Posts Tagged branding
Morgan Spurlock on The American Way
Supersize Me’s Morgan Spurlock is no stranger to brand warfare. (He and Ronald McDonald probably still aren’t speaking.) Spurlock’s new documentary, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, is both about the evils of product placement and entirely funded by product placement. The Guardian just reviewed it, saying “We onlookers seem to be expected to wallow in a kind of knee-jerk indignation that we don’t actually feel” and “For your next trick, Morgan, why not try something less tricksy but a little bit more consequential?”
I interviewed Spurlock about this little while ago for triple j magazine, and found him A) very charming and B) pretty candid about the film’s goals. Here it is.
So this interview is just part of the ‘media impressions’ required by your sponsors, right?
That’s right. You’re complicit in this whole process.
I feel like a DVD extra or something.
You are a walking, talking DVD extra! But it’s not just you. What I love about the film is that it shows you how things are marketed, how that marketing turns into awareness, how that awareness turns into attendance…
In Greatest Movie, we see you getting your Don Draper on and trying to sell the concept to brands. Is this something that comes naturally, or do you hate the business of movie-making?
What I’ve learned is that if you’re going to be in this business, you really need to understand how to manoeuvre in this business. Pitching is one of those things that they don’t teach you in school. You’re thrown into the deep end as a filmmaker when you graduate from college and you’ve got to figure it out. I made it up as I went along.
Your last film, Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden…
Question answered by the way. President Obama, you’re welcome.
…that movie was also a kind of sales pitch, just one for tolerance and understanding. Greatest Story feels different because you’re compromised from the start.
Yeah. That’s part of what makes the film work. You see the corruption take place. After making this, I told people that when you get into business with a brand it’s not a 30% or 40% chance – it’s a 100% chance they’ll somehow infect the content.
“Transparency is the new objectivity”. Do you agree?
I think we live in a time where people have been jerked around and lied to for so long that the new thing is just to not jerk people around and lie to them. To finally say: “You know what? I’m going to do something nuts and tell you the truth.” We’re at the end of that rope, and people are tired of being bullshitted.
Is that really where we’re setting the bar? “I know you’re going to screw me, but at least you’re honest about it”?
Yeah! I think it is! That’s exactly where we are!
The movie shows how everyone has their own line between ‘what’s okay’ and ‘what’s selling out’. Where’s your line?
The line I didn’t want to cross was giving up control of the film. The greatest asset they got out was the movie marketing their products, but the greatest asset I got was the film itself. The minute I gave final cut over to a brand or a company, I compromised my ability to tell the most honest and open story I could.
Did a number of sponsors want final cut?
All of them. Every single contract.
They should at least put more money on the table. “Final cut? Ten million dollars!”
I would happily have given it to them for ten million dollars.
Are you worried the film makes product placement seem sort of fun and harmless?
There was a great thing that happened after the premiere of the movie at Sundance. We got a standing ovation for the brands. It was one of the most insane things you’d ever seen. A woman came up to one of the brand representatives and said “First I want to thank you, all your companies, for supporting this movie. I’m going to buy more of your products because you did – but I’m conflicted about it.” Luckily the irony wasn’t lost on her. And I hope that when people watch the movie, just like her, the irony of the situation isn’t lost.
While a lot of the doco is funny, I found the last ten minutes strangely moving, especially with that OK Go song rising up behind it.
What I love about the film is how it comes full circle. Everything I’m critiquing at the beginning of the movie are the tools I’m using to market the film at the end. So you see the snake eating its tail. The lyrics of that OK Go song are “We solved all our problems with bigger problems”. That’s the American way.
This interview first appeared in triple j magazine #53.
A Black Bat in a Yellow Oval
One of the things you have to admire about superhero comics is their ability to turn almost anything into fresh meat for their never-ending adventures.
The fact that the Hulk went from grey to green in his earliest issues due to colouring difficulties? Decades later, it’s the rationale for two different Hulk personas warring inside Bruce Banner. Inconsistent Supermen and Batmen confusing your readers? Fix it with an apocalyptic storyline about the multiverse collapsing into a coherent whole! And then, later still, fix that first fix with another story bringing the multiverse back!
