marketing independent culture

Ummm, an interest in eliminating the corporate world from the spheres of art, politics, and culture:

http://wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=4853

p.s. also total hotness.

Hey gang,

Forgive the cross-post from my other unpaid blogging gig at WIMN's Voices, but I thought you dudes might have an interesting take on this story. And because you are smart, I want to hear it!

heart,
aem

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Yesterday's WSJ cover story—a paper owned by NewsCorp now, remember—details the story of Marie Digby, a 24-year-old recording artist on Disney's Hollywood Records, "urged" to self-promote her work virally, through an online video-posting site, for several months before the company would release her album. Lucky for her, it worked. Proclaimed a self-made success by podcasters and DJs across the country, she's proof, many thought, that the internet is making our media a meritocracy again. Except for, oh yeah, she's been working under Disney on this "self-made success" project for two years.

OK, admittedly not a one of us is surprised—over here or on this board—but there's something to be said about the meticulous documentation of the death of wonderful things. "Enjoyable" might not be it, but "necessary anyway" seems to come a bit closer.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Corn, The Nation
Subject: I've Never Done This Before
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:40:36 -0400

Dear Member of the Nation Community,

I've never written a fundraising letter--not counting the few notes I
sent my parents when I was in college. I'm a journalist. I write
articles and books--about politics, national security, and the world

FastCompany blogger Keith Hammonds is my new hero, 'cause somehow he found a way to work this phrase into the online content of the hip (and actually really good) business mag: "Mainstream marketers that try to send messages that look authentically countercultural, using the distribution apparatus of the underground itself, risk coming off as awkward, out of it, or just plain evil."

more here: http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2007/06/21/push_the_future_4.html

So I was invited to a marketing conference—really, a "futurist" conference, but I'll describe what that means in a moment—and decided to go along the line of thinking that if I'd spent the last six years standing in front of the White House telling passersby we needed to overthrow George Bush and then one day he invited me in for dinner, I'd probably have to go do that too.

A "futurist" conference is sort of hard to describe to, well, anyone I think who does not run one, but the gist is that you gather all these various forces together that represent differing emerging trends, and then you invite people to come witness the emerging trends and suss them out a bit, see what is to be gained from them. And who wants to do that? Mostly, marketers. Other people too, sure. But mostly, marketers.

Through a series of ridiculous circumstances, I undertook a reconnaissance mission at the local Wal-Mart the other day in a brand-new silver Mercedes.

The Wal-Mart part I can explain easily enough; the company had somehow managed to quell the furor initiated by activists that was bringing about such things as the local Big Box Ordinance (a law that set wage restrictions on new stores, called by the Nation “the most significant victory for the living wage movement to date,”) by proposing an initiative Wal-Mart was calling the "Opportunity Zone."

The Opportunity Zone is not only the spot inside the store where you can go to apply for jobs with the company, it offered a space to advertise actual local businesses inside Wal-Mart stores. In other words, according to Wal-Mart Vice President of Operations Todd Libbra, the Opportunity Zone "is a commitment to reach beyond our stores to further engage the communities and offer an even greater economic boost to people and neighborhoods that Wal-Mart serves."

Remember that dumb-as-shit book I mentioned a few months back, a HarperCollins property that intended to upend the stodgy old mindset of marketing executives everywhere by using the word "punk" in the title of a book and the word "edgy" in their press release? (http://www.punkplanet.com/anne_elizabeth_moore/blog/get_off_your_ass_and...)

Well, given a little bit of time, they've now—finally!—woven enough rope with which we can help them hang themselves. And you can join the fun!

As a part of the marketing campaign for this ridiculus dumbness, they've created a "boycott" website at www.punkstinks.com. This is not only extremely dumb—who is going to believe this inanity worthy of political engagement—but also cheapens the idea of the boycott. Which, frankly, is one of the very few avenues for political dissent we have anymore in our late-capitalist arsenal. Finally, and most egregiously, this fake-boycott-as-marketing-campaign-project enlists dissent itself as a tool for selling.