Lovemarks - A Coca Cola Century

Lovemarks, as Jenkins defines them, are efforts geared toward eliciting emtional attachments to specific products from consumers through strategic advertisement campagins. And the winner is.....Coca Cola! And is the news to anyone.....of course not! Coca Cola has has monopolized the world of "Lovemark making", if you will, long before the internet or American Idol became viable venues of advertisement. It won the hearts of collectors decades ago as one of the most coveted brands of collection. Bottles, caps, posters, trinkets, and aything else bearing the red and white Coca-Cola symbol has been haorded and displayed as if it were some secret long lost treasure. Decorators took Coca-Cola to their dinners, bathrooms, kitchens, and bedrooms to create Coca-Cola themed atmosperes equipped with everything from Coca-Cola curtains to Coca-Cola rugs. How about Christmas time? Everyone has a special attachment to Christmas. How about those Coca-Cola Polar bears? So cute and cuddly sipping on their ice cold Coca-Cola bottles that the Coca-Cola Santa Claus just threw out of his Coca-Cola sleigh Coca-Cola Coca-Cola Coca-Cola. Sorry, I must be too emtionally attached. So of course when something like American Idol, a mecca for consumer emotional attachment, comes along Coca-Cola is ready to pluck the heart strings and encourage you to vote for your favorite Idol, on your way to the fridge to open up an ice cold Coca-Cola. ........Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola.

Spoiling Elections

In his survivor chapter, Jenkins hints at the idea of the Internet and these newly emerging knowlegde cultures as having profound effects on the political envirnoment. He says that Pierre Levy puts forth the belief that this type of cyber interaction will bring us back to a true democracy. My mother is a Political Consultant by profession and a political junkie by trade. She has her hands in local, regional, state, and federal wide elections running her own political phone bank and consultant firm. She is well aware that her type of work is quickly going into the museums. Thus she is looking to the internet for the new wave of politcal data collection. The main focus in her work is polling. Twenty years ago she had some 15 operators using hand dialed telephones with paper and pencil marking down answers and so forth. Roughly ten years ago she upgraded to computer systems that can support hundreds of operators and that hold all the voter information, connect and disconnect the calls automatically, and record the survey data by use of a keyboard or mouse click. Now, no one answers the phone - especially if the caller ID does not show someone with whom they are familiar. My mother is now looking into ways to affectivly bring political polling to the internet. Collecting information on a voter's record, stance on issues, and support for specific candidates is much more accessible on the internet due to users' willingness to engage. When you call someone asking them to complete a politcal survey, they feel imposed upon; but, give them the option of taking a poll online and they feel that they are making their own desicion to engage in the process. My mother is one of those many political analysts who believe that the elections of 2008 - and most specifcally the Presidential elections - will predominatly be decided by internet campagining, polling, and voter turn out.

Wii - This is fun.

In the introduction chapter of his Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins discusses the New Orleans Media Experience, a media based convention held in New Orleans to generate dialogue concerning the new frontiers of media interaction with consumers. One particular anecdote from the convention pits Sony and Microsoft against one another in search of the ultimate video game console whose functionality would reach far beyond its originally intended, youthful, obsessive gamers - into the world of media functionality for the whole family unit (Moms, Dads, Grandfathers etc.). Jenkins says that the questions confronted in this session of the convention were "What was mom going to do with the console when her kids were at school? What would get a family to give a game console to grandpa for Christmas?". This morning when I woke up, I took a shower, fixed myself some bacon and toast and a nice, large glass of orange juice, and then sat down on the couch for my morning dose of news and weather on the TV. However this morning I thought to do something slightly different than what my regular routine asks of me. Instead of turning on the cable to catch CNN or MS NBC, I instead looked to my brand new Nintendo Wii console (thank you Santa Claus) equipped with a wireless enabled Internet connection for News and Weather reports. I read about Bush's commemoration of MLK day, a fatal airplane crash in southern California, the sunny skies that were predicted over Baton Rouge today, and I followed all this up with a relaxing though invigorating session of Super Mario Galaxy where I suffered three consecutively fatal "Game Over's". Could this be the very convergence on which Jenkins is so focused? Of course it is. The Wii console, unlike most of its predecessors, is multifunctional: game console, Internet interface, anchorperson, and meteorologist. This multifunctional capacity elicits interest from a larger array of consumers than older consoles did. Through its revolutionary sensor remote controls, the console also doubles as a baseball field, tennis court, and bowling alley. Mom, dad, grandpa, and little Johnny or Suzie can all satiate some electronic hunger with the Wii at their finger tips.
Yes, Jenkins would call the Wii a "delivery system" or "tools we use to access media content". However, the interaction of an entire family unit, from the youngest (and probably the most technologically inclined) to the oldest (and possibly less technology savvy) of our society, with the media and cross-relative activities that the Wii console provides is what Jenkins would call "protocols" or "social and cultural practices that have grown up around [a given] technology". Though the console is somewhat limited in its Internet accessibility and offers a limited source of news that is pre-programmed to list only a small amount newsworthy stories a day, the door is open for more projects of similar capacity to darken. So, convergence culture is truly here, as Jenkins assesses. There is no denying it - in fact, there is only identifying it and labeling it in every facet of our cultural lives because it is everywhere. While we all - as members of this specific course (LSU: English 4304) or members of any and all societies- attempt to identify and define the many manifestations of convergence culture, Ill be sure to keep you up to date on my Super Mario Galaxy skills as they hopefully progress with time.