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Post by Skelly Craig on Sept 21, 2018 19:55:34 GMT -5
I just watched an interesting little video on a short-lived Coca Cola-offshoot introduced in 1993, called "OK Soda," that had a very innovative marketing campaign that reminded me somewhat of ASoUE's notable "Don't read this" marketing approach... not that they tried to "dissuade" people from buying the product, but by their postmodern subversion of usual advertising tactics. That made me wonder how much Daniel Handler's genius anti-approach to ASoUE's marketing contributed to the series' success (I know it contributed to my having picked up the first book), and whether it tapped into a 90s zeitgeist. Idk how far this can even be discussed (or at all), but I felt like making a topic about this. Maybe some of you know of other marketing campaigns from the 90s and early 00's that were similarly subversive. |
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Sept 22, 2018 4:54:18 GMT -5
It's an interesting thought. I read the first two books because my parents bought them for me, not because of the advertising, but maybe the 'don't read this' approach was part of what made them pick those books specifically. I'll have to ask them (surely they remember buying me two short books for a car trip thirteen years ago, and their motivations for choosing specifically those).
It's hard to make a commercial that won't grate the viewer, but as for as ads go, those soda ones seem OK. One notable difference between ASOUE and soda, though: Postmodernism is an integral part of ASOUE, whereas the postmodernness of the ad campaign is a different thing from the soda itself - the ads, and consequently their subversiveness, are a tool used in relation to the product, not a part of it. Changing ASOUE's marketing would've changed ASOUE itself, so really I think it's a question of whether ASOUE itself, not just its marketing, is a product of zeitgeist. Personally, I think it is.
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Post by Skelly Craig on Sept 22, 2018 11:18:34 GMT -5
It's hard to make a commercial that won't grate the viewer, but as for as ads go, those soda ones seem OK. I see what you did there. It's true, ASoUE's marketing is an extension of the subversive spirit of the books/the product itself. Still, the advertising (like the text on the back of the books) is usually the first thing people know about something like ASoUE. This tactic then continues within the text itself and continues working as a hook for the readers, so much so that it's very much part of what ASoUE is. So you're right, it goes way beyond its advertising with ASoUE, and yes, I think it fits in with 90s American culture.
Irony is a big thing that flourished in 90s popular media as well, and which David Foster Wallace recognized/predicted in a 1993 essay. Another thing that fits in with ASoUE and its focus on conspiracies, organization, secret codes, is a trend in 90s Hollywood movies, that I've discovered, that depicts black suits/CIA/FBI/government/authority controlling the deluded masses, and a fleeing individual who sees the truth (I actually have a whole list of films written up somewhere).
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Post by bear on Sept 22, 2018 14:53:18 GMT -5
i think postmodernism in general entered the mainstream in the 90s, which means it reached as far as children’s books, I.e. asoue, and also advertising. that doesn’t mean those two things have much to do with each other though. the use of irony was an attention grabbing literary device but calling it advertising is a bit of a stretch .
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Post by Skelly Craig on Sept 22, 2018 15:24:25 GMT -5
My idea was that they only have, in so far, to do with each other, as ASoUE's success benefited from PoMo having become mainstream in the 90s (beyond advertising, as you probably rightly point out).
When I mentioned irony, though, I wasn't limiting it to advertising, whether for ASoUE or other popular media in the 90s; sorry for the confusion.
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