SparkBlog by The Hartman Group

Pizza: Now with Less Muzak

Think that NWA is just an airline? For those of you that haven't heard of "the world's most dangerous rap group,"  you might consider calling for delivery from Seattle-based Mad Pizza. One customer was surprised to hear the group's controversial 1988 single "F*** Tha Police" serving as hold music when he placed an order during the dinner rush.

While some may be offended by the song's lyrics (NWA earned one of the very first parental advisory warnings), the departure from the usual "your call is important to us" lingo could be a welcome one.

Can't get enough Muzak? Click here.

(via Consumerist, Seattlest)

The Zoundz of Life

Okay, so Zoundz first made the rounds of the blogosphere when we were vacationing in Mexico this spring, so it's not technically our fault we were so late to the game.

But oh what a marvelous game indeed.

On so very many levels, the Zoundz "device" made by the folks at Zizzle represents the intersections of innovation, culture and technology circa 2007.

From one perspective, Zoundz is a sound toy designed for young children. But even though it was marketed at Wal-Mart and other major retailers, its $50 price tag likely proved too steep for most parents. Besides, most folks likely had no idea what this thing really was...

But as word began to spread among the kind of folks who travel in bent circuit arenas, Zoundz began to pick up a life of its own. Suddenly, what might appear as a puzzling, cryptic, over-priced piece of junk to a parent becomes downright magical in the hands of young folks, trend-setters, designers and well nigh anyone else whose ever had the urge to build their own time travel device, replace their eyes with cameras or examine the inner workings of their own brain.

We think of Zoundz as a sort of open source soundscape for the bent circuit set. Or, as one colleague commented, ..."the pinnacle of acid toys in a world LSD appears to have sadly forgotten." The basic idea is that by moving around a set of weirdly shaped and textured "pawns," the user creates a variously textured soundscape reminiscent of "Music for Airports" era Brian Eno compositions.

And just to be most clear, your child may well tire of this thing in five minutes. But if you happen to be the sort of person who is much more concerned with the journey rather than simply getting to the end, you will have a new way to waste hours of your time.

Because mere words cannot to the Zoundz justice, consider this YouTube video of the Zoundz in action...

Product Music

One of the oft-unrecognized benefits of the internet, especially the 2.0 version, is the vast amount of historical media artifacts available for immediate retrieval. Out of print books and records, obscure films, underground comics and zines—these were once physical objects, typically produced in small numbers, which required great patience and tenacity to track down. It was not unusual to encounter collectors who had been searching for some highly prized artifacts for several decades.

While original media artifacts are always highly prized for their authenticity, there were many of us in the 60s and 70s who simply wanted the ability to listen to the music, to see the images or to read the words with our own eyes. Ownership is great for bragging and all, but it’s a lot more fun to share the cool stuff with others. Fortunately, today’s internet—what with its infinite series of tubes and all—makes most of that instantly possible.

Which brings us to today’s great find, product music. We’re referring here to the classic  industrial musicals of the 50s and 60s. Borrowing on the cultural legacy of the work song—a worker-created tune designed to alleviate the boredom of a physical, repetitive task—companies relied on elaborate song and dance numbers to promote enthusiasm and camaraderie among the employees. The main difference, which eerily foreshadows many contemporary developments, is that the songs were written not by the workers but, rather, were outsourced to professionals based on management’s whims.

The result is a treasure trove of surreal, whimsical ditties sung with an earnestness and enthusiasm which is no longer possible in the irony-infused, detached cultural pose of the present. Consider “Up Came Oil” (Exxon), “He’s a Penney Man” (J.C. Penney’s), and the classic “My Bathroom is a Private Kind of Place” (American Standards). The always entertaining WFMU blog has the whole catalog available for download in mp3 format. In a similar vein, check out an entire LP of Chevrolet Showroom Music from 1972. Our personal favorite is the “Test Track for Factory, Impala and Caprice.”

Upon listening to this music, one can’t help but to recognize that there was a time and place in which marketers were content to simply entertain. Compared to today’s world of hyper-targeted communications and messaging, where every word is focused-grouped ad nausea, with supposed scientific precision, the casualness with which marketers appeared to approach their craft seems darned refreshing. Today’s auto ads, for example, may communicate volumes of information about product performance or (supposedly) trigger aspirational emotions, but they aren’t very fun to listen to or look at.

