This story follows a focus group in a marketer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads the focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!" The story is about the deception and manipulation in the operation of modern corporations, particularly those whose success is highly dependent on the public's perception of the company and its products.
Most interesting to me was that Wallace's structure of the story matches the setting (a skyscraper), but its layers are revealed one at a time in an upward journey that reveals the figures of each lower layer to have been duped by someone above them. The higher levels is where it really gets fascinating. We are introduced to the perspectives of members higher up in the marketing firm and told that the true purpose behind the inter-focus group study is to explore a class of marketing strategy where a depiction of the inner workings of the company is the subject of advertising material. So, Schmidt, without knowing it, is effectively delivering to the focus group a primitive form of this behind-the-product advertising.
Further up, the future of demographic analysis is anticipated to be carried out by monitoring websites rather than running focus groups. Only problem is all of the presently employed focus group coordinators. The inter-group experiment is actually a device that will be used to demonstrate to the coordinators their own inimical influence on the focus groups, using a statistical argument which the coordinators, themselves statisticians, will be forced to accept, followed by their resignation or, if they are so unreasonable as to protest, as evidence against any case they may form in a lawsuit regarding their termination.
There's also a guy scaling the wall of the building and drawing a crowd that speculates on his activities throughout the story, who in the end inflates his costume which bears the image of "Mister Squishy."
This to me represents the interaction of marketing firms with consumers. Marketers put on a carefully designed performance and the consumers are drawn to it.
I very much enjoyed reading this short story. The amount of detail put into the story was very unique and I think it has a lot to say about marketing and the world in general. Deception and secrecy are huge parts of the marketing and business worlds. Its a scary idea and it makes this story very thought provoking.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
Additional Essays due 10/26
Valuing Fans: This essay talks about the rise in popularity of “engagement” a few years ago, a tactic to sell advertisers audiences whose enthusiasm is believed to translate to more awareness of and receptivity to product placement and commercials.The author proposes the building blocks of a more holistic methodology for valuing a fan community, with the goal of helping producers, creators, and advertisers assess how to increase the effectiveness of their investments of time, money, talent, and reputation. For fans, having a model that moves toward quantifying their contribution to the bottom line will help foster a better understanding of how they can function effectively in the media ecology and may ultimately help to better align the interests of the media industry’s decision-makers with theirs. Many of the activities within the broad spectrum of fan behaviors that contribute economic value fit into four categories. These are watching, listening, or attending; purchasing primary and secondary products; endorsing; and sharing and recommending. The first two sources of economic value are “direct” and are thus generally easier to quantify and track than the latter two. Direct sources are already components of how we measure and value audiences.The two “indirect” sources of economic value listed above are so called because, although some of their dimensions can be measured and even quantified, they focus not on existing sources of value but on nurturing and creating new audiences and markets. In terms of economic value, the payoff of indirect sources of value is in the recruitment of new fans who will contribute to the two direct sources. These types of expression, while more difficult to quantify and sometimes to measure, are immensely valuable because of the social elements that help to both retain and recruit audiences. It is also an instance when interests among fans, creators, and producers are aligned. For fans, expanding the community and forming or strengthening social relationships through the media property provides an extra incentive to participate further and to contribute both direct and indirect sources of value. For creators and producers, this type of behavior increases the audience, enhancing both the short- and long-term value, and thus the sustainability, of their projects.One of the biggest misconceptions about the value of a fan community is that it has to be large and locked into particular consumption behaviors to be meaningful. However, without mass-market-size audiences, the property needs a dedicated core of fans who will contribute enough economic value to achieve sustainability through primary sources and who will recruit more people like them to help grow the market or at least compensate for attrition. The author argues that fans have always gone beyond the consumption behaviors that advertisers and producers have used as the predictor of the ultimate value of the audience. But, by broadening the framework and digging deeper into how people actually show their affinity for a media property and what drives them to do so, we can gain a more thorough understanding of which communities are fast and fleeting and which are here to stay.
