Porntifications

Posted by mikezillion at June 29th, 2008

It’s true. I may be a big, burly, bearish guy, but there’s something about hundreds and thousands of people joining together to celebrate pride in what was so recently “the love that dare not speak its name” that really gets to me. Especially when I see the PFLAG group march past, or the happy faces on the gay families with adopted children.

Of course, this year is particularly moving. It’s barely been a month since the California Supreme Court decided that it was just plain silly to prevent loving couples from marrying, just because their plumbing wasn’t in the conventional locations for married couples. San Francisco Pride was brimming with gold leaf lettering against white backgrounds, and it seemed as if everyone was either wearing a bridal veil or applauding someone who was.

And it just makes me well up with tears thinking about it. How far we’ve come. How optimistic we can be about the upcoming elections in November. How likely it is that the people of California will side with their Supreme Court judges and say no to a proposed ban on recognition of gay marriage. Not to mention all the other good changes that could be coming in Washington.

San Francisco is just an isolated bubble of sanity in a swirling sea of confusion today. I didn’t see any protestors, and I didn’t think to look for them. I saw gay and straight people of all ages gathering together to celebrate our pride in being ourselves, whatever the social and practical costs. In the end, what else do we have but who we are?

As a gay man, I take pride in my identity, and in the enhanced perspective it has created in my life. As a bear, I also take pride in allowing myself to be big, to be furry, to be comfortable in my own body, the way God made it, and the way Nature has sculpted it. 

Blessings of the day to everyone out there. Find your Pride, and own it. Woof!

Posted by mikezillion at March 25th, 2008

Subliminal advertising was a big thing a few decades ago. Then they realized that it didn’t translate into immediate sales, and the trend died out. But marketers these days are looking further down the road than the immediate sale. We’re learning now that brand identification can lead to later sales, or even unconscious actions, if planned carefully.

A new study about the longer-term impact of subliminal exposure to recognizable corporate logos shows that the brand identity does carry a message which affects the viewer’s behavior. In this case, flashing an Apple logo briefly and incidentally while testing an unrelated skill encouraged users to think more creatively in a subsequent test than flashing an IBM logo.

The product placement folks are going to enjoy playing with the implications of this. And the question for you and all the other marketers out there is: “What does your brand identity imply?” For example, what do each of the following names do to the observer’s stream of consciousness?

• Chi Chi Larue
• Starbucks
• COLT
• Michael Lucas
• Vivid
• McDonald’s
• Hustler
• Penthouse
• BearParty
• CyberSocket
• Disney
• Oprah
• Playboy
• Hillary
• [insert your name here]

Put a random object next to each of these names, and notice how the name colors your perception of that object. A Penthouse telephone is very different from an Oprah telephone, or a Disney telephone. Once you’ve got that image in mind, how will it affect the next actions you take?

How can your brand make conscious use of that subconscious brand recognition factor?

Posted by mikezillion at March 19th, 2008

They’re always looking for ways to control the marketplace of ideas. I am a big support of protecting minors from having any access to pornography, but I surprise myself when it comes to violent video games.

Violence, unlike sexuality, is a part of life from the very beginning. I don’t think there’s anything particularly mature about wanting to blow somebody else up. It’s one of those emotional issues which we all need to learn to deal with right from the very start.

Sexuality, on the other hand, is something which arrives later in life. Freud might argue that point, but I contend that it’s worth preserving the innocence of youth around issues of sexuality.

I don’t see the argument for restricting children from access to violent video games. It’s not as if the games teach them anything they won’t come up with in their own imaginations in the face of ordinary childhood life. We can’t insulate them from their anger or frustration, so why should we limit their access to tools and techniques for learning how to deal with it?

I don’t play video games. Never have. I have friends who do, and they don’t seem any more or less inclined to use violence than I am. It’s just a way that they deal with those feelings. I deal with mine in other way. So do you.

Restrict children from access to pornography because there is a valid reason for doing so; they are not yet mature enough to understand those issues. But even the youngest of babies get frustrated and scream. Don’t pretend that you can protect a child from rage.

Posted by mikezillion at March 3rd, 2008

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Seth Godin? He’s the marketing guru who’s fond of pointing out that the best way to build a market is to make something that people will either love or hate, and ignore products aimed at the middle.

His latest gem came in the briefest of blog entries:

the products and services that succeed wildly are the ones that everyone expected would fail

He followed this up with some examples, including The Beatles, in a later blog posting.

It seems to me that the barrier to success used to be access to the tools to make and publish your dream. Now, it’s just the genuine passion you feel about what you do, and the stubbornness to believe that you are right in the face of your first seven or so market failures. Seven is an arbitrary number, but the idea is that you put enough examples out there until your unique slice of the planet discovers you and recognizes that you’re the only one giving them exactly what they are looking for.

