murketing

In Consumed: Obsessive Consumption: Products that are meant to make you think - about your purchase.

In 2000, Kate Bingaman-Burt graduated from college and took a full-time job as a designer and art director for a gifts company in Omaha. She worked on ads and packaging and products but didn’t feel great about any of it. Mostly it was stuff that “people didn’t really need,” she says, and ultimately it made her wonder about why people buy what they buy. Eventually she quit, went to art school to pursue a master’s degree — and started wondering about the things she bought. This led to a project she called Obsessive Consumption, which involved documenting pretty much all of her purchases; soon she started collecting those images on a Web site. And this turned out to be the first iteration of something that continues to this day: “I basically built a brand out of Obsessive Consumption,” she says, “and ran with it.” …
Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site via this no registration required link.

Additional link: Obsessive Consumption.com.

I’ve always been rather petty about certain things. I’ll give you an example.

Because I was raised to fear debt above all else, I didn’t get my first credit card until I was well into my 20s. And really even then I didn’t quite get how credit cards worked. Which was ironic, in that I was working for a personal finance magazine by then. In fact, it was while editing a story about credit cards that I finally figured them out. It was one of those “best cards to get now” kind of articles, and the person writing it (who knew what she was talking about, luckily for me and the readers) recommended the GE Rewards Mastercard. Why? Well, it paid 2% cash back on all purchases. (There was a cap of course; I think $250 a year was always the most you could get back.)

Obviously such benefits are easily canceled out if you don’t pay your balance every month, but as a rather petty consumer, I’ve always done that. And I loved that once a year, I’d get a credit back from my card company on the last 12 months of spending that the card had enabled. There card carried no annual fee. Basically, they were paying me to use their product.

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I remember when I saw these things popping up in Staples stores: The “Easy Button” from the chain’s ad campaign. You could buy yourself a piece of Staples’ branding efforts. Who would do that? I remember thinking: If these sell, it would be a great Consumed.

But then I never heard anything else about it, never knew anybody who bought one, never saw or heard references to anybody buying one. And of course I never bothered to look into it, since I had plenty of other things to write about.

Well, now comes a piece in Brandweek saying that Staples has sold 1.5 million of them! They cost $5 apiece.

The piece also mentions people buying gnomes that Travelocity is selling. But really that’s just something with a life of its own that Travelocity appropriated for its branding, so I think it’s different. You can buy a gnome without having a handle on Travelocity or its marketing, but the Easy Button is a product that exists only as an extension of advertising. (So far as I know, anyway.)

Brandweek compares the Easy Buttons to Hess trucks, and quotes an ad guy involved in the campaign that spawned the buttons saying: “It’s a testament to very successful advertising … an elegant metaphor for the fact that everyone is frustrated as hell about how hard it is to get things done today.”

Is he right about that? Why do people buy these? If you’ve bought one or know somebody who has, please explain: murketing AT robwalker DOT net. (Or in the comments.)

Regarding the picture above: I was looking for an image to swipe for this post and found this guy’s Flickr set about hacking the “Easy Button” into a garage-door opener. (That’s step 15 pictured.) Clever!

“Authentic Happiness,” new works by Sket One, Murketing Q&A subject. Opening reception at Channel 1 in New Haven, Friday night November 17. Show is up through January 28.

Press release highlights:

KFC Corporation today became the world’s first brand visible from outer space by unveiling a record-breaking 87,500 square feet, updated Colonel Sanders logo in the Area 51 desert. The event marks the official debut of a massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000-plus KFC restaurants in over 80 countries over the next few years.

The new logo depicts Colonel Sanders with his signature string tie, but for the first time, replaces his classic white, double-breasted suit with a red apron.

“The Colonel is truly a global icon and we want everyone in the universe to see KFC’s new look of the future,” said Gregg Dedrick, president of KFC Corp.

It took a team of nearly 50 designers, engineers, scientists (including astrophysicists), architects and other professionals working nearly three months to conceive, create and execute building the world’s largest logo.

Via this guy; thanks Paul!

So, BoingBoing has a link to a YouTube video — somebody has spliced together Steve Jobs saying “boom” a whole bunch of times. I don’t want to watch it, but I do. I don’t want to laugh. I laugh. It ends. YouTube suggests I watch another video — somebody has spliced together Bill Gates saying “um” a whole bunch of times. Don’t want to watch, don’t want to laugh. Watch. Laugh.

Now I’m bringing it up here, with the links.

I hope someone does a dance mix.

We are all getting so much smarter, freer, and more empowered. Every day.

Some of the entrepreneurial DIY types among you — I know you’re out there — might be interested to read this from Grace Bonney of Design Sponge: A basic overview of making money from blogging. I’m really in no position to evaluate any of this on a practical level (I don’t even track readership of this site, let alone have any fantasies about selling ads here or whatever). And it’s a bit vague on some points, some numbers would have been interesting. But what’s there seems straightforward and, possibly, helpful.

The best thing about the piece, by the way, is that it’s all part of a “special promotion” for some American Express product on Slate. So I’m assuming — well, I’m hoping, for her sake — that Bonney actually got paid to write a post giving advice about making money from blogging! That’s why she’s Design Sponge, and you’re not.

According to Cellular News:

Research by Sheffield Hallam University and Virgin Mobile is reporting that British men consider their mobile phone an important status symbol — particularly in helping to attract the opposite sex. The research reveals that in an age when technology is king, and competition is rife, men see their phones as a tool to help them impress women. The study observed men and women in various different public locations including: restaurants, bars, coffee shops, shopping centres and pubs.

It revealed that many men believe that ‘Bond-esque’ phones with gadgets including video cameras and mp3 players will make them more desirable to females.

Furthermore, the research which also included focus groups and questionnaire surveys, found that in social situations men actively display their phones and its capabilities in a bid to look important and popular. The research suggests that this is done primarily to attract females but also used to show off and gain status with other men in their peer group.

Via Textually.