Retro Brands and Retro Marketing: This short essay discusses and analyzes a form of brand extension strategy that has gained prominence, in which tired or even abandoned brands have been reanimated and successfully relaunched. When these big brands, who are routed in the past, extend and use their existing brand name to introduce a new product or service, the past meanings and images that it invokes become an important element to be managed, understood, wielded, and shaped by managers. Management will deliberately reach into the past and consciously seek to gain new value from old brands and the meaningful relationships they convey. Stephen Brown, John Sherry, and the author define retrobranding as “the revival or relaunch of a product or service brand from a prior historical period, which is usually but not always updated to contemporary standards of performance, functioning, or taste,” seeing retro goods as “brand-new, old-fashioned offerings” (2003b, 20). Old brands retain value simply by being old: the value of nostalgia, the so-called retro appeal. There is also value in the communal or cultural relationships that the brand has built over its lifetime. Finally, there are values on an individual level that relate to the former two other values.This investigative work on retro-branding bridged Brown’s (2001) theorizing and retro-marketing case studies with my ethnographic research on longstanding entertainment brands, their ongoing extensions, and the role of consumer culture and subculture in this process (Kozinets 2001). As well, the investigation sought to bring together research on popular culture with research on consumer and marketplace cultures. It deepened an exploration into the sources and implications of the convergence of fan communities with brand cultures.Brown, Sherry, and the author argue that powerful brands possess their own detailed story structure. They say that aura (brand essence), allegory (brand stories), and arcadia (idealized community) are the character, plot, and the setting, respectively, of brand meaning. Retro-branding research thus builds on the idea that brand allegories are stories, narratives, or extended metaphors in symbolic form. Successful branding is successful world-building, and the world it builds can be a window into the brand’s own past. Successful brand narratives will possess an almost utopian evocation of past worlds and past or present communities.The propose that there are six key characteristics that create value in sleeping brands and other properties. They are dormancy, iconicity, evocativeness, utopianism, solidarity and perfectibility. After these six characteristic elements are met, the conditions for revival and the revaluation—as well as the addition of value by the efforts of the community—are met. Yet, behind these elements, there is also an inspiration: a motivation to find, to share, to dream, and to build on.Buried within the stories and histories must be something mysterious and strange, something that powers the connection and motivates the chase.A strong brand will combine the opposing elements of a deeply meaningful product. The brand that can tap into these insoluble puzzles offers lasting engagement and meaningful connection that can persist through the decade.The author uses the example of Health Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight (2008) to show how Hollywood remakes and refreshes old franchises just as old brands are continually extended and renewed.
“Consumer” or “Multiplier”:
“In Defense of Memes”:
The author agrees that the terms viral and meme often connote passive transmission by mindless consumers, but she takes issue with the claim that meme always precludes active engagement or that the term has a universal, static meaning. As understood by trolls, memes are not passive and do not follow the model of biological infection. Instead, trolls see memes as microcosmic nests of evolving content. Memes spread because something about a given image or phrase or video or whatever lines up with an already-established set of linguistic and cultural norms. In recognizing this connection, a troll is able to assert his or her cultural literacy and to bolster the scaffolding on which trolling as a whole is based, framing every act of reception as an act of cultural production. She uses the example of Insane Clown Posse, which performs in full-face clown makeup, always being a target for trolling humor. Especially with the 2010 release of the group’s single Miracles and its video.Within a few days of the video’s release, dozens of remixed images and .gifs were posted to 4chan’s infamous /b/ board, many of which merged with existing memetic content. Most significantly, memes in the trolling world emerge organically, with absolutely no consideration for or loyalty to the supply side of the equation. Capital, in other words, rarely enters the picture. Trolls don’t benefit from the largess of media producers, and media producers don’t benefit financially from the engagement of trolls. Trolls may appropriate media content, but there is no interest in either camp for symbiosis, preempting any possibility for moral/economic relations between trolls and media producers.
