iPhone Branding: Way of Life or Downfall of Capitalist Industries?

This is an excellent example of the juxtaposition between a corporate branding effort and the use of user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube to counteract these corporate brands.

In the first video we see the direct link created between the iPod and a modern way of life. This is what Lucas Cornips, in an artcile entitled “Feeling Lonely Planet: the Social Negotiation of a Brand on YouTube” would refer to as the ‘ideal brand’ - an image put forth by Apple Inc. in this case, but one threatened by increased consumer activism.

In the second video we see the result of this activism – the reality of the iPod’s influence on globalization. This demonstrates what Anti-Advertising Inc. is trying to convey: that through social media and user-generated content brands are now socially negotiated. In an article entitled “When brands get branded,” Frank Huber explores Apple Inc.’s potential problem with an empowered, aware, and internet-savy audience:

Brand owners must accept that their monopoly on brand power is deteriorating and that they are no longer the sole dictators of the weal and woe of their brands. In the future, interaction between brand owners and consumers will increasingly shape the brand, resulting in intensified negative consequences of brand misconduct.

In an article published for Spiegel Online, entitled The World in The Ipod, Andrew Leonard explains the issues behind this user-generated video, faulting Apple’s practices and their negative effects on global relations:

Critics are worried about trade deficits, job numbers, and even national defense. They are convinced the U.S. has sown the seeds of its own decline by shipping jobs and technological know-how to future superpowers like India and China.

So are Apple and the iPod the gateways to a modern, connected, and convenient internet generation, or are they a a major player in the downfall of Western Capitalist dominance? Can Apple maintain an ideal aesthetic in their branding, or are they now forced to address their negative role in globalization and change their business practices in favor of greater responsibility?

The Neistat Brothers and “iPod’s Dirty Secret”

This is a video entitled “iPod’s Dirty Secret,” that was posted in late October, 2003 by Casey and Van Neistat on their personal website. It has garnered over 2.3 million views on the website itself, and an additional 40,000 views since it’s debut on YouTube in January, 2007.

On December 20, 2003 Hank Stuever, a reporter from the Washington Post, picked up on the story and published an article entited “Battery and Assault,” presenting the video as an example of the irate consumer reacting to the disposability of new electronics:

There is something both wonderfully renegade and depressing about “iPod’s Dirty Secret.” It provokes an ambivalent despair in iPod owners, many of whom had not yet considered the mortality of their new little electronic friend.

As in the case of other large corporations faced with a challenge to their ideal brand, Apple was forced to bend. Soon after this article was published Apple ushered in the now famous $59 2-year warranty, and $99 battery mail-in replacement service.

This is yet another great example of user-generated content (UGC) forcing corporate interests to be on their guard. As Christodoulides contends in is article, Branding in the post-internet era,

The brand manager who used to be custodian of the brand has now become a host whose main role is not to control (this is impossible) but to facilitate this sharing; alas, if the experience promised by the brand is not delivered. All that is needed is a video about the longevity of the ipod battery and a brand like Apple is suddenly in serious trouble.

It is important to note that the Neistat Brother’s video became popular in a pre-YouTube era, when such examples of user-generated content were not as common-place as they are today. This is in a way a groundbreaking precedent for the power of user-generated content to combat corporate misconduct.

July 29th Lecture Reflection: Stuart Hall’s Decoding

During a lecture given by Dr. Strangelove on July 29 the class was introduced to Stuart Hall’s 3-pronged decoding theory.

Dominant-Hegemonic:  This is what Dr. Strangelove refers to as “the preferred reading” (how the majority is expected to respond to the text). Often the state needs an enemy and consumers are directed against this enemy in order that the democratic system can function. This is also referred to as the mass audience.

This method of decoding reinforces the status quo, characterized by inequality in gender relations and  inequality of wealth within the established class system. This type of reading also creates what Dr. Strangelove refers to as the branded personality: fitting into a style tribe that is narrowly defined by a certain appearance. Construction of the self in this case derives from the marketplace and results in a noticeable type.

Negotiated : This type of reading adapts meaning from a specific social and cultural context. Some of the contexts  introduced in class include Middle America, neo-Conservatism, and Liberalism. This method is entirely based on the interpretation of the individual, and this is why consumers from different backgrounds can take pleasure from the same text in a different way. There is a large enough subtlety of meaning that a media production can be interpreted from different angles.

As discussed in class, Team America: World Police was a successful political satire because it was able to draw multiple groups into a sense of comfort by portraying content that partially represented their beliefs about American culture.

Oppositional: This type of reading is quite relevant to Anti-Advertising’s goal: the empowerment of the consumer. An oppositional reading is one that knowingly flies in the face of of the mass audience and the dominant-hegemonic system.

Dr. Strangelove sees the increasing prominence of consumers as producers of content as a challenge to what he calls “advertising-supported behavior.” Advertising is now charged with the task of trying to keep up with a growing methods of producing culture outside of the advertising-content relationship.

