A lesson from The Merchants of Cool

So today I was watching the PBS documentary "the merchants of cool" and despite the fact that a lot has changed since 2001 when the doco was aired (Malcolm Gladwell's hairstyle being one of them), it still has some very relevant messages for marketers.

The doco looks at how marketers are doing everything they can to infiltrate the teen landscape in an effort to integrate their marketing message into pop culture thus associating their brand with whats considered "cool". But this brings about the problem, when the drivers of "cool", the early adopters, see what ever it is they are currently into start appearing in the main stream, the "cool" very quickly wears off.

It would be easy to point the finger at marketers as being responsible for ruining what is "cool" but if we wind the clock back to the days before marketers were scientifically employing psychological trickery to coax money from the pockets of the unsuspecting consumer, this phenomenon was alive and well.

The prime example of this is how music trend move through history. There is a good reason why kids todays aren't sitting around listening to Benny Goodman big band albums (well actually some of them are, but for a different reason) and thats because somewhere along the line this style of music was no longer "cool" and thus music progressed to a new sound. This happened again and again right through the last century from rock and roll to punk to disco to rap, etc.. it just goes on and on. As marketers this may seem a little frustrating, but its actually quite the blessing. There will come a day when walking around with an ipod and uploading pictures to your facebook page will be so unbeleavabley uncool that kids will be rolling their eyes at their parents for even saying such a thing out loud and when that day comes marketers will be miles away frustraitedly working on how to integrate their message with whatever IS cool on that day. So for marketers, this constant cycle will ensure the business of marketing will exist for many years to come..

PlayBoy beauty products..

So I was just walking through Bourke St Myer at lunch time and my eye got caught by a display for Playboy Beauty. My first thought: “Since when do girls take their fashion cues from porn stars”. And, yes, I do realise the impact that the porn industry has had on popular culture. But beauty products?

Just think about this for a second. Playboy was a porn magazine. Now it sells women’s fashion and cosmetics. I actually think Playboy Beauty is really quite excellent. I think it says a lot about the nature of brands and the role of marketers in positioning brands.

Hugh Heffner didn’t set out for Playboy to become the Disney of the Porn Industry. It evolved that way. That’s right; you heard me, the Playboy brand evolved. Now I am not going to go on a spiritual-marketing preach about how brands are living, breathing orgasms (I mean organisms). So long as people, trends, tastes, technology and opinions change and evolve - so too will brands.

As taste and attitudes to porn changed, and the cult of Heffner and the Playboy bunny/mansion grew, Playboy was flexible enough with its positioning to capitalise on this. It allowed people to view the Playboy brand differently and in new ways. In doing so, Playboy was constantly sending new and revised brand messages that were more closely aligned to the changing consumer perceptions of pornography, sexuality and the Playboy Brand.

I was wondering what other industries / markets Playboy could move into. Funeral homes. Hospitals. Sports Gear. Trucks. Any suggestions?

ripple makes a splash for charity

Melbourne based startup ripple launched recently and seem to be making quite a splash in the philanthropic pond. The site offers two separate services the first being really quite simple, companies partner with ripple to provide advertising (usually in the form of flash based ads). Every time the advertisement is viewed the revenue is donated to one of 4 different charities working to fight poverty. This is kinda cool, especially when you realise that 1 click can provide 1 person in the developing world clean drinking water for 6 days and with this in mind watching the ad that subsequently showed on my screen really wasn't that bad (I would much rather be watching the ad than being thirsty in the 3rd world). The second part of the site is, for me, the real reason why this site can be successful..

Rather than using Google for your search results, you can set the ripple sponsored search site as your home page. The page returns the exact same results as your ordinary Google search but the revenue earned from the searching goes to ripple who pass on 100% of the money to the charities.

The thing I really love about this site is that the creators (Matt Tilleard, Simon Griffiths and Jehan Ratnatunga) have come up with a way for the general public to continue using one of the worlds most popular services (Google search) and do their bit for the global community without any inconvenience to the user whatsoever.

At last count they had 1,364 members in their Facebook group, but I have no doubt this will continue to grow rapidly and hopefully result in some decent revenue for their charity.

