Big Secret Pizza Party

Herman Melville, fan-fiction author.

I've been wanting to write this post forever (or any post, really) but time has not been my friend lately.  But I'm getting to it now, and I guess that's what counts.

I've had a few literary dots serendipitously connect themselves for me over the past month or so, which is a cool and rare experience, I think. 

Awhile back, I read Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends - a great book of essays and observations, many of them about authors I share his affinity for (Philip Pullman, and others).    Anyway, there's a quote from Moby Dick at the beginning of the book that I'd wondered about ever since, but never explored.  Here it is, verbatim:

"The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity."

- Herman Melville, on the writing of fan fiction

Clearly the thing I'd wondered about was how Chabon attributed the quote - to Melville on the writing of fan fiction, versus to Ishmael, who is the narrator of Moby Dick.   (There are tons of references in Maps and Legends to fan fiction - I wrote about last January here.)   I don't think I ever explored it though, and forgot all about it until my recent honeymoon on Block Island, when I read a book that I borrowed from my mom called In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.   

Apparently the story of the Essex is incredibly well known, especially in New England, although I'd never heard about it growing up.   It's a true story of a whaleship from Nantucket that was destroyed by an aggressive attack from a sperm whale (the whales they were hunting) in the South Pacific in 1820.  The story spread far and wide, due mainly to the fact that the crewmembers in lifeboats were forced to eat their fellow shipmates to survive after the ship sank.    The prologue to the book makes it incredibly clear that this story - the story of the Essex, its crew, and a whale with a serious attitude problem - was a big part of Melville's inspiration for Moby Dick.  The first mate of the Essex, Owen Chase, wrote an account of the experience, and his son William happened to give it to Melville when the two whaleships they were working on at the time had a rendezvous.  Not that this fact isn't widely known itself - it's included in the Wikipedia entry for the Essex.  (and in the wikipedia entry for Moby Dick, although it has Melville acquiring Chase's account in a different way - his father in law buys it for him.)

What's really interesting, and explains a ton about Chabon's use of the Moby Dick quote, is that Herman Melville went beyond just reading and pulling from the account written by Owen Chase.   He kind of became a little obsessed with the captain of the Essex, George Pollard - the Essex book notes that Melville even went to Nantucket, and sort of lurked around Pollard's house.  The "demi-gods and heroes" part of the quote is incredibly fitting - in Nantucket around this time, social rank was almost completely determined by how you were involved with the whaling industry.  Captains lived on one street - the street with the best view of the ocean - first mates on another, and so forth.   They became sort of celebrities in their own right, and Melville was apparently fascinated by Pollard, whose whaling career took a complete nosedive after the Essex incident.

I guess, looking at it this way, you could call almost anyone a fan fiction writer  - inspiration always comes from somewhere.  But it was interesting to find out how taken in Melville was not just by the story of the Essex, but by the actual people involved - to the extent that he got excited when his ship crossed paths with Owen Chase's, and made a special trip to Nantucket to see where George Pollard lived. 

In the larger sense, Melville was ultimately a fan of the entire whaling industry - something he tried to bring to life in more books than Moby Dick.   It's kind of funny when you think about fandoms focused around fictional worlds like Harry Potter or Star Trek.   In a way, the whaling world - which had its own intricacies, rules, vocabulary and social structure - must have seemed just as fantastic to Melville.

Twitter Support - Nonexistent.

This past weekend, my Twitter account got hacked ( which was sort of my own fault, because my password was "password" - I never changed it), and three spam messages about winning money from some cell phone scam were sent.   The hackers changed my password and email, so I have no access to the account.

The link that was in these Tweets led to some site called Predicto, which appears to be a business devoted to text-in voting, and stuff like that.   I've tried everything to find a contact there so I can personally rip them a new one, but I haven't been able to.  Apparently they run some sort of affiliate program that encourages idiots to hack Twitter accounts.  Predicto, you are terrible, terrible spammers, and I hate you.  

