It’s been a while since I last blogged but I think enough events in the real world have hit me squarely in the publishing lobe of my brain to make me want to come here and organise my thoughts to assess the damage.
It started the Sunday before last, my train was just pulling out of Manchester station and I saw a poster for a new novel. Through the powers of successful design my eyes were lead to some 40 point Helvetica, a quote: ‘Completely riveting, as gripping a read as any Tom Clancy’. Below this dedication, which I am tempted to pick apart as a flawed testimony but will leave be for now, there was the title ‘Phoenix Squadron’. There was something more central on the page than the title, the quote the author’s name or the image of the oncoming fighter jet – the author of these praising words – ‘Jeremy Clarkson’.
This event left an itch in my head: this poster represented a trend which is ‘gripping’ my industry (every creative industry), celebrity culture.
I was reminded of it on Tuesday when Eoin Purcell linked to an article in the Irish Publishing News. It reported that Robbie Williams was to provide the endorsement for a new book from Liberties Press, titled ‘Randumb: The Random, Dumb Adventures of an Irish Guy in LA’. His quote? ‘I like book, me’.
This is the point where this camel’s back broke down. It’s not that I disrespect these celebrities being given the space to praise a book. They’re hugely successful people in their own right. Jeremy Clarkson for example, as well as being a multi-millionaire jackaninny, is a best-selling author. People like his books. Robbie Williams is not known for his literary talent, but he’s not pretending either; this is a book about a fish-out-of-water in LA – it’s a good match.
It’s just disheartening, I’ve spent the last couple of years reading the different theories about how marketing needs to change, to foster a different relationship with the consumer/reader/fan, so I’m disappointed when it seems to boil down to ‘can we get Justin Lee Collins to say something nice about this?’
The medium of a poster at a train station is probably perfect for the marketers of a book such as ‘Phoenix Squadron’ to reach their desired audience – the descendant of Blair’s Mondeo Man, Pendolino man: the daily commuter with their Stephen-King-sized brick of, sometimes fact-based, escapism.
I had to cheer myself up by reading about the more exciting marketing strategies currently in play e.g. Dutton’s ‘guess the word’ campaign for Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (http://brsts.com/) or the ‘snap and tell’ interactive posters that communicate with mobile phone users. I understand that I am in the minority. I have had less than a year’s experience of the publishing industry and I have the high faluting ideals of a recent graduate, to boot. I don’t want to see every book stamped with a recommendation from a more popular figure.
I have one exception: I am completely for ‘book groups’ of the celebrity variety. I think the only people that would begrudge Richard and Judy their fortunes for encouraging their viewers to read, would be the wholesalers and shop assistants who had to apply all of those stickers. Such groups encourage the public good of publishing, the act of reading. It’s about planning for tomorrow, making sure that you don’t have to encourage every purchase with a recommendation or offer, because the reader has developed a relationship with your company and with all books. There’s a certain democracy and self-improvement vibe bound up with the big business of these celebrity groups that makes them ‘ok’ in my book. They make reading into a communal activity, breaking down the core objection to reading – the solitary nature of it.
When I think about whose name I would rather see stamped on a book, the names that come to mind are those of author and journalists. In case there was any doubt, I don’t think Clarkson – the TV creation – should be put in such a group, you might as well put Big Bird. The idea is that a person becomes a specialist on a topic through lengthy study, you read their work, they are rewarded by making a name of themselves, and you are rewarded by having someone you can trust. It is the essence of a good, honest brand, as well the basis for critical study. It is a hierarchy of respect. I’m sure there were always exceptions to this that proved to be in hindsight a worthy success but I want there to be some reward for a person to find out about high culture.
Maybe it’s the prospect of a hung parliament, but I am starting to get the impression that people don’t know who to trust anymore. Somewhere along the lines of ‘citizen journalism’, the decline of printed newspapers, the re-structuring of Sunday papers, the competition from/demand for the sensational on television has led to a downturn in respect, and thus visibility, for critics.
