A Crowds Loves A Crowd: If You Fake It, They Will Come
Have you read “Crowds and Power” by Elias Cannetti? We recommend it highly. Despite the intimidating title, it reads as smooth as a comic book and gives an excellent account of how people submerge their individual wills into group identities. And, once this is accomplished, how damn easy they can be to lead around. Like sheep.
The book also explains what we’ll call the “Venice Beach Effect,” named for the crowds of tourists who gather around the hustlers, magicians, and comedic street performers on the concrete boardwalk of Venice, California. According to the Venice Beach Effect, the key to generating a big crowd of people is to seed it with a small artificial crowd of 9 or 10 associates. The secret is to slow down foot traffic long enough for folks to start rubbernecking and asking “hey, what the heck is all the fuss about?” They pause, stop and look. The folks walking behind them do the same. The street barker (unless he’s a complete hack) senses the crowd starting to swell and flexes his chops. The whole scene starts to snowball and the artificial crowd quickly becomes real.
Perhaps the “Venice Beach Effect†is why beloved Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr often designs his restaurants with opaque or semi-opaque facades, so picky diners have to go inside to determine whether the place is empty or full. It’s also why sitcoms have laugh tracks. Why DJs, love starting off a slow weekday night with “Soul Finger” by the Bar Kays, which includes the noises of fun, wild people having wild, noisy fun. Most recently, the “Venice Beach Effect†can be seen in the marketing of would-be Hollywood blockbusters like Nacho Libre and Superman Returns, which launch so-called “fan” websites filled with supposedly homespun and likely phony photographs of rabid hardcore obsessives anxiously awaiting the release. The formula is the same: if you don’t have a real core start off with a fake core, and the real crowd with gather, like ducks on a pond drawn in by the decoys.
Kenneth Cole Tries to Tee Off
When a fashion mogul uses his product as a personal billboard, it’s bad. Tacky, you know. Vain even. But when the message conveyed on said billboard is vapid and lukewarm, it’s even worse.
Such is the case with the colorless cobbler Kenneth Cole. In the past, Cole has taken courageous stands on such issues can’t-lose issues as homelessness (it is bad) and AIDS (he would like to see it cured). Now, he’s stepping up to rake that well-worked patch of muck known as Iraq, with the following bold declaration, made via t-shirt in his signature sans font:
IN WAR,
IS IT WHO’S
RIGHT
OR WHO’S
LEFT?
Wow! Way to speak truth to power, Kenneth! We’re thrilled to know that all proceeds from the sale of this shirt will be going to Support Your Troops, an organization that appears to share your desire to associate itself with the War in Iraq without actually having a discernible opinion.
Virtue is the New VICE; GOOD the New Evil
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Virtue is the New VICE; GOOD the New Evil
Picture this existence: You lay around the house all day, polishing your patent leather Chelsea boots, checking various social networking sites and listening to cheesy electro records on which girls with robotic voices perform lame raps about the decadent life you live, well, for three hours every other Saturday.
Gets old, don’t it? Especially after ten years. Eventually, you may decide to venture outside, witness how much the world has crumbled during your prolonged shut-in period, and be all “Whoa! What can I do about this?”
Enter GOOD Magazine, which is attempting to forge a middle way between the empty decadence of scene cynicism and the rabid, granola-flavored yammerings of Punk Planet. GOOD is for the young new capitalists out there, the Vespa-driving sippers of organic lattes who give to charity with the same largesse that their Vice-reading counterparts fund their dealers’ sneaker habits. Here is their editorial manifesto:
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We live in an era of change fueled by the freest exchange of ideas and creativity in history. With individuals now able to connect to millions, distances shrink and we feel the impact of each other’s actions more quickly and more tangibly than ever before.
From the pop status of hybrid cars to the future of energy, from the mass appeal of sweatshop-free clothing to the near obsession with organic everything, from the blurred line between celebrity and activism to the merger of capitalism and idealism, the world is just waking up to a new good.
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Keep an eye out for the first issue, which drops this Fall. In the meantime, enjoy their site and a very solid blog.
Volkswagen Tries to Seduce Manhattan With a Hick Wannabe Cab Driver, And Who Knows, It Just Might Work
Volkswagen is bringing back their old Rabbit hatchbacks, and launching the line in the typical viral reality-show style. Here’s the premise: A regular guy from Colorado named Steve drives around New York City in a brand new Rabbit, filming all of his regular-guy conversations with his various passengers. Can he make it as a DIY cab driver in the big city? Called the Gypsy Cab Project, the slick Flash-animated site does not treat us to the spectacle of poor Steve trying to convince his passengers to sign long release forms consenting to the use of their likeness on http://gypsycabproject.com, though we have little doubt these moments occurred and probably interrupted the revelatory Volkswagen-sponsored moments of “connection,” that Steve says he’s so very into.
On the one hand, New York City is filled with guys like Steve: Mountain Time Zone hicks who want to make movies and will do anything for five or ten grand and prominent billing on a corporate webpage. So perhaps this will be a spectacle that Manhattan-ites can relate to. On the other hand, Steve’s first few fares are ridiculously boring to watch—he’s just some regular white dude trying to make conversation with suspicious fares who are clearly in this for the free ride. This is all made even more annoying by the numerous suggestions that this campaign is somehow risky or daring. Volkswagen’s all like “Who’s gonna hop on board? We don’t know,” and “It’s going to be a fast, unpredictable, and chaotic two weeks.” We’re like “Sure, about as unpredictable as the L-Train on a Friday night.”
