Nostalgic Things

To give you all a little view into the window of my personal life, I’m currently earning my Master of Business Administration while working full time. After a stressful spring semester juggling work and 12 credit hours of classes, I decided to take the summer semester off for a break until the fall semester begins and enjoy some indoor leisure time binging on Netflix. One of my binge sessions included watching the much-talked-about Stranger Things over the course of four days.  

The series is set in Indiana of the early 1980s with four young boys whose past-times include playing 10-hour campaigns of D&D, talking over ham radio, and riding bikes through the woods. One of the boys goes missing and his three friends set out to find him, encountering shadowy government agents, monsters, and a mysterious girl with psychic powers along the way. 

Was it good? Very good! It doesn’t quite reach that sublime level of The Wire or Breaking Bad, but Stranger Things is extremely satisfying television.

What impressed me the most about Stranger Things was its attention to the details of the decade in which it’s set. Everything in this show reeks of the Reagan Era from the clothes, to the soundtrack, to the interiors, to the camera angles. Even the titles in the opening credits look like they were pulled directly from an 80’s sci-fi paperback sitting haphazardly on the shelf of a used bookstore.

Given the show’s tremendous success, I have to wonder whether its creators, the Duffer Brothers, or Netflix knew that the 80’s setting would draw a lot of viewership.

In a recent article from Forbes on nostalgia marketing, there is a quote from Gregory Carpenter, the James Farley/Booz Allen Hamilton Professor of Marketing Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management in which he explains the psychological need for nostalgia:

"People become especially nostalgic when they are anxious about the present and, especially, the future."

With the looming United States presidential election in November and subsequent results, I suspect that more people will turn to shows such as Stranger Things  for comfort.

Gold and Glory: Brazil and the 2016 Olympics

Millions from around the globe are about to descend upon Rio de Janeiro for the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil on August 5, 2016. As the country prepares for this international onslaught of athletes and attendees, Brazil has been beset by many challenges as the host of the Summer Games, including a beleaguered police force.

But what interests me the most about Brazil’s hosting of the 2016 Olympics is what the games mean for its national image. Like it or not, every country has a certain perception in the world, a “brand,” if you will. If I was in a focus group for the International Olympics Committee (IOC) back in 2006 – which was when Rio’s bid for the 2016 Summer Games began – and a moderator asked me what are the first things that come to mind when I hear “Brazil,” I would answer, “Samba, soccer, steakhouses, and a people with a love affair for the derrière.”

It definitely wouldn’t have been a place I would have chosen to host the Olympic Games, but here we are in 2016 with the opening ceremony a little more than a week away.

Brazil is no stranger to large, international sporting events taking place on its soil and hosted the FIFA World Cup not once, but twice. It is also the “B” in BRICS, which is an acronym for the five major emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It’s a nation to be reckoned with, for sure.

Still, it’s one thing for a country to have a GDP that ranks in the top 10 worldwide, but it’s quite another for it to host the largest sporting event in the world.

For the nations that receive the honor of hosting the games, a degree of prestige is bestowed upon them as well as a sense of “We’ve made it,” possible negative fiscal impacts aside. A good example of this was the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Less than a generation after Japan had been devastated in World War II, the island nation rose like a phoenix out of the ashes, and the world caught a glimpse of the economic powerhouse it would become. Whether or not Brazil will have a similar “Cinderella Story” for its Olympics remains to be seen.

All eyes will be on Rio next Friday as the first nation on the South American continent hosts the Olympics. Brazil – it’s time to put your best Samba sandal forward and show the world what you got by shaking your scantily clad tail feather (literally)!

Pokénomenon

In the interest of trying to increase my readership, I thought I’d pander to the masses and write about something more timely for a change; namely, Pokémon Go.

Have I played it? No. Am I going to play it? Probably not.

And yet, neither myself nor anyone else can seem go escape the “Pokénomenon.” It’s like the whole word has become a giant Poké Ball. Or, is it that we’ve all become Ash Ketchums zealously trying to capture all 150 Pokémon?

Correct simile aside, I’m intrigued by how the game has taken the world by storm. At least the parts of the globe where you’re not banned from playing the game.

Gabriel Rosenberg’s article for NPR outlined both the positive and negative attention that Pokémon Go has garnered since its release on July 8^th, which ranged from a Pokémon Go Walk of more than 1,000 people in Perth, Australia, to four young men in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri who used a PokéStop to rob several players at gunpoint.

One of the more “…Huh!? Well, how about that!” stories to arise from the Pokémon Go was its surpassing of Tinder on Android smartphones in terms of downloads. Pokémon Go also broke the Internet when the search term “pokemon go” overtook “porn” in popularity, according to Google Trends.

Do these stories mean that Pokémon Go will supersede humanity’s more base and primal instincts, leading to the demise of our species? Highly unlikely.

What Pokémon Go can do, however, is offer businesses an opportunity to increase their revenues by capitalizing on the game’s popularity. Pokémon Go players can purchase “lures” that attract Pokémon to an area when activated, and it’s what a few business owners have been doing already to attract more customers.

It’s hard to say from a marketing standpoint what the future holds for Pokémon Go and other augmented reality (AR) games of its kind, but that doesn’t stop people from speculating.

To wrap up this post, it’s said that one should never let a crisis go to waste. My advice to business owners during this time: don’t let a Pikachu go to waste, either.

