PSFK writes about an apparently lame attempt by Levis to jump on the ethical bandwagon:

The photo shows the mannequins in the NYC Broadway window telling us all to volunteer our time for social good - but why? This all might sound quite worthy but it comes across as patronizing and cheap. Enough said. Too little, too late.

Looking at the picture, it seems hard to argue with that take on the campaign. 

Grant McCracken, meanwhile, writes about a Nike ad he saw in a Sunday New York Times.  It’s written to “ignorance” and deals with the Don Imus/Rutgers basketball team situation.  I’m sure you can guess the gist of the ad, even without reading it.  As McCracken transcribes it:

Thank you, ignorance.
Thank you for starting the conversation.
Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger’s (sic) team story.
And for making us wonder what other great stories we’ve missed.
Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.
Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.
Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.
Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.
Thank you for unintentionally moving women’s sport forward.
And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.
Next season starts 11.16.07.

McCracken’s attitude about it can be summed up in three words: “Well done, Nike.” 

What am I missing?  How is this different than Levis’ attempt at ethics?  Why does Nike feel they can teach me about ethics?  Why does the company feel the need to preach to me?  I can’t believe this stuff works.  It uses both the Rutgers basketball players and Imus to try to create goodwill for a brand.  How crass is that? 

McCracken goes on to say:

Naturally, this is strategically challenging.  It is not yet clear exactly where this development will “net out.”  So there is an element of risk.

Huh?  The only risk about this ad is whether it made it into the paper before the story died down.  There was absolutely no risk about it, and that is one of the things that makes it so fatuous.  Several years ago Benetton ran an ad campaign that created quite a furor.  It’s 1992 ads included AIDS victims, African guerrillas, and mafia  bombings.  Still motivated by gaining attention for the brand, but no doubt including some actual company held principles, and risky.  Whatever you thought about the motivation behind the ads, they were risky (although they would not be today).  The Nike ad? Pandering, not risky.  Sorry, I just don’t see how this kind of pile-on advertising helps a brand sell more product.

If Nike wanted to take a strong stand for justice for athletes, where were they when the Duke lacrosse players were being persecuted?  Let’s see, those athletes were wealthy, white males, with high-priced attorneys, attending a private university, playing a game viewed as the domain of wealthy, white males, attending private schools.  Hmmmm. 

Too risky. 

Reuters has interesting news about Second Life - the FBI is investigating gambling.  With hundreds of casinos and the Linden dollar freely transferable into US dollars, it seems pretty clear that there is gambling in the traditional sense of the word. 

‘We have invited the FBI several times to take a look around in Second Life and raise any concerns they would like, and we know of at least one instance that Federal agents did look around in a virtual casino,’said Ginsu Yoon, until recently Linden Lab’s general counsel and currently vice president for business affairs. ‘We have specifically requested that a US Attorney give us guidance on virtual gaming activity in SL, but this hasn’t resulted in clear rules yet.’

Yoon goes on to say, “It’s not always clear to us whether a 3D simulation of a casino is the same thing as a casino, legally speaking - and it’s not clear to the law enforcement authorities we have asked.”  I fail to see how it can be considered anything but the same, although that’s different than believing it should be outlawed.

Whether the virtual casinos are a simulation, or actual gambling, I love the idea of the FBI investigating.  I wonder if the agents are undercover?  Are they armed?  Wired?  Do they have informants?  How many Linden dollars is a juicy piece of information worth?  The questions are endless.  Of course, one way to look at this is to view the FBI as just another business trying to set up shop in Second Life.  They can do some marketing, have an outreach program, maybe a gun exchange.  If we’re lucky, perhaps we’ll see Smith & Wesson opening a shop and creating virtual handguns for the agents.

Grant McCracken writes that he believes that the days of accidental friends may be numbered:

In the “old world” model, we make friends by accident. Our family is from Seattle, so that’s where we were born. Or, our Dad got a job in Chicago, so that’s where we went to school. We like to ski, and that’s how we ended up in Vermont. Accidents of birth, occupation, inclination, all of these constrain the set of people with whom we can be friends.