While we’re surely not suggesting anything resembling another wave of ironic, nostalgia-based marketing, is it heresy to even suggest that the message might not be as important as the medium? 

May you stay forever young, Simon Le Bon...

Somehow, one never expects to see words such as “pioneering,” or “groundbreaking” used in reference to 1980s glam sensations Duran Duran. But then again, who could have ever guessed that David Bowie would someday dabble in securitization in the global bond markets?

Yet such accolades may well be in order given a recent press release touting Duran Duran’s stab at a “second” career. While precise details remain vague, the five original members of Duran Duran have commissioned five custom-designed avatars to represent the group in the popular MMORPG game Second Life.

The virtual version of the group will become immersed in the Second Life game, where they will be free to inhabit a “fantasy, luxury island” replete with “in-world” concerts and media appearances designed to accompany the band’s real-world engagements.

Keyboardist Nick Rhodes had this to say of the project:

“Second Life has brought a third dimension to the internet; it is the new frontier where dreams have become reality. Whatever you can imagine is now possible. When the video revolution began we instantly saw the opportunity to experiment and explore a new form of expression to enhance the musical experience. Second Life is the future right now, offering endless possibilities for artists. Our community will be able to help develop the island into a fully functional, futuristic utopia, where you can never be quite sure what to expect. Duran Duran are thrilled to be the first band to become citizens of Second Life and are rehearsing now for our first concert there in the coming months.”

For critics of our hideously-aging rockers touring to raise money for their pensions, the avatar route seems like a nice fix. Now you can tour until you're in the grave, while keeping that youthful, fresh appearance we demand from our popular music icons.

Personally, we’re more than a bit concerned that a band who often seemed off in their own fantasy world (anyone remember the video for Rio?) in real life is now setting off to inhabit their own “fantasy, luxury island” in imaginary space.

Then again, if we've learned anything from Jimmy Buffet and his flock, perhaps it’s best to quarantine aging rockers to fantasy islands in imaginary spaces.

Just imagine, a world without parrot-heads...

Apples demonized yet again...

It took the apple industry some time to repair their image after the infamous 60 Minutes broadcast in 1989 suggesting that the widespread use of Alar posed a significant health risk to U.S. consumers.

Saturday concerned citizens of the world once again took to the streets to express their discontent with the apple, only this time the target happened to be the beloved brand (Apple) rather than the humble fruit itself. Members of the collective Defective by Design were out in visible force—replete with their characteristic yellow hazmat suits—protesting Apple’s use of DRM hidden inside their iTunes. Protestors gathered outside Apple stores in Chicago, Seattle, Cambridge, New York, San Francisco and Dallas to generate greater awareness of Apple’s DRM software.

For the uninitiated, DRM refers to digital rights management, the belief in a proprietary encryption system built into downloadable music which prevents the consumer from using the purchased music as s/he sees fit. The most serious flaw with Apple’s DRM is that it restricts the playback of music only to Apple products, meaning that should you choose to replace your iPod with a competing digital music player, you’ll need to repurchase your music again—at significant cost.

As part of their strategy, Defective by Design members unearthed a fitting Steve Jobs quote from a 2002 Wall Street Journal interview and made it the theme of their protests:

“If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.”—Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

While it remains unclear how concerned consumers are at the moment regarding this issue, one can’t help but to speculate as to the long term effects on the overall brand experience—especially when someone decides to migrate to a different player and discovers their $2,500 iTunes collection is unplayable.

As is often the case in intellectual property and digital rights matters, John Perry Barlow offers choice insight:

“These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices. And I don't have a question about who's going to win that one eventually.”

“But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.”

Is brand loyalty a thing of the past?

Folks have been talking about the declining importance of brand in marketing arenas for some time now. Many suggest the spread of information technology has led to better educated, more fickle consumers who are less willing to place their faith in a logo or a name. Nokia and Sony’s recent declines surely seem to support that angle.

Others suggest that our increasingly postmodern society, in which consumers re-mix cultural artifacts such as music, film, brands or logos to playfully create new contexts and content, renders brands obsolete. When you really think about it, what is Nike anyway?

