These are links to cafepress.com, featuring a couple of
buttons I made up. Nothing overly complicated, but I love buttons so I decided
to try a applying quick bits of satire in button form. The “corporate party”
one is my favorite, blending the elephant and the donkey as they so clearly
have become a single entity in political terms. I wish I was better with
photo/video editing so that the image would appear a little cleaner and more
proportional, but I did the best I could with Microsoft’s pre-loaded software.
The other button is just something I tend to say with a fair
amount of regularity: I get the impression that a great many people try to
think on the go, not really going over the things they say or contribute to FB,
Twitter and other Net outlets. So many times I hear what someone has said or
see what they have posted and have to say to them “stop and think”. I know I’m
as guilty of this as the next, but that made creating the button as reasonable
as my urge to push the notion on others. I wanted to remind myself to take my
own advice, a button seemed like the perfect space to do this in and, as
mentioned above, I really enjoy buttons.
I like cafepress.com ’s customized item idea. It’s a really
great way to create an interactive buying experience. Along Jenkin’s line of
thinking, this is exactly the direction our culture is moving in. We want to
consume, but also to contribute and have our contributions consumed with an
equal gusto. It doesn’t matter to cafepress what we actually buy, so long as we
buy from them. By giving us a measure of freedom in our product, our purchase
has become something personal. This is an ingenious and seemingly obvious
marketing move. And it’s powered, at its base, by the connectivity of the
Internet. Cafepress.com offers us more than a vendor; it offers us a community,
a place to contribute something unique.
This is Jenkin’s argument when he is dissecting the media
phenomena Survivor and American Idol. These two series
transcend the standard television program, relying on viewer participation and
an interest that expands beyond the hour long weekly production. Both have
created and foster enormous online followings, from fans to doubters to
speculators. All of these types of viewers create unique communities, making
the shows into more than simple entertainment. The meeting of old and new media
creates a comprehensive and potent new form of marketing.
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