My first email to Twitter Support (ha) was on Saturday morning - I received an auto-response, and haven't heard from them since.   I also reported the problem on GetSatisfaction.com, which is a community support site for all sorts of things, including Twitter.  This was when I realized that Twitter support would never help me, since I saw people saying that it had been months or YEARS since their support ticket was opened.  WTF?!?!

So, at this point, I don't really know what to do.  I've tried contacting people at Twitter, no response.  It sucks that they are so fast to help Britney Spears get her account back, but not people who have been using Twitter since it started out, and have been strong supporters of it. 

I realize it's a free service, but if they ever intend to make any money from it, they need to pay attention to the needs of the majority of people on Twitter, not just celebrities.   The bigger Twitter gets, the more of a target it will be for hackers - look what just happened to the founders.

So, if anyone has any advice, that would be much appreciated.  But, as of right now, it looks like I'll never get my account back.  So no more @its_amber.   I'm going to wait a few more days to see if anyone helps me,  and if not, I guess I'll have to start all over.

UPDATE:  you can now follow me at @amberfinlay  - I made a new one because not being able to keep up with my friends made me sad.

you're no one unless you're talked about, Chanel.

I saw this full page ad on the back cover of Women’s Wear Daily last week, which apparently was not so much an ad, but “a note of information and entreaty to fashion editors, advertisers, copywriters, and other well-intentioned mis-users” of the Chanel name.

[click for bigger]

Basically, what Chanel is saying is that they don’t want people to use their name unless they’re speaking directly about Chanel or it’s products, and ending this “entreaty” to the very people who contribute to the growth of their business with a thinly veiled legal threat.

This might be an argument that makes sense for some brands, but Chanel is one of the most iconic fashion brands in the world. Their interlocking C logo and their signature pieces that they repeat over and over- quilted bags, jackets with logo buttons – scream to the world that they want you to associate them with certain things. And when you’ve achieved such iconic status, you’ve got to expect that people are going to talk about you. They’ll compare other things to you and notice when others are influenced by you. Have we learned nothing from Gossip Girl?

Obviously, Chanel thinks being mentioned in this way is diluting their brand, but in fact, when fashion editors say a cardigan is “Chanel-esque”, they’re building the Chanel brand, not the copycat’s. They’re building aspiration and desire. And let’s face it — the people who are in a position to actually buy a Chanel cardigan will likely do just that, eschewing tributes and homages for actual Chanel, while people who can’t afford Chanel will be slightly mollified with their knockoff, but still wish for the real thing.

To own certain looks and items of clothing in such a way that these things will always be compared to the Chanel version, no matter who makes them, is certainly a feat. I think a lot of brands would love to be in this position. Look at the literary and film worlds – having an entire adjective dedicated to your style (Proustian, Kafkaesque, Hitchcockian) is a clear indicator of fame and reverence.

I guess I just can’t figure out why, if Chanel is so flattered by tributes to their name, they would want to reprimand and potentially punish the people paying them tribute?

xoxo…

Baggage can be a good thing.

Usually fashion brands make for horribly irrelevant branding examples.  After all, what's interesting about selling things that everyone already wants, using expensively shot photos of gorgeous people?  

Nothing, usually.  But recently, Louis Vuitton has gotten back to their roots as purveyors of luxury travel goods, and established what is proving to be an excellent creative platform focused on Journeys,  for the luggage part of their business.

The Wall Street Journal just covered the latest LV campaign focused on journeys, featuring astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride and Jim Lovell.  The campaign (obviously) features an amazingly beautiful, Annie Leibovitz-shot photograph of the three space travelers.  But on the website, there's a video where you actually get to hear them discuss how they felt about traveling into space.  Not so innovative if you were watching the Discovery Channel, but for a category that relies on beautiful people to create desire for inanimate objects, it feels different.  

Other journeys featured on their site include a trip through Scotland with Sean Connery,  San Francisco with Francis Ford Coppola, and Marrakech with Sofia Coppola (whose voice is unfortunately very grating).

