This is in some ways an interesting story. A few days ago news pops up on Pitchfork about Disney producing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt inspired - no fucking joke - by Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album cover.
When I read the news I thought of how incomprehensible was this thing. Isn't Mickey and the whole Disney universe about joy and cheerfulness? And what does it have to do with the dark, introspective, cold world of Joy Division? But that's my planner mindset, probably.
The funny part of this story was that the remaining members of Joy Division didn't know anything about this t-shirt. Peter Hook, the bass player, in a typical burst of british humour declared: I hope Disney understands when we start doing Donald Duck t-shirts.
Promptly Disney has stopped the sales of this that is deemed to become a real collectors' item. But Peter Hook's joke is a great insight: how long do you think it would have take Disney to throw a medieval lawsuit on the band's ass if they really did a Donald Duck t-shirt?
The tired joke in the US is that FIAT is an acronym for Fix It Again, Tony, so poor was the perceived quality of the products. A lot went by, Fiat acquired Chrysler and is working towards full merging. In the meantime created some products, like the 500, that strengthened its image.
Sergio Marchionne has been both praised and attacked for his management ways. He is treathening to leave Italy (a good summary of the whole thing can be read here) claiming it is not an environment where productivity can be competitive. He's been bashing Italy and its institutions in every possible occasion. Everyone can image what kind of social impact these kind of statements can have.
Then this new Panda TvC comes along. Panda is one of the two models still produced in Italy. This new TvC is all about the Italian core of this car, how this car is the epytome of everything good in Italy but also a symbol of what Italy needs to be and all the negative things that need to be overcome (at the bottom of the post you can find a quick translation).
What kind of behavior is this? How can the CEO make certain claim and then pretend this such commercial to be believable?
Was the aim to be a pride-swelling narrative, like this Chrysler commercial?
Or does its rethoric push everything a bit too far by making a FIAT vehicle the representation of progressive Italy, coming from a history of progressive decline, workers layoffs and social instability?
I personally feel more like the answer is the second. But then again I may be biased because I come from Turin (which is to FIAT what Detroit is to Chrysler). And I've seen first hand years of FIAT struggle and its results. Something that doesn't make me proud of being Italian the way this FIAT campaign would like me to be.
At least not a supreme example of coherence between brand belief and brand behavior.
(Here's a quick translation of the speaker: How many "Italies" do we know? The "art" one. The "great inventiveness" one. The "crafting talent" one. The "pictoresque country" one. The "young people looking for their future" one.The one capable of creating great manufacturing enterprises. We can choose which one of these Italies we want to be. The time has come to decide if we want to be ourselves or be satisfied by the image someone else gives of us.This is the moment to re-start. To re-start the only way we know. With out work. And testing ourselves. Because in Italy every day somebody wakes up and puts talent, passion, creativity but expecially the will to build something well done, into his work. The things we build makes us what we are. New Fiat Panda. This is the Italy people like.)
I've been reading lots of stuff these days about the battle between Megaupload, the Federal Governement, the Riaa and the Mpaa (who hasn't?). The more I read on, the more I persuaded myself record corporations were painting themselves into a corner once again. Then this video pops up and makes me think:
This video creates a strange short-circuit: the stars represented by Riaa are actually speaking on behalf of its contender, they are endorsing the very same entity that is supposedly violating their intellectual property.
This raises the serious question: do musicians really need gigantic record corporations? This graphic would indicate they don't:
This graphic kills the argument of defending intellectual property. Record corporations are not defending intellectual property. They are defending their right to package that intellectual property and ship it across the world. And why someone who just ships boxes of CDs should make more money than the artist itself?.
Courtney Love - leader of alt rock band The Hole, Kurt Cobain's ex-wife and alternative icon herself - did the math of what proficts making a records generates (and who these profits go to) in an infamous article in 2000.
You can find the full piece here, but I think there is a sentence that sums it up pretty well:
If all of the million records (printed for the band) are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 mil in royaltes, since their 20 percent royalty works out to a $2 a record. Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ...zero! How much does the record company make? They grossed $11 million.
This is clearly incomplete, to have the clear math read the article, but it gives a clear picture of how poorly the record industry managed his assets.
I was talking with a dear friend who owns a record label who publishes mostly world music of rarely documented countries. As a record label owner he is absolutely against download. But he expressed an interesting point of view:
what was the response of the majors to the sales crisis? Discount. Like records were smoothies or snacks. That was the fatal blow to the badly wounded market. The moment you price A Love Supreme or Kind Of Blue at 5$ you won't sell more of it - because it's extremely unlikely that I will buy three copies instead of one just because it's cheap - but you destroy the cultural value of the record. And being music a cultural industry, you are destroying your market.
So the question may arise: should musicians give up making music? Clearly not. But music, expecially popular music is an experience. The experience of just listening to a song gets tired quickly, expecially when you get bombed by it over the radio, on MTV or through cellphone ringtones. You have to offer something unique.
