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tools of the trade

Harith and I were talking on gtalk about my resolution to write a blog post a day every weekday for the next week, and he very helpfully created this desktop background to act as a callous, unblinking reminder of my oath.

Pity the little cursor doesn't blink, now that I think of it. Here's a high-resolution version that you can use should you ever find yourself similarly in need of motivation.

on the nature of twix, space-time, and advertising

This guest post on Boing Boing by writer/comedian/game developer* Jason Torchinsky argues that modern advertising is pointless and puts up these television ads for Twix candy bars as Exhibits A and B. If you haven't seen the ads and can't be bothered to watch them right now, the basic gist is that the young male protagonist of the ad gets into a terribly awkward situation with a very photogenic girl. By biting into a Twix bar, time stops and he gets a moment to compose himself and turn the faux pas to his advantage. (He can't fix the fact the he's got a bad haircut and looks like a tool but Twix is only so powerful, apparently.) Here's how Jason sums this up:

"They're relying on the tenuous idea that we're all not drooling idiots to take this literally, because the only qualities of a Twix bar demonstrated in these commercials are the ability of the Twix bar to stop time. There's nothing mentioned of the taste, the crunch, the dubious energy benefit-- all the usual candy bar selling points-- just the bold suggestion that these crunchy little logs have colossal power over the time-space continuum. I know no one really thinks they can do that, and this is just an advertising conceit, but it's strange when the big marketing appeal of your product is the freedom it gives you to be a jackass."

The conceit is inane, Jason's thesis goes, and therefore the advertisements are a waste of money. While I don't disagree that the conceit is inane (I don't think the ads are that great) the ads are far from pointless.

What is the burden of an advertisement for Twix? Those ads are not targeted at children - they run in prime time - so between that and the content we can assume that adults are the intended audience. So let's think about Twix's relationship to adult consumers.

This is a candy bar that has been around since 1967. It's ubiquitous and it costs less than a dollar. I promise that the overwhelming majority of adults who are amenable to eating candy bars have eaten at least one Twix in their lifetime.

Now let's revisit Jason's criticism.

"There's nothing mentioned of the taste, the crunch, the dubious energy benefit[.]"

Why on earth do you need to spend 30 seconds talking about the taste/crunch/mouthfeel/whatever of a product that virtually the entire target audience has already eaten? Jason is fundamentally incorrect in his assessment because he seems to be working from a standpoint that all advertisements need to be made with an unexposed audience in mind. It would be folly to do that for a popular and universally-available candy bar.

The point of these ads is to keep a familiar brand top-of-mind. No, Twix does not stop time. But it is delicious and crunchy and the purpose of the ads is not to inform you of that new and unique insight but rather to remind you that you already know it. The ads are not about tearing holes in space-time or the apparent gullibility of the ladies in them. What the ads are actually saying is: "Twix exists and you like it."

There's a message in there about Twix being good for taking a break - and I'm sure the account team at the ad agency worked though many a Twix-fueled brainstorm to come up with that. But on a basic level, the purpose of the ad is to put an entertaining wrapper around the crucial moment midway through when the Twix break in half with a loud crunch and reveal the thick rope of caramel in the middle of the bars. That's the moment when people who enjoy Twix think to themselves: "I sure do like Twix." That's it. Everything else (the attractive girl, the doofus guy, the arguably funny setup) exists to hold your attention until that point.

If you've tried Twix before and don't like it or if you don't eat candy bars no TV advertisement is going to change your mind about that. You are not the target audience for these ads.

Ads like this are useful to brands because frankly, you spend very little time thinking about candy bars. They're not a considered purchase, they're not an expensive asset. They're not a part of your identity. Go to the right part of America and you'll find people who identify themselves as Ford drivers or Chevy owners. See if a Rolex watch wearer or Gucci bag bearer seem to consider their possessions a part of their identity. A 60-pence candy bar is never going to occupy that kind of affiliative real estate, and thus requires a very different approach to advertising. The next time you're queueing for the till at the grocery, the box of Twix candy bars is going to stand out to you, because you've seen two ads and read two blog posts about it. And if you're a member of the intended audience, you might remember that you find it very tasty and buy one.

(Thanks to my buddy Mike McIntyre for sharing the BB post on Google Reader and getting these wheels spinning in my head to begin with.)

*Much though I disagree with him on the points made here, the guy is a legitimate renaissance man. I wish my resume looked like his.

it's karsa

My good friend Harith is a Mandaean, one of the last, in fact. Mandaeanism is a Gnostic religion that pre-dates Christianity and is still observed to this day.