In an industry where the biggest "ad campaign" news is usually which model they're going to use, Louis Vuitton is using the very foundation of their brand to tell stories that are actually interesting.  The history of Louis Vuitton, which is covered in the book "Deluxe - How Luxury Lost it's Luster", begins with a journey. Louis Vuitton himself traveled 292 miles from his birthplace near the French Alps to Paris - which took him two years.  In Paris, he became an apprentice to a master trunk maker, and eventually started his own business, creating luggage for royalty, explorers, and all sorts of people going to faraway lands.

So what do this Journey platform say about the brand?  Well, it says that they know who they are.   Beyond all the Marc Jacobs designs, and Stephen Sprouse homages, and the college girls with tiny pouchettes over their shoulders (you know who you are/were), they're saying that at their core,  they are a company that appreciates the magnitude of the journeys we take in life.   They understand that the things you take with you on your journeys - the bag you pack, your passport case, your luggage tags - are all part of your travel experience, and that experience should be special.   And they're taking this understanding beyond ads - they've created city guides, and chosen partnerships that make sense, like creating bespoke luggage for Wes Anderson's movie The Darjeeling Limited.

(photo credit)

Arguably, they can definitely do more, and better things with this concept. (Admittedly, the videos take forever to load, but are beautiful and ultimately do their job). 

I guess what strikes me the most about their use of Journeys is that instead of telling you to buy a bag, they're telling you to take a trip.   And to bring that feeling of wanderlust - the best setting for their products - to the foreground,  they've chosen to create features and content that actually do make you want to buy a logoed & mongrammed suitcase,  pack it,  and take the next steamship (or spaceship) out of here.  

mix tapes 'n' micropayments

I was having a conversation at work earlier today about the future of newspapers, and micropayments (or whatever you want to call them).   It suddenly struck me that this discussion about the potential change of format for newspapers (and maybe even magazines) was kind of similar to Chuck Klosterman's observations about the shift from mix tapes to CD's.

In his essay "Being Zach Morris" (in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs), Klosterman compares the differences between wooing with a mix tape versus a CD. It basically breaks down like this:

mix tape:
- takes a long time to make (at least the length of all the songs)

- it's a linear format, so the person you give it to has to listen to it all the way through, at least once (Chuck notes that he would leave out a track list on purpose).

- you have control over the order in which they listen to the songs, so you can mix "messagey" songs in with meaningless songs meant to - I guess - not make you seem like a psycho.

So basically, the person you give the mix tape to takes away an overall feeling about the entire mix of songs, in addition to whatever they thought of each individual songs.  It's all of the things above that make the message, along with the songs themselves.

CD's
- easy to make, takes almost no time at all.

- has track numbers, so the person you made it for can skip over songs pretty easily, listening to only a snippet of each to see if they like it.

- track numbers also mean that the person can listen to it out of order, or only some parts, which might mess up whatever message you were trying to convey with the CD.  For instance, if they only listen to the "messagey" songs, they might think you're a complete creep, and if they only listen to the meaningless, "throw you off the scent" songs, they might think - why did someone make me this stupid thing?

So with a CD, you have little control over whether or not your recipient gets the overall takeaway of the mix as an entity, which is sort of the point of making someone a mix of music in the first place.

Klosterman notes that this shift in format seriously messed with his romantic life, and then goes on to dissect Saved By The Bell, philosophically and critically.  I recommend reading this.

So - back to news stories, and other content shifting to a "single" model, where the focus is much more on the singular story you might pay to read, and less about your macro-evaluation of the publication at large.  It's sort of interesting to think about - when I view a publication as "good" or bad", it's a reflection on their body of work at large, I guess, and the percentage of it that I liked or didn't like. 

For example, I think Wired is a good magazine, because the overall quality of their stories is pretty good, and their editor (not really sure who it is..) seems to curate a good mix of content each month.   If the collectiveness of all these stories that I generally like is taken away - if I myself am forced to choose which ones to read (because I might be paying for them individually) - I would tend to evaluate things on a more individual basis.  I might start paying more attention to the actual writers that I like, and start to seek out their work elsewhere -- a shift from placing value on Wired to placing value on one writer. 