[…]

My guess is that machines once they are dedicated to this purpose will do a much better job of building social connections than I could do even if I were to devote all my time to it. It can detect patterns in the stuff I put on line, and find hidden resonances with the stuff others put on line. And this would be interesting. It would be fun to get an email that says ‘we’ve found a match.’

Pretty clearly we spend a lot of time and money trying to sort ourselves into like-minded groups, in both the virtual and physical worlds. We join MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn (as Grant notes) in an attempt to find people we have something in common with. We also join book clubs, sports clubs, country clubs, museums, and the SPCA, hoping that we’ll find kindred souls as members. We have a need to find people who are like us, and Grant is probably right that machines will be able to do a good job with this.

This search for people I’ll like, though, reminds me of the search for information I want to read. If I end up only reading articles on topics I’m interested in from sources I like, I’m in danger of never coming across a new thought. I also miss stumbling across information that I might not have been able to predict will interest me but does. It’s the same with people. Do you have a friend you’re surprised you can even tolerate, much less like? Someone else you enjoy talking with even though you think differently on just about any subject? Another friend from a completely different background and cultural upbringing? Of course you do. Might a machine someday match you with them?

If our social networks were the result of machine driven sifting and filtering, I have to believe that society would become polarized, with interactions among self-reinforcing groups resembling a Hardball episode - lots of talking and shouting but not much learning and understanding. It is encountering diversity of thought and experience that allows us to grow and develop intellectually. While I, like everyone else, employ filters for many of my friends, I recognize that it is accidental friends who often add the spice to life.

I suspect that Grant just has more faith in machines than I do. He no doubt believes that they will be able to pick up on something we exhibit that provides the evidence for that unlikely match. On the other hand, maybe every thirty-third search they’ll short circuit and throw out a random match. That might work.

Any day now, China’s National People’s Congress is expected to pass a private property law that gives the property of individuals the same protection as that of the state. The New York Times notes that,

Approval of the property law was expected last year, but party leaders tabled the proposal after an unusually public and passionate ideological fight erupted. It was led by leftist scholars who argued that the law would worsen income inequality, legalize the misappropriation of state assets and undermine the socialist tenet of state ownership of property.

No doubt there were some sleepless nights spent at CCP headquarters over this one, but in the end, economic progress won out over communist ideology (wasn’t that battle won long ago?).

Also reporting on the law’s imminent passage, the Economist notes,

Every month sees thousands of protests across China by poor farmers outraged at the expropriation of their land for piffling or no compensation. As in previous years, placating those left behind in China’s rush for growth has been a main theme of the NPC

As if to prove the point, 20,000 people rioted in Hunan during the first week of the Congress. Although ostensibly over transportation costs, it’s easy to see this as another protest by those “left behind.” Lest we expect instant change from the impending law, the Economist gives us a dose of reality:

This latest law, likewise, will not bring the full property-rights revolution China’s development demands. Indeed, it will not meet the most crying need: to give peasants marketable ownership rights to the land they farm. If they could sell their land, tens of millions of underemployed farmers might find productive work. Those who stay on the farm could acquire bigger land holdings and use them more efficiently. Nor will the new law let peasants use their land as security on which they could borrow and invest to boost productivity. Nor, even now, will they be free from the threat of expropriation, another disincentive to investment. Much good land has already been grabbed, and the new law will merely protect the grabbers’ gains.

Outsourcing manufacturing to China continues to be protectionists’ bugbear, and they will likely see anything that makes the country more welcoming to capitalists as bad. A freer China, though, is good for the United States and for the world. Yes, it may prompt more businesses to outsource or invest in China, but that train has already left the station. The best thing for the US economy is for China to move from hungry capitalists to satisfied capitalists. When that happens wages will begin to equalize and China will fulfill its potential as the home of billions of prosperous consumers. This property law is one more step down that road.

