you know, back in the day, people used to get dressed up to fly on an airplane? it wasn’t simply about getting from point a to point b, it was actually–before the concept even really existed in the kind of marketing sense it does today–an experience. same like when movie theaters were once movie “palaces” and likewise, banks were too. participating in this space-age activity of flight somehow commanded respect for the sheer wonder of human mastery over the laws of physics themselves.
now, the entire process of flying is like the biggest pain in the ass ever, ranging in degree of horror from irritating teeth cleaning to root canal without anesthesia. it may still be the safest way to travel, or whatever, but the whole experience is so fucking antiquated, it’s like…who cares? i mean… everything about it is a holdover from a bygone era, from those arm rests that still have ash trays built in, to the whole centralized process of having to get to an airport. somehow, in comparison to, for example, having to drive for three hours to get to the closest commercial airplane from santa barbara, even the NYC subway system is more progressive in terms of the decentralization of its accessibility.
and that’s all before i even bring up the T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-M thing.
wasn’t the teleporter supposed to have already been invented by this point?
anyway, short of that, it’s nice to know that someone out there’s giving any kind of crap about addressing the fact that the air-travel experience that once upon a time carried as much weight as dressing up for sunday mass has essentially turned into the equivalent of taking a greyhoud in the sky.
thanks boeing, for–at least coming off like you’re–taking this issue seriously. we’ll see how well it flies (badumching).
maybe boeing should start its own airline? but they’re probably way too smart to think about dealing with all THAT noise.
** side note, speaking of antiquated, i’d just like to reiterate again, how ridiculous it is that all the brands and publications out there producing dynamic online content INSIST on chaining it down to their sites, without considering any way to let that shit move, by making sure it’s branded and embeddalbe. (i had to go looking for the video on youtube instead of being able to get the code right on the boeing site.**
perhaps it’s just typical to find SOMETHING to dislike about the business 2.0 article about how “burningman grows up” but i can’t help it!
i bet there’s probably even distinct camps of dislike about it, in fact.
camp #1 are the people who dislike that their special countercultural identity-defining ritual is being profiled somewhere so mainstream, and involves words like “brand” and “leverage.” you know it can’t be good for the “rebel” self-image to be confronted with the consideration of who might be reading about the mecca of the “radically self-expressed” alternative lifestyle when it’s written about glowingly on a url like money.cnn.com…
camp #2 might maybe be able to make an allowance for the market-speak as being superimposed by the writer vs. the being the normal vocabulary of the event’s organizers themselves, but this group is pissed that the strict ideology of anti-commercialism at all costs is being at all fucked with by the high priests themselves. how the hell are we supposed to follow the path to salvation from the “default world” if the compass arrow won’t stay pointed firmly in one direction? i mean, yeah, it’s just green businesses now, but this isn’t about green, goddamnit! it’s about black and white!
(yup: camp #1, and camp #2 link to the same place, curiously enough, and no: i didn’t make the reference “default world” up.)
ok, i take it back, not everyone’s irate. camp #3 actually probably doesn’t give a shit. camp #3 is just full of members of the creative class who’ve been using burningman as a giant dynamic gallery in which to get to exhibit their art and a great source of highly fun creative inspiration for years, and they’ll probably raise an eyebrow, sigh whatever, not even finish reading it to the end, and then get back to doing whatever it was they were doing before they got forwarded the article.
but i dislike it for different reasons. you know… i always get flack from my friends for paying attention to language too closely. like, one of the most annoying parts of any argument is when someone goes, “ok, you’re just picking on my word choice.” JUST picking on word choice! like as if words choose themselves, and mouths hiccup them up without any input on the process.
uh..yeah! i pick on fucking words alright, cuz you picked them. which makes us even. and the most irritating part about the whole article is marian goodell’s (one of the event’s main organizers) word choice when she says:
“This community is a dream for anyone looking at demographics. We have kids who work in coffee shops and we have billionaires. To ignore the value of our brand, the buying power it has, is silly. But it’s a ritual for these people, which is why it’s going to be hard for them seeing businesses out there.”
eeeuuchh!
i’ve written sponsorship proposals for LIB, and can very much sympathize with the trickiness of navigating the space between brand enticement (for the record, we’ve been targeting green companies to participate in our festival since ’06) and the management of non-commercial community expectations, but referring to the community that has sustained and nurtured your event, and that defines the buying power of your brand as “these people” or even as “them” is just…disingenuous, tacky, and… just…ugh, bad form!
