Kindle Ads

While I was at my mother’s home on Thanksgiving, I caught a new Kindle advertisement on television. In previous weeks, I’d seen the other installments in the same campaign, where a man holding a Kindle passive-aggressively debates its merit over paper books with a woman whom we are evidently supposed to think is stuck in the dark ages because she still reads things that take up physical space. Each commercial ended with the woman tacitly acknowledging that the Kindle owner was right to ridicule her, even though I as a viewer never found his explanation of the equivalence between books and e-books to be persuasive.

In the latest entry into the campaign, the dinosaur lady has evidently accepted the superiority of e-book readers completely, and she now appears as a fellow Kindle owner, sloughing off the last of her reluctance to the change. I am guessing that this development means that the advertisers are confident that e-book readers have handily won the competition, and that no further convincing is necessary. Perhaps they’re right; perhaps people like me will never be convinced, but everyone else has already gone over. It doesn’t quite seem fair, though. It’s not as though a coalition of print publishers and booksellers have been running ads in favor of the other side.

I earnestly wish that there was such creative competition going on. Whenever I saw those advertisements, I was fascinated by how ineffective they were for me personally, and it repeatedly occurred to me that the difference between an argument for and against physical books is just a matter of different interpretations of the same information. For instance, one of the Kindle commercials began with the Kindle owner commenting on the size of the shoulder bad that the woman was carrying. Beaming, she explained how many books and magazines it was capable of holding. When the man responds by pointing out that his Kindle holds 3,500 books and only weighs eight and a half ounces, we see the physical equivalent of that much literature piling up in the space around them.

I recall thinking when I originally saw that ad, “wait, are we supposed to take it for granted that having that much literature in one device is preferable to having it in the form of books?” From my perspective, the ad was presenting two distinct alternatives and essentially inviting me to choose the one that the advertisers are competing against. Given the choice between an eight and a half ounce piece of plastic and circuitry, and a personal library in my home lined with 3,500 individual volumes, there’s absolutely no contest. I would much rather have an array of books that I can keep on display, take down off a shelf when I need them, lend out to curious friends, and generally appreciate. That seems like the obvious choice to me, but I’m sure that there are a great many consumers who don’t think that much about it, and do accept the assumptions of advertisers. So I really wish I had the means to run advertisements disseminating the opposite angle on the same scene.

Another thing to consider is why holding 3,500 books in one place is considered an advantage for the consumer. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t read nearly as much as I would like to or should, but are other people typically plowing through 3,500 books in a year? If not, why the hell would they need to carry that many with them on a daily basis? Again, if one owns that much literature, it seems to me that it’s far better off in a personal library. The only reason I can see why a person would own thousands of books, unless he was an antiquarian, is because he has been collecting them over the course of a lifetime. And of course people do just that with their paper books. But how many people hold onto and use the same piece of technology for decades? What, then, is the point of trapping decades’ worth of books in a single electronic device? Considerations like this leave me with the impression that if anyone is impressed with the fact that a Kindle holds 3,500 books, it’s purely because it’s a big number, not because of any practical advantage of that feature. Unfortunately, it would probably take a snappy television ad to make that fact known.

Another of the Kindle ads consists of the man smugly showing the woman that a Kindle can be read just like a real book, being unaffected by glare from the sun, and saving one’s place in the text just as well as one would save her place in a book by folding down the page. She feebly protests that he doesn’t get “the rewarding feeling of actually folding down the page,” then demonstrates, realizes that’s a ridiculous advantage for books, as asks to see the Kindle. This one strikes me as straightforwardly disingenuous. The woman starts by saying that she only reads real books, and the man casually responds that he is reading a real book. At that point I wish I could chime in and tell him, “shut up, douchebag, you know what she meant.”

I don’t think anybody who maintains a preference for physical, paper books does so on the basis of some misconception that you can’t read the words on a Kindle screen, or that you have to go to night school in order to navigate one. But there is a distinct, obvious difference between reading a physical book and reading an e-book. There really isn’t any argument to be made against that. Each individual is free to decide which one they experientially prefer, but to say that they’re the same and that technological convenience is therefore the only consideration is just demonstrably false.

I don’t dog-ear the pages of my books. In fact, I like to try to keep them in as pristine condition as possible. So I don’t get any rewarding feeling from actually folding down the page of a paper book. But I do like the fact that books are capable of acquiring personal character in that way. Again, there’s a place for a contrary advertisement here, emphasizing that there is an advantage to being able to manipulate and even manhandle your physical books. Every dog-eared page might remind a person of a time and place, or mark off personally meaningful passages so that they are more easily accessible than they ever could be while lost in the binary code of countless other passages in three thousand other books on an e-book reader.