It's sort of like evaluating musicians based on their singles that you buy on iTunes, versus evaluating them album by album, with the physical album in hand  (which is pretty much how many people who aren't that deeply involved with music do it, especially in terms of pop music. There's actually a whole movement to save the album format, with various musician interviews - you can check it out here:  http://savethealbum.com/ )   You don't really hear that many people saying "Man, I loved that new Britney Spears album".  They say they like a particular song.  I can't even name a Britney Spears album.

This isn't a perfect analogy - or even a good one - but this was sort of where my mind went after that conversation.   I know that people already only read select items from the New York Times, or wherever, online,  but I think that if you're paying per story, there will be a different set of values associated with the content.  And other questions might emerge, like why can't I just pay Mr/Ms Writer directly for their story? 

So I guess the question is - once you no longer have the option of taking in a format, or collection of works as a whole, are you more likely to attribute value to each individual piece, instead of adding it to your perception of a larger entity?

*(funnily enough, the book that I'm about to start reading is called Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time).

**(even funnier - I started thinking about all the mixtapes I've ever recieved, and also this one day my friends and I spent searching for this one mixtape called "On the Boat 2", or something, that we all loved.  We still think someone stole it out of one of our cars, because it was so good.)

New Next: TV Channels the Internet

Wow, it's been so long since I've posted here that I heard a scary creak and had to brush through cobwebs when I opened the 'new post' page. 

Anyway, this isn't much of a post, but I wrote this article for Media magazine like, two months ago, so ignore the potential irrelevance.  Print media is so slow.   I kind of forgot what I wrote about, but I remember that it was supposed to make sense in an issue geared toward the TV Upfronts.   It's a little boring.  It's the one on top. (I put the text below the picture)  Enjoy?

Now that we can watch pretty much anything online, whenever we want, access is no longer the big issue – experience is. 

 As the internet becomes a more ubiquitous delivery mechanism for entertainment,  electronics companies and content partners are working to reconcile online content delivery with the traditional, relaxing, lean-back TV watching experience that most viewers still want in their homes.    

The hardware side is being covered – web-enabled TVs swept CES back in January, with new models from Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba planned for release this year.   Sony's XBR9 series will come equipped with Yahoo Widgets - user interfaces developed to help bridge the navigational gap between traditional cable and the web.

For the majority of people who won’t immediately buy a web-enabled TV, other ventures that address both delivery and content without massive behavior change on their part of the viewer are emerging.  One of the newest is ZillionTV, which allows users to stream shows to their TV using a WiFi-enabled box and a remote control.  Viewers can watch ad-supported content for free (there is a one time $50 membership fee), rent content, or buy content to own it.  As of now, ZillionTV’s content partners include NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures.   They plan to play nice with cable companies,  including ISPs in the initial membership contract, but models like this could strip away the fees that companies like Comcast and Time Warner are used to charging for cable TV service.

All of these experiments are being conducted with monetization in mind.  Just as viewers are no longer beholden to a timeslot,  brands are no longer dependent on whatever the networks offer them.   Content producers have recognized this, and are involving advertisers directly with the development of new platforms – another step toward blurring the line between advertising and content, and the intertwining of brands and entertainment.

Johanna also wrote an article in the same issue, which I think she's putting up soon.

Everything communicates - even how you listen.

(cross-post from House of Naked - I am a lazy piece of crap, I'm sorry.)

I was reading Alive this weekend (the story of those rugby players who crashed in the Andes in 1972). Obviously, they consciously fantasized about food a lot while they were trapped,  but a recurring hallucination of one of the guys who was suffering most - Rafael Echavarren - was of going to the store to get a Coca-Cola.   

The night before Rafael died, he kept telling the other survivors he was walking to the store to get a Coca-Cola, and asking if anyone wanted to come with him.   Makes sense that his mind would subconsciously go there during his last hours - Coca-Cola is certainly a comforting drink for a lot of people, and that feeling is probably magnified about 10 million times when you're freezing in the fuselage of a plane crashed in the mountains.  

