consumerism

This makes my brain hurt, but as it isn't in Khmer, I can't be bothered with it right now:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/business/Blog-it-but-dont-flog.3616...

(oooh, link sent via steve at the antiadvertisingagency.com!)

p.s. More on consumerism in Cambodia—particularly its most celebrated holiday, Christmas—here: http://camblogdia.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-will-tell-you-about-christmas-n... and here: http://camblogdia.blogspot.com/2007/12/cheung-eck-happy-merry-christmas.....

Interesting Fast Company column by Rob Walker in this month's issue (his column there is called Murketing and you can read it here) Unmarketable fans may want to take a look at, that looks at the various strata of brand relationships.

Here in Cambodia, though, branding is a whole different ballgame. Copyright, too. The symbols have all become dissociated from their original meanings in a way I haven't figured out how to explain yet. My T-shirt for the day, for example, shows Tin Tin in the Forests of Cambodia, whereupon he stumbles upon some decomposing bodies. On the front of the shirt, you are urged to avoid landmines (Danger! Mines!!). Which. I mean. Isn't even a useful symbol on a T shirt. Or in the Russian Market a few days ago, I saw a shirt with a Polo label but embroidered with an Abercrombie logo knockoff. A popular video here displays a woman caressing a minivan emblazoned with a Bridgestone logo as she sings about her cheating boyfriend (I think). One of my roommates wears nothing but Playboy paraphenalia, but is the primmest and most proper of all the girls. She would be horrified to find out what the symbol symbolizes. (The last Leadership Resident taught them the devil horns and explained that it meant rock and roll. They asked for more details, about where it came from and who started doing it, and now it's sort of considered too negative for them. They have replaced its use with the high five.)

also for the Anti-Advertising Agency, where I wrote up a li'l thing about this awesome new tobacco marketing campaign! Which is totally cool and indie! You can read about it here: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/

*please note: enthusiasm implied in these exclamation points may be ironical.

In a crazy proof that all this globalization stuff is really working—and by working i mean getting people to not give a crap about *where* things come from, under what conditions they are made, or who profits from them—Anderson Analytics released a new report on college student's inability to match brand names to countrie of origin:
http://www.andersonanalytics.com/reports/BrandAndCountries.pdf