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Levi's Pop Branding

Levi's looks to Warhol to boost it's high-end jeans

Iconic American artist=Iconic American brand? Levis sure hopes so.

Levi's relationship with the artist dates to 1984, when it commissioned him to create art for its "501 Blues" ad campaign. "He wore Levi's most of his life," said Amy Gemellaro, a spokeswoman for the jeans maker.

Headphone Music

Now this takes narrowcasting to an absurd new height: a worldwide music festival where speakers are replaced by headphones:

Plug, held here Saturday, is just what you'd expect from a music fest: rotating performances in front of a live audience, socializing and plenty of beer. But the headphones (bring your own) replace a traditional concert's amplified speakers, and much of the socializing happens over a computer terminal linked to an IRC chat room, populated by members of the global audience listening to the performances over the internet. (from wirednews)

It's not the geekiest thing I've ever heard of, but it's pretty close.

MTV Mobile Content

Open Ad, a forum for ad creatives to pitch ideas for various campaigns, is holding an interesting one at the moment for MTV UK, inviting submissions for mobile phone content.  The mobile phone platform, still in its infancy as far as content goes, has potential for some pretty cool stuff.  Here's MTV's take:

Consumers are using this mobile phone content like ‘snacking’ - using it to fill time at a bus time or in a bar/pub. They use their phones to download and view video/audio clips by WAP or via a basic web browser, depending on their phone. This works like the internet but with less text and smaller images.

To date, MTV has mainly used this platform as a means to download clips of popular shows, but opening up to user-submitted content is a whole thing altogether, and quite smart.

Only In America?

A realer reality show: upcoming show Only In America examines American sub-cultures (via influx, hosts of M2, a new marketing conference that takes place in San Francisco on September 27).

Communication Magic

Evelyn Rodriguez, writing on her excellent Crossroads Dispatches site, cites the marketing wisdom of chiropractor Jeff Greenfield, who built a multi-million dollar business on word-of-mouth, as told in the book BuzzMarketing by Mark Hughes.  With so many parallels to things I've learned over the years as DJ, I'm motivated to post about some lessons learned from behind the decks (but will have to leave out the "multi-million" dollar part!).

Jeff Greenfield grew up in a small Florida suburb. He took a liking to magic and began performing his first magic tricks at age five. By age ten, he was regularly performing at parties and events, and making more money than his mother, a registered nurse.

His specialty was close-up magic. When Uri Geller became famous for his spoon-bending trick in the 1970s, Jeff Greenfield began performing the same trick, though still a teen, and was written up in the preeminent trade publication Magical Arts Journal...

Great magicians are often great marketers. And why is that? One guess could be that magicians have well-developed skills in sleight of hand, manipulation, and misdirection - just like a lot of today's marketing. Good guess, but that's not the reason. Great magicians have two keen abilities: They understand consumer behavior - how to influence people to look in one direction, and how to communicate with people one-on-one in setting up a trick and explaining what's about to happen.

Understanding consumer behavior and communicating extremely well one-on-one are two valuable skills in business. Most marketing gets discombobulated right here, because most marketers think in terms of their messages going out to thousands. That's the stage they are given: a mass-market stage.

The traditional marketing model sends each message out to people via a one-way vehicle (even when sending one message to those watching VH1 and another one to those watching Comedy Central). The marketing industry has grown up taking one-way communication for granted since the 1940s.

Magicians, however, start with a two-way communication model. If people don't gasp in wonder at their trick, it's like a stand-up comedian not getting a laugh. Magicians live for interaction and two-way communication, and have to be able to understand consumer expectations, exceed them, and communicate well to get the applause. And when the audience members reward a magician with that applause, what happens? They come back from their evening [and spread the word to all their friends.]

Misc Links

Adrants on ad agencies and weblogs

Ads vs. Product Placement

Kraft Recipes on your iPod

Google Talk launches

Marc Ecko vs. Da Mayor (via BrandNoise)

Airport Reading

NYT article on trend toward non-fiction at airport book shops.

"What might be also affecting this is the fact that there are a lot more of these quality narrative nonfiction books out there," she said.

But the trend has much to do with the customers themselves. Terry Kraml, of Trofie Productions, a marketing firm that works with airport bookstores, said that customers are drawn to serious nonfiction because they want information.

"People aren't going just to John Grisham for entertainment anymore," Ms. Kraml said. "People are looking for substance now."

Fruitstock

Innocent Drinks has been praised for their unique, innovative branding, and their annual Fruitstock festival sums up much about what is great about the company:  amazing live music, a yoga tent, a flirting area, a charity cd, farmers market and other feel-good attractions contribute to produce, by all accounts, a very successful event and experience that reflects the vibe of the company.  Kind of makes us wish we could be there to hear a couple of the acts (The Rebirth) and hang out a bit.

Warming Up

Nokia and Target are sponsors for this year's Warm Up, a music festival at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, which features electronic music artists, djs, and art installations. Nokia's innovative program includes photo galleries put together with pics snapped using Nokia camera phones (they're very good).  Target's involvement is light-hearted and fun: tons of beach balls released to crowd to bounce around (and burst), branded seat cushions, and cool little electric Target fans were given out.  A quick search on flickr revealed some great photos of the event, and some rather revealing, and very positive, commentary from the flickr user on the Target sponsorship.  In fact, the commentary on Target's promotion was so positive (one comment stated something along the lines of "it must be so cool to do marketing for Target!") it might make a cynic of manufactured word-of-mouth slightly suspicious.  That's all we need now: buzz agent-type infiltrators on sites like flickr sneaking in with promotional plugs!

"It's OK To Be Ghetto"

You might think the fine folks over at Fedex might have better things to do than send cease and desist letters to broke people crafting furniture out of boxes. 

Wired picked up on the story, and now who looks like a big bad meanie?