Posted by mikezillion at March 2nd, 2008

I’ve been reading a book called Medici Effect about innovation, and it’s interesting to note how the desperation for reward can inhibit creativity:

“One group was told that they would receive a $5 reward if their solution time to the problem was in
the top quartile and $20 if their solution was the fastest. The second group did not get these instructions…. (The) group that had no chance of getting a reward solved the problem
significantly faster than the people who did.”

I think about how desperate companies in the porn industry are these days, as the paradigm shifts from expensive and exclusive content to free and commodity content. The point at which innovation is most valuable seems to be the point at which it is also the most inaccessible.

The Medici family spurred the Renaissance by bringing together experts and thinkers from a wide variety of fields, and offering them the opportunity to cross-pollinate their ideas. The concept of “renaissance man” doesn’t mean someone with a job and a hobby, but rather someone with broad expertise in many fields. However, the carelessness and sense of play which comes from having a hobby seems to be elemental to truly innovative thinking.

Success is a product of many, many failures. But there is no reward for failing multiple times in the same manner. Look how many companies are now trying to use the same formula to make money with porn. No matter how many of them fail, there is no innovation being generated if none of them tries something different.

Maybe I should start capitalizing the word Porn.

Posted by mikezillion at February 28th, 2008

The folks at Hulu are using the old broadcast interruption advertising format online, and having some success with it. Now it’s time for them to take their advertisers by the hand and show them that a web-based viewer is not the same as a television viewer. That’s something the porn industry needs to keep in mind as well. Single-handed mousing is not the same as single-handed remote control television watching.

Hulu seems to be up for the challenge. According to MarketingVOX, the Hulu is recommending its advertisers look to more interactive advertising formats. It’s never easy to tell your advertisers what they should be doing. I wish them luck.

It’s about time, though. I’m almost ready to shoot that stupid Intel microprocessor. The same annoying 15-second spot running six times in one program; it’s worse than Head-On!

And when is the porn world going to come up with a good parody of the Head-On advertisements? The challenge has been issued!

Posted by mikezillion at February 27th, 2008

A marked decline in the popularity of search-based advertising has Wall Street in a panic. Advertisers have been quickly adapting from the old-media model to click-based online advertising. But the news from comScore shows that browsers are becoming less and less likely to click on search-based advertisements from Google and others. As a matter of fact, in the past two months Google’s market value has dropped by almost a third.

Interruption marketing used to be based on broad nets, thrown to capture the common denominator of viewers or readers. Search-based advertising takes advantage of the content being viewed to present targeted ads to likely potential customers. However, sophisticated web users have begun to challenge the increasingly deceptive advertising practices of companies looking to generate as much attention as possible with less relevant ads.

And where is porn in all of this? Porn continues to advertise like hookers in the streets of Paris: put a pretty shill out on the sidewalk to lure in the customers, and then charge them for someone less appealing in the dark hallways of the brothel while the shill returns to the street.

Yes, you wanted sexy pictures and you got sexy pictures. But what you really wanted was the model in the ad. What you got might have been comparable, but it wasn’t what you were expecting. If it was free, and it did the trick, you’re not likely to complain.

Remember that the porn consumer is just your average consumer, who happens to be shopping for porn. The failure of contextual search-based advertising to sustain the growth patterns of the past few years is just an indicator of what lies in store.

Publishers need to think carefully about how they market their goods as potential customers become more familiar with misleading marketing techniques online.

Posted by mikezillion at February 26th, 2008

In a great follow-up to the emerging discussion about what a “free” really means for the marketplace, Alex Iskold has posted an article with a solid warning about the dangers of “free”-dom.

It’s not only the impact on the seller. The customer gets stuck with whatever the suppliers choose to offer when the market is controlled by free providers. And this is certainly something the average porn consumer is seeing.

Remember the days when a VHS copy of your favorite porn title cost $79.95? There was a plot, there were characters, and there was this sense that all of those hot, sexy people were somehow safely unattainable except in the realm of fantasy. The customer’s experience was usually either mail order, or at the counter of a store on the outskirts of town. This was a market which knew what it wanted, and was willing to stretch to the limit in order to obtain it.

Nowadays, a porn consumer need only click on the same mouse he uses when paying his taxes, writing letters to his mother, or updating his blog. There is rarely the need to pay for porn, since a single click will adequately verify that the viewer is a legal adult–if the website hosting the porn is even responsible enough to ask. And what comes for free is often just as effective in satisfying the needs of the viewer as what he might otherwise have to buy for $29.95 a month, or $49.95 on DVD.

How hardcore does a fan have to be these days to shell out $49.95 for a permanent souvenir of 90 minutes of porn featuring his favorite performer?

