Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 29-10-21
Inter-generational Pop | Spooky Season | Luxury PR Packages Backfire
Welcome to Borkowski Trends!
In Campaign magazine, founder Mark Borkowski weighs in as the lone PR voice on the question, ‘Can deliberately provoking ad complaints work as a marketing strategy.’ In light of the John Lewis ad saga, their responses beg the question: are advertising creatives really grappling with the new cultural reality on which so many of their ideas are shipwrecked? Read the piece and see what you think.
And in other Trends…
Are we witnessing an intergenerational pop renaissance globally?
Last week, Sir Elton John appeared on the Graham Norton show to promote his new album featuring collaborations with a motley crew of young artists, from Charlie Puth to Young Thug and Nicki Minaj. There is something slightly surreal about these songs, where Elton’s bravura vocals and classical songsmithing meets the latest trends in pop production, such as auto-tune and hip-hop ad-libbing.
One might ask why artists as accomplished like Sir Elton insist on keeping going, especially when they risk imperiling the canonical work by reaching so far across the generic and generational aisle. This risk however has not dissuaded a host of older artists from engaging the new sounds, melodies, production values, and even themes that have emerged over the past several years. For example, Rod Stewart recently gave us the new ballad, ‘One More Time’, his grainy, characterful voice fitted oddly to a four-on-the-floor beat and computer-generated guitar picking.
As strange as these Harold and Maude pop songs might sometimes seem, they can also be surprisingly cheering in a period that has witnessed generational splits grow more extreme. In a world where just under half of millennials report not knowing an old person, we have also seen loneliness increase amongst old people by a staggering percentage. Hot-button issues like independence referenda, unsustainable pension systems, diminished prospects of home ownership, and the question of how the pandemic (which imperiled mostly the old) should be handled have created a situation of intergenerational tension.
Perhaps, for this very reason, collaborations between the aged icons of pop and their young challengers have flourished in the places with the most broken pension systems and worst youth unemployment. The biggest hit of the summer in Italy brought the venerable singer Orietta Berti together with Fedez, an avatar of the progressive social and cultural politics of his generation and husband of Insta-star Chiara Ferragni. Their styles—vocally and otherwise—couldn’t be any different. The result is surreal, but for some reason feels good and made a smash-hit this summer. They’re odd bedfellows: she’s had every benefit of 20th century industrialism. He inherits a broken planet. But she doesn’t critique his tattoos and lets him love who he wants. And he doesn’t call her boomer.
Though these songs can’t elide the material tension that exists between the old and the young in our shriveling democracies, they negotiate an uneasy truce around the age old themes of popular music. Indeed, with generational antagonism—a demographic inevitability—comes guilt. Guilt that we have not properly respected and loved our elders, or that we have wasted an opportunity to get to know them. Or that we haven’t given them a chance properly to embrace the changing times. These songs allay this guilt by reminding us that somewhere in their raspy, broken voices there is a tune worth singing along to.
Trick or Treat: Brands Get Spooky Again
This year, after 2020’s Covid-riddled October left the public too terrified to contemplate any further spookiness, the UK seems ready to face Halloween once again.
Thanks in part to American pop culture and increasing consumerism, British Halloween celebrations have slowly been becoming more commercial. Halloween spending is set to reach £500 million in the UK this year. That’s the highest ever, although still a fraction of America’s whopping annual £8bn Halloween spending spree. For brands looking to cash in on the festivities, there’s a fine line to tread between good humour and relentless marketing. But for those household names, getting involved feels more good natured than anything.
The supermarkets are best placed for Halloween activity. M&S’s ‘Squeal Deal’ – which offers customers three Halloween themed products for £10 – gets a round of applause for the clear effort made by its recipe developers. The product range is genuinely creative (think a glowing, green, brain-shaped jelly, dripping with red popping candy blood) and smacks of a real desire to spread some Halloween. ASDA’s Halloween advert – with an emphasis on prices - feels less thoughtful, but enthusiastic nonetheless.
Tesco, meanwhile, hasn’t bothered with any traditional marketing. But giving up its Twitter account to a friendly ghost has generated lots of nice engagement on socials. Elsewhere, brands like ASOS and Fanta have been cashing in on TikTok’s Gen Z audience, with campaigns that leverage young social media users’ appetite for creativity.
It seems that, for those who want it - teens, twenty-somethings, and families – Halloween is ready for the taking. But for those easily spooked, no fear, it’ll be a while before Britain embraces Halloween in its full gory.
Has La Mer gotten lamer?
There are few beauty products with as much social capital as La Mer’s infamous Crème de la Mer. With a 500ml tub of the product costing almost £1,700, the luxury blockbuster potion has become a tacit cultural signifier of a more conspicuous form of consumption. It is a symbol of quieter opulence, refusing any conventionally obnoxious or public declarations of wealth, only to be seen and enjoyed by the sedentary loner primping and preening at their dressing table at night.
It is odd, then, that the brand presented the Veblen good through such a pronounced PR campaign on TikTok. The video of a New York fashion influencer (Sai De Silva) opening a large luxury package from the brand, transforming into a full-size vanity — complete with chair and mirror — upon opening, has sparked significant debate on the platform. As De Silva opened the various drawers, the package revealed champagne, an industrial-sized tub of the flagship moisturiser, and an unimposing white robe embroidered with the brand’s name. The short video, shot against a red brick NY sidewalk, was criticised by TikTok users for being ‘tone-deaf’ while others seemed surprised by the backlash — of course a luxury brand would attempt more extravagant stunts, they claim.
Superficially, it is hard not to agree with the latter dialogue. La Mer’s PR team sought to preserve the air of elevated unattainability central to its cult image. Even more, the transformable box was to be recycled between influencers, judiciously aware of the ever-pressing climate conversation. Why the controversy, then? Well, this is a great PR exercise we like to call ‘reading the room’.
Why circulate a product only available to the aged elite on a platform dominated by Gen Z socialists? With the most popular comments on the video acerbically responding with oft-quoted communist maxims like ‘tax the rich’ or tongue-in-cheek references to the guillotine sprees of the French Revolution, the improper placement of the stunt reduced a well-composed gimmick into poorly pumpfaked extravagance. The brand failed to play to the mood of the moment, with more affordable drugstore brands like Cerave commanding the younger skincare communities of TikTok.
Also, something tells me that a single reusable box may not be the most thoughtful gesture towards widespread climate concern in an industry producing 120 billion units of plastic each year. La Mer seemed to shoot itself dead in the water before it could even swim, alienating the conspicuous consumers of its pre-existing clients while repackaging itself as a concentrated symbol of everything ‘zoomers’ have grown to resent. Rather than evoking the remote oceanic terrains where it has eponymously baptised itself, its current PR efforts feel more like walking to Blackpool beach with a Waitrose plastic bag caught around your leg…