As a sad aside, the Times notes the confiscation of land by “corrupt officials working in concert with developers.” As China moves closer to a Western economy, not so long ago the US took a step closer to China’s economy.

[Update: For more extensive coverage see China Law Blog.]

If you still need evidence of the mainstreaming of the formerly underground worlds of comics and video games, go see 300. The genesis of the movie, just released on Friday, is explained well in this Time article. As Time states:

It was made by a young director, stars nobody in particular, and it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen. Very little in 300 is real except the actors. Sets, locations, armies, blood–they’re all computer generated. It’s beautiful, and it might well be the future of filmmaking.

The article spends some time worrying about whether nearly all movies will be made like this in the future. Seems like a silly thing to worry about. Movies will become what their audiences want them to become, although it’s as hard to imagine that most future films will become digital as it is to imagine that few future films will have digital elements.

The film looks like a comic book which, as an adaptation of a graphic novel, it is. It is highly stylized and atmospheric, just as the comic is and just as video games are. “For [director Zach] Snyder it was simply the only way to get the look of [the graphic novel] off the page and onto the big screen.”

Other movies have been made using this “digital backlot” method combined with a comic book feel. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow comes to mind, although that movie was not a box office success as 300 certainly seems destined to be. I liked both films and while it’s difficult to say why one fails and the other doesn’t, 300 has much more of a video game feel. Anyone familiar with atmospheric first person shooters will immediately feel at home with 300. The violence is much more prominent in 300 as well, just as it is an integral part of FPS games.

The well-known classicist, Victor Davis Hanson, compares (page down) the digital backlot technique to ancient Greek tragedy:

…Snyder, Johnstad, and [300 writer] Miller have created a strange convention of digital backlot and computer animation, reminiscent of the comic book mix of Sin City. That too is sort of like the conventions of Attic tragedy in which myths were presented only through elaborate protocols that came at the expense of realism (three male actors on the stage, masks, dialogue in iambs, with elaborate choral meters, violence off stage, 1000-1600 lines long, etc.).

Comparing 300 with Oliver Stone’s film on Alexander the Great, Hanson says,

If characters sometimes sound black-and-white as cut-out superheroes, it is not because they are badly-scripted Greeks, as was true in Stone’s film, but because they reflect the parameters of the convention of graphic novels, comic books, and surrealistic cinematography.

During Leonidas’s final moments, he is shown in profile, a profile that looks exactly like the profile of Greek warriors found on ancient pottery. Most of the best lines in the film are taken directly from Herodotus and Plutarch. The whole thing is a wonderful mashup of comics, video games, and ancient history. What a fantastic combination!

A few other noteworthy nuggets that came out of the PSFK conference on Tuesday were from the panel discussion titled “Eco Shift or Greenwash.” The panel was comprised of Tamara Giltsoff, Hemal Vasavada-Gill, Jill Fehrenbacher, and Marc Alt.

The first few people to speak, Marc and Jill, both noted companies that they felt hadn’t received proper credit for their Green efforts. In Marc’s case it was Wal-Mart (several initiatives) and in Jill’s case it was H&M (organic cotton). I had expected fire-breathing eco-dragons on this panel and instead heard some rational discussion of corporate Green efforts. This, along with some other discussion, made me feel that the eco-ground is truly shifting for activists. With opinions expressed in the media and among the urban cognoscenti swelling in their favor, they seem to be shifting into business mode from fire-breathing mode. If I’m right, this should mean that companies can stop trying to please activists with their Green products and start trying to please consumers. I’ve said many times before that Green products will only become widely accepted when they offer benefits beyond their Greenness. Those who truly believe in the cause should work on creating superior Green products, not just Green products. It looks like there may be hope that the shift is beginning to occur.