Fashion Signaling

If the old axiom, “You are what you eat” is true when it comes to food, can we say the same about the clothes we wear?

Clinical psychologist Dr. Jennifer Baumgartner, author of You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You, shared her insights about the psychology of fashion in the Forbes article, What Your Clothes Say About You.

“Shopping and spending behaviors often come from internal motivations such as emotions, experiences and culture,” says Dr. Baumgartner. “You look at shopping or storing behaviors, even putting together outfits, and people think of it as fluff. But any behavior is rooted in something deeper. I look at the deeper meaning of choices, just like I would in therapy.”

To put it simply, a shirt is not just a shirt. What we wear becomes sartorial shorthand for age, race, ethnicity, gender, income, upbringing, education, and interests, to name a few.

Fashion choices can also signal geographical origin, as I discovered on an outing with my wife to Lowe's a few weeks ago to pick up some wood stain for a house project. The young, black male cashier greeted us with a quizzical expression as we walked up to the check out counter with our purchase.

“Y’all ain’t from around here, are ya,” he proclaimed.  

 “What was that?” my wife asked the cashier, not understanding what he said.

“He said we’re not from around here,” I answered my wife.

“Oh, I was born here,” my wife said to the cashier. “What made you think that we’re not from here?”

“Your Patagonia,” replied the cashier.

My wife was wearing a Patagonia backpack along with a t-shirt of a local coffee place we frequent quite often, and I was wearing a screen printed t-shirt of the album cover for The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night soundtrack. Both of us were wearing shorts and flip flops, too. Admittedly, this is not standard Wichita fashion, but I didn’t think it read that we were from out of town.

In spite of the initial awkwardness of the conversation, we eventually learned that this young man – who was originally from Chicago – moved to Wichita because of a woman. Can’t say I blame him for doing so; I did the same for my wife.

After we completed our purchase and walked to our vehicle, my wife and I talked about how we were both a little taken aback by the cashier’s initial presumption. Nevertheless, he was correct; neither my wife nor I are exactly born and bred Wichitans. I spent the first eighteen years of life in Osage City, Kansas, a town of just under 3,000 people that’s a half hour drive south of Topeka. In between that time and last year when I moved to Wichita, I had lived in Lawrence, Kansas, Seoul, and Kansas City. My wife, on the other hand, was born and raised in Wichita for the first fourteen years of her life, but had lived a decade outside of the Midwest in California, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut before returning to Wichita in 2012.

As with the places we’ve lived, what we wear imparts a certain quality to the people we meet. Like it or not, our clothes tell our stories; who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. People judge us by what we wear even before we speak. If you live like I do in a postindustrial society such as the United States, personal branding is becoming more important than ever, and what you wear is an integral part of your personal brand.

Or, as Mark Twain eloquently put it more than a century ago, “Clothes make the man.”

S’well – Bringing S’exy Back to Water Bottles

So I recently caved in and bought a S’well bottle.

My wife bought one back in March and has been raving about it ever since.* It was only a matter of time before she finally convinced me to get one of my own. So I did. Below is a picture of my S’well bottle in all of its 25oz. of Onyx stainless steel glory.

Now, I’m no expert on the reusable water bottle market, but this picture that I took on a recent outing with my wife to TJ Maxx leads me to believe that it’s – pun ahead – flooded.

A 17 oz. S’well bottle retails for $35.00, and if you’re really thirsty, 25 oz. for $45.00. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives for those who want to stay hydrated, so what explains the ever-increasing popularity of S’well bottles? Is it the ability to keep cold liquids cold for 24 hours and hot liquids hot for 12 hours via a double-insulated stainless steel body? It’s a nice feature, but there are other brands that do the same. Several strategic business partnerships, including one with Starbucks, have certainly helped launch S’well into the national spotlight.

Probably the most succinct explanation for the success of S’well comes from its CEO and founder, Sarah Kauss, who shared her inspiration for the brand in a recent Business Insider article.

“I just thought the world needed a more fashionable water bottle,” said Kauss.

S’well bottles are available in more than 200 colors and designs so there is something for everyone, including myself who wanted a S’well that was rugged and masculine looking. I carry my S’well around with me virtually everywhere, and I have to say that I’ve never received so many questions or comments about something I owned. Same goes for my wife who carries her S’well virtually everywhere as well.

We went to an Indian buffet over 4^th of July weekend and towards the end of our meal the waitress said to my wife, “That’s a really unique looking bottle!”

My wife, never one to miss an opportunity to plug something she enjoys (she works in marketing, too) responded, “ Thank you! It’s a S’well bottle. You can find them at Pink Saloon in town, but I bought this online. They’re really great!”

“Yeah, I really like the wood grain look you have for yours. I looked at it and was like ‘That’s a really cool looking bottle.’ Does it come in a larger size, though?”

“Oh yeah! This one is only 17 ounces but you can buy one that’s 25 ounces, too, online.”

“Oh good. Yeah, I drink a lot of water. About a gallon a day!”

My wife and the waitress both laugh, and then we paid for our meal. After we left the buffet it dawned on me, “My wife promoted the brand just by talking to that waitress about her S’well bottle…”

It’s one thing to do promotional marketing for your product, but to have other people do it for you? That, my friends, is genius.

*My wife has bought two more S'well bottles since March. She now has a grand total of three S'well bottles and is considering purchasing two more in the near future.