And indeed, real books will take much more abuse than mere folded-down pages. If there was a market for advertisements promoting the simple practice of reading physical books, I would like to design one that depicts a single book being dropped and an entire library shelf shattering. The scene would ask the audience if such a thing has ever happened to them, and remind them that if they store all of their books on one sensitive piece of technology, it just might.

But unfortunately, there’s no one to present an alternative ad campaign, no unified front against the advance of unnecessary technological replacements. The fact that the Kindle has been selling itself by striving to undercut not its competitor e-book readers, but the actual concept of physical books strikes me as fairly unprecedented. It is as if internet service providers had run ads championing the obsolescence of television, or television manufacturers had produced commercials prompting people to throw out their radios once and for all. But if either of those things had happened, one would assume that television networks or radio broadcasters would push back against it.

Presumably, in the case of books, large publishers and distributers would stand to profit more from the sales of electronic downloads, given low overhead. Barnes and Noble seems to have no interest in safeguarding the future of its physical stores, seeing as every time I go into one, I am confronted with a kiosk promoting their own e-book reader just inside the door. It almost seems to implore people to walk in, avoid the bookshelves altogether, walk out, and do all their future shopping from home.

Meanwhile, small print publishers and local bookshops have no resources with which to try to change the public perception of the divide between e-books and print books. I think that if there was not such an imbalance of resources, people could be swayed in either direction. It may be selfish of me, but I lament the fact that media pressure pushes people in favor of the high-tech alternative, as I know that if the trend moves quickly enough in that direction, it will eventually mean the virtual extinction of print publishing, and with it the beauty of constantly evolving personal and public libraries, and an entire category of human experience. I can’t accept that future.

As it stands, there’s no relying on commercial media to counteract dominant trends, so I have to merely hope for enough people to reach breaking points in their experience of the negative aspects of e-readers or in their understanding of the irrelevance of their ostensible advantages, so that this relentless advertising, which targets physical media and unique identity as competitors, loses some of its power.

Now I AM Mad at Netflix

You know, I actually defended Netflix when it originally announced its price increase. Admittedly, part of the reason was that I have an emotional attachment to physical media, and although I recognized that separating the pricing was a move toward discouraging the DVDs by mail service, I determined that it wouldn’t harm that side of the business artificially. I figured that people with the money would hang onto both services and demonstrate the continued relevance of both media that you can hold in your hand and the United States Post Office. I also supposed that certain people like me would cast a vote in favor of those things by keeping only that service. I think Netflix discovered, to their evident chagrin, that I was right.

And in a move that will become a prominent case study in future business textbooks, the solution that they decided upon in response to unexpectedly negative customer feedback was to issue an arrogant non-apology while pushing the original idea to a further and more alienating extreme. Instead of simply retaining two price structures for different services and letting customers demonstrate their demand within the existing business model, Netflix will now be separating the two services into two completely separate businesses, with separate billings, separate websites, separate ratings information, even separate brand names, and ultimately completely separate customers.

In a replay of the July chorus, the response from customers and persons with common sense about how a business should operate has been overwhelmingly derisive. The perfectly obvious complaint is that the company is making it impossibly difficult for customers to utilize the dual service that they have already had access to. The Oatmeal quickly responded with this cartoon: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix. One of the thousands of commenters on the Netflix blog post compared this move to separating phone service into a company devoted to talking and one devoted to listening. References to New Coke abound. People are predicting still more declines in the stock value of the company.

In his post, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained, no doubt disingenuously, that the complete severance of the DVDs by mail portion of the business is aimed at allowing management teams for each business to focus completely on their own needs, thereby helping the DVD portion to survive for longer. Now, I have no formal education in business management, but I’m pretty sure that it’s possible for a company and a subsidiary company to be managed separately, but share billings and retain user interface that is already well in place. Even if the creation of a separate site was deemed necessary for clarity’s sake or simply for the sake of a symbolic fresh start, I find it impossible to believe that Netflix couldn't have designed two separate sites that share ratings and reviews from customers who have accounts with both.

I call absolute bullshit on Hastings’ claim that he wants the DVDs by mail service to be around for as long as possible. Completely and unnecessarily divorcing the two services forces customers to choose one or the other. They are trying to deliberately, perhaps artificially, reduce demand for the portion of their business model that involves an investment of physical resources. And if that fact isn’t evident simply from the effort to sequester the older service away from the newer, they’ve even given it an awful, awful new name. The red envelope will now bear the name “Qwikster,” a name which I can only imagine was artfully designed to imply obsolescence.