The danger for companies is not over yet, however, as evidenced by an interesting quote from Hemal: “Green is a liability.” She wasn’t entirely clear on what she meant, but I took her to mean that if you do Green “wrong,” the price you pay is high. To me, this brings to mind the lessons learned by the college football world as a result of the criticism Notre Dame received when it fired Ty Willingham. Whatever it was that the critics wanted to teach, the lesson learned was don’t hire a black coach unless you are absolutely positive you won’t need to fire him. With Green products the lesson may be don’t bother unless you are willing to make your product, initiative, etc. absolutely unassailable. The shame of this is that it leaves no room for companies to make honest, but flawed, efforts. What I heard from this panel, I hope, means that is also beginning to change.

The best evidence of a change in the air came from Tamara who said she has been, somewhat controversially, “pro-greenwash.” Her belief is that even if flawed, a Green initiative at least starts the conversation. I think that’s a healthy attitude and one that may actually result in truly remarkable Green products.

Of the many items that can often be found on the “socially responsible company” checklist, avoiding genetically modified foods is a popular one. It’s not entirely clear how a product that enables larger crop yield (feeds more poor people) using less land (more open space, forests, etc.), less fertilizer (clean runoff), and less pesticide (friendly to the environment) became an environmental villain, but no doubt a scary sounding, complex process helped this result along. Oh, and it was being embraced by corporations, so evil forces must be at work.

In Saturday’s New York Times, however, John Tierney writes of Stewart Brand’s embrace of genetic engineering. Brand makes a wonderful point when he states:

One area of biotech with huge promise and some drawbacks is genetic engineering, so far violently rejected by the environmental movement. That rejection is, I think, a mistake. Why was water fluoridization rejected by the political right and “frankenfood” by the political left? The answer, I suspect, is that fluoridization came from government and genetically modified (GM) crops from corporations. If the origins had been reversed—as they could have been—the positions would be reversed, too.

Ignore the origin and look at the technology on its own terms. (This will be easier with the emergence of “open source” genetic engineering, which could work around restrictive corporate patents.) What is its net effect on the environment? GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops.

He goes on to say that most of the scary stories about “frankenfoods” are urban legends and notes “how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes.” He also makes an excellent point when he says that “the best way for doubters to control a questionable new technology is to embrace it.” The funny thing is that we’ve been genetically engineering plants (and animals) for centuries, we just call it breeding.

This whole debate (although opponents rarely enter into scientific debate on the issue) is reminiscent of the nuclear power debate some years ago. Environmentalists, who sowed visions of power plants disintegrating nearby communities in accidental nuclear blasts, won that battle, much to the country’s detriment today. Nuclear power plants are no longer built and we’re more dependent than ever on fossil fuels.

As environmentalists wonder if newly Green companies have truly changed or are just marketing, the same question must be asked of those companies that avoid genetically modified foods (while hoping for the opposite answer).  Perhaps a Peace Corps volunteer working with the poor in Africa could ask the CEO of Whole Foods if they really believe GM foods are bad, or is it just a marketing ploy.

A few days ago I posted about the value of prizes in innovation. Yesterday The Guardian published a story stating that the American Enterprise Institute is offering $10,000 “for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Later the article states that “the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.”

Now, these are two very different things, but let’s suppose for a moment that AEI is offering a prize to scientists who can refute the IPCC report. Given the recent New York Times article, isn’t this exactly the thing to do? No matter what you believe about climate change, you have to be sick of the unsupported carping by both sides. It’s been highly politicized and has become dogma for many. What we all should want, however, is to understand what can be supported by facts and research, and how credible that research is. A prize to refute the IPCC report would go a long way in doing that. Ten Thousand dollars is enough money that I don’t think (despite the article’s silly characterization of the organization) the AEI will hand it over for propaganda even if it wanted to. If a requirement of winning the prize is that the research must be accepted into a peer reviewed journal (etc., etc.), we could have an extremely valuable contest. The main problem I see is that the prize may simply not be enough. Any scientist entering the contest will be badly abused by the powerful climate change lobby and $10,000 may not be worth it. One Texas A&M prof, speaking a bit cryptically, says as much in the article. If Netflix can offer $1,000,000 for a better recommendation algorithm, can’t we find someone to offer the same amount to bring another side to the climate change debate? If you strip away the article’s righteous indignation that a) anyone could question the IPCC report and, b) that filthy lucre has been entered into the debate, you’ll see that this type of contest would go far to shed light on a subject that’s been too long in the shadows. C’mon all you dirty, filthy, corporate funded scientists - innovate your way to this prize, if you can!