The perspectives available are so diffuse that many products seem to be critic-immune. As criticism moves from the readily available to the online and scattered it seems that tastes are becoming more conservative. The battle for good publicity has become (if it wasn’t always) a war to be noticed. Comparisons are often made between the business models of publishing and that of the music industry, I think a key similarity has been overlooked in these studies – both of these creative industries rely on an activity that does not need to be regulated or sold – reading and listening. These are not passive activities – regardless of what you might think when you see a commuter with earphones and a book open – they are learning mechanisms that allow for education as well as entertainment and escapism. As well as, I’m sure, lots of other words beginning with ‘e’.
My interest was also sparked this week as I watched the finale of series 3 of Mad Men. The American drama recreates 1960’s Madison Avenue, New York – the centre of the advertising industry at the time. During the last episode, set a month after the assassination of JFK, the hero attempts to win over colleague with the following words: -
Don: “There are people out there who buy things. People like you and me. Then something happened. Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves… is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that’s very valuable.”
This gets at the heart of what I want to see, and why I might not have a good case against the Clarkson poster. I am happy to admit that the poster might be right for this book but I want to see, as often as possible, marketing that stretches the medium in order to meet the different ways the opinions are being formed.
Mad Men flatters its viewers by foreshadowing future events but it also lets them see something that is rarely talked about in this postmodern, kitsch era – the role of advertising: to decide how best to communicate with large numbers of people. You can watch characters adjust their strategies as they open their eyes to new markets – the birth of a Media department, the marketing of goods to a specifically African-American audience, the control of information required in promoting products that are dangerous e.g. cigarettes. It’s the genesis of marketing in an increasingly aware and diverse age.
I appreciate that it is easy to feel envious of a scripted television drama but if you scratch off the fiction, by looking at reports of the time, the fact remains that changes were made on a large scale during this period to create the multimedia popular culture that we all know so well. The heroes of Madison Avenue realise that it isn’t enough to tell people what to do and what to want. A repeated phrase as the series progresses becomes ‘I did everything they asked of me’ as they look back on their own nuclear family Gomorrah like the Richard Yates creations that pre-date them.
I’ll try not to turn this into a ‘boo-hoo’ that people working in the industry that sells itself as the gatekeepers to knowledge aren’t always as creative as they could be, I understand the costs that come with every innovation. Maybe I just need to look harder.
On Saturday, I saw something that for me represents the partial replacement of the critic. It was a table laid out on my high street upon which people were offering a petition to ‘Say No to ID’. I’m sure there are better jokers out there than me that have irreverently criticised the existence of a petition that acts as a register of people that oppose their information being stored on a list. That petition reminded me of the other change that’s taken place since the birth of advertising and marketing – the sharing of private information and preferences.
A publisher can have a far better understanding of what a person wants now, trackers, spybots and surveys have crept into our days just as technological escapism has become almost universal in the developed world. There are so many sources for information that a search engine is now the most influential determiner of taste in the world.
This should tell marketers everywhere something. Google have re-drawn the creative space, and Apple are now opening their own shop with iAds. If marketers want to be in the business of selling then they need to find more spaces where they can set their own prices. The place that is most valuable is the consumer’s memory, it’s not rented by the click and its value will always increase with the long term investment. In order to buy a valuable chunk of this performance space the marketer needs to treat the owner with respect and do more than lay down a flag. They need to offer more than one experience and provide an introduction to more. They need to connect with what the reader’s passions and interests.
Don’t just give me someone else’s word for it that this book is good: let me have a chapter to decide for myself, provide me with links to research the topic, join it into the network of other titles that might interest me so that I can immerse myself in something satisfying. And only tell me about it if I have given you reason to think that I will like it. The smart people out there are already doing this and I hope they are rewarded for it.
I realised mid-writing that the problem I came to this keyboard to address isn’t the industry’s, it is my own. I want marketing to encourage creativity and a literary culture because these are what I want to do and what I want to see. What have we learnt? Don’t put Jeremy Clarkson’s name in front of me on a billboard.