The new brand remains true to the original by having two syllables and in no other way. Those two syllables combine two assaults on the durability and desirability of the business into one absurdly shitty name. To start with the more obvious act of sabotage, I would say that Netflix’s marketing department attached the suffix “-ster” to the new brand explicitly to place it in the company of businesses that are already defunct and to make it feel at home there. “-ster” was commonly attached to web business names about a decade ago, and has never been used with anything new that had a shot at being successful since then. Napster and Friendster still exist, as far as I know, but nobody cares, nobody really uses them, and the prospects for them growing in the future are slim to nil. By making the older half of their business of a piece with these oldsters, Netflix is transparently broadcasting the fact that it perceives Qwikster to already be in the same position of neglect, or that they want it to be.

More likely the latter given the other half of the brand. “Qwik,” Mr. Hastings helpfully informs us, is supposed to refer to the quick delivery offered to customers. So in order to promote the longevity of their premier service, they’ve chosen to emphasize the one feature by which it pales in comparison to the company’s other brand, which is now being put forth as a competitor. I’ll say a lot in praise of the DVDs by mail service, but by modern standards, quick it is not. The Netflix marketing team seems to be banking on the idea that every time they read the name on that little red envelope, the word “quick” will be on their minds and they’ll think, “Gee, I wouldn’t have had to wait a day for my entertainment if I had just chosen another title that’s available to stream online and watched that instead.”

Despite the strengths that they could have emphasized, they instead chose to create a new brand identity based on the one modest weakness that will repel all the shortsighted customers who can be trained to value convenience over quality. They could have called it PickFlix, or ClearFlix, or Doesn’t-rebuffer-or-increase-strain-on-your-ISP-Flix. Or they could have just called it Netflix Mail. But they went with Qwikster. They may as well have just called it Waitster and made the logo a cartoon of a guy looking at his watch while getting older. This goes beyond bad branding. It was never intended to be good branding. Reed Hastings wasn’t caught off guard by the blowback he received today; he was counting on it. As far as I can tell, his attitude is that anyone who still wants his company to mail them any of their 100,000 DVD titles can fuck right off. Go check some other dead and decaying websites, then put on a big band LP and type a letter to the editor on your Smith-Corona, you dinosaurs. Reed Hastings is too plugged in to the rapid changes of the modern market to stop and give a shit about whether you still want what he was offering you back when his company’s stock was more valuable and you were paying less.

I suppose that given the theme of this blog, I should give Hastings my respect. He’s trying to force a breaking point. But it’s a decidedly negative breaking point for most people concerned. If we accept the shitty deal he’s giving to his loyal customers, we demonstrate that decreased quality and selection is okay as long as we get our poor, limited goods quickly. On the other hand, we could spin this breaking point in our favor. I’ll be curious to see how many more subscribers they’ve lost after another month. I’m not sure how I’m going to respond yet. Netflix has been my only reliable source of entertainment for some time. The price hike hasn’t taken effect for me yet. I was planning on just keeping the DVD side, but now I’m not sure whether to support Qwikster despite the fact that it’s designed to dissuade support and is owned by someone who’s happy to treat his customers like gullible fools, or to try to find something else.

I actually didn’t know that Blockbuster had changed to a monthly subscription model. When did that happen and why wasn’t it four years ago? There’s also apparently something called Green Cine, which doesn’t have much of a site but seems well-priced and is uniquely focused on independent and classic titles. There might also still be one privately owned DVD rental store in my area. That could be neat in light of my nostalgia for physical media. I don’t think I’ve gone inside a building to rent a film since I was a kid.

Claire McCaskill: Naive, Pollyannish, and Correct

On Wednesday’s episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart ridiculed Senator Claire McCaskill for her comments in a hearing on the financial future of the United States Post Office. She recounted sending letters from college to her family, and lamented the fact that there are no such physical keepsakes arriving at her home from her college-aged children today. She then mused that an advertising campaign promoting the value of physical letters might have a positive impact on the USPS’s revenue stream.

Mere moments after I watched the Daily Show segment on Hulu, I read a post at Jack Marshall’s blog, Ethics Alarms, in which he thoroughly upbraided McCaskill for the same commentary. He concluded his post by saying that her remarks constituted a “level of demonstrated incompetence and stupidity that mandates removal from high office.”

I dare say it’s a little extreme to advocate that someone be removed from office based on having simply expressed an off-the-cuff idea, and one which McCaskill prefaced by acknowledging that it may seem “naïve” and “pollyannish.” Now, of it was foolish of McCaskill to bring it up in that context, and to apparently be just spit-balling ideas during an official government hearing. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, though, as far as I know, that’s just the way these things go. There may often be an informal tone in these sorts of hearings, which encourages a free exchange of thoughts. And appropriate or not, that is exactly what McCaskill was engaged in. That is not demonstrated incompetence. She didn’t actively structure a policy around her reflections. She didn’t do anything except share an idea that some people took very seriously and saw as a decidedly bad idea.

