LNOYL

Fourth post in this series; hopefully there is some linearity to these posts which will reveal the right name for this manuscript when it goes to print. Dareck, Kirk and I are red lining it this month, with rehearsals, organizing the rentals, incidentals, commutes and people we need for the studio space on Nov 28th. Our record shipments are just going to make it in time…they are printing the jackets this week…with any luck, they used the right artwork (they lost the files!)…

We’ve all got the friend or family member that decided to…well, not decide. They end up living in the world of default. If you are breathing air within the world of default, then “default” is what you need to get by. But it is pure malignancy. This existence nullifies people, and it scratches out vitality and movement found within art. You spend what seems like every waking hour following the muse. To leave the introduction of your work up to fate, or to let it roll down the standard path is to place it into default mode. Your work, on its own, may not have the apparatus or instinct to dig its way out that. You’ll see scratch marks in the dust, just before it is eaten by the saturation and noise. I didn’t want all the music we created to become ensnared within default options. I wanted to understand how our work could access our culture, to find it’s proper place, whatever that would be. Apparently so do a lot of people, because there is an entire industry dedicated to that pursuit.

The “business, marketing and entrepreneurship” section of any retail book store is a unique prospect. The books found there, sitting on their shelves, are no different than in any other row found in the store with respect to weight and dimension. Yet the shelves feel something persuasive, and silently begin to buckle beneath this force. This section of books is clustered in intensity, sensational in presentation, and even sleazy in intent. If there was a red light district at Chapters-Indigo, you’d find it right here. You can feel the solicitation just by standing too close. These rows are filled with publications that sport front covers of “go get em’” faces, complete with the serious looking “arms folded in front while twisting at the waist 45 degrees” pose, or clever art work that convey a sense of success if you believe and apply their teachings. There are a lot of montage phrases, like “playing to win”, “human potential”, and a lot of references to “power”. As in “using the power” or “becoming empowered”. All of these techniques, of course, are adapted to work withing the realm of “marketing 3.0″, so you can become the king or queen of social media influenced transactions. There are hundreds of titles on the shelf, and thousands in the web store. Even the plain yellow “dummies” book looks jaded, abused and confused sitting next to it’s higher priced brethren. After walking away, feeling slack jawed and itching for a yoke-ling, I gave my head a shake, and realized that I wanted to be in a position to understand what concepts I could ignore, and what ideas I should pay attention too. I needed to figure this out in order to rid ourselves of any defaults. The following chapter discusses the initial work that allowed us to do just that. It may sound odd that we start off discussing television sets as they relate to the death of marketing. But bear with me, because it was the application of this knowledge that put our plan on relevant grounds.

In many an action adventure flicks, or even stories found within the Bible, there’s inevitably a scene where one is warned and then educated about the evils of the marketplace. To get where we are going, we’ve got to be schooled as well; we’ve got to learn about the default path. You’ve probably got some ideas about what main stream, traditional marketing is all about. It feels omnipotent in its manipulative capacity, as it seeks to bend our thought process towards that of the ideal North American consumer. It is the catalyst found within Annie Leonards “golden arrow of consumption” (Leonard 2009; http://www.storyofstuff.com./; Skip to the section labelled “consumption”, or better yet, watch the whole thing). In order to better define our marketing and advertising preconceptions, one must first understand a process that Godin (2003) calls the “TV industrial complex”. The TV industrial complex is simply a term given to a particular method by which products were marketed and advertised to the general population. It was a very successful technique. It’s the reason why we all know the same brand names, and why we all bought the same things growing up. The TV industrial complex was developed and rigorously practised during our parents generation, and continues to be a prevalent marketing method today.

Remember the commercial advertising you watched on TV during Saturday morning cartoons? Behind these cereal and toys commercials, or any other viewed then wanted trappings you begged your parents for, was the rumble and grind of the TV industrial complex. Can you still recall all those clever fast food commercials, complete with characters and mascots? Then your mind knows very well the effect of the TV industrial complex. How about those razor blade shaving commercials from the eighties, that aimed to convince you that your choice of razor could result in instant membership to the old boys club, a trophy wife, the ability to spread far and wide into the gene pool because of your enhanced fertility, and increased athletic ability (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzHu3pxgG8)? It was TV industrial all the way. Did toothpaste and Ska ever go together? It did, to great success, within the functions of the TV industrial complex (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdcVRueT2cw). According to Godin (2003), the TV industrial complex is the established rule of marketing; it’s goal was to “create safe, average products with broad appeal, and then combine those products with a marketing campaign”.

The mechanics of the TV complex were as follows. A company would hire marketers to create advertising. The subsequent advertising campaign was aimed towards the masses of everyday, regular people. The more people that could be exposed during the campaign, the better. This just happened to be effectively accomplished with television, because an increasing amount of people were glued to their TV screens as it became the dominant form of passive entertainment during the 20th century. By purchasing television ads, a company could engineer massive exposure. This level of exposure must have been really been quite influential, because products advertised via television also experienced superior distribution to retail outlets. Increasing exposure, coupled with better retail distribution meant that immense sales could be attained. According to Godin (2003), colossal success was to be had if the profit from those sales were used to buy more advertising. More advertising would in result in ever more exposure and retail distribution, which then resulted in more sales…and on and on the cycle went. Therefore, companies could directly profit by investing into mass media advertising. Marketers could differentiate their products from competitors, not necessarily by being different, better, or offering new features, but by developing a TV marketing campaign that built awareness for their brand. Thus, marketing, in effect, created the brand (Godin 2003). The TV industrial complex created huge growth for the the advertising industry, and produced an exhaustive list of well known brand name items. The products developed under this system thrived, because they were average offerings, made and advertised for normal people that were paying attention to TV. This system showed that you could capture the attention of the masses, and be very influential in getting them to consume things.

At the heart of the “TV industrial complex” system was something called distraction marketing (Godin 1999). This is the method by which the advertising was presented to you. Distraction marketing involves unsolicited and repetitive advertising messages that are designed to interrupt you. The idea is that exposure to repetitive advertising encourages or trains someone to focus on the product that is being sold. Therefore, the objective of distraction marketing (e.g. television, billboards, magazine ads, banner ads etc.) is to find ways to interrupt a person, and get them to adjust their focus and behaviour. Over the past few years, marketers – the guns for hire on the front lines, waging for acceptance of newly created products, have experienced something that has shaken them to the bone. I bet it sounded like grinding gears, and it must have looked like stripped, contaminated metal. The hyper-profitable TV complex, along with it’s distraction marketing artillery, quickly and dramatically broke rank, then broke up (Sheth & Sisodia 2006; Godin 1999). How did this happen? It happened because our culture has changed. When we know the reasons why this is true, then we will know why you, and your creative work, will be ignored.

continued next week…