Lately, I’ve been writing about superheroes, their corporate owners, and the public domain. Comics work these issues into the fabric of their ongoing stories, too – mostly by framing them in the most ironic and heartbreaking ways. But in Batman Inc., writer Grant Morrison takes these issues and feeds them into Batman’s war on crime.
“Bruce is obviously a corporate CEO, billionaire and playboy superman,” says Morrison, “so what would Batman look like when that guy applied everything that he normally applies to Waynetech to Batman’s mission and way of life?”
Batman, Inc. features billionaire Bruce Wayne publicly admitting to funding Batman’s expensive gear and gadgets; all while, as Batman, travelling the globe and bestowing the rights to “wear the bat” to heroes of his choosing. Morrison’s inspiration was the hype around Tim Burton’s first Batman movie in 1989. In the academic anthology The Many Lives Of The Batman, William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson describe Bat-Mania like this:
During the summer of 1989, this bat-logo permeated American culture, appearing on candy, boxer shorts, leather medallions, earrings, baseball caps, night lights, sterling silver coins – in short, on any item capable of bearing the trade-marked image (or unlicensed likenesses thereof). The bat-logo’s omnipresence diffused its meaning, reducing the wearing of a black bat in a yellow oval to a mere gesture of participation in a particular cultural moment.
Batman’s symbol is everywhere in Gotham, too. Batman’s obsessed with it. He’s made it into his weapons, his vehicles, and everything else imaginable. In Gotham After Midnight, we see that he’s rigged Wayne Manor to spray the symbol across every single surface. Sometimes it feels like he’s terrified his memory is slipping away, a la Memento, and he’s designed his entire life to remind him that he’s Batman. Every thrown Batarang whispers as it returns to him: “You’re Batman. You’re Batman. You’re Batman.”
In our world, anyone can wear the Bat-symbol – so long as they’re willing to pay for the merchandise. But within his own universe, Batman is incredibly protective of his brand. Many times over the years he’s angrily told someone not to wear the symbol. In Batman Inc. #4, Morrison retells a moment from way back in 1956’s Detective Comics #233, as Batman calls out after Batwoman: “Wait! You can’t just… no one can wear a Batman costume in Gotham but me!” She says: “Ridiculous! No man, maybe!”
Batwoman quickly proves that she’s worthy of wearing his symbol, but others aren’t so lucky. Morrison’s current run is filled with ‘fake’ Batmen; his very first issue has a cop dressed as Batman shooting the Joker in the forehead. Other impostors attack him throughout, all driven mad by becoming Batman. And later, Batman’s memories are stolen and implanted into fresh bodies in an attempt to create an army of perfect bat-soldiers.
“They’re stealing your DNA. Your memories. To imprint unstoppable soldiers. Driven by your trauma.”
“Then tell them they can have it. You can have it, too. If you can bear it all at once.”
It turns out no one can handle the superhuman levels of pain and misery fuelling Batman. Impostors that borrow his story, mission, and iconography without permission will be destroyed by them. Only the ‘real thing’ can survive.
Morrison is no stranger to taking the external demands on his stories and narrativising them. My favourite example is the second volume of his epic The Invisibles; it took the need for action and accessibility required to boost sales and turned it into a growing anxiety about what this (seemingly glamorous) violence was doing to heroes’ psyches. And the idea of Bruce Wayne applying corporate logic to Batman’s mission makes perfect sense – but can the men and women who take on his heroic identity survive? Is the fact that they are ‘official’ Batmen enough to shield them from the horror built deep into the brand’s DNA?
I ended my last Bookslut column by wondering if we should apply the moral code of these fictional superheroes to their corporate status, too. I can happily imagine Superman wishing himself into the public domain. Batman, though, would be horrified at every bat-shirt, every bat-lunchbox, and every homemade bat-costume. They’d never be “mere gestures of participation” to him. They’d be signs of tragedy to come.