Happy Tuesday - Google Doodle, The Wind and Gizmoz.

I wanted to start the day off on a positive note. So I thought I would bring up a couple of things i think are pretty cool…

1. The 'Doodle 4 Google' competition - Google is asking Australian school kids to come up with a Google doodle for next Australia Day. It is running it as a competition with prizes to the winning school of $10,000 of tech gear.
I like this. It is a very simple way to engage with a particular user segment (schools and kids). It provides the creators with a real benefit (its a design project schools can do, there is a prize and the winning entry will get BIG exposure). Provides a real sense of locality presence (makes Google seem more Australian). Agreed its not revolutionary - but just goes to show that user engagement and UGC can be easily done. Give and thou shalt receive!

2. The Wind Ad. I keep going on about this ad. I am showing work colleagues, friends - even mentioned it in the podcast (which you can check out the second instalment of!). Ad for energy co. in Germany. One awards. It is clever. Expensive idea, inexpensive execution!
3. Gizmoz. Check this site out. Nothing super special here. Just a nice little idea and some good fun to be had.

Now that I have got all that out of my system I can proceed with the rest of the day being cynical, critical and abusive! Hooray!

If you want to hear us go the hack, we lay into Telstra and Diet Coke in Episode 2 of the Gen Y Marketing podcast. What can I say...easy targets I guess!
Cheers, Nat.

Gen Y Marketing Podcast now available though iTunes

I know, I know.. You have all been waiting with baited breath for the next installment of the Gen Y Marketing Podcast and wondering "why cant I find it on iTunes?"...

Well finally we have sorted out some "technical issues" and I am pleased to announce that the Gen Y Marketing Podcast is now available though iTunes. The best bit is you don't even need to search for it, if you have iTunes installed all you need to do is click this link and it will automatically load iTunes and take you to the subscribe page (ain't technology grand!)

If your using another RSS tool to keep up up with whats going on in the world, the RSS feed is available here.

Pressing the Online Flesh – MySpace Impact

MySpace recently launched its MySpace Impact channel for politicians and non-profit organizations. It is a space where politicians, political and social organizations can list their official myspace pages.

Compared to places like USA and the UK, Australian politicians have been fairly slow to utilize social media (take a look at Hilary Clinton’s myspace or Barak Obama’s myspace as great examples). And it seems in this case, the Aussie Pollies have been dragged online – kicking and screaming. An interesting note – Labor MPs currently outnumber Liberal MP’s by 2 to 1 on myspace. And John Howard, the Prime Minister, has refused to signup. At last count, only 28 individual federal political candidates for the upcoming election now have official MySpace pages.

Ask any politicians what the value of a personal handshake is? There is a reason why politicians in this day and age still hit the pavement in their local electorates and go door-knocking. Social media enables politicians to make a form of personal contact with voters on a massive scale. In addition it also engages a particular segment of voters – Generation Y and builds on the perception of the politician as a real person, an authentic person and someone open to new ideas.

Check out the table below (that I plan to update every fortnight) regarding how well each of the politicians are utilising this space…



Liberal Party Candidates Total Friends: 616
Liberal Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 5
Labor Party Candidates Total Friends: 9617
Labor Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 10

Connex Trains to target cure for cancer

On the 26th of July Connex Trains, one of Melbourne's largest providers of public transport will be setting aside $1 from every train ticket sold for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in their fight against cancer. Its a worthy cause and great to see a company kicking some profits over to help out a non profit, but campaigns such as this always attract the question "is this due to social responsibility or is the company after some positive marketing spin?".

There is no doubt that Connex has had a lot of bad press in recent months so they could certainly use some positive attention but according to their website they are hoping to hand over just $50k to cancer research, a figure im sure is not too far off what it has cost them to put together the television advertising campaign, change the print on the tickets, etc. But them if Connex put out a press release saying "we just gave $50,000 to cancer research" would anyone notice?

The thing that I find strange is that according to this document, just one of the 16 lines that Connex runs, handles 60,000 passengers per day. With a few rough calculations (number of passengers for each line, minus the number of pre purchased tickets, etc) 50K sounds a little low.