Video for Thought: Anti-Advertising in Public Places

This is a video by Logorrhea’s Gill Holland, and was inspired by one of the major authorities found in our own documentary, Naomi Klein, and her web-documentary “No Logo. According to Naomi Klein in this 1999 documentary,

what we’ve seen in the past six years is an explosion of brand-based investigative activism where you have campaigners that have looked behind the brand, pealed away the façade…

Klein does not necessarily refer to social networking sites such as YouTube as the main battleground for this activism, as she tends to focus more on culture-jamming, billboard modification, and ad busting as the means for brand-based dialogue.

José Van Dijck sees the empowered and active audience as leading the way in a natural progression toward online activism when she states in “User Like You? Theorizing Agency in User-Generated Content,” that

notions of ‘participatory culture’ tend to accentuate the emancipation of the engaged citizen, who unleashes her need for self-expression and creativity onto the digital spaces created expressly for this purpose.

Therefore, Klein’s anti-corporate emphasis has, since the release of “No Logo,” transformed from the real world to the online world, and has consolidated self-expression into digital space in the form of social networking.

This video also raises the issue covered in our July 13 lecture reflection, addressing the issue of saturation in advertising. Public space has been threatened with encroachment of advertising techniques and consumers are now physically confronted with content from the advertising system.

Anti-Advertising’s goal is to see the future of advertising as a dialogue between public and private interest, rather than an imposed set of meanings turning every individual into a distracted consumer.

United Airlines: Safest Way to Travel?

These two videos juxtapose perfectly and demonstrate what Karla, Arezou and I see as YouTube’s primary function: a process of branding that is not imposed by the corporate system, but one that is socially negotiated and held accountable by user-defined content on YouTube.

What can United Airlines do to cambat this process? They have to bend. A consumer-created video such as this forces United Airlines to be held to a higher standard, and closes the gap between the unattainable aesthetic of their brand in the first video, and the reality of United Airlines’ customer service.. Dave Carroll, the musician reponsible for the user-generated music video explained his situation in greater detail on YouTube:

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were travelling to Nebraska (From Halifax!) for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Rile) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

On July 8, 2009 CNN discussed the story on cable television:

It is interesting to note that in a statement relased by United Airlines after the video reached 50,000 views, a United Airlines spokeswoman referred to the video as,

A unique learning opportunity, (…) and they will be using it internally to ensure better customer service.

The video has now reached over 4.3 million hits.

United Airlines must now refine their internal customer service polices to reflect the average consumer’s increasing ability for activism. They must guard against what Frank Huber, in an article entitled “When brand get branded,” would refer to as ‘brand misconduct.’

Also posted on July 8, 2009 was a video from Steven of  TakeLessons.com, showing his support for Dave carroll’s position, and furthering the cause of brand activism against United Airlines by promoting his use of Southwest Airlines over the disgraced airline company. This video shows consolidation of consumer activism on YouTube, where only fragmented public disaffection would have existed before.

YouTube Provides Resistance to Mainstream News-Media in Iraq

One aspect of YouTube’s potential in providing an outlet for consumer-defined advertising that I have yet to explore is its role as an alternative to the traditional news-media system and the branding surrounding it.

Dr. Strangelove’s July 13th lecture brought up the tendency of political leaders, especially in the U.S., to equate capitalism with democracy and freedom.  This rhetoric is political, but corporate interests are served here as well through the maintenance of capitalist consumerism.

An excellent example of this psuedo-capitalist rhetoric came after September 11, 2001, when George Bush gave a speech in reaction to the World Trade Center attacks. Notice the use of terms such as “brightest beacon of freedom  and opportunity,” or “the search for justice and peace, and all that is good and just in the world,” and even a call to safety and religious ideals. However, coupled with this idealized call to action is a reassurance of the strength of the U.S. economy and an appeal to continued trade.

According to an article entitled “US Soldiers Imaging the Iraq War on YouTube” by Kari Andén-Papadopoulos:

The Iraqi conflict is emerging as the first YouTube war, where homemade soldiers’ videos throw into sharp relief the reportorial conventions of the mainstream news coverage.

If the political machine and mainstream newsmedia is considered as the link between democracy and the military-industrial complex referenced by Dr. Strangelove, then counteracting this influence is a vital aspect of YouTube’s role in consumer-defined branding efforts. This is the first socially negotiated war in history.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KAd8fXk45M&feature=related]

July 8th Lecture Reflection: Information v. Emotion

Dr. Strangelove’s July 8th lecture explored Tom Reichert’s Erotic Advertising, focusing specifically on Chapter 3, entitled “Passion Plays.” The key ideas explored in this chapter dealt with the shift in advertising technique from information-based to persuasion-based, as well as how this shift appealed to women’s identity and the definition of a woman’s success.