Charles Burns and OK Soda
Last year, I visited the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. I’ve mentioned it briefly here before. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the M&M store in Times Square, but wandering through its displays definitely brought on its own particular jitters.
(All that caffeine probably didn’t help.)
Buried amongst the hundreds of products on the walls, however, was an item worthy of a double-take. It was a can of something called OK Soda, featuring the instantly recognisable art of Charles Burns. When I interviewed him for Bookslut last month, I finally got to ask him about it:
Yeah, that was a very odd project. Another American cartoonist, Dan Clowes, did some designs as well. I kind of know what they were after – but I don’t know what they were thinking. They were going for this kind of ironic humour, for the 20-something audience. Instead of having that iconic Coca-Cola logo, the can would be different every few months or so.
It was test-marketed in maybe five or six different US cities. It was produced; it was out there. I never sampled it, but everyone I talked to said that whatever the soda was it was truly disgusting. It was a combination of grape soda and tea, or something like that.
I said that I felt like he needed to taste it for himself, right? Just so he knew what his art was wrapped around? He wasn’t convinced.
I wasn’t in one of the cities where any of this stuff was available, but they sent me a few cans. I never felt compelled to crack one open and chug it down.
Pattern Recognition
In William Gibson’s new novel, Zero History, one chapter opens like this:
Hey, that’s where I live! Fitzroy represent!
When this unexpectedly appeared on the page, I felt that odd thrill of recognition. Because of our geographical isolation and limited media output, Australia is particularly susceptible to this. We don’t see our streets or landmarks or countryside on screen that often so there’s an excitement when we do. Somehow I doubt that, say, New Yorkers get the same buzz seeing their neighbourhood on Law & Order.
It got me thinking about the insidious pleasures of recognition. I’ve been there! I’ve read that book! I get that joke! It can be a powerful drug.
Sometimes the fun of recognition comes from encountering something that you feel is just for you. (Fitzroy! Woo!). Writing on her blog, Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica) once explained the meaning of a “two-percenter”:
“A two-percenter, as I’m sure you’ve figured out, is a joke that the writers estimate will be understood and enjoyed by two percent of the audience. Sometimes the number cited varies, but the idea is the same, it means you’re dealing with a fairly obscure reference. As an audience member, when you’re part of the two percent that gets it, there’s nothing better than this kind of joke because it feels like the writer is reaching into your own personal brain. In a good way.”
Gibson’s mention of Fitzroy could be a non-funny example of this, as would every second brand name in the book. If the protagonist of his earlier Pattern Recognition was allergic to brands, Gibson is addicted to them. In his review of Zero History, Mark Feeney writes:
“The [brand] names aren’t simply showing off. Their role is structural, not merely cosmetic. They provide a kind of gazetteer of desire, an armature of possession. Products and companies fascinate and excite Gibson the way sin did Graham Greene and butterflies Nabokov.”
And while some of these brands are ubiquitous (Sony, KFC, iPhone) others are more unique. Two-percenters, if you like, for those familiar with them. One character’s outdated Neo phone is mysterious enough that this website, which tracks every object mentioned in Gibson’s most recent trilogy, had to guess at the Neo specs. If you recognised it? Imagine how special you’d feel.
Compare and contrast Gibson’s world, though with the movies of Jason Frieberg and Aaron Seltzer. Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie or Vampires Suck. These movies aren’t comedies; they’re barely even films. They’re more like secret psychological tests designed to make sure you’re absorbing an appropriate dose of popular culture. Recognition is their entire raison d’être.
When Meet The Spartans shows a bald, baby-crazy Britney Spears getting kicked into the pit from 300, it gives the same hit of pleasure. This time, though, it’s just a reward for knowing who Britney Spears is, and having heard the exact same Crazy Britney gags as everyone else.
Paris Hilton. Michael Jackson. Lindsay Lohan. It begins with jokes, but then the jokes fall away; audiences now laugh at the mention of their names. The jolt of easy recognition turns human beings into punchlines: ninety-eight-percenters.