We seem to hear about, and experience, the transparency of the internet every day. We read blogs critical of products and companies, check price comparison sites before purchases, review data on corporate political contributions, and choose hotels based on guest reviews. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a slide show is worth ten thousand, and Influxinsights just put me onto ten thousand that a couple of retailers would prefer not to exist. After a trip to Kohl’s in one case, and Wal-Mart in another, two would-be customers decided the condition of the stores was so horrendous as to deserve a public dressing-down. They each posted pictures, and some of these companies’ brand equity that was carefully built up over the course of years was chipped away.

While a negative blog post about either one of these two stores could have been damaging, pictures had a much greater impact. These episodes prove that there is no such thing as “an isolated incident.” Of course, it’s hard to imagine that either store lost business over these postings, but I have no doubt that some Kohl’s and Wal-Mart employees lost sleep (at the very least). On the other hand, imagine if these pictures were of a product caught failing or malfunctioning - it would be devastating ( e.g. the Kryptonite lock). All sorts of companies are subject to complaints and exposés all the time, but with every customer walking around with a camera in her pocket, the margin for error is now a lot smaller.

Monday’s New York Times story on the ubiquity of advertising ignited some discussion about the relative merits and demerits of ads everywhere, all the time. Many writers lamented the loss of blank space while others decried the crass commercialization of Everything. I’m a little more sanguine, however.

Early in the Times article, Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency, is quoted as saying, “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.” This is one of the article’s key statements about this trend. The statement itself reminds us that the trend will one day be replaced. The fact that we are reading an article about it in a major daily makes us believe that day will come sooner rather than later. In fact, one suspects that Ubiquity is now, well, ubiquitous.

This ubiquity of ads, though, has a meritorious effect - innovation. It takes great ads to break through the clutter and it’s the existence of great ads that convinces consumers to allow the clutter. Any consumer backlash is quickly felt. The “Got Milk?” signs that smelled like chocolate chip cookies in San Francisco bus stops caused complaints and were quickly “de-smelled.” Longer in coming but much more draconian is the ban on outdoor advertising that began on January 1st in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Despite the ultimate outcome, I do believe the smelly “Got Milk?” signs were a good idea. They went a bit too far for some people, but I’ll bet there were more people telling friends they’ve got to visit a bus stop to smell the sign than there were complaints. (Advocates for those sensitive to scents ultimately did them in. It is San Francisco after all.)

One of the great ads mentioned in the article was “an interactive floor display for McDonald’s last year [that] showed the head of a teenage boy with small Big Mac burgers flying past; when people stepped on the ad, the burgers bounced away from their feet.” An Adidas sign “looked like a static picture of a sneaker until someone walked past it, triggering a motion sensor that sent a spray of miniature sneakers flying.” People liked these ads, were amused by them, and were probably glad they saw them. Although another innovation, the electronic billboard, is said to make a community “look like Las Vegas,” if programmed to be season, time of day, event, or even weather specific, it will be a great improvement over the static pasted graphics now on display. As John McNeil, executive creative director at McCann said, “If you do it the right way, you actually win points.”

As another example, look at product placement, which was also demonized when it first became popular. The fact is, it enhances a user’s experience, whether it’s watching television or playing a video game. A NASCAR video game with actual products on the cars is much more realistic than one with blurred logos, and we always laughed at how TV characters never drank a recognizable brand of soda.

