The small sell
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Natasha Ludowyk and Penelope Modra
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Natasha Ludowyk's and Penelope Modra's biographies and other articles by these writers
- "We can't earn your respect so we're gonna buy it." – The Presets, at the Tsubi Jeans and Modular Records Christmas Party, December 2005
- "To marketers it no doubt all seems a little harsh on the side of the detractors, but as I have said before in this space, the new comms tools are in the hands of the consumers, if you want to play with them you need to do so cautiously or it could backfire in a massive way." – B & T weblog, referring to the grandiose failure of the Coke Zero campaign, www.thezeromovement.com, January 2006
- "We don't try to be something we're not; it's more about representing the community and promoting Melbourne than us making any money."
– Karl Stanton, co-founder of www.niceproduce.com, April 2006
- "Tight pants. Big dreams. Bending over for the mainstream."
– FrankieTeardropESQ, www.messandnoise.com, February 2006
- "Still united by hate." – advertisement for Vice magazine, January 2006.
It's easy to buy something these days without knowing who's selling it. Converse used to be punk, now it's an arm of Nike. MySpace.com used to be a cultural networking tool, now it's ad space for Rupert Murdoch.
Brands have long known the value of mimicking and even purchasing subculture: the big race for authenticity began in the early '90s. Indeed Generation Y, in its quest for individuality, may have sped up the process. But what about instances where subcultures themselves have begun to compete commercially? In the world of the "small sell", the line between cultural production and branding is blurred.
There has been a lot of talk about our generation's disdain for labels. On the one hand, it is difficult to label us. What does Generation Y even mean? It is hard to pinpoint a unifying element, other than our age, which may or may not be fifteen to thirty. Ryan Heath has attempted a definition in Please Just F* Off, It's Our Turn Now (Pluto Press, 2006), although he concludes that we are really only unified by our diversity. We have certainly grown up together in a golden age of advertising. While we seem to embrace capitalism and consumption, we are cynical about labels. We have an inbuilt suspicion of the big sell.
This sentiment was best captured by Naomi Klein's branding overview NoLogo (Flamingo, 2001), which brought into focus the corporate backlash of the '90s and beyond. More a commentary than a call-to-arms, NoLogo clarified a general itchiness we might have felt about the emergence of a global corporate lawlessness, about brand dominance, the proliferation of culture marketing, and particularly the colonisation and mimicry of subculture by global brands.
As Klein charted, brands became aware of our generation's disdain for the big sell, and began to use our own subcultures to market to us. The new race became one of self-representation. And what a golden age of advertising this has spawned. Where catalogues are indistinguishable from ‘zines and independent street press; where school children are employed to up-sell clothes to their peers; where graffiti artists are head-hunted to work on shop fit-outs; where the seeding of "social epidemics", in the words of Malcolm Gladwell, has become the spending priority in marketing budgets.
Our visual and physical spaces are now crowded with marketing that is often indistinguishable from our own cultural production.
SO HOW HAVE GEN Y SUBCULTURES RESPONDED? These skaters, indie-kids, breakers, graffiti crews, tech-nerds and rockers? Klein assumes that we resented the accelerating absorption and re-sale of our identities. But are we really fighting back? NoLogo places a vague faith in "... an activism that is sowing the seeds of a genuine alternative to corporate rule." But where is it and what form does it take? We are not a unified or politically driven generation. Our culture-jamming is prolific, but it's not organised. Adbusters magazine and websites like www.worth1000.com have made an artform of advertisement critique and this has become an amusing pastime for thousands of graphic artists, bloggers and film editors who spoof, deface and re-edit corporate messages as they emerge. Yet brands invest billions of dollars in staying ahead of this backlash. They are selling our own attitude back to us, employing us as advisors, and, in the case of General Pants, asking us to submit our own artwork to their catalogues.
As Klein point out, marketers tell us we live in "the global village, an incredible place where tribespeople in remotest rainforests tap away on laptop computers." The question is: how is our generation using this power? Perhaps we are failing Klein. Rather than reading between the lines of the happy rhetoric and fighting a globalism where the economic divide continues to widen, we seem to be embracing the market's new global scalability.
In a globablised world, where we hold the card of authenticity that brands try so hard to play, there is nothing stopping us from becoming our own cultural salespeople. In order to sell to us, effectively the brands need to emulate us. But we are also becoming our own brands. We can bypass brand absorption and operate not as brand avengers, but as independent, subcultural entrepreneurs. Maybe this is our activism?
When it comes to the small sell, global corporations and creative individuals jostle for consumer attention, and authenticity is paramount. Individuals who trade on their own subcultures have the upper hand, yet they must also walk a careful line, to maintain a profit on the one hand, and their cultural credibility on the other. Even a partial profit motive can be met with calls of exploitation.
So how is the subcultural entrepreneur to survive, let alone prosper, in this market? Most of these enterprises begin by serving their own community. But with some success comes the potential for new audiences, more sales, bigger enterprise, as well as disillusionment from their original community. How these challenges are met can mean the difference between make and break.
We've compared the careful rise of a few established local ventures.