Us Elephants had a stomping good time at last Thursday’s party, thanks to our fine friends & the Drunkness Monster. Anyone have shots of Pop Rocks or Garbage Pail Kids? Do send them our way, we’ll add them to the pixmix.
The next smashing soiree will celebrate St. Valentine’s Day.
A Kissing Booth? A visit from Erman Desedo the IV?
Don’t know yet, but we do know it’s gonna be hothothot!
Marc Jacobs now has 3 stores on Bleecker street and makes $20 million annually on items priced under $25. And yet with this, and Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mr. MJ magically has not diluted his brand.
How has MJ retained value while selling $10 wallets? Well in a world of brands cloying to be your friend, Marc Jacobs actually succeeded. And you value things made by your friends.
We’ll start with the fact that his women’s clothes look great in reality, not just on the catwalkers. But this is just Step 1. MJ connects not only with the body of his consumer, he connects with her mind – the brand’s face is often Sofia Coppola and Kim Gordon – ladies known best for their artistic prowess. Since MJ is proud to have them on his team, and dresses them well, this makes his brand a destination for the creative/thinking woman, a mental space not previously courted in lux fashion.
And these open arms even trickle down to the salespeople, who buck the fashion stereotype of insulting potential customers with snide looks. On the flipside, both MJ & his people are happy that YOU walked in the door – and think you’ll look ace in their clothes. (word on the street is that he flies every employee to NYC for his annual Halloween bash, not a bad way to court fealty)
And so by valuing his customers, the customers returns the favor, ascribing value to even the ‘cheap’ items. A $10 wallet is perceived not as a scrap tossed out for the masses, but something fun made by our buddy Marc Jacobs. And that wallet retains a slice of lux mindshare. Heartshare too…
Jacobs’ brand may soon go even one step further, as he and business partner Robert Duffy have an eye toward creating a 3rd line that would compete with Gap/H&M. The LVMH brass aren’t too keen on it – they are, after all, a Death Star Lux brand – so we’ll see what happens. Will that dilute the brand? TBD. Vera Wang did Kohl’s and Proenza Schouler did Target successfully, MJ might just be the guy who can take it to the next level, Magnolia cupcake in hand.
Straight from Japan, we bring you the newest technology in personal defense & urban camouflage:The Coke Machine Coat.
The culture of the creator is indeed a mother of invention.
We RSS street fashion blogs from around the world and invited the authors to our upcoming Autumn Apotheosis soiree – You never know when a Carioca or Milanese will be on a NYC jaunt. Our friends Saana & Tonic in Manchester blogged about missing the party, then the fashionistas at Les Mads in Köln read it and RSVP’d. And…to update ya – the ladies arrived straight from JFK to throw down with us Elephants. Hells Yeah. Promotions All Around.
Things like this make me love the www and her wily ways.
Brands and Ad Agencies have lately taken note of the $170 Billion purchasing power of Muslims in North America.
Halal Chicken McNuggets for customers.
Ikea hijabs for employees.
Ramadan Sales for all?
And as Madison Avenue develops campaigns for this newly acknowledged demographic, I’m curious to see if there will be nuance in the advertising. Or will it just be the Islamic equivalent of simplistic sombreros and soul claps – with every third word being “Allah”. Dunno. Still waiting to see a hijab in a national TV spot….one smart brand might start with this soccer player:
Thinking about this ‘new’ consumer base brought up hazy memories of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The brilliance of this film is that it was the first time a Hollywood pic featured an Indian-American and a Korean-American as “Red Blooded American Malesâ€Â. Like millions of other American men in the 18-34 demographic, Harold & Kumar’s prime objective was the holy trinity of Bong Hits, Bare Breasts + Burgers. Ever present were their races and cultures, but instead of being mined as tropes for pathos or the exotic, they were well employed as one of many narrative and comic elements.
So what of this? Well many folks we know loved H&K as the FIRST bawdy blockbuster that spoke to their same-but-different status. What brand can do this? What agency can do this? I posit that there are still many millions of American consumers who have not yet seen a campaign that actually engages them with this intelligent duality. Does it matter? Even though we’re still stuck with many dated, even pernicious, cliches, our industry is not built to serve the common good, it’s about the bottom line.
So let’s frame it like this: Whichever brands can deftly tap into these markets, going beyond the easy sell, will see quite the windfall. And with the ever increasing number of platforms to reach the consumer, which can disseminate risk, I’ll wager we’ll see it soon.
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UPDATES & RELATED LINKS:
10/7/07: Nigeria, Nokia & Ramadan
12/9/08: private/public lives and representational politics on TV
4/4/08: Holland is probably the Western country that has the highest % Muslim population. Read more about business and advertising at Islam in Europe.
4/18/08: Islam, Cosplay & comic books.
4/27/08: John Cho, Harold of White Castle, talks about choosing his roles
4/29/08: Oliver Wang talks about the social value of H&K 2 being mundane.
5/5/08 As The World Turns & Islam
September 2008 conference in Berlin about Islamic Consumer Culture. MHB was invited to submit an abstract for it…will keep ya posted.
In the AICP show this year there were 3 award winning spots rooted in the idea of “White Kids acting Black”
1) Adidas “3 Courts” – White kid puts on special sneakers and can hop across 3 courts better than all them jumpity black kids.
2) Smirnof “Tea Partay” – The viral sensation of Vineyard preps rapping and rumpshaking.
3) Star Trek “Cribs” – Animated Trek characters on the YoYoYo Turntable tip.
Well, BFD, we’ve been milking black culture for ‘cool’ since before Charlie Parker played a note. (metoo) But it is the couterpointing of this slam dunking/hip-hopping definition of Blackness that caused Raafi’s essay about Black Nerds to go viral.
From the traffic, I was directed toward the work of Mary Bucholtz, a scholar of Nerditry at UCSB. She writes that white nerds typically eschew their peers’ aforementioned adoption of black style and slang. Mary also dips into how “Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional dissonance of [white] nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, ‘You got me straight trippin’, boo’) and black people being nerds [aka ‘acting white’] – like Steve Urkel and Carlton Banks.” All food for thought. Gritty like wheatgrass. Do click on the above articles to read more.
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douwantmore?
4/10/08: An article from San Jose about race, academia and cool.
On a late weekend night, two days before the release of the much-anticipated Microsoft video game Halo 3, a group of 8-to-10 black nerds in their late teens walks down the Bowery, their conversation animated. The leader of the pack, his Ben Wallace afro in full bloom, turns to the others, “Master Chief is… the Jack Bauer of… the Halo universe!” The pack, each member clamoring to respond in the affirmative before the others, turns into a burger joint.
The rise of the black nerd has been a blustery and uneven process characterized by large gains and deep swoons. Presaged by Clarence Gilyard Jr.’s portrayal of Theo, the computer ace who hacks into the building vault in the classic film Die Hard, the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a cartoonishly grotesque opposite. The broadening media landscape, however, allows us greater access to the pulse of black America even as the mainstream media seems to be stuck on stupid infatuated with the images of black males that (used to) sell records.