viz. - marketing

What's so original about "original series"?

Calliope — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:35:39 +0000

Image Credit: screenshot capture of NYTimes.com

This was one of the ads on my NYTimes.com edition today. Upon first glance it appears to be a simple ad for an e-book by Amy Harmon called Asperger Love, but the New York Times masthead and the words "Byliner Original" suggest that the Asperger Love is an in-house publication. And that's just what it is: an "e-single" written by a NYTimes journalist, packaged for Kindle, iBooks, and Nook, and hosted on a partner site, Byliner.com.

Image Credit: screenshot capture of byliner.com

Asperger Love is the third piece in the Times' e-singles program which is being piloted this year. I suppose the idea behind creating the series is to capitalize on the talent and ambition of the Times staff by keeping their longer non-fiction projects in-house. The program also seems to extend the NYTimes' existing model to a more generalized hybrid, moving from a media site to a media publisher and retailer. Maybe the only way to survive as an online newspaper today is through price segmentation and product diversification. Gone are the days when $3.75 would get you the whole daily scoop (well, maybe you still find newsprint copies of the Times at airports). Now online customers pay different premiums for extra or alternative content, bundled in various ways, and for spin-off products like the The New York Times / Byliner Originals.

In one light, it's pretty cool that readers now have the option to "follow" a favorite journalist and read what they're writing on the side. This will enable these writers to establish greater loyalty and name recognition among NYTimes readers (a sizeable audience). But what about reaching new readers? Is it possible that the NYTimes e-singles editions will become so independently popular that they will attract customers who do not already know and trust the brand?

I have the same question about the Netflix Original series, a similar bid to extend Netflix's function as a video streaming and distribution company to a full-scale production company. What's the payoff for Netflix? Is the point just to make current customers (like me!) a lot happier now that we can watch Kevin Spacey in a new series on Netflix Instant? Or is this original series meant to draw in new users? With a budget of $100 million or thereabouts, something tells me House of Cards is meant to accomplish the latter. But what makes these new Netflix and NYTimes products different from, for instance, Lifetime original movies or the Target brand soap you buy in lieu of Dove? I would be surprised if either Lifetime or Target acquires a significant number of new customers solely through these "original" products.

The success of the NYTImes and Netflix campaigns, I suppose, is a matter of ethos. Does The New York Times want to be seen as a company that sells content simply by the force of its brand, a strategy that big retailers have used to offer cheaper, no-frills versions of products they carry in their own stores? Perhaps it does. Perhaps The New York Times and Netflix are such strong brands--brands that benefit from the celebrity of the actors and writers associated with them--that their original series will thrive like no other original series ever has before.

Image Credit: screenshot capture of Netflix.com

The Changing Face of Media Consumption

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: Ad Age, MBA Online, Magid Generational Strategies)

This cutesy inforgraphic from Ad Age and MBA Online presents the reader with a breakdown of media use by type, time and generation. The initial study was performed by Magid Generational Strategies. At first blush this seems to present a thorough overview of how different populations consume media, but on closer examination there are some signifigant issues. These issues aside, and in some cases because of these issues, this long image (I've broken it into several pieces for readability's sake. See the full image here) raises a number of questions about not which types of media we consume but how our methods of media consumption are changing to the degree that this infographic doesn't quite make sense.

Some of the choices apparent in the key are pretty interesting. First, we have activities broken into strict online and offline portions. And while this initially might feel like a reasonable position to take, especially if you're concerned with the marketing to specific demographics through specific types of media, it brings to light the question of just how various forms of media are percieved by consumers today. Increasingly discreet artifacts, songs, shows, articles, games, etc are seemlessly available across a variety of media types without any appreciable difference. What we might consider is that rather than consuming any kind of blanket media people gravitate toward consuming particular artifacts.

(Image Credit: Ad Age, MBA Online, Magid Generational Strategies)

This, of course, raises the question of how exactly we should begin to classify these artifacts. What exactly are we to make of an article initially written for a print magazine, though probably first published on the magazine's website, and finally read on facebook? There are several clear answers. We can look to the context of an artifact's creation. In this case it was created for a print magazine; it was constrained by a monthly publication schedule, the phsyical space available in the magazine, the cost of producing the magaziine (pictures, etc). You could say, though, that all these constraints mean little to the end user, and their experience is shaped by the context within which they consume the artifact. That several people have liked and commented on the piece, that it was shared by a particular friend, the ads running down the side of the screen create more meaning for the consumer than the specific reasons behind its length.

(Image Credit: Ad Age, MBA Online, Magid Generational Strategies)

These issues have, in some part, been played out in discussion surrounding MLA's decision to require that citations include the source's medium of publication. These generally break down between Print and Web, though according to the Purdue Online Writing Lab, "other possibilities may include Film, CD-ROM, or DVD." The question of just what a works cited is supposed to perform for both its author and subsequent readers is a slightly different question than how we should appraoch the blended mediation of various artifacts.