I actually disagree with them. I don’t think it’s all that bad an idea. Now, if she thought that effective advertising would completely turn around the Post Office’s revenue problems and that they would all then be able to go on with business as usual, her naiveté is quite incredible. There’s no reason to assume that, though. I see no reason to assume that she meant anything other than that it might help a little, which I think is true.

Jack Marshall’s derision of the idea almost comes across as a tirade against letter-writing, and both he and Jon Stewart seem to be of the opinion that traditional mail is dead, that nothing will revive it, and that technology moves inexorably from one item to the next, leaving the past buried in its wake. That perception is disputed at least in a modest sense by a study that was detailed on NPR some months ago, in which the author claimed that nothing that had ever been produced in the past has since stopped being produced altogether. Of course, that’s far from saying that any older technologies or practices remain commonplace, or rebound, but in my observation some do.

Marshall writes:

"If the Senator’s idea works, maybe we can use the same approach to bring back the use of other obsolete and inferior technologies. Like…typewriters! Didn’t you love that ‘clack-clack-clack-ding!‘ sound? Phonographs! And telegrams! Ah, there was such a thrill when you got one of those!"

I found that passage amusing to read, considering that I am twenty-six years old and I own two typewriters and a record player, both of which I use. The record player is a Crosley model that was manufactured in recent years. I do as a matter of fact like the clack-clack-clack-ding of typewriters. As a writer, I find that it reassures me of my progress and helps me to establish a rhythm. I also appreciate the concept of having a physical concept of my work without having to go through the further process of printing it out. That is essentially the same reason why I prefer personal correspondence in the form of handwritten letters, rather than e-mail. I know for a fact that I am not the only one in my age bracket who feels this way. When I was in college, e-mail was already quite dominant, but I had several friends with whom I exchanged letters, because we thought it preferable to have a space of time between correspondences, and to be able to open physical envelopes, which imbued the messages with greater significance.

Marshall seems to not realize, or to ignore the fact that some of the technologies he refers to as obsolete and inferior have remained current even in the presence of domination from their competitors. I was able to buy a new record player a few years ago because they are still marketed to some segments of the population. Naturally, some of these are seniors with disposable retirement income, who still have vinyl records from their earlier years and would like to hold onto them, and perhaps convert them to mp3 and CD formats. However, newly pressed vinyl has seen a significant resurgence in recent years, because advertising and word-of-mouth has informed people that it actually provides a better sound quality than the alternatives. It is a niche market, but audiophiles and music snobs are now willing to spend more on a high-quality vinyl record than a CD. For my part, I am happy to purchase used records for one dollar at the local thrift store because as long as they are well-preserved, the overall sound quality remains superior, and I also like the hands-on aspect of it, the fact that the need to turn over the record at the halfway point encourages you to remain engaged with the music, and to listen actively.

I have noticed the same sort of resurgence with typewriters, which I began to see being sold new in office supply stores starting a couple of years ago. I expect the reason is that people have realized – or manufacturers have realized they can try to convince people – that they are preferable in some professional contexts for fundamentally the same reason that I prefer them when writing fiction. That is, they provide an immediate physical copy, a fact that probably benefits businesses when they would rather not waste time by scanning, modifying, and printing existing forms and documents.

So why not actually promote the USPS as a means of personal communication? It’s not unheard of. The Swedish post office embarked on a creative ad campaign in the Christmas 2009 season, and from what little I know it was rather effective. It seems to me that the mistake that the government and the Post Office has been consistently making is that they have been going about business as usual, failing to make necessary structural changes to their operations in order to reduce costs, and also failing to implement any strategies in order to increase revenue. Both are necessary to save the institution, and despite what Jon Stewart or Jack Marshall would have us believe, it’s not all that ridiculous to think that people can be guided towards choosing something in spite of its not being on the cutting edge.

To my mind, this entire subject speaks to something deeper about modern American perceptions of marketing. That is, we seem not to have any such perception. In the context of constant information and ongoing consumer profiling, people who are in the business of selling things to other people have gotten so caught up in the “people” and “things” elements of that equation that they’ve utterly forgetting about the “selling” part.