Reaction: These four essays read rather quickly because of how familiar I was with the content. I think that the most powerful part to me was in Retro-branding. Writing that aura, allegory, and arcadia are the character, plot, and the setting of brand meaning, makes so much sense to me as a media major but also as someone who grew up watching this at work. Nostalgia is one of the best ways to promote anything because it is such a strong emotion. I also very much agree with the switch from the term consumer to multiplier, it makes more sense in this modern time of mass technology. I generally agree with the majority of what these short essays said. However, I didn't completely understand the last essays point.
The author agrees that the terms viral and meme often connote passive transmission by mindless consumers, but she takes issue with the claim that meme always precludes active engagement or that the term has a universal, static meaning. As understood by trolls, memes are not passive and do not follow the model of biological infection. Instead, trolls see memes as microcosmic nests of evolving content. Memes spread because something about a given image or phrase or video or whatever lines up with an already-established set of linguistic and cultural norms. In recognizing this connection, a troll is able to assert his or her cultural literacy and to bolster the scaffolding on which trolling as a whole is based, framing every act of reception as an act of cultural production. She uses the example of Insane Clown Posse, which performs in full-face clown makeup, always being a target for trolling humor. Especially with the 2010 release of the group’s single Miracles and its video.Within a few days of the video’s release, dozens of remixed images and .gifs were posted to 4chan’s infamous /b/ board, many of which merged with existing memetic content. Most significantly, memes in the trolling world emerge organically, with absolutely no consideration for or loyalty to the supply side of the equation. Capital, in other words, rarely enters the picture. Trolls don’t benefit from the largess of media producers, and media producers don’t benefit financially from the engagement of trolls. Trolls may appropriate media content, but there is no interest in either camp for symbiosis, preempting any possibility for moral/economic relations between trolls and media producers.
Reaction: These four essays read rather quickly because of how familiar I was with the content. I think that the most powerful part to me was in Retro-branding. Writing that aura, allegory, and arcadia are the character, plot, and the setting of brand meaning, makes so much sense to me as a media major but also as someone who grew up watching this at work. Nostalgia is one of the best ways to promote anything because it is such a strong emotion. I also very much agree with the switch from the term consumer to multiplier, it makes more sense in this modern time of mass technology. I generally agree with the majority of what these short essays said. However, I didn't completely understand the last essays point.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
If It Doesn't Spread, Its Dead (Part One and Two) by Henry Jenkins Due 10/19
Part One: Media Viruses and Memes
Jenkins concerned with the use of the terms “viral” and “memes” by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers. Furthermore, just what counts as viral is unclear. In focusing on the involuntary transmission of ideas by unaware consumers, these models allow advertisers and media producers to hold onto an inflated sense of their own power to shape the communication process, even as unruly behavior by consumers becomes a source of great anxiety within the media industry. The infection metaphor is attractive in that it reduces consumers, often the most unpredictable variable in the sender-message-receiver frame, to involuntary “hosts” of media viruses and that it hold onto the idea that media producers can design “killer” texts which can ensure circulation by being injected directly into the cultural “bloodstream.”
Given the problems with these terms, Jenkins and his partners are proposing an alternative model, the idea of spreadable media which better accounts for how and why media content circulates at the present time. this model emphasizes the activity of consumers also called “multipliers” in shaping the circulation of media content, often expanding potential meanings and opening up brands to unanticipated new markets.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 was looking for a way to explain cultural evolution, imagining it as a biological system. What genes are to genetics, he suggested, memes would be to culture. Like the gene, the meme is driven to self-create, and is possessed of three important characteristics. These are "fidelity — memes have the ability to retain their informational content as they pass from mind to mind, fecundity — memes possess the power to induce copies of themselves and longevity — memes that survive longer have a better chance of being copied."
The authors argue that this approach misunderstands the way content spreads, which is namely, through the active practices of people. They say that “memes” do not self-replicate and that people are not “susceptible” to this viral media
Part Two: Sticky and Spreadable- Two Paradigms
The authors prefer to think of media as spreadable. Spreadability as a concept describes how the properties of the media environment, texts, audiences, and business models work together to enable easy and widespread circulation of mutually meaningful content within a networked culture. This new “spreadable” model allows us to avoid metaphors of “infection” and “contamination” which over-estimate the power of media companies and underestimate the agency of consumers. In this emerging model, consumers play an active role in “spreading” content rather than being the passive carriers of viral media. Spreadability relies on the human mind to spread valuable content to others.
