The Skittle Fairey…Yum!

This past weekend I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston to see the Shepard Fairey exhibit Supply & Demand. You know him for his Obama portrait, a pop cultural icon that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. For someone who came up in the art world by graffiti tagging and plastering stickers with the face of Andre the Giant and the word “Obey” just about everywhere, being featured at the ICA and National Portrait Gallery is a sign that what was once street is now truly mainstream.

And when you think about it, what’s really happening in the world today, from a communications standpoint, is that the Shepard Faireys are taking over. Before there was a Facebook wall for you to write on, Fairey was tagging walls with his graffiti art, and spreading his stickers virally. His “Obey” stickers preceded the Internet age and became so ubiquitous that they’re the precursors to those “Original Irish Gifts” and other Facebook flotsam and jetsam that is seriously clogging up my information arteries (not that I don’t love a virtual Guinness as much as the next guy).

In the way that Fairey is subversive by taking traditional images of propaganda (Mao, Stalin, Bobby Seale) and giving them an ironic (and often hilarious!) twist, marketers are using the power of social networks to have you, the consumer, mess with their brand and help to define it anew, remix it, make of it what you will. Consider Skittles, the bite-sized candy in a rainbow of fruit flavors. I love them because they’re delicious. And as someone in marketing, I also love them because the brand is going outside of its safe zone. With its “Interweb the Rainbow” campaign, they’ve created a widget that floats from Facebook page, to YouTube channel, to Twitter, to product page so you can seamlessly experience their brand as a participant. Like Shep Fairey, you can “tag” Skittles by tweeting about them, creating a video and uploading it to YouTube, write on the FB wall, etc. Skittles is opening themselves up wide for all that YOU have to say about them.

We’ve all heard the joke about the bad blind date who talks on and on about his many accomplishments to his companion, and then pauses to say, “Well, enough about me, what do you think of me?” In our increasingly digital age, where self-publishing and social networking technology is free to everyone with a smart phone or an Internet connection, who you are isn’t what you tell the world, it’s what the world tells you. Now go have a Skittle.

In Facebook All Business Is Personal

Last week our agency received a visit from Lisa Hickey, a self-described “Slightly insane creative thinker and writer. Designer and strategist. Global conversationalist.” She worked at almost every local Boston area advertising agency (with the exception of Mullen) and when she was laid off last year, she re-branded herself as a social media consultant.

Her compelling tale of personal growth via use of Twitter, Facebook, etc. was stirring for all attendees. Given the tragicomic state of the economy today with layoffs everywhere, we can expect other marketers to follow her lead from the unemployment line into social media, and a proliferation of “social media gurus.” By the way, social media guru is a term that I personally loathe because in this day and age we should all be digitally literate, rather than relying on some sort of digital elite (See: Chinese Ch'an master Lin-chi I-hsüan and “Killing the Buddha”). 

Anyway, one thing she said really stuck with me: “Today, people are becoming brands, and brands are becoming people.” It’s true for Lisa, and it’s true for a lot of companies today. Consider how Facebook pages for companies have proliferated, and the very same week of Lisa’s visit Facebook changed those pages to resemble individual profiles. Check out this fantastic whitepaper from The Advance Guard on how those changes can be optimized.

Now, what Facebook doesn’t tell you is that if you wanted to get a customized URL for your company’s fan page that will start at around $100K and involves a media buy. Not a lot of individuals will be in a position to brand their own personal profile at that high price tag.  So, I guess companies are becoming more like individuals, but still get corporate pricing courtesy of Facebook. (Nice. But it’s probably better than spending the money on redecorating a bank’s bathroom.)

So what’s my point? I guess I’m left feeling like Randall Stross, who in his Digital Domain column on Sunday really opened up the can of worms that individuals becoming like companies, and companies becoming like individuals entails. His belief is that it’s ruining our sense of privacy: “When the distinction blurs between one’s few close friends and the many who are not, it seems pointless to distinguish between private and public.” It will be interesting to watch companies open up in the social world and see just how much they’re willing to share. What do you think? Are we over-branding ourselves and destroying what little is left of our private identities in the process?     

 

Seth Godin on PR vs. Publicity

I just want to celebrate Seth Godin and the wisdom he demonstrates in his post "The Difference Between PR and Publicity." I can't really write what he wrote any better than how he wrote it. But I think it's important for all clients to understand the difference between PR strategies/counsel and getting ink, and to demand that their agency delivers both.

 I also feel that an agency that delivers great press coverage without great strategy is performing some kind of miracle. For great press coverage is the result of great PR strategy -- the two are not mutually exclusive. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how an agency can deliver results without strategy, or strategy without results. I seriously doubt that it's possible.