In season four of Mad Men, there is a scene in which Don Draper clashes with an expert brought in to do market research on how to sell skin cream to women. Her interviews find support the notion that the traditional angle is the only angle: convince them that using it will help them to get married. Draper had been pushing for another interpretation, no doubt guided in part by his own resistance to the confining set of options offered by society, and the woman insists that there doesn’t seem to be a new approach to be had. Draper stands his ground by saying that of course no such approach would come out in the market research. Neither the product manufacturer nor the potential customers would know what they’re looking for until someone tells them. That’s what makes it new.

Was marketing really like that once upon a time? Is there any creative appeal left in marketing now? All the sales of products seem to be obtained through algorithms which pick out the sort of people whose consumption patterns demonstrate a proclivity for consuming those products. We seem to feel that all we need to do is isolate the people who want something, and then tell them to obtain it. But good advertising is capable of targeting people who don’t yet want something and convincing them that they do. Great marketing can convince them that they want it even though it’s different from what they’ve gotten accustomed to, even though it seems, at first blush, to be inferior, even though it’s old. But that idea is apparently so passé that Jon Stewart and Jack Marshall find it to be laughably indefensible.

Ad Libs

I heard an absurd radio advertisement today. "Manure," it began, "It's not a pretty word, but that's what some fertilizers are made of." Good start, that. It's not indicative of a very rigorously thought-out ad campaign that the first volley of attack on the competition is that a word associated with them simply doesn't have a euphonious sound. The announcer went on to talk down about manure-based fertilizers for a few seconds, but what really caught my ear was the effort at selling the product being advertised. The copy proudly pointed out that apart from its being "high energy," the alternative to manure is preferable because it is organic.

Amidst the fervent effort to greenwash products, have we actually forgotten what the term "organic" means? What could the livestock possibly be eating to make their excrement anything other than organic? It is stupefying to think that advertising agencies may actually expect consumers to leap at the sound of appealing language without thinking for two seconds about the meaning behind it. Worse still is the thought that they may be right. That suggests that the job of modern advertisers must be wonderfully easy. Either that or the industry is seriously lacking in truly effective, genuine creativity.

In many cases, advertisement seems to consist of little more than a professional game of mad libs:

[Competitor or general class of product] doesn't want you to know that it's [scary sounding but innocuous adjective]. But [our product] is better because it is/has [familiar but meaningless buzzword].

I hope for a breaking point on both sides. Consumers need to be more discerning, so as to not be taken in by the most obvious, unoriginal branding, which is rooted in nothing more than an attempt to repeat and bastardize the simplest terminology of current social awareness. But not everybody is that simple-minded, and this sort of advertising can only have a rather limited effect. Just painting something with the bland colors of glaringly obvious trends does not sell a product on its actual merits. For the sake of their products and for the sake of basic self-respect, advertisers need to hold themselves to a higher standard than this.

Other Views on the Below

I continued to follow the Buffalo rebranding story after my comment last night, and I'm pleased to see that many others are recognizing it as terrible, if for somewhat different reasons. There is an excellent tearing-down of it at WNY Media. The article is very thorough and well-thought out, despite not addressing the major issue that I expressed about it in my post yesterday.

The WNY Media piece also brings up a small meme that spread over Twitter in response to the press release, using the hash tag buffslogan to suggest satirical alternative brands for the city. Scrolling through those posts turns up a handful of real winners, like:

“Buffalo: Your city’s unemployment is low because of our people.”

“Buffalo: Come see what the rest of the country is laughing at.”

“The city that never wakes.”

“Buffalo: You come for the wings. You leave shortly afterwards!”

“You’re always fifteen minutes from being fifteen minutes further away from here.”

“Buffalo: Coming soon.”

“Buffalo: We’re here, fuck it.”

And there’s definitely something to be said for this contribution: “But seriously, Buffalo, no one cares what your slogan is. They just want to not be sad as a result of their visit.”

The satirical treatment of this topic also came in the form of a sendup of the video that came out alongside the unveiling of the brand. The video at that link makes some very amusing comments, but ultimately I feel that it gets away from itself as it goes on. Still, it’s really nice to see anyone doing satire about Buffalo, because laughter really is a wonderful way to address problems.

I remember that when I had just discovered Mike Polk’s absolutely brilliant Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Videos, I searched for Buffalo on Youtube, wondering if anyone had attempted similar satire of this similarly crumbling rust belt town. What I found instead was several doting tribute videos, many of them emphasizing Buffalo’s sports fandom as an admirable feature of the city’s very character, and as something that proved it to be a great place to live. But it has long been my feeling that sports fanaticism is a direct side-effect of living in a faded, downtrodden place. Knowing that there isn’t much else to be proud of or to hope for, you channel all of your hope and positive spirit into the performance of sports teams. But that’s just another form of self-delusion.