White on White Is the New Stripes
Lawrence of Arabia knew it. So do those Eagles fans on Oregon Avenue. When it comes to weddings, suit-and-tie combos, and most of all sneakers, white-on-white speaks of a classiness, cleanliness, and virginal newness that no other combination of color can hope to evoke.
As any Foot Locker employee and they’ll tell you that Philly is a bastion of the white-on-white sneaker craze, particularly Reeboks (also a favorite in Hollywood), especially when paired with the jersey of a local sports team and longish denim shorts. Are white sneaks are how the underclass dresses up or how the overclass dresses down? They’re so hot we can’t even tell any more.
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=90f5976708fa5fcca512c0f36570b74a” rel=”external” title=”So Do Indian Computer Scientists”>So Do Indian Computer Scientists
Bud is the New PBR
Budweiser has been sinking millions into new logos and a big ad push for the last 18 months or so, as we noted here about a year ago. Here on the ground in Philly, we’re starting to see it pay some dividends. This Memorial Day weekend, the King of Beers has tall boys sitting in coolers and pint glasses where one year ago you would have found Pabst Blue Ribbon. What happened to PBR, you ask? Some say they succumbed to the Acronym Rule, which states that as soon as your customers know you well enough to shorten your name to a few letters, things are nearly over. Others say they tried to cash in on their hipster status by sponsoring local bands and taking out cheesy ads in alt weeklies. Why couldn’t the brand just sit still, shut up, and allow itself to continue to be discovered generation after generation? They took the short view, tried to cash in, and scared away the flighty trucker-hatted Strokes boys who hate, above all else, to feel like they’re being sold to. And now solemn old Bud sopping up the macrobrew froth PBR left behind.
Evian Cleans Up Toxic Gawker
Just when you think advertising couldn’t get more winking and meta, along comes Evian’s new Gawker campaign. With one click of the button, Gawker’s cluttered, image-strewn adfest of a blog is transformed into columns of type framed by a snowcapped mountain and nothing but white Zen emptiness, brought you by Evian.
An ad campaign that literally obliterates all other ad campaigns with one click of the mouse. That’s pretty clever. Now if only they could
cleanse the poison and resentment from Gawker’s haterly NYC soul, we’d water our plants with the stuff.
Owls Are Hot.
For awhile, the bird was the perfect symbol of hipster innocence and aspiration. With her tender wings, soft feathers, and mournful gaze, the sparrow on the telephone wire seemed to epitomize the fragile vulnerability of a generation that refused to grow up.
Pretty soon, the generic clip-art bird icon was as much of a rock poster cliche as stars, rainbows, and lightning bolts falling from clouds. The world cried out for a more distinctive icon of hipsterhood. Something wiser and more predatory. Something with the nobility of an eagle, but smarter.
Enter the OWL. We’ve seen owls popping up everywhere from hand-sewn custom t-shirt patches to flyers to the coffeeshop doodlings of our own city’s artists. What will be the next winged beasts to be canonized as an indie rock totem? Could it be—gasp!—VULTURES? Let’s hope not. We spent a good long while picking out this name and we’d hate to have to go looking for a new one.
SPOTTED: Jay-Z & Beyonce Roll On Two Wheels
We have it on excellent authority that Jay-Z and Beyonce shopped at American Apparel’s NYC Columbus Circle location last week, dropping a sum well into the triple dollar figures, and then left, completely unaccompanied by bodyguards, making their way through traffic ON TWO BICYCLES.
What’s the significance here, you ask? Why do we feel the need to share this siting with you? Does this mean the Vulture has joined the rest of the online media is peddling celebrity prattle?
Not quite. We’d only like to note that we’ve been riding bikes for, oh, just the last ten years. In 2006, for the first time ever, American consumers bought more bikes than cars. Now that these wonderful machines have both the carrot of celebrity hype and the stick of three dollar gas prices working in their favor, it’s only a matter of time before Ford and GM convert their production lines from camshafts to calf-powered pedals. A long time, to be sure, but it’s coming.
Sparks Makes It Look Easy
Today’s consumer is supposed to be hard to market to. He’s supposedly suspicious of ads that pitch to him directly, and prefers products that stalk his peripheral vision, that stand off to the side, aloof, with their arms folded. Products make him come to the product. Because the consumer is so tired of being sold to. All we advertising folks can do is sit there, cross our fingers, and pray that he’ll find a place for us in his already crowded brain. Right?
But once in a while, a product comes along that serves to remind all of us just how easy marketing is. A product like Sparks, the sickeningly sweet orange energy drink that combines the inhibition-reducing power of a malt beverage with Red Bull’s highly caffeinated kick-in-the-seat-of-the-pants. You just aren’t supposed to be able to give your product away at a bunch of parties, paint your logo on the side of mini-Cooper, and have everyone and their mom spontaneously thinking that you’re cool. You can’t just sponsor rock shows and give away cases at the Winter Music Conference and have everyone start thinking that you’re cool. They’ll be laughing at you behind their backs. Or will they? We laughed at these simple Sparks ploys when they first began appearing about 20 months back, but lately
we’ve changed our tune, as this drink has been popping in all our favorite bars and BBQs. And now, the customers are paying ones. Sparks proves that when you have the right kind of idea (simple), and the right kind of package (slick), you still get to play by the old, easy rules.
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