The term “sticky” first and foremost refers to websites which “grab and hold the attention of your visitor” (Meredian, n.d.). Stickiness seeks to attract and hold the attention of site visitor and depends on concentrating the attention of all interested parties on a specific site or through a specific channel. Stickiness typically tracks the migrations of individual consumers within a site.
They argue that for media companies to fully grasp the advantages of spreadability, they have to unlearn the lessons of “stickiness,” which is less effective than it used to be.
Reaction
I noticed that this was written in 2009 and since it is more than 5 years later, I was wondering if they have new ideas about the spread of media and if this piece has actually effected and changed the terminology of "viral media" to spreadable media in some circles. I agree that the term viral media doesn't give enough credit to the consumer who actively spread the media and change it to their liking. The work of the consumer or "multiplier" is too important to only give it a host role inferring that they don't have any influence on the spread what so ever. I like the idea of spreadable media, it is a more comprehensive term for the process that is commonly know as viral media.
Jenkins concerned with the use of the terms “viral” and “memes” by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers. Furthermore, just what counts as viral is unclear. In focusing on the involuntary transmission of ideas by unaware consumers, these models allow advertisers and media producers to hold onto an inflated sense of their own power to shape the communication process, even as unruly behavior by consumers becomes a source of great anxiety within the media industry. The infection metaphor is attractive in that it reduces consumers, often the most unpredictable variable in the sender-message-receiver frame, to involuntary “hosts” of media viruses and that it hold onto the idea that media producers can design “killer” texts which can ensure circulation by being injected directly into the cultural “bloodstream.”
Given the problems with these terms, Jenkins and his partners are proposing an alternative model, the idea of spreadable media which better accounts for how and why media content circulates at the present time. this model emphasizes the activity of consumers also called “multipliers” in shaping the circulation of media content, often expanding potential meanings and opening up brands to unanticipated new markets.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 was looking for a way to explain cultural evolution, imagining it as a biological system. What genes are to genetics, he suggested, memes would be to culture. Like the gene, the meme is driven to self-create, and is possessed of three important characteristics. These are "fidelity — memes have the ability to retain their informational content as they pass from mind to mind, fecundity — memes possess the power to induce copies of themselves and longevity — memes that survive longer have a better chance of being copied."
The authors argue that this approach misunderstands the way content spreads, which is namely, through the active practices of people. They say that “memes” do not self-replicate and that people are not “susceptible” to this viral media
Part Two: Sticky and Spreadable- Two Paradigms
The authors prefer to think of media as spreadable. Spreadability as a concept describes how the properties of the media environment, texts, audiences, and business models work together to enable easy and widespread circulation of mutually meaningful content within a networked culture. This new “spreadable” model allows us to avoid metaphors of “infection” and “contamination” which over-estimate the power of media companies and underestimate the agency of consumers. In this emerging model, consumers play an active role in “spreading” content rather than being the passive carriers of viral media. Spreadability relies on the human mind to spread valuable content to others.
The term “sticky” first and foremost refers to websites which “grab and hold the attention of your visitor” (Meredian, n.d.). Stickiness seeks to attract and hold the attention of site visitor and depends on concentrating the attention of all interested parties on a specific site or through a specific channel. Stickiness typically tracks the migrations of individual consumers within a site.
They argue that for media companies to fully grasp the advantages of spreadability, they have to unlearn the lessons of “stickiness,” which is less effective than it used to be.
Reaction
I noticed that this was written in 2009 and since it is more than 5 years later, I was wondering if they have new ideas about the spread of media and if this piece has actually effected and changed the terminology of "viral media" to spreadable media in some circles. I agree that the term viral media doesn't give enough credit to the consumer who actively spread the media and change it to their liking. The work of the consumer or "multiplier" is too important to only give it a host role inferring that they don't have any influence on the spread what so ever. I like the idea of spreadable media, it is a more comprehensive term for the process that is commonly know as viral media.
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