Apparently a couple of radio personalities on Buffalo’s sports talk station WGR devoted a sizable portion of their air time this morning to the discussion of the video that Visit Buffalo Niagara had released, which they derided for its failure to mention either the Bills or the Sabres. Now, granted these are sports talk guys, so as a rule, that is all they think about, but still this is a truly asinine complaint. As terrible as the For Real campaign is, that’s the one place where it’s got it right. Buffalo needs to put focus on different things – things that don’t strike us with the knee-jerk reaction of stadium excitement – in order to broaden its appeal beyond the reach of people who actually live here. Nobody’s going to travel to Buffalo, NY to see an NFL or NHL game. They can do that at home or in a city with more to offer besides.

Tragically, though, Buffalo is the sort of place where some very vocal people, though complaining about something that has certainly earned criticism, will attack it from exactly the wrong angle. The WGR personalities, and no doubt many other locals, look at a very bad piece of creative marketing, and decide that what’s wrong with it is that it is too high-brow, too distant from the familiar. The last thing we need is to keep on channeling our energy through the same useless outlets.

Buffalonians need to come to a breaking point in their understanding of what they’re up against, but some of them have much farther to go than others. Despite all of my criticisms, I’ll say this for Visit Buffalo Niagara: at least they’re actually trying something new. They just fucked it up, that’s all.

Change, Where Needed Least

The local tourism board has unveiled a new brand identity for the city in which I begrudgingly hang my hat. In my frank and honest, opinion, it is a stunningly awful, sorely misguided attempt at marketing a severely damaged city. The slogan that apparently emerged not from a journal kept by a marketing director on a bender, but from several brainstorming sessions comprised of a variety of advertising professionals was “Buffalo. For Real.”

First of all, this is a terrific example of the danger of mistaking something for simplicity when in fact it’s over-simplification. There is an absolutely unsophisticated connotation to a brand of this sort, one that could only have been bested by settling instead upon “Buffalo. For Really Reals.” The phrase “for real” is not only grammatically flawed, it conveys no information. It functions, at best, as an interjection, and in the long run, perhaps I will be one of the people to get the most mileage out of this brand, in that it will be a nice alternate for the word “fuck.”

“You live in Buffalo? That sucks.”

“For real.”

And that’s the real (for real) crux of the problem. My very first reaction to this was to observe that the people in charge of promoting Buffalo and dressing up its numerous, deep-seeded flaws had decided upon a brand identity that encourages people confronted with it to think about the things least worth emphasizing for the sake of tourism.

You know what I think of when I think of Buffalo, for real? I think of crumbling buildings scattered throughout the cityscape. I think of debilitating poverty hanging over many of its residents from cradle to grave. I think of the sixth greatest level of segregation in the United States. I think of population decline, unemployment, poor infrastructure, appallingly corrupt politicians, and vacant retail space in the city’s only commercially viable areas. I think of the death of the American city.

Somehow the video that Visit Buffalo Niagara released to coincide with this new found brand identity manages to begin by trying to speak to the exact opposite, portraying Buffalo as unique and distinctive, in contrast to the “sameness of the interstate.” It also encourages the poisonous notion that there is somehow a real America and a fake America, and that the roughshod, poorly positioned people and places are somehow more genuine than people with an urban identity or a measure of social mobility.

There’s something ironic about the fact that Buffalo tourism wants to emphasize the reality not just of this town but of an ostensibly overlooked national character, because actually acknowledging the ignored reality would entail clearly recognizing all those terrible things I mentioned above. Acknowledging the ignored reality would be in stark contrast to the broader goals and worldview of Visit Buffalo Niagara and all those who narrow their vision to focus upon the tenuous handful of nice things this place has going for it and claim therefore that Buffalo is really a great town.

“For real” doesn’t really work as a brand identity, because the impulse to attach a cheerful, positive brand to a place like this relies upon a great deal of delusion. And that sort of delusion is evident throughout the tourism video.

"Now, some might say time has left our town behind," the narrator says near the halfway point of his excruciating four minute monologue. "Prosperity has moved on, our moment passed. And no one would argue that we haven't had our share of hard knocks. Yet, despite the odds, we're still here."

Despite the odds, we're still here? Much like the slogan itself, this means nothing. Are we to believe that the odds were once in favor of the city of Buffalo being wiped completely off the map? We're still here, sure, because despite the best efforts of population trends, not everybody can leave all at once. But those of us who have both the will and the means to escape have done so, and we will continue to do so unless something fairly dramatic happens - something far more impactful than a whole lot of optimism about a new brand identity. Yes, we're still here, but what isn't here is much that makes Buffalo worth living in, or even visiting. For real.

