Tuesday, February 9
Thursday, February 4
Great thought on the cultural redefinition of second hand and recycling.....
but can tell you what it’s been up to. Could make second-hand stuff
much more desirable than new. Brilliant. Most things that are used are seen to be diminished by use.
Depreciation is not just an economic concept. It’s a cultural fact.
Once something has been owned by someone it is soiled, profaned,
yuuky, somehow. We continue to have the idea that things come from the
factory in a state of grace. Ready for ownership. Ready for us. Any
ownership diminishes them. But what if these products were blank, storyless, tedious. What if
objects straight from the factory seemed somehow orphaned, smaller and
less interesting for the fact of their pristine condition. If we care
about recycling, we want objects to be better at absorbing and
recording and reporting their histories. Of course, some objects will
be incapable of telling stories: bottles and newspapers for instance.
But clothing, furniture, technology, these could be storyful. And they
could spared the landfill for one or more cycles of ownership by the
stories they bring us. There are three problems here. One is technical: how to make the
object capable of recording and then retelling its story. One is
cultural or rhetorical: how to choose and craft the best stories, the
narrative that creates the most value. And the last is economic: how
to figure out how to think about what kind of value this is, and how
it can be measured, distributed, captured and stored in the
marketplace. Oh, we do have our work cut out for us. via Grant McCracken
VW Social Media Campaign Delivers One-Two Punch | Autopia
Remember playing “punch buggy,” hitting your little brother every time a Volkswagen Beetle passed by? Volkswagen has revived the game as a social media advertising campaign, with a little help from Tracy Morgan and a septuagenarian blogger.
Renamed “Punch Dub” (for the Volkswagen nickname “Vee Dub”) the new game offers far more opportunities for pummeling, as sightings of all Volkswagen vehicles are fair game. Aside from throwing a punch when a Volkswagen drives by, no other rules have been written. As the game’s fictitious founder, Charles “Sluggy” Patterson put it, “I like punching people, not keys.”
The campaign will debut with a Super Bowl ad featuring comedian Tracy Morgan and more punches than a Manny Pacquiao fight. Additionally, Punch Dubbers can also choose to dole out their slugs on Facebook for a chance to win a new Volkswagen CC.
According to Tim Ellis, Volkswagen’s Vice President of Marketing, “The campaign is a modern twist on a classic game that has been played on America’s highways for generations and will help consumers gain a new perspective on the breadth of our vehicle offerings, quality, performance and value.”
Or, as Sluggy put it, “It’s not a pretty spaceship to Mars. It’s just a game.”
Photo: Volkswagen
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