In the end the infographic doesn't really tell us terribly much. I would have liked to see a nod toward the differences between social and personal mmedia consumption. And many of the categories, especially in the online section, are either too broad (entertainment, what isn't entertainment online?) or to specific (Facebook, rather than social media in general) to give any clear picture of how people are spending their time. This, coupled with the lack of total time breakdown, makes drawing any sort of concrete conclusions other difficult. It is charming, though, and the rough strokes it works with have been useful in generating discussion.

A Politics of Plating

fc — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:46:10 +0000

Image Credit: Evan Sung for the New York Times

A recent article in the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times led me to rethink the importance of visual culture in the current round of debates about food in America. In a shift from the usual conversation about how food is deceitfully misrepresented in branding or advertising, the article at hand got me thinking about the role played by the visual presentations of actual meals. Thinking about plating allows us to revisit the relationship between food and visual culture and reimagine sight as a creative component of foodways—instead of a predatory marketing ploy—with the potential to positively impact the ways we eat.

The role of visual culture and rhetoric in marketing, branding and otherwise selling food has received a fair share of attention lately. The opening sequence of Food Inc. (read Tim’s review here), for instance, tells us how the agrarian ideal depicted on our grocery store products masks the lurid industrialization of agribusiness. The seemingly omnipresent Michael Pollan (whose In Defense of Food is currently playing a central role in the rhetoric curriculum at UT Austin) often portrays sight as a villain, warning us never to eat anything we’ve SEEN advertised. Visual critiques of the fast food industry have even shown up in different ways on this blog (see here and here ) . For the moment, I want to ignore all of that and think about tweezers.

Oliver Strand’s Times article on the culinary uses of surgical tweezers is unlikely to draw the attention of any but a niche audience of foodies and kitchen enthusiasts, but the descriptions of plating offered by the chefs he interviewed should catch the eye of anyone familiar with theories about photography, poetry or any number of aesthetic and cultural productions:

“It’s harder to make it look like you didn’t try,” said the chef David Chang, whose kitchen crew at Momofuku Ko tweezes extensively. “It’s more difficult to make it seem it’s plated as it falls. That’s what we call it, ‘as it falls.’ It’s not rustic. It’s naturalistic. It sounds stupid, but you’re using tweezers to make it seem natural.”

There are a number of points here, but the first thing to notice is the difference between natural and naturalistic. “Rustic,” for those who don’t keep up on gastronomical lingo, is another term for “country” or “home-style” presentations of food. Rustic dishes can be accomplished with much less precision than what is typical of haute cuisine. Chef Chang wants to draw a distinction between “rustic” plating—food that actually falls where it will—and a “naturalistic” presentation that is painstakingly made to appear plated “as it falls.” Strand sees this as part of a larger trend:

Increasingly, this kind of naturalism is the look of fine dining. Symmetry and geometry are giving way to artful jumbles and cascading forms. Microgreens, for instance, seem to have drifted in on a gentle breeze. It all might look tossed together, but it’s about as accidental as a $200 bed-head haircut.

The plating should LOOK accidental, but the presentation isn’t any more natural than the dialogue in a Wordsworth lyric or the musculature in a Gericault.

So, as with the grocery store in the into to Food Inc. or the photoshopped breakfast sandwich in Tim’s post above, we find that plating presents food as something it is not. Even the industrial concerns of uniformity and homogenization seem to be at work behind the scenes: Strand reports that “Chefs say tweezers let them assemble meticulous compositions quickly, and with such consistency they look the same every time.” And we can't forget that chefs share with agribusiness and fast food the same goal of selling you food (though, of course, they have very different business models).

Despite these similarities, plating—the visual presentation of individual meals—provides us with a potential counterbalance to the visual exploitation of consumers by glossy prints of food and farms that have little to do with the product they purchase. The goal of marketing images is moving the consumer to the point of sale, and they often accomplish this goal by obscuring either the product or its origins. The grocery story is full of bucolic images of ideal farms meant to keep us from thinking about the factory our milk came from or the exploited migrant worker picking our winter tomatoes. The fast food menu board is not there as a point of reference—“your bacon cheeseburger will look like this”—but as an incitement to forget what the order looked like last time and order it again. In this system, food is a commodity, and companies want consumers thinking about the consumption, not the production, of that commodity.

Plating, on the other hand—even semi-deceptive naturalistic tweezing—draws attention to the food itself and invites us to contemplate the ingredients and the craft that went into its production. Chefs spend time plating in fine dining kitchens because they want their customers to appreciate the skill that went into planning, prepping, cooking and serving the meal, especially since those efforts can’t generally be seen from the dining room. A well arranged plate invites contemplation. While it might not force us to ask if our tuna was sustainably fished or whether our busboy is paid a living wage, it does move food out of the realm of interchangeable commodities, and, in doing so, it asks for more from us than thoughtless consumption.