What's New?

I am pleased to say that I had no idea that a new singing talent contest launched tonight on NBC. I just happened to hear an audio ad for it earlier this evening announcing the premiere of the network’s “new – and different! – …show.” That’s the way it was read. The announcer delivered the line so that you could actually hear the dashes separating – and emphasizing! – “different.”

I think it’s laughable that the ad agency that wrote that line didn’t realize that making a special effort to distinguish yourself from an alternative belies your sincerity about how different you actually are. In fairness, giving a certain description to your brand doesn’t actually mean the description is false, but pushing to be identified a certain way is a sure sign that you’re insecure about it, if not downright dishonest.

All they’ve done by writing that promo is call attention directly to the fact that everybody suspects this to be something of an unoriginal idea. And indeed it is unoriginal. Painfully unoriginal. Even putting aside American Idol, haven’t we seen enough television talent competitions yet? And more to the point, is the notion of originality even still present in the entertainment machine?

Something is seriously wrong when the people whose job it is to promote the same old trash aren’t even putting effort into distinguishing the brand they’re supposed to be marketing beyond simply saying “this has a different name – buy it!” I’m not sure whether this means that they’re aware of their own disingenuity and think of the audience as sufficiently easily manipulated that saying “it’s different” is enough to get them to tune in, or that they’re so committed to the modus operandi of putting new spins on horribly played out ideas that they don’t even recognize that there was ever an original way of creating content.

Depending on which it is, the breaking point needs to come either from consumers taking a broad look at their lack of original choices and ceasing to tune into the new version of the same crap, or from some portion of the entertainment industry having the gall to say, “Hey, we value our creativity, and we believe that if we take a chance on something genuinely good, rather than just established, the public will pay attention to it.” But if it comes of the latter, I worry about whether we would prove them right or wrong.

Good Timing, I Guess

I think it’s fascinating that Farley Granger’s death got so much media attention. I’ll confess that I had no idea who the man was, though seeing as I was born in 1985, that shouldn’t be read as an attempt to impugn his significance in the history of film. It’s not that I find the ubiquity of reports of his death to be interesting because I don’t think they’re deserved. I’m just surprised that he wasn’t overlooked in the way that so many other deceased celebrities have been in recent years.

The reason I feel this is worth blogging about is that I think it says something remarkable about marketing and public relations. It goes to show that even in death a person’s public image is not immune to the random influence of fortuitous coincidence. Remember when David Carradine died in the summer of 2009, followed that same month by Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, who died on the same day? I’ll be you do. And the popular media was on quite a death kick for a while in response.

Remember also in 2009 not hearing about Ricardo Montalban and Henry Gibson passing on? That’s because Montalban’s death came in January when there were other things to focus on, like the Obama inauguration, and Gibson waited until autumn to leave the mortal coil, long after the media’s deathwatch ended. It’s not as though either of those men was especially iconic, at least as compared to Fawcett and Jackson. But they were both better actors than David Carradine, and they were both more visible to people born after the seventies than was Farah Fawcett. You may not even known Henry Gibson by name, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that his face triggers an acid flashback of filmological memories. And that being the case, I’m sure his role in the history of cinema was roughly as notable as Farley Granger.

I think Granger’s immediate legacy benefited a great deal from his death coming right on the heels of that of Elizabeth Taylor, whose passing nobody could have possibly ignored. There’s a tendency for the news to pick up on a narrative and follow it for a while, cherry-picking the news in order to mold it into that shape. The “Summer of the Shark” is a prime example that I will always remember. In this case, I think that after Taylor’s death, the media was looking for a sequel, and Granger benefitted by way of the pure luck of dying. It’s kind of unsettling to know that it can work that way, and it may be rather cynical to think of it as roughly the same as the effect of adjacent magazine advertisements on one another. But that’s the way of things, and while I’d like to see a breaking point in the media’s construction of narratives, when it comes to the marketing and public relations aspect of this story, I’m comfortable with taking it as a purely instructive tale.

Small-Minded Press

Last weekend, I attended the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. While I took an interest in a handful of the vendors that were present, for the most part I came away with quite negative thoughts about the driving forces behind most of the projects represented.

First and foremost, after about five minutes of looking, I had the distinct feeling that, more than anything else, affluence drives all of this. I don't have a great deal of respect for those sorts of small presses, which are clearly not struggling to stay financially afloat, but are led by people who can pour money into them without ever needing to break even. They may love what they're doing, but I think the event was advertised to the public as a showcase for industry professionals. Instead, it was comprised almost entirely of people who are able to maintain their presses and publications purely as hobbies, because they have neither the need nor the ambition to be demonstrably successful with it.