We think most would agree that if forced to pick the single most successful, iconic brand story over the past several years, the answer would surely be Apple and the iPod. Certainly no product or company has more captivated discussions at the intersections of design, branding and marketing. So it only stands to reason that the iPod’s tremendous success on all fronts has generated a nice halo for Apple, perhaps boosting Apple’s computer sales and garnering greater market share in the PC market, right?

Not exactly.

According to today’s release from the Gartner Group, Apple’s worldwide market share fell in the 1st quarter of 2006 from 2.2 to 2.0 percent. Domestically, their U.S. market share fell from 3.8 to 3.6 percent in the past calendar year. All those fanatical consumers digging on their iPods don’t appear to be generating the kind of halo effect for Apple that the branding experts have taught us to believe in.

So much for the brand halo theory...

(via AppleInsider)

Learning From Others' Blunders

As the good boys at Suck so famously proved, cataloging and critiquing corporate blunders is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel--with or without the smoking gun. So rather than simply chronicling the music industry's parade of blunders and its inevitable slide into oblivion, we thought it useful to consider more carefully the consumer implications of what's going on here. Hopefully those in other industries can learn a bit as we watch this ecosystem self-destruct before our eyes.

The story of the demise of the record industry is now so commonplace that an industry-wide 10 percent drop in category sales doesn't even garner a front-page headline in most business press. Can you imagine what were to happen if, say, grocery sales dropped 10 percent in a calendar year?

And while all parties bicker as to the root cause--"Piracy" shout the record execs, "Bad product" shout the analysts, "Music is no fun" shout the kids--we can't help but to believe the answer is really much simpler. Consider that somewhere along the way, all interested parties have somehow forgotten that if you continue to cheat, berate and otherwise abuse your consumer, s/he may eventually go home.  Duh.

We're referring, of course, to the increasingly aggressive copy-protection tactics deployed in the name of "anti-piracy." Consider Coldplay's latest release--X & Y. Only after purchasing the CD is the consumer informed of all of the devices on which the consumer will not be able to listen to the music s/he has just purchased. This list includes, but is not limited to, computers, DVD players, most personal music players and car stereo's, iPods, and on and on. To quote:

"This CD can't be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3...This CD may not plat in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs(!) and of course, Macintoshes."

So basically unless you plan on playing the CD in a CD player, you're screwed. And if you have an iPod? Don't ever even think about listening to your Coldplay CD. Then, and we are being deadly serious here, the insert explains that this protection is necessary in order for you, the consumer, to enjoy "the highest quality music experience." Oh yeah, and don't forget that last line "Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return or refund."

Can you imagine purchasing a can of soda and a bag of chips from a convenience store and then reading the labels only to find out that the contents are inedible while watching TV, driving a car, bickering with your spouse or studying late at night. In other words, although you the well-intentioned consumer have purchased these snack items, you do not "own" them. Instead of being free to do with them what you wish, all you really own is the right to consume them as the manufacturer see fit. And as it happens, said manufacturer is a whiny, grumpy old man. Oh, and don't bother asking for a refund.

Little wonder consumers are simply giving up and quitting in droves.

The lesson? Give your consumer (a) some credit, (b) some respect and, most importantly, (c) the freedom to consume your product as they wish, on their terms. Otherwise, they have little reason to return. In a way, it's sort of like dating that way...Sure you can try to bully them into liking you, but in the end if you don't let them come to like you on their terms, they won't be around very long. Most adolescents figure this stuff out while dating in high school.

Record company executives, it would seem, are a little behind on the curve.

More Surreal Every Day...

CNN had a major tech news story yesterday on the growing necessity of bands having to instruct their paying fans as to how to move music from purchased CD's to personal players such as iPods. It seems that many new CD's are protected with DRM (digital rights management), a coding system that limits which file formats consumers can use to copy the music as well as the number of copies of the files consumers can make.

As a result, paying customers are now having to visit individual band's websites to explore a myriad of "workarounds," or "hacks," just to be able to listen to the music that they purchased. Consider just one excerpt we tracked down on Dave Matthew's official website:

"Information regarding Downloading Stand Up Songs to iPods 

Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod:

If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD....." 

One can't help but to scratch one's chin and ask "Is this really the best they can do?" In their goal to eradicate file-sharing they plan to make life difficult for, of all people, the paying customer? 