But free porn can only be provided by the biggest companies, who can afford the luxury of giving away their products without driving their business into the ground. These companies survive on the hope that a free scene will sell a subscription to a site that offers more of the same. That means that the innovators at the fringes of the market must make do with less and less in order to sustain themselves. And the general market must settle for more and more mediocre product that looks just like everything else out there.

Sounds a little like Hollywood, or TV, to me. The passionate indie filmmakers operate at a loss, hoping their success in something that fuels their passion might translate into a cushy studio job turning out the same mainstream schlock they can’t stand to watch.

You can get depressed, or you can get angry, but you can’t blame the customer. Free is a very compelling marketing pitch. Customers will always take free. Beware of the business that seems to be offering more for free than you can offer.

Posted by mikezillion at February 25th, 2008

We’re all noticing it. Porn is pretty much a free commodity on the Internet these days.

That’s not to say that there isn’t porn that’s worth paying a premium to see. But so much of the porn distribution going on right now is based on the notion of free loss-leaders that people are having a more difficult time understanding why any porn has to cost money.

It’s possible that our cutting-edge industry has misunderstood the Gillette notion of giving away the razor and selling the blades. For the most part, porn is the blade that sells cable subscriptions, Internet access, computer hardware, fancy televisions, DVD players, and soon Blu-Ray players and HD video downloads.

Maybe we should be selling porn to the companies that make these products and services, rather than trying to squeeze the last few pennies out of the consumers who buy them.

Visualize that for a moment.

Without porn, there isn’t much of a market for cutting-edge passive entertainment electronics. That may sound like an insular position from a pornographer like myself, but give me some credit. I’ve seen the history of entertainment media. Passive entertainment like TV, movies, and porn is losing precious attention share to interactive recreational entertainment like mobile phones and video games.

We’ve already got video games pushing movies and television out of the way in terms of economic impact, and blurring the boundaries between entertainment and recreation. Passive media is hurting badly, and Hollywood is racing to integrate porn elements into everything they do, whether it’s bouncy babes with big titties selling the latest teen flick, or increasingly exposed hot young beefcake stars drawing in viewers for yet another cookie-cutter reality show. That’s porn. Most of it would have gotten the producers and distributors thrown in jail forty years ago.

Folks are losing interest in passive media. Porn generates interest. Human nature seems to dictate that it’s the cock, tits, and ass that we haven’t seen yet that we most want to look at, so new porn will always have a built-in audience. It’s the freshness of porn that keeps viewers coming back. And without those passive viewers, there isn’t going to be a market for those high-end entertainment products and services. Porn drives the infrastructure of the media industry. With so much free porn available, it’s no wonder that one of the few areas of our economy where prices are getting lower for products with better and better features is entertainment electronics. And media companies try to sweep up the dregs by selling consumers the same old content in the latest format.

We’re not going to stop making porn. Folks aren’t going to stop watching it. The market won’t stop allowing much of what we make to be available for free online. The idea of paying for porn, music, movies, television, articles, etc. may seem strange and archaic to the consumer of 2012. He may pay a monthly service fee for a hardware/software/network access package. He may never see any advertisements which are not positioned as product placement. He may pay for personalization of his services only in bulk, but never pay for individual content items. His attention is what he brings to the marketplace.

We need to consider today what that consumer of tomorrow would be willing to pay for.

Posted by mikezillion at February 14th, 2008

I know this is a bit off-topic, but bear with me. It turns out that there is an epidemic of teenagers and pre-teens actually choking themselves and each other with bungee cords, ropes, belts, or anything else handy. They say that the effect when the choking cuts off is a dreamlike state.
Now the Center for Disease Control has issued a warning to parents for telltale signs. Apparently some 82 confirmed youth deaths have been linked to this practice.
This makes me wonder about the practice of auto-erotic asphyxiation; a similar practice in which men cut off the blood supply to the brain at the point of orgasm to achieve a more powerful sensation. There are close to 1,000 deaths annually from this. It’s not the sort of thing that I imagine folks discover too often on their own. It has to be learned from somewhere. Probably more folks know about it now thanks to the Internet than ever before. Just the way kids are learning from their peers online and offline to strangle themselves for the temporary high that results from blood loss to the brain.
The question in my mind is one of censorship. Folks try to censor porn all the time, arguing that it is an unhealthy expression of sexual deviance since it takes sexuality out of the context of a committed monogamous heterosexual lifestyle. But only the most extreme voices (like the late Andrea Dworkin) argue that porn is harmful in and of itself. More rational minds agree that porn should at the very least not be made available to minors.
But is it legitimate to try to control the sources of information which spread the technique of self-strangulation? What about simply trying to control the spread of that information to minors? And what about the argument that teaching kids not to strangle themselves is just an invitation for them to try it in order to see what the fuss is about?
I would be interested to hear more opinions about this.