The thing that I thought was really interesting was that he wasn't simply asking for a Coca-Cola.   The experience of the trip to the store to get the Coca-Cola was included in his hallucination, and it got me thinking about a conversation I recently had with a friend, about the rituals around certain products.  (We talk about this a lot here at Naked, especially regarding Coca-Cola - ask Pak if you want to know more).   

When we think about product rituals, especially around beverages, most of that ritual is literally centered around the product itself, and the situation it's consumed in.  For Coke, these things include the temperature, the bottle shape, and all that imagery you see in their ads - fishing around in a red cooler for a cold Coke, smiles, and the "aaaahhh" after the first sip.  

You can speculate a little on what the ritual around desire for that product is (like, working up a thirst, obviously), but some things in a product ritual are beyond our grasp as marketers, or purveyors of goods.  There are contexts and meanings we can't possible engineer with branded materials or ads, and it's these meanings that make a brand part of someone's life. 

The fact that these organic points of connection are out there just proves that the most important thing a brand can do is listen to it's customers and fans.  That's where the amazing stories are, and it's the only way for brands to truly know how the things they make affect people's lives in real ways.   It seems so simple, but  there are marketers out there that don't even have a Google Alert set for their brand name. 

I realize this is sort of a trite observation in light of all the other things to be take away from such an inspiring story, and I hope I haven't offended anyone with it.   I guess it was just amazing to me that in his last moments of life, a time when you'd assume people thought of their parents, or their homes - certainly not a soft drink brand -  Rafael's mind took him to the comfortable and happy ritual of walking to the store to get a Coca-Cola with his friends.   

If you haven't read Alive, I definitely recommend it.  I also read a lot of other mountain disaster/climbing type books, if you're looking for recommendations. 

Sometimes a bike isn't just a bike

(this is a cross-post from House of Naked, but I thought it was relevant to pretty much anyone, so I decided to post it here too).

Around Valentine's Day, I noticed a few stories pop up about some displays in Macy's stores that featured bikes painted white.   Their similarities to Ghost Bikes -- bikes painted white, and installed as a permanent memorial to bikers killed on city streets -- were the topic of debate, and reactions ranged from incredibly offended to indifference.  (DKNY had a simliar installation - bikes painted neon orange around the city, but their was intended to support cyclists).      If you live in New York, you've probably seen Ghost Bikes around town - for me, the visual of a bike painted white is synonymous with mourning and sadness now.

White painted bike at Macy's

ghost bikes posted by Flickr users from around the world

I was going to post back then about the insensitivity of the Macy's displays, but I figured that maybe their visual display people didn't live in a city, or didn't know about Ghost Bikes, so I should give them the benefit of the doubt.   (If you want to read a great, intelligent debate over the matter, the comments on this Gothamist post - where the image above came from -  are very interesting). 

Then, just today, I was walking by Madewell on Broadway, which is owned by JCrew, and I saw that they had some bikes painted white as part of their window display.  At first,  I was just surprised that their visual merchandisers - whom I would imagine pay attention to what other stores are doing - put the white bikes in their windows after Macy's was taken to task for doing it.  

Then, I started to think about the fact that as marketers, we have to pay attention to loads of stuff that doesn't directly concern us, just so we're familiar with the cultural zeitgeist.  Ghost Bikes do not only exist in New York.  In fact, they are present in almost every major city in America, and in countless other countries. Including most of the cities that have Madewell shops.   It's not a small movement, it's a pretty big one, in fact.  

Seeing the full picture - not just in the sense of looking at problems from a few steps back, but in the sense of being aware of what's going on outside our own circles of reality -- is essential to staying in touch with what consumers are thinking, feeling and doing.  

If brands want to do all the things they say they do - connect with real people on a meaningful level,  strengthen consumer affinity for their brands beyond just their products,  be a positive part of people's lives - then the first step is to observe what's happening out there, each day.

Another of our Naked Truths also applies here, in terms of how brands process and reference what they find out there in the wide world.  People are our Partners, which we means we should not only be in touch with what's out there, but also that we need to understand that some of these things are already rooted in meaning, and that meaning should be respected.    Not everything should be co-opted as a creative idea for brand communications.  

