U-Haul, Montara, CA

What use case is eMove targeting? What narratives are implied by this advertisement?

The other day I was looking for a blender and happened across the “Bowie Collection” at Target.

It’s interesting to see how designer Keenan Duffty has synthesized his interpretation of Bowie’s look-described on the Target page as “edgy and sophisticated”-into a few broad strokes. The hat, the vest, the sashed coat.

Here’s David talking with Dick Cavett in 1974 about a variety of topics, including his clothing. During the interview, Cavett asks Bowie whether he can picture himself at 60. In a manner of speaking, Bowie has let Target and Duffty do the picturing for him. Gee my life’s a funny thing.

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Like I said earlier, the old car is gone. Here’s the new one, a brand new Mazda RX8!

Virginia Postrel blogs a nice analysis of my recent entry about Target’s wire-filled ad imagery through the lenses of her work on glamour and an essay by Grant McCracken in his brand-spanking-new book, Culture and Consumption II. Cool!

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A while back Virginia Postrel wrote about Wireless Glamour – the absence of wires from the glam photos of technology used in advertising, etc. I found these pictures in a Target advertising circular called Room Solutions. I was amazed to see pictures of messy rooms, where people own lots of stuff, it’s messy, askew, and yes indeed, there are wires – cables, cords, the whole real deal.

Sure, the pictures are entirely stylized and sort of hyper-real, but somehow it’s relieving to see a significant move away from the more idealized and yes glamourous consumer images that advertising is so fond of. I was at an annoying deisgn conference a couple of years ago and was struck when someone from IKEA showed fieldwork photos – messy homes overflowing with stuff. Of course, it wasn’t the photos that I was struck by – in doing ethnographic research, I’ve taken a million of those “real” pictures myself over the years but I was struck by the reaction – laughter. Designer after designer showed luscious product pr0n but one person showed realistic images and were met with ridicule. Now Target is using the mess of real life to help depict their ideal world – where consumers’ homes are messy and overflowing with stuff – stuff purchased at Target.

This report from CES considers how poorly electronics companies address their female customers, who make about as many purchases as men.

Only 1 percent of women surveyed said they thought manufacturers had them in mind when they created a gadget. And electronics companies don’t do a great job communicating a product’s bottom-line benefits. “It might very well be meeting my needs as a consumer, but I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Hallie Deakton, a publicist from New York, after listening to a day’s worth of industry announcements. “You could be rocking my world, and I wouldn’t know it.”

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