Today is the end of Karsa - one of the most important dates of the year on their religious calendar. Karsa is especially interesting given the stipulation that the observant cannot leave their homes for 36 hours. Now I've found over the years that non-Mandaeans tend to make a mess of their attempts to explain Mandaeanism, so rather than attempt an explanation myself I'll simply point you to this short post about Karsa that Harith has put up for the occasion.The holiday is nothing short of fascinating and I urge you all to go read about it.

If this whets your appetite for learning about Mandaeans and you turn to Google to sate that, I strongly recommend that you steer clear of an article that appeared in Harper's a couple of years back that was brimming over with half-truths and out-and-out fictions in describing Mandaean beliefs. Numerous letters to the editor were published in the subsequent issue, but to the best of my knowledge Harper's never retracted the piece. I canceled my subscription over that matter, and I won't give them the benefit of a link here.

the fall of nails

Every American boy from the 1980s remembers Lenny Dykstra.

Lenny was a baseball outfielder who split a heralded career between the Mets and the Phillies, winning a World Series with the former and single-handedly resurrecting the fortunes of the latter after years of mediocrity. Our dads and their friends would talk about Dykstra as a player cut from the same cloth as Pete Rose, hyperkinetic and selfless on the field, a human pinball. "Nails" talked as tough as he played, a Saturday morning cartoon character more than a man. At Little League practice, when we filled our cheeks with Big League Chew gum so that it looked like we were chewing tobacco, we did that to be like Nails.

Lenny Dykstra filed for bankruptcy today, and that is probably the last chapter in the story of his public life. Nails dropped off of my radar when he hung up his cleats in the mid-90s but suddenly reappeared last year. He was a wealthy tycoon now, who (unbeknownst to me) had been picking stocks for Jim Cramer for years but somehow was still the same jock meathead from the old days. Dykstra was suddenly an idiot-savant business success. Between last spring and now, that disguise has steadily unravelled.

It started with this New Yorker profile by Ben McGrath last spring, titled "Nails Never Fails". The profile tells the story of Lenny Dykstra the adventurer/entrepreneur, living a life of extravagant luxury buttressed by successful investments in day-trading and in a chain of Southern California car washes. Writers of subsequent profiles describe this piece as "credulous", but it never read that way to me. Dykstra comes off as a silent movie magic drunk in this piece, always narrowly missing the falling piano and somehow coming out even better for doing so.

"Dykstra hadn’t yet finished his fries, but he glanced at his watch and jumped. 'Oh, shit, I got to go,' he said. 'Dude, oh my God, take a ride with me.' He was halfway to the door before he said, to no one in particular, 'Put that on my bill.' Outside, a car was waiting, and Dykstra instructed the driver to take us to Time, Inc. 'It’s fun hanging with me, right?'."

McGrath reacts the way anyone who met the figure described in the article would: perplexed that someone who is stumbling through life as haphazardly as Dykstra is could possibly be such a huge financial success. He isn't credulous, he's confused. Later writers taking a dim view of McGrath had more information than he did.

At the center of the New Yorker profile is Dykstra's then-forthcoming niche glossy magazine for wealthy athletes, The Players Club. Gawker Network sports blog Deadspin kept up a steady drumbeat of skepticism about Lenny's new persona and his business venture throughout 2008, but Gawker's bloggers are gadflies by nature. The edifice really starts to come apart in March of this year, when GQ published the account of a photo editor who worked for The Players Club for two nail-biting months before going hat-in-hand back to his old job when the magazine folded. The title of the piece tells you everything you need to know about the tone: "YOU THINK YOUR JOB SUCKS? TRY WORKING FOR LENNY DYKSTRA".

The next month, Deadspin ran an I-told-you-so post that gleefully linked to a Mike Fish expose for ESPN.com that read like a capsule version of The Smartest Guys In The Room. "Either Lenny hates to pay his bills," says Fish, "or he's a financial train wreck." Fish uncovered millions in unpaid bills and taxes and a catalogue of pending lawsuits. The ESPN piece prompted HBO's Real Sports show to track Nails down to follow up on the glowing, uncritical piece they had run on him the year before. What they found was Dykstra at rock bottom, as hapless and confident as ever but now surrounded by the wreckage of his failure: an empty house, his wife gone. Ozymandias. That was a couple of weeks ago.

Nails is more like Pete Rose than ever today - an object lesson in the value of keeping separate our reverence for heroes and the feats they perform. In the New Yorker profile, Dykstra chews out a waiter that he feels was less than polite, then finishes by turning to McGrath and saying, "There’s some point in life when you have to grow up.” I suppose the little boy in me who loved Lenny Dykstra has grown up now.

Good luck, Nails.