What Scion Events in Minneapolis Gets Right

Notes: This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 will be published next at TRCOM. RE: Quotes: I paraphrase quotes and reference loosely as my writing budget does not include researchers of any kind.

Two expressions stick out in my mind when I think of marketing in America: The first comes from a successful mid-century Black architect working in Hollywood. I cannot remember his name and preliminary Google searches are turning up little, but his quote I believe I memorized verbatim when I read it several years ago, "Americans love the appearance of opulence." To me, who cares little of such things, nothing could be closer to the truth. I don't really get it, except that the appearance of opulence sells a lot more crap more frequently than the actuality of quality which sells less, less frequently. That's probably all there is to get: Selling more is more income. Where's the nuance. That's the JOB.

And yet, things looking like crap I also find understandably unappealing. In my heart of hearts, I believe in the ornate beauty of age as it appears on well built, fully realized (ugly or beautiful) human objects - in a sense incorporating the natural process into the artistic, thereby catapulting the effect of beauty over and above the glossy sheen of a new car. I like places that have a feeling. Sterile is sterile. What's there to know about it? It's a surface good for little.

But this is why my sensibility has landed me in so much disarray with the sales of Photography. Photography is sales. Seeing is believing (in). Many days I think I'm just not up to it, that I've missed the boat completely - and part of me really believes that. To live and work in a culture which agrees little with what you value is not affirming, but it's also no reason to go crying foul. The United States has a ton of resources for making whatever it is you want to make...so that is what I tell myself when I'm making what I make. Whether there is a market for what I make is highly questionable, which brings me to Scion's Metro events.

This brings me to the second quote, "Americans don't buy things, they buy experiences. They buy the feeling the thing gives them." Traditionally this has meant an attractive man sucking on a cigarette and musing about how much enjoyment he experiences from the cigarette and women who find him thus attractive in equal proportions. I get this. This is abundance, and for all the consuming going on in the US, there is a strange sense of limited resources. There is a whole hell of a lot of hording going on, which I refer to as 'the poverty mentality.' It's the 'I'm no longer poor, so I need to constantly prove it." sensibility which plays nicely into the shiny objects not aging well sales model.

The notion that there IS enough for everybody, that what you have is worthwhile, that unexceptional day to day experiences have cause for celebration. We only seem to get that endgame in American consumer culture when there is a product involved - otherwise the zen fulfillment will n'er come about. And, as mentioned before - above, it has traditionally come in the form of images of 'desirable attainability' forced onto the consumer as media purchases and presented as experiences to be had after price of purchase.

End Pt. 1. Pt 2 to follow as next entry.