FedEx on fast forward

I was watching The Simpsons on Hulu last night (a very Lisa-heavy episode, unfortunately) and FedEx, the sponser of the show, reduced the usual 15 second wait-time until the show resumed by running their commercial on fast-forward.

(I find Lisa Simpson very annoying)

The voiceover of the ad was basically that FedEx recognizes that it's more helpful for them to get you back to what you're watching faster then to tell you how awesome FedEx is for 15 seconds. 

I wrote a little while back about brands trying to get sponsorship around Hulu content right for the audience and vewing experience, and I have to say, this FedEx ad is definitely getting there.    They created a brand message that was appropriate for the medium, and acknowledged the viewers wants and needs. 

I guess you might be thinking that if their intentions were truly to just bring you your show without interruption, they wouldn't have run an ad at all - but that seems unrealistic, and from the perspective of a FedEx brand manager, a pretty dumb idea.

I wonder if we'll start seeing more ads on sites like Hulu that acknowledge the fact that all people want to do is get to their content faster.

(I tried to find the spot online, but I couldn't - if you see it, give me a heads up!)

Ex-Libris: a short history

So I was just reading something that led me to search for the book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, since I've never read it.   When I found it on Google Books, I noticed that the book had been scanned with the page that included the bookplate of the original owner.

As we can see, this edition of the book was published in 1916, in New York.  I guess little Emma Ward Woolfolk could have acquired this book at any time - when it was published, or at a thrift store last week - but according to Google Books, they scan volumes that have been sitting around in libraries for awhile, so I'm assuming she got it around the time when it was published, since personalized bookplates are much less common then they were back then.

*sidenote - I google Emma Ward Woolfolk, and found a reference to a 1936 marriage of a person with that name to Dr. John Alexander, the 17th president of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (whatever that is).   I have no idea if it was the same person, but how cool would it be if it were?

Anyway, back to the bookplates.  Ex-libris or 'bookplates' are small prints or labels designed to be pasted into books to indicate their owner. ("ex-libris" literally means "from books", and is taken to mean "from the library of" when on a bookplate).

I'm sort of a bibliophile myself, and I actually had many books when I was younger that I pasted my own bookplates into.  I still have some, but others are long gone - maybe in a library somewhere, or a goodwill, or someone's attic - and I thought it was pretty cool that years later, someone might see those bookplates and wonder who I was. 

Unfortunately, my bookplates weren't custom made, so they wouldn't really tell anyone that much about me, beyond the rough timeframe of when I owned the book, and that I was a child, from my handwriting. 

Originally, bookplates were custom made for the library owner, depicting crests, mottos, and other clues that might tell you a little bit about who the person was.    Wikipedia told me that the first marks of book ownership go as far back as Egypt in the 1300's, and bookplates as we know them now (with images and names) originated in Germany sometime in the 1500's. 

(This ex-libris was made by Albrecht Dürer before 1503. The text ‘sibi et amicis’ means ‘belonging to him and his friends’, a reminder of the pleasure of sharing one’s treasures with friends, and also of the rarity and value of books at that time.)

Ex-libris became more common in France in the 1700's, replacing the more expensive practice of gold-stamping the book's binding with a personalized mark or crest.  (though that sounds pretty awesome).   For a long time, family crests were commonly depicted on these bookplates, since even people who couldn't read would recognize them - and since most people who would have a personal library would also have a family crest.  

*source: an excellent history of ex-libris can be found here.

Around the late 1800's, people started to get into collecting ex-libris, which in turn sparked a renewed interest in using bookplates for personal libraries (which explains little Emma's bookplate).   A lot of new books were being pulped to make new paper at this time, which made it easier for people to remove and form large ex-libris collections. 

There are loads of ex-libris collectors societies  and a few cool blogs about them.  Here are a few of my favorite bookplates that I've seen online:  

Now I'm kind of thinking about getting some custom bookplates made up, and documenting my personal library now - which will hopefully one day have a room of it's own.

oh, and PS: here's an awesome map of Kensington Gardens that was also in the Peter Pan book. 

and me at the Round Pond, making friends with some swans.