Ironically enough, the consumers most able to negotiate the sometimes complex tasks required to move DRM encoded music to another source happen to be the file-sharers themselves and not the so-called "paying customers."  As one A&R rep in the story was quoted:

"The bad thing is that you are almost promoting what you are trying to protect against. You are upsetting the fan that went out and purchased the record."

We can't help but to note here the odd parallels between these developments and findings from our own research. In our last major assessment of consumers in the coveted 18-35 age segment, we were struck by how far music had fallen in terms of its overall relevancy to these consumers' lives. It wasn't so much that they never listened to music as much as it was the case that music procurement had become so challenging and fragmented that consumers were finding other things to do. As once younger male commented:

"It used to be fun to go to the record store with friends and buy CD's, but now some friends only do Kazaa, and others keep all their music on laptops. And anyway the (local) Tower just went out of business. It ain't worth the grief, you know man?"

We couldn't agree more.

Giving it Away...

The Seattle-based rock band Harvey Danger recently announced that their newly released album Little by Little will be available for free as a download via Bittorrent or from the band's website. This isn't some new streaming technology or cheesy podcast. No, it consists of the full album in lossless, LAME encoded files. As they explain on their website:

"We embark on this experiment with both enthusiasm and curiosity—and, ok, maybe a twinge of anxiety. Why are we doing this? The short answer is simply that we want a lot of people to hear the record."

Of course, Harvey Danger are by no means the first band to make their music available for free and they explain as much in a nicely worded disclaimer.

"This is by no means a manifesto. We don’t pretend to be the first band to spin a variation of the shareware distribution model. We love record labels and record stores. We buy lots of CDs and are committed to supporting independent music. We’re not a bunch of fake Marxists. We’re just trying to be smart capitalists so we can sustain our lives as musicians. This is an experiment. We’ll let you know how it goes."

In fact, more than a few industries have tried the "giving it away," approach as a promotional vehicle and the results have been decidedly mixed (remember when .coms were literally giving money away?)

But we think the real insight here might be something the Grateful Dead figured out some 25 years ago. At that time, prevailing logic held that because it was a violation of a rock band's publishing and copyrights to make a recording of a concert, the band should extend significant effort to track down and punish such violators. Many bands would employ their own security at concerts just to catch these "scofflaws."

Then the Grateful Dead decided not only to quit enforcing these rules, but to invite their fans to sit in a special section at live shows dedicated solely to taping. Further, fans were encouraged to share their tapes among networks of friends.

As most are now aware, this decision proved to be ingenious. For as more and more fans began sharing copies of live shows with one another, a large community of dedicated followers quickly developed. Perhaps unwittingly, the Dead spawned one of the largest (and most lucrative!) brand communities to date. To this date, most serious touring acts have adopted the Dead's model.

But the real take away here is not so much in the ingenuity of the Grateful Dead's decision (whether accidental, consciously planned or otherwise) as it is in what drove that decision. At the end of the day, the Dead simply wanted to get back to making and playing music for themselves and their fans and all of the concern with taping was getting in the way of that goal. In management and branding parlance, we could suggest that in the chaos of daily operations and marketplace fluctuations, the Dead re-engineered their organization with a focus on their core competency (making music).

This is the same message we see in Harvey Danger's statement and, in our opinion, it's a message the music industry would be well advised to consider. It's not that we're taking any particular position on the issue of copyrights, the DMCA, or file sharing. Rather, we're simply suggesting that all parties associated with the music industry should give pause to remember, respect and acknowledge their consumer. This is something ingrained in us through our years of extensive research.

As most seasoned brand managers know all too well, the consumer won't wait around forever.

Photo courtesy of Ryan Schierling. (link) 

Befitting of an Iconoclastic Genius

We often see our planet's geniuses described with words like "rebellious," "iconoclastic," "insane," "visionary," or "innovative." For the unaware, Brian Wilson likely qualifies on all of those counts-- with perhaps a bit of "tragic," "tumbleweed," or "romantic," tossed in for good measure.

In fact, besides being the influential spark behind Sgt. Pepper, Wilson is the only songwriter McCartney could ever acknowledge as being (perhaps) better than himself!

Now you have the chance to chat with the genius for a mere $100 donation to hurricane relief. As the website reads:

"Here's my challenge: For anyone who sends a donation of $100 or more, I will call you personally and answer a question you may have, or just say hello. Also, Melinda and I will match the donation."

Get those questions ready...