Burning Man’s customers keep coming back to Black Rock precisely because it’s so far outside the scope of the corporate culture – and its incessant marketing – that most of them live with the other 51 weeks of the year.
i guess that’s the thing that gets camp #4 all up in arms–camp #4 is where i’m camped, at the intersection of “7:30” and “annoyed”– when there are corporate brands that treat their community with less distance, and more dignity (i by no means read that whole long discussion thread about the article, but the fact that it came as a total shock to the community is unmistakable) than this kind of language and closed-off attitude belie, then just what exactly is so special about the authenticity of an authentically disdainful counterculture “brand”? the article makes a big deal about how burningman has come back from the brink of bankruptcy like four times or something because the only way the event sustains itself is through selling admission tickets, and essentially nothing else to its communi–uh, i’m sorry, i mean, to “these people”–but in the end, you gotta wonder, is that (much like the anecdote that larry harvey, the event’s originator, didn’t have a bank account until like last year or whatever) actually part of a desire to make room for more intimate interactions than commercial transactions….
this post is my contribution to the crowd-sourced response for everyone that demands answers to”useful stuff for freelancers?” from google.
1. billable: this had me at the built-in timer thingie, that tracks how long you’ve been working on a service for a particular client. i’m hoping it’s going to be the harness i need to keep from falling into the precipitous “i don’t know when i’m working and when i’m not” abyss.
2. legalzoom.com – hocus pocus… DBA! plus, if you type in “vandals” in the discount code section, you get ten bucks off. yeah, that’s right. vandals. joe escalante’s punk band is now your coupon.
One of the most annoying things about people in advertising is it’s like they stop being human when they come to work. As soon as they walk through the office door they forget about examining what drives their own purchasing decisions when planning the process for others and start talking about “consumers” and “demographics” like test subjects in some experimental medication test — as though they aren’t consumers themselves!
It’s the communications industry, and yet so many of the “communicators” forget whatever it is they may have learned in that immersive language course they’ve been taking all their lives, and opt instead for an online translator. Which is what drives the point home in this great article from San Francisco Magazine about Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — an agency that obviously takes the process of being human along with them on their travels into advertising land — when their media strategist, Hashem Bajwa, says, “This is about brands releasing some control to the consumer, and that’s really cool. Brands that won’t start a relationship with us aren’t going to be as successful.” It’s not about those “consumers;” it’s about “us.”
Plus, the article is filled with both articulate insights:
The change involves no less than a fundamental shift in the relationship between advertiser and audience. No longer at the mercy of what a network beams into their TVs, people have morphed from passive watchers into active agents with the power to seek out and view whatever they want, whenever they want. As a result, the very notion of what makes an ad appealing has changed. Now that people are choosing to hang out with an ad the same way they choose to watch a show or play a video game, pushing a product—or at least pushing it explicitly—has become less important than creating an experience that’s fun, addictive, helpful, and even communal (since people pass word of these ads to their friends). In many respects, advertisers—and hence the agencies they hire—are becoming more like content providers whose main goal is to entertain.
And fascinating predictions:
Goodby and Silverstein predict that brands will become the new networks, making advertising agencies more like Hollywood producers.
How many directors of traditional agencies have you heard lately proclaiming that the internet’s making them feel younger? “Are you kidding?” Silverstien says, “I love this stuff. It’s even better than television.”
…. As smart as Goodby and Silverstein are, they come off more as artists than tech geeks. Silverstein still loves to draw. Goodby paints and writes poetry in his spare time. Hanging out with them, you wonder how they keep up with hyperspeed technological changes. “We hire freaks,” says Goodby, laughing.
Bonus track: one of my favorite freaks in general, Zach Canfield, is also a Goodby Silverstien freak–as their creative recruiter, and part of the team responsible for, among other things, the most amazing spoof of R. Kelly’s “Trapped In The Closet” saga EVER:
(You MUST watch!)
Trapped in the Clauset pt. 1:
Trapped in the Clauset pt. 2:
Trapped in the Clauset pt. 3:
Being human helps, but being a freak don’t hurt none either.
