the word “crisis”) the comfort of community will matter even more to us. More important that pushing consumers to connect to a brand, is creating ways for consumers to connect to each other through a brand. Working in lifestyle events and music festivals for 10 years, I’m intimately familiar with the incomparable role social gatherings play in reinforcing community ties. Many events can, themselves, become identity-defining brands, motivating attendance not just by the promise of a good time, but by the opportunity to share an experience with friends and establish belonging within a greater community. In talking with South By Southwest Festival organizer Hugh Forrest, Owyang writes that attendance to the event’s Interactive portion is up approximately 20% this year. It is a testament to the the appeal of community-reinforcing experiences that this can be the case in a recession.
MillerCoors is among the companies currently seeking to increase their investment in event strategy, according to Adage:
That stakes-raising strategy paid off two weeks ago, when MillerCoors sponsored a U2 Day for Emmis’ XRT radio station in Chicago to promote the release of U2’s new album, “No Line on the Horizon.” For the month leading up to the event, MillerCoors and Emmis ran a co-sponsored mobile campaign where listeners could send text messages to win a chance to score tickets to an exclusive U2-hosted event. Ms. Luegers said the promotion was the perfect opportunity to establish a database of avid MillerCoors drinkers in the Chicago market and re-market to those consumers in the future.
Plus, the U2 contest delivered the ultimate success metric for both advertiser and media partner: “Fans got the feeling of, ‘Wow, I’m in a secret underground society where the average person walking down the street doesn’t know about, but I’m here because I’m an avid listener,” she said.
For brands, providing environments that reinforce community ties means not only a much deeper connection with consumers, but also a platform to jump start the “network effect.” If everyone else in your community is into something, you’ll feel compelled to be into it too because it’s a part of the lifestyle that defines you. Think about how this impacted the spread of Twitter, American Apparel, or Harry Potter, for example. .Just as the brands that offer us personal meaning will be the ones considered to provide more bang for our buck, so too will the ones that offer us a deeper community connection and shared experiences. .
4. ADDRESSING CONSUMER REALITY
Same as we seek to counteract our anxiety in tough times with the buffer of community, we’ll gravitate to brands that offer “Certainty in Uncertain Times,” As Hjörtur Smárason writes on “Why Hyundai is Winning the US Automarket”:
It’s a recession and it isn’t easy for the car makers. In January sales dropped 37% in the US (which is pretty good compared to 88% here in Iceland). The American producers are leading the drop with 55% (Chrysler), 49% (GM) and 40% (Ford). But Hyundai didn’t drop. They increased their sales 14%!
Why is Hyundai growing while everyone else is losing? They are playing their cards according to the situation. These are uncertain times. People don’t know how the economy will develop. More people are going to lose their jobs, and no one is safe. At times like that, people hesitate to make big commitments, like buying a new car. So to overcome that, Hyundai started their Assurance program: If you lose your job or income, you can just return your car. They'[re] even offering to pay for you up to three months if you can find another job within that time.
Brands that are genuinely able to address the needs and prevailing sentiments of the current consumer reality may even be able to undermine brand loyalty as deeply embedded as the Mac Vs. PC dichotomy. Back in October, Steve Jobs announced that Apple doesn’t “Know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.” Which is why the nascent Netbook market is dominated by the PC. While the computer industry overall is going through a rather tough period, the Netbook segment of the market has shown a growth of over 160% quarter-over-quarter. With that kind of growth, there’s no doubt loyal Mac users are being swept up in the Netbook tide. Whether it’s figuring out how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, or allaying people’s car-shopping fears, or just seeking to provide certainty in uncertain times in general, genuinely addressing the current consumer reality is going to be the deciding difference between growth and decline during the economic downturn.
