Discuss William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. In-class activity: find a partner. Inspect what he or she is wearing or carrying, and write down every brand name you can spot. We will collate the results and vote on what is, or isn’t “cool.”
Brand Name VICTORIA SECRET Advil 14 Hanes 13 Adidas 12 Smackers 12 Eclipse 11 Twix 11 Blistex 11 Bath & Body 11 nike 10 Old Navy 10 Wal Mart 10 Bic 9 Listerine 9 Nickelodian 9 Orbits 9 SHU 9 Visa 9 Skechers 9 Big Red 8 Express 8 Giant Eagle Ad Car 8 Jansport 8 Juicy Fruit 8 Maybelline 8 Panasonic 8 roxy 8 Steve Madden 8 Verizon 8 Kohls 8 American Eagle 7 CoverGirl 7 Dino’s 7 ETNIES 7 Extra 7 FOSSIL 7 MUDD 7 Nine West 7 Aquafina 6 Lerner 6 Ralph Lauren 6 Relic 6 Trident 6 Wrigleys 6 Extra 6 Altoids 5 Emily the strange 5 No Boundaries 5 BASIC 4 Paper Mate 4 PB 4 TIMBERLAND 4 Kay Jewelers 4 Aeropostale 3 Fashion Bug 3 George 3 Hillfiger 3 HURLEY 3 Jerzee 3 National City 3 Nokia 3 Tachikara 3 Tilt 3 Vaseline 3 Bad cat 2 clairs 2 J. JILL 2 Jeffrey Bean 2 Nextel 2 ROSE ART 2 Kyocera 2 Legend 2 K-mart 2 EB TEK 1 License 1 Micron 1 Northwest Territory 1 OPI 1 Pilot 1 Swerve 1 ULTRA BLEND 1 Unisoly 1 Virgin mobile 1 Athletic Works 0 Atlantic 0 Jerz 0 C.E. George 0 Canyon River Blues 0 East Port 0 Ed White Basics 0 Jostens 0 Modern Book 0 Motorola 0 Shop n Save 0 Uniball 0 wccc 0 Maxell 0 Cartier -1 Cool Hunting at Seton Hill UniversityJerz’s Literacy Weblog)
In the final weeks of term, it’s not surprising that a headache pain reliever rates so highly. I was surprised at how highly various brands of gum and other oral products rated. Victoria’s Secret actually got cheers, with some people, both men and women, putting up both hands. Hanes seems, by contrast, very boring to me, but hey, it’s underwear, so I guess that was good enough for this class.
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Daisy, those books sound great! Last term we watched “The Merchants of Cool” in a freshman “Seminar in Thinking and Writing,” and I thought it sparked some good discussion.Are you familiar with The Malling of America? I haven’t read it yet, but it’s a study of shopping mall culture. One of the malls used in the study is here in Greensburg, Pa — or, that is, it was here, until it was pulled down earlier this year to make way for a new Wal Mart, so that the existing WalMart can be turned into a Sams. (I think.)
Have you read any of these books by James Twitchell? Lots of interesting commentary on branding…
Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in America (1995), For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture (1997)
Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (1999)
Twenty Ads That Shook The World: The Century?s Most Groundbreaking Advertising (2000)
Living It Up: America?s Love Affair With Luxury (2002)
Branded Nation: When Culture Goes Pop (forthcoming in 2004).
You’re not a pain at all, Karissa. I made this list in MS-Excel, and then saved it as an HTML file, then cut and paste from the resulting file in order to format it as you see it above. It was actually a big pain removing all of the nonsense code that Microsoft adds to anything that it generates via a “save to HTML” function, and at one point when it worked, I just said, “Fine, it works, forget it.” Sorry about the white space! In a few days it’ll disappear into the archives… This is one of those times when I do wish my blog software had an extended entry box, but if I really thought about it in advance I could post the whole thing on a web page and use the blog entry to point to it. (So don’t worry, Will, I’m not giving you something else for your to-do list!)
Have you thought about putting the information into two columns so that it doesn’t take up so much space (and leave so much white space)? Just wondering. Sorry if I’m a pain in the neck.
Nobody. There was a “Jerzee”, but I threw in “Jerz” just for fun. Nobody thought I was cool, which I expected…
Interesting exercise. You’re good at inventing fun class games. So who was wearing Jerz?