Customer Reviews

Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity

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Unmarketable articulately and wittily outlines how corporate America utilizes strategies of the underground for to market both underground and mainstream media. In this process, the corporate somehow manipulates the underground into the destruction of its own underground culture. The sad truth is that its probably only going to get worse. In fact, Entertainment Weekly in issue #984 Mar 28, 08 just ran a "Special Bonus Edition Entertainment Weekly: The Indie Rock 25" supplement, a saddle-stitched book that pulls out of the magazine separate from the rest of the issue, full of information about bands like Radiohead, Spoon, Yo La Tengo, the Pixies, and more, interspersed with ads for Toyota's Yaris, the ads themselves illustrated by the talented graphics artist and show poster designer Nazario Graziano, which lets us know just how subcultural a Yaris is supposed to be. And no doubt, a Yaris is a cute car. But let's not fool ourselves. Toyota ain't no small mom-and-pop business. They're out for your dough. And they're out to get your dough especially if you're young, subversive and into cool illustration. Ads like this supplement in EW have become more and more common, and unfortunately this is just going to go on and on. Moore's book is full of examples like this (OK, not the particular example since the EW Yaris ad is newer than the book), just like the bug zapper that nobody wants to look at. Thankfully, Unmarketable is a totally fun read.

Ms. Moore is the perfect author for this book because she's an experienced media critic and writer on a variety of topics relating to activism. She was the co-editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet. She's written for a whole slew of magazines including the Onion and Bitch. She's even been on Chicago Public Radio. Anne Elizabeth Moore continues to be at the forefront of making quality media and marketing observation.

I found this to be interesting and ultimately useful.

The style is concise and witty.

Any book which heps the reader to emerging insidious marketing techniques is worth reading. The fact that this one is well-written makes what is essential a pleasure.

If the price is beyond your means, try your local public library.

If they don't have it, request it!

Some very interesting insights into the growing seamlessness between indie and corporate culture:

-If you try to control the discourse about a piece after it's out there, you must admit that it's become intellectual property and is no longer art (compensation is another matter)
-Work for hire is not yours, no matter how hard the corporation tries to sell it that way
-Corporations have destroyed the myth of the aesthete by selling it to everyone else
-transparency is the best way to encourage integrity on all sides, even if it destroys the illusion of uninhibited expression

I was struck by how many times the participants in these faux-DIY campaigns used "really organic" or some variant to describe the experience. Ummm, I know reading the stipulations of the contract might "totally strangle my muse, man" or something else to the effect of shattering the illusion of autonomy, but it's entirely necessary, as Ms. Moore points out. Once you know the boundaries in which you are expected to perform, you know exactly where those boundaries are best exploited according to your own (hopefully admirable) ethos. That, to me, is the most important lodestar in punk, which has been subsumed by its more immediately profitable counterpart, the myth of the aesthete and the hyperreal cult of hyper-individualism.

One of the most surreal examples in the book is where she details the "graffadi" wars--and just how much of a zero-sum game they are. No one wins, and no one emerges looking good--not the artist collectives, not the corporations or the artists in their employ, not the reactionary taggers, not the city, nor the business owners that sell the wall space.

One of the more sobering examples is the war between Minor Threat and Nike. They actually arrived at the most "punk" solution to a thorny ethical dilemma about appropriation, only 10 months after the fact. It taught me this: appropriation is inevitable. But it's also a golden opportunity to force the corporation to act ethically. They found a clever way that would've increased brand cachet for themselves while minimizing same for Nike. That's very punk. But even more punk to do it. Something I'll keep in mind.