Obviously, my class-consciousness bears upon my perspective on the event. It would be one thing had I observed collective ventures supported by many individuals each with modest means, spurred on by an earnest belief in the literary alternative they're providing. But in fact, the vast majority of tables were manned by individuals with professionally bound copies of their own books and magazines, and I must say that it just doesn't seem fair that they be able to disseminate their works on account of their affluence, while seriously committed artists elsewhere struggle to make ends meet.

And I find that impulse among the small press owners frustrating for this other reason: Why wouldn't you, if you don't actually have to sell your work in order to make a living, devote yourself to developing a presence in large presses, so that you can be more visible as an artist? I can't avoid coming to the same conclusion about this that I've come to about other artists and groups in the past. In particular, it reminds me of criticisms I've made of the large but stubbornly amateur audio drama community on the internet. It seems to me that there are a great many artists who insist on remain amateur, and won't entertain the ideas of either profit or editorial oversight, precisely because being professional opens them up to a great deal of criticism.

There was one table at the book fair that encapsulated the problem of small presses better than any other. I was there with a friend, and as we were taking a second pass of the exhibition space, we both paused in front of a table displaying a pile of chapbooks and a large white board with a network of multicolored scrawls, seemingly designed by a schizophrenic, under the heading "The 21st Century Dude." I'm happy to ignore things that I don't think are worth trying to understand, but my friend was practically transfixed by the bizarreness of this thing, and quietly commented to me that she wanted to ask the person behind the table what it meant, but was concerned about offending her. I said that the woman was there to talk about what she was selling, and that my friend should just ask her to explain her project. Somewhat crudely rendering my advice, she timidly walked up to the table and, pointing squarely at the white board, asked a more direct question. "Hi, um, could you tell me... What is this?"

I don't think the vendor's answer could be considered an answer, and it certainly didn't seem to register the obvious confusion. "Well, this is a chart of all the categories that we think make up the twenty-first century dude. And it looks at their different combinations, and how they interact. And, I mean, they've all existed before, but..."

I came up alongside my friend and picked up a chapbook to peruse the table of contents. "Okay," I said to the vendor, a tall bespectacled woman of about thirty, "So could you tell me, what is the focus of your publication?"

"What is the focus of the publication," she repeated flatly, as if not comprehending the words, and then picked up one of the books herself, as if ready to search for the answer. "Well, it's about the twenty-first century dude - trying to define it, what it is, what he believes, what it means."

"Okay," I said as I set down the book. The most forgiving thought that I could entertain was that maybe this was some kind of hipster irony that I was simply not cool enough to understand. I gave a look to my friend, and walked away with her, thoroughly convinced that this was just not going to make any sense to me. When we got a safe distance away, we laughed our asses off.

What really struck me about that table was how off-guard the woman was when I just asked her to explain what she was publishing. Honestly, she reacted as if she had never been asked that question before, and never even anticipated that it might come up. And that's almost understandable. These small presses, and other creative ventures like them, are used to dealing with their friends, or repeat customers, or with people who already think the way they do. Most of them, thus, are unprepared for the culture shock of thrusting themselves into a public event where they need to reach out to people not already in their niche. Consequently, virtually none of the vendors at this event had any marketing sense.

Apart from general curiosity, I had gone to the event in the hopes of doing some networking for both my creative and business writing. I really should have passed my card out to everyone I found interesting, but I had the same problem as my friend did in asking the vendor to explain her white board. How do I approach people who need help marketing without insulting them? "Hey, your table sucks because I have no idea what you're selling. You look like you could use my help." Besides, is it worth offering my services in the fields of marketing and advertising to people who are specifically not interested in professional success anyway?

It's really a shame. There were a few publications, presses, and artisans represented there who seemed to have terrific talent and focus, and those ones I would love to help move in a more professional direction. But I don't think they'd be interested. I've seen it before, and it always makes me feel sad and, as a person with earnest creative aspirations, lonely. I want the people around me to take themselves as seriously as I take myself, and hell, as serious as I take them. I've known many people whose multi-faceted talents fill me with jealousy, but who just aren't committed to utilizing them. Can our own skills and overly delicate aspirations drive us to a breaking point?

I'd love to start seeing that. I want the people I respect to start looking around at the overwhelming volumes of people all trying to express themselves creatively, and decided it's time to snap themselves away from the crowd. It's worth it to be professional, because that's how you'll have an influence outside of your own circle. It's worth it to open yourself up to criticism, because that's how you'll learn what works and what doesn't, and that's how you'll learn to be better. As a writer myself, that's what I want. Am I alone in that?