Amanda Palmer is a singer who made a name for herself as a member of the "punk cabaret duo" The Dresden Dolls. While she put out a solo album on Roadrunner Records (a subsidiary of Warner Music), she found that they had little interest in promoting her, and took things into her own hands. She reached out directly to fans on services like Twitter, often setting up "flash gigs" where people would show up wherever she wanted to perform. In June of 2008, one such flash gig at a beach in Los Angeles ended up with an impromptu, beautiful, music video for a song that Palmer had just learned that morning, due to a suggestion from a fan on Twitter. And she's doing a good job making money, as well. Bored in her apartment one evening, she started twittering with fans and came up with a jokey t-shirt suggestion, and set up an immediate store, selling $11,000 worth of t-shirts in days. Another night, she started a live video stream from her apartment, and started an impromptu online auction for various items in her apartment associated with a recent tour, often with a personalized twist. In three hours, she brought in $6,000. Connecting with fans and offering them something fun and unique to buy worked wonders. To date, she hasn't received a single royalty check from Warner Music on her album.
Moldover is an electronic musician based in San Francisco. Being in such a high tech hub, he had an interesting idea for his next album. Along with the music itself, the CD case would be a working circuit board, with all the songs spelled out in soldered electric circuits. These connected various components to make the CD case itself an instrument. Pushing a button on the side of the case, would light up the center and make a noise, which could be modified through a pair of light sensors, creating a virtual theremin. The case even had a line out jack, so it could be plugged into a computer or an audio system. The CDs themselves were sold for $50, and Moldover discovered the demand was far stronger than he expected. Yes, even though we're told that no one will pay for music (without strict copy protection), this less well known artist is doing brisk business selling $50 CDs.
These are successful examples. But they are useful to make my point:
music (expecially popular music, less so jazz, classical or more niche forms) has turn into a commodity. You can hear the same song a hundred times a day on the radio, as a ringtone, in a mall or on the very YouTube channel of the record company. So people don't value it, unless some sort of experience is created around it. This is why artists who are not making a dollar from record sales can still charge more than $100 for ticket concerts. And this is why, as the Economist explained in this article about a year ago, music business is still profitable. And the most profitable artists are those who established themselves in the long run.
The rercord industry failure recalls the Kodak one. The incapability to understand what the need of people out there really is. And failure is the only payback to one of the most conservative industries in the world.
A cultural industry cannot be focused on short-term profits, one-hit wonders and bombing people with the last lame hit. It should be focused on nourishing valuable artists and creating valuable experiences: otherwise, in the end you become something people are used to, but can really do without.
Ok, I know this is in Italian. But you'll find the translation at the bottom.
Stefano is an ex-colleague, copywriter and director. This is his first effort. Would say it's a killer, but that's a bit of an easy pun.
Vanessa is an-ex colleague too. She's the lady that guts the poor freak. She looks cute holding a sickle. And that's disturbing.
Lorenzo is the actor. I don't know him, but I kind of feel sorry for him and his intestines.
The Dunwich Gazette is the most important Italian blog on horror movies. And this is the first ad for them, made by those above. Enjoy and share.
(The speaker says: There's always a room. A music, the right one. There's always a rope. Never tight enough. There's always a surprise. A red one. And there's always a happy ending.)
This lovely video has been circulating for a while over the web and it's a fantastic yet simple idea. But it can also be seen as a symptom of something potentially bigger: the shift from an economy based on ideas to an economy of phisically create stuff out of an idea.
Advertising is the old world. Content is contemporaneity. Producing is the near future. Some agencies are already moving down that path (R/GA and AKQA among the first) while other are still fidgeting with TV ads, but that's not something that is limited to advertising. Every idea company will have to evolve in some way, and this could be the direction.
To follow this evolution, though, the biggest requirements are two things that are rarely seen in today's corporate culture: R&D and a culture of long term objectives (something companies like Google understood way before everyone else). As beautiful and simple as the Little Printer may look, it took Berg six years to fully realize the project: from here to here.
Because, as Russell says here, it will not be stuff that just gets chucked out the back of a creative technology department.
The Possum Posse are a somewhat obscure sardonic honky-tonk/bluegrass band from Austin, TX. They consistently win over audiences by playing memorable originals as well as mashed-up versions of urban cult-classics and girlie-pop favorites, according to their website bio.
Now how do you get out of the obscurity and into the limelight in these age of abundant content and mass availability? A silly story. Hopefully silly enough to go viral. Like the adventures of a guy on a buffalo.
Now the plot itself is surreal enough. But they way they re-cut the whole thing adding their bluegrass songs with fitting lyrics, moving the whole thing in the realm of nonsense. A mini-series with four episodes and incredibly adventurous situations. Something definitely worth watching when your soul needs some uplifting.