It’s totally funny, but it’s also kind of interesting social commentary in a way. I’ve been doing some research for a client over the past few months on community sites for kids such as Club Penguin, GuppyLife, Stardoll,imbee, etc. Because of the way that COPPA laws restrict what kids are able to do online, and what information they are able to share about themselves, all of these kinds of social network / virtual world sites aimed at kids under the age of 13 have to rely very heavily on the use of various Avatars instead of photos.
It’s gotten me thinking about what this means, that a whole generation is coming up right now whose youth will have been shaped by the use of avatars. It’s something that did not really exist to the same degree of pervasiveness for prior generations, and I’m very curious about how it will impact the way kids construct identity. It’s interesting. Replay that ad with this question in mind….
Britney Spears has a new album out today, and guess what it’s called:
That’s right!
Britney Spears’ new album is called Circus, and this is incredibly interesting to me.
Once upon a time, I used to be the production manager for a circus called Lucent Dossier—
This troupe is actually part of a whole larger Circus performance subculture that has been growing on the West Coast for years. San Francisco’s The Yard Dogs Road Show, El Circo, and Vau De Vire Society, Santa Barbara’s Clan Destino, L.A.’s Mutaytor, Cirque Berzerk, and Lucent Dossier, these are just a few of the major acts that are coming to mind, but there are untold scores of others. With its own distinctive music, style, and nightlife, the Circus scene’s cultural influence has been steadily spilling over into mainstream fare for a while.
In 2006, Panic! at the Disco cast Lucent Dossier in the music video for their first big hit, I Write Sins Not Tragedies. When Panic! went on the road later that same year they brought Lucent along, and called it the “Nothing Rhymes With Circus,” Tour–
–which, according to the Washington Post, offered “a far superior take on the warped circus theme Motley Crüe was going for in its latest tour.”
Oh, yes…that’s right. A year prior, Motley Crüe–who would become no strangers to the stylings of Lucent Dossier, themselves–reunited, and you know what their comeback tour was about?
Here’s a hint:
The Circus subculture infiltration, I should mention, has by no means been limited to music. With such proximity to the entertainment industry, it’s been showing up all over the place. Captivating gamers at E3, holding it down at Red Bull’s nightlife spectacle, Ascension, even America’s Next Top Model weighed in with an “homage” of sorts to the style earlier this year–
–but none of this is really comparable in scale to an endorsement from the Princess of Pop herself.
Despite the inescapable reality that it’s blatantly far from any kind of original album or tour concept, Britney Spears still chose to go with Circus anyway. Clearly there is something about Circus that continues to resonate with performers, but there is also something about our current culture, that the Circus theme persists in being so damn appealing. It should have long ago gotten played out, and yet here it is again, and again. It would be easy to contend that Circus is just an overly-tenacious current trend (and I know a few Circus professionals who do), but I see it is as the manifestation of a cultural response to a slew of far greater–and much less fickle–social trends.
Traditional forms of the tribe, like the village, have almost completely disappeared. Fewer and fewer people live in small communities where their daily interactions bring them in contact with the people they are deeply connected to, either spiritually or economically. Workers in modern corporations are replaceable and no longer bound to each other by the experience of a shared interdependence. The modern individual is preoccupied simultaneously by isolating, immediate concerns of personal survival and the larger, often intangible concerns of war, terror and economic change as transmitted by a now-seamless global media network. The intermediate space of community is not easily reached.
Not by accident, many of the newer, emergent forms of culture include a specifically tribal aspect. A return to tattooing, sacrification, fire performance and drumming, as well as a renewed interest in ritual, has occurred side-by-side with the formation of intentional (if temporary) communities such as the Rainbow Family gatherings and Burning Man festival, all of which focus on celebrating and integrating the peculiarities of their varied members.
It was at these kinds of festivals, in clubs and at underground raves, that alternative circus acts began appearing in the early 90’s. The performers were young, crazy “freaks” without any formal training who used circus costumes, skills or themes as performative means for expressing their own exaggerated personalities. Many went on to gain formal training or to study the history of the genre, but essentially their relationship to conventional circuses resembled that of outsider art to mainstream art circles. They didn’t really relate to the modern-day circus. They took their cues from something much, much older: the caravan-pulling gypsies.