According to Reichert,

advertising evolved from an information orientation (just the facts) to one of creating values for brands – persuasion based orirentation.

Reichert included examples such as Hoover Vacuum, Coca-Cola, and Kleenex to illustrate this point.

Dr. Strangelove disagreed with Reichert’s definition of this shift, prefering to view the shift as information-based to symbolic. As he remarked, “are facts not persuasive?” The shift is more easily characterized as a departure from discussing the engineering of a product toward a focus on the emotional appeal behind a product.

At the turn of the century the emotional appeal for women that advertising capitalized on was based on the two expectations of womankind in this era: marrying well and running a successful family or household. As Reichert remarks on P. 75:

the appeal [of Woodbury's soap] emphasized the benefits of beauty: what beautiful women have a what beautiful women are able to possess. As always, beauty and its effects were just out of the average women’s reach.

Obviously definitions of success are fluid and change significantly over time. As Dr. Strangelove stated over several lectures, third-wave feminism and female empowerment are facets of female success toward which advertisers have directed their appeals. This advertisement from Voodoo is a perfect example of the emotional appeal that lies behind advertising today.

July 6th Lecture Reflection: The Importance of Master Symbols

An important idea discussed during Dr. Strangelove’s lecture on July 6 was concerned with the rise of visual imagery in advertising after WWI, and the importance of this medium as a means of managing collective thoughts and desires – especially when dealing with the acquisition of power.

According to Dr. Strangelove every society has its master symbols. For example, Christian society revolves around master symbols of crucifixion and the concept of sacrifice. In Muslim and ancient Hebrew thinking it is believed that images are extremely powerful and those who control representation of these images gain tremendous power.

Images are effective because they are non-discursive (appealing to intuition and emotion rather than reason), associative, iconic, and fictive.

Master symbols are more important than ever in today’s society because as traditional sources of meaning erode and traditional ideologies wither, visual culture in advertising assumes more social power. This is why we see mainstream, professional advertising including amateur pop-culture symbols in their own campaigns. As we become increasingly deinstitutionalized, whether in our belief systems or our relied upon sources of influence and power, our management of master symbols is an attempt to find links that bind our society or to preserve what links we have remaining.

The image below is an example of why master symbols can be so crucial: does anyone remember the publication of this cartoon and the trouble it caused? Orginally published in a Danish newspaper entitled Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, the corresponding article called on Danish cartoonists to draw the Islamic prophet how they saw him. This was in effect the public negotiation of an important master symbol for Islamic culture – one that was not welcome. In the original article posted in Jyllands-Posten it is stated that,

The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. […] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end.

The point made here is closely related to the fact that traditional mater symbols are no longer as vital to society as they once were. As society is becoming increasingly deinstitutionalized and modified to fit the model of consumer culture, master symbols are antiquated. They are no longer hallowed ground for advertisers, and this controversy demonstrates the conflict at the centre of this new transition.

A Review of Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”

An interesting article this morning by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. It’s a review of Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” and on Page 2 there’s a short discussion concerning the weaknesses of YouTube as an avenue for advertisers.

So how does YouTube bring in revenue? Well, it tries to sell advertisements alongside its videos. The problem is that the videos attracted by psychological Free—pirated material, cat videos, and other forms of user-generated content—are not the sort of thing that advertisers want to be associated with. In order to sell advertising, YouTube has had to buy the rights to professionally produced content, such as television shows and movies.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=1

Beverly Cola: Italian Soda or Poison in Disguise?

Beverly Cola, an Italian soda featured at the World of Coca-Cola museums in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Orlando has caused quite a stir in the world of user-generated content.

A certain trend is beginning to appear more and more common to this Anti-Advertiser: the Beverly Cola taste test,  in which consumers post their reactions to this objectionable cola, seemingly as a right of passage for the attendees of the World Coca-Cola museum exhibit on international beverages.

In the McSweeney’s Online Archive, within subgroup entitles “Reviews of New Food” a consumer named Kari Anne Roy gives her thoughts on the drink:

You push the button, you toss it back, and then it hits—it’s as if you’d crushed a thousand Imodium AD caplets, made them into a paste, and painted your tongue with it. The bitterness seeps into parts of your throat where taste buds should not exist, but somehow do. The museum staff falls all over themselves laughing at you, and then they get a mop.

This video was the primary inspiration for Anti-Advertising Inc. because it identified a relevant function of user-generated content: reactions against corporate branding.

Louise Rijk, VP of Marketing and Sales for ADV Media Productions, in a lecture on May 24, 2007 entitled “The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Advertising Medium,” hints at this new role for social media. She contends that user-generated content can counteract large scale advertising campaigns, and destroy a vital brand image for a product. Ironically she gives a hypothetical of two college students tasting another Coca-Cola product – Cherry Cola – and creating videos calling the product’s taste as akin to cough medicine.