Plating might be most important at home. Most of us don’t eat the majority of our meals at Corton or Momofuku Ko, so tweezer-positioned microgreens are unlikely to have much impact on our consciousness or our behavior. On the other hand, those of us who cook at home (and cooking more at home is one of the best things you can do for your health, your budget and your carbon footprint) might benefit from being more intentional with our plating. An attractive plate invites us, even as home diners, to pause momentarily and consider the food we are eating. By drawing attention to the craft of cooking, it can earn home cooks some well-earned respect (even from ourselves) and help open a space for us to be conscious diners instead of mindless consumers.

The Glee Effect: New Media Marketing for Old Institutions

Rachel Schneider — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:52:57 +0000

Screenshot Credit: YouTube

Zounds! After Noel’s heartwarming welcome-back posting, I feel reinvigorated and ready to begin posting again here at viz. I did rest my blogging muscles over the break, but managed to take a few notes for what will hopefully be more piquant posts on pop culture.

Recently, my friends have helpfully provided me with such a deluge of musical material that I don’t know what to do with it all. My friend Cate Blouke forwarded me the NPR story about HOPE: The Obama Musical, which delights me to no end—but I was a little more intrigued by a video my friend Meghan Andrews brought to my attention—a short-form musical YouTube video that doubles as a Yale advertisement called “That’s Why I Chose Yale.”

While I might critique the video for what seems to me to be an excessive length (it’s over 14 minutes, and starts to drag during the long list of student activity groups), what I find fascinating about this is that what seems to be one of the most traditional American universities is choosing to brand themselves using the most current cultural trends: the YouTube viral video and the unexpected musical. While Andrew Johnson, the Yale graduate who dreamed up the idea, disclaims that he was influenced by shows like Glee and High School Musical, the “campiness” noted by Matthew Nojiri of ABC seems very influenced by Glee’s particular brand of snark and softness.

What Nojiri doesn’t discuss is that these attempts to advertise colleges are a long-standing trend. A former professor of mine, Mark Edmundson, wrote a wildly controversial essay called “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment For Bored College Students” for Harper’s in September 1997 which critiqued universities for marketing themselves to students “immersed in a consumer mentality.” This ad does just that, selling things like Yale’s residential colleges (and their organic meals) alongside experiences like “monitor[ing] a foreign election. / And now I volunteer at a law school clinic on human rights protection.” While both things might appeal to a student body, there’s something uncomfortable about suggesting that the university is another fashionable purchase to make alongside a Wii or a hipster shirt, or that volunteering at law school clinics is cool because cute girls do it while sitting in fabulous new buildings.

Glee, as I’ve already noted, markets itself as dramatic irony; what is more interesting about the Glee
phenomenon is how successfully it has turned itself not only into a popular television show, but also an iTunes phenomenon where individuals can buy cast recordings of the songs, and season DVDs before the season is even fully finished. Taking advantage of the appeal of old 80s songs and new R&B htis, Glee is helping make FOX serious money in a time when media conglomorates are trying to find ways to monetize the web. While it’s understandable that in a time of financial crisis even Ivies like Yale want to seek out the greatest number of possible undergraduates to fund their coffers, there’s something disturbing about a university marketing itself like a musical. Is the slick marketing of “That’s Why I Chose Yale” a little too knowing? What is the substance underneath which this video is meant to express? Or is it a good sign that professors seem to be rethinking what they're doing as not merely educating, but selling valuable skillsets and educational services for a newly media-savvy generation? Maybe Yale's Glee-ification is just all in good honest American fun, like the musical itself.

Alcohol ads target Latinos

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:55:43 +0000

A study recently conducted by researchers at UT-Austin and the University of Florida has shown that alcohol advertising is significantly heavier around schools with Hispanic populations of 20% or more.

While this news is troubling in and of itself, I think it bears noting the number of alcohol advertisements that are also targeted at Latino consumers in particular. I see them whenever I drive around town here in Austin -- billboards with beer ads in Spanish, with the colors of the Mexican flag self-consciously employed. For some reason, however, I could only find two on the web (and one of them -- a Tecate ad -- hearkens from 2004). Latinos are comprising a larger and larger portion of the market for all sorts of products, not just booze. Quick and dirty evidence of this is in the preponderance of caramel and dulce de leche flavoring in everything from M&Ms to ice cream. I kid you not: this is the result of Latino-directed sweet market research. Of course one could point to all the alcohol ads aimed at white people -- there are plenty -- but when you couple the findings of this UT/UF study with the marketing effort, the move seems all the more sinister.