Interestingly enough, even the ad opponents mentioned in the article seemed to accept the ads, they just wanted advertisers to pay more. The New York and New Jersey Port Authority canceled plans for Geico to place ads at toll booths at the George Washington Bridge when politicians and preservationists complained. The preservationists may have been high-minded about it, but others (only the politicians?) felt the space was sold too cheaply. In New York City last month Chase and Commerce banks were told by the city to turn off ads projected onto the sidewalk outside some branches. I have to wonder if it was because no fees were paid for the sidewalk space. As George Bernard Shaw said,”…now we’re haggling about the price.”

Ultimately this trend will also respect varying community mores, as the Sao Paulo example shows. Commenting on the Adidas sign, a women from the state of Washington said the sign was “cool,” but “I wouldn’t want to see it back in Spokane.”

Finally, one ad agency president said that this type of out-of-home advertising is “one of the last mass mediums.” Yes, and perhaps that explains why it’s so popular among ad agencies - like nearly all mass media advertising, a good creative ad can make a big splash, yet the ROI really can’t be measured. The article ends with Perry Ellis dubbing a campaign which placed ads on shirt boxes and dry cleaning bags a success because laundries continue to call looking for more after the campaign ended. Since the bags and boxes were given to the laundries for free, that tells me more about the cleaners desire for free bags than the success of the campaign.

Just when you think Hollywood is hopelessly anti-capitalist (artistically, if not in practice), comes this (through A&L Daily). It turns out that Angelina Jolie is an Ayn Rand fan and is lining herself up to play Dagny Taggart in a film version of Atlas Shrugged. The International Herald Tribune reports:

…Rand’s grand polemical novel keeps selling, and her admirers in Hollywood keep trying, and the latest effort involves a lineup of heavy hitters, starting with Angelina Jolie.

Randall Wallace, who wrote “Braveheart” and “We Were Soldiers,” is working on compressing the nearly 1,200-page book into a conventional two- hour screenplay. Howard and Karen Baldwin, the husband-and-wife producers of “Ray,” are overseeing the project, and Lions Gate Entertainment is footing the bill.

Others have tried to bring the book alive on both the big and small screens, but have never quite been able to pull it off. In the IHT’s words:

Until now, at least, no one in Hollywood has figured out a formula that promises both to sell popcorn and to do justice to the original text, let alone to the philosophy that it hammers home endlessly, at times in lengthy speeches. (The final one is 60 pages long.) But Baldwin said he believed that Wallace and the rest of their team were up to the task. “We all believe in the book, and will be true to the book,” he said.

While this news may be interesting to Ayn Rand fans and to some in the movie industry, why should anyone else care? Well, although this movie is a long way from production, the mere fact that it is able to pick up some momentum seems counter to many trends posited by today’s conventional wisdom. Rand’s heroes celebrate industry and cities while we worry about deforestation and global warming. Rand celebrates egoism while the press decries the Bush Administration’s alleged egotism (the two concepts are often confused). Rand writes of capitalism, individual liberty, and free thought while we watch industries beg for protection from world trade and hear politicians speak of the Holy Grail of bi-partisanship (known as decisions by committee in the business world). Is change in the air?

It’s way too early to say, of course. If successful, this movie won’t be out for years and the world will be a different place by then. On the other hand, perhaps this is an early warning sign of a future public mood shift away from the “nanny state” and toward more self reliance and personal responsibility. Judging by actions at the micro level, this certainly seems plausible. Small businesses (or entrepreneurs) have been lauded for years now and they are enabled by capitalism and a healthy sense of personal responsibility. We’re frequently told how today’s youth refuse to rely on corporations to manage their professional lives and define their self worth. That’s an attitude that even John Galt could love!

It will be fun to watch the progress of this film and ultimately see how faithful it is to Rand’s book. In the end though, perhaps it’s best to remember one thing… it’s just a movie!

(Reason picked up on this here.)