The gypsies, shunned by society at large, but fiercely loyal to their own clan, were the most tribal group in all of Europe. It was these wanderers who first produced circus-like entertainment in the medieval townships, along with strolling players and minstrel shows. It wasn’t until the 1770’s that Englishman Philip Astley fused military equestrian drills with acrobatics and other entertainments to form the modern circus.
The phenomenon of alternative circus performance can be seen as the theatrical dimension to one generation’s wholesale rediscovery of the concept of tribe.
In other words, kids originally began forming Circus performance troupes as an extension of creating urban tribes:
According to French sociologist Michel Maffesoli, urban tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in metropolitan areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles and behavioral patterns. Maffesoli claims that punks are a typical example of an “urban tribe.”
20 Years later, instead of forming punk bands, party kids were forming circuses. And in an age where no one thinks twice of breakdancing or skateboarding, does circus art seem all that unexpected?
In the past decade we’ve also seen the arrival of social media, and “Performative means for expressing exaggerated personalities” as Hill put it, isn’t just for the Circus anymore. It’s what makes the social web go round, too. In Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before, Jean Twenge and her coauthors analyzed 15,324 responses to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, completed by college students between 1987 and 2006. The survey is considered the most popular and valid measure of narcissism, and features statements such as “I think I am a special person,” “I can live my life anyway I want to,” “If I ruled the world, it would be better place,” etc. According to the results:
The trend was extremely clear: younger generations were significantly more narcissistic. The average college student in 2006 scored higher on narcissism than 65% of students just nineteen years before in 1987. In other words, the number of college students high in narcissism rose to two-thirds in the space of less than twenty years.
While Myspace, Youtube, blogs, and all the rest, aren’t responsible for the origins of this narcissism trend, they absolutely help enable its progress. “Narcissism is the darker side of the focus on the self,” writes Twenge, and our constant interaction with social media is an indulgence in self-focus. All of us have been affected by the process of maintaining our online presence. Even if we’re not all live-streaming our entire existence, we upload photos of our lunches or puppies for our network to see, we write blogs about experiences that we planned to blog about even as we were having them, we leave comments for friends just so other people will see them, we fill in our favorite movies and books and music in the appropriate boxes on various profiles, aware of what our choices say about us. In a sense, all of this is a performance. We are already constantly performing our selves, and Circus represents the ultimate performance platform.
Not surprisingly, we also crave attention. After all, what’s the point of being the spectacle if no one is watching? “Given the choice between fame and contentment,” writes Twenge, “29% of 1990s young people chose fame, compared to only 17% f Boomers.” No doubt, the 2000’s generation would score even higher.
When i ask teens about their desire to be famous, it all boils down to one thing: freedom. If you’re famous, you don’t have to work. If you’re famous, you can buy anything you want. If you’re famous, your parents can’t tell you what to do. If you’re famous, you can have interesting friends and go to interesting parties. If you’re famous, you’re free!… [However] Anyone who has worked with celebrities knows that fame comes with a price and that price is unimaginable to those who don’t have to pay it.
The idea of “freedom” is a huge aspect of the appeal embodied by the Circus since way before its modern “reinvention.” Circus has long represented freedom from normal society’s rules. The ultimate outlaw lifestyle. And like celebrity, it too has extolled its own price. No surprise then that celebrities from Motley Crüe to Britney spears should find this theme so relatable.
While I don’t doubt there will be much talk of shark-jumping going on within the Circus underground (after all, just how underground-y can it be if Britney’s fans get into it?), to me, both the alternative and the mainstream reincarnations of Circus are on the same continuum. More than just a subculture or a concert tour fad, Circus has come to articulate something about the nature of our relationship with various social trends shaping the modern experience.
