Category — Cool News

One of the greatest spirituals, just in time for Passover and Easter, says Roger McGuinn in The Folk Den. (listen)

LL Bean has about 3,600 people answering its phones, and 10 "wading boot-deep into social media," reports Susan Q. Stranahan in the New York Times (12/8/11). The staffing disparity is directly related to this reality: The retailer typically fields about 100,000 phone calls a day, but records only about "50,000 social-media mentions on Twitter, blogs, Facebook and YouTube" a month. And yet, LL Bean is acutely aware that its online engagement is a big deal. "We’re quite used to dealing one-to-one with our customers, but this takes it to a whole new level," says Terry Sutton, the retailer’s svp of e-commerce.

To be sure, there’s a world of difference between a private phone conversation and a public broadcast, and so Bean’s newly created 10-member social-media team keeps a close watch on what their shoppers are saying about them online. Team members are also empowered to respond as they see fit, creating an unprecedented level of informality in Bean’s public presence. “I can be me,” says Rochelle Clark, a member of the retailer’s social-media team. This, in turn, can itself be a cause for concern for Terry. “At first, some of the Tweets were too loose,” she says. “You don’t want somebody freelancing the brand voice.”

To help manage that, "the company uses a service called CoTweet, which allows supervisors to monitor web conversations." Sometimes customer Tweets are edgy, such as one suggesting that Bean was supporting the "Occupy Maine" movement to sell more tents. Others are cranky, such as a harshly worded Facebook post about unwanted catalogs. And yet, in many ways, these digital conversations are not all that different from those by phone, which can be chats about favorite Bean products, and speak to the company’s 99-year tradition of warm-and-fuzzy customer service.

A crew of young and scruffy German internet activists are forcing conventional politics to walk the plank, reports Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times (9/20/11). The Pirate Party, promising "liquid democracy," shocked Germany’s political status quo by winning 8.9 percent of the vote and 15 seats in the state parliament. To an extent, their electoral success was a protest vote, but some suggest larger implications. "In the internet, they have really found an underexploited theme that the other political parties are not dealing with," says Christoph Bieber of the University of Duisburg-Essen.

These themes include "online privacy" and "data protection," and are rooted in the reality that young people "often spend half their waking hours online, much of it on social networking sites where they share their most intimate moments." In addition, "the Pirates’ call for complete transparency in politics resonates powerfully." To that end, the Pirates "have promised to use online tools to give party members unprecedented power to propose policies and determine stances, in what they call ‘liquid democracy,’ a form of participation that goes beyond simply voting in elections."

"Today’s cadre of politicians is missing out on asking some very relevant questions about the future," says Rick Falkvinge, who founded the Pirate Party in Sweden in 2006. Rick says that, because of the internet, "you don’t have to take these laws being read to you … You can stand up, stand tall and write the laws yourself." So far, the Pirate Party is overwhelmingly the enclave of "young men who spend their evenings writing computer code," but the Pirates say this will change. In the meantime, party leader Andreas Baum says they’ve already made a difference. "The very fact that these other parties are now asking themselves how we won these votes is already progress."

“Unlike any other form, piano bar is about constant interaction between the pianist and the audience,” reports Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal (8/4/11). The piano bar is unlike “the more technologically-driven karaoke bar,” where the backing is recorded and the singers try to sound like their favorite stars. It is also different from open mic nights, “in which aspiring artists perform onstage with an emcee.” Nor is it like cocktail-lounge pianists, who do their best to tinkle quietly in the background. No, the piano bar, “a venerable but fragile” tradition, has a style and a psychology all its own that’s designed to impel “customers to get up and give it their all.”

Franca Vercelloni, “who has played piano in rooms all over New York,” sees herself as a ringmaster, of sorts. “It’s like I’m a deejay, an emcee and a party band all at once … I read the room and play what the people want to hear,” she says. At Marie’s Crisis, where Franca is a regular on both piano and accordion, “everybody sings every number, and the pianists … lead them through extended medleys of Broadway’s greatest hits, one show at a time. “It’s less of a showcase and more like group musical therapy,” says Franca. “It’s magical when everyone bursts out in lyrics and harmony.”

Few approach this opportunity with as much panache as Lewis Hunter Stowers III, who plays at Mimi’s on East 52nd Street, alternately billing himself as Chicken Delicious or Hunter Blue. Mr. Delicious “enhances the ringmaster’s role with an infinite variety of costumes and masks, most of which he makes himself and which are extremely song-specific.” For French Tourists he puts on an Eiffel Tower hat for a round of La Vie En Rose, and for a group of Irishmen with a girl named Kathleen, it’s a green bow tie and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” When Chicken does his best Elvis, it’s well, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.

Amy Winehouse "took vintage looks and combined them with punk into brand-new looks that gave even bad girls pause," says John Waters in a New York Times piece by Guy Trebay (7/28/11). "Rock ‘n’ roll," says John, "is about bad girls." One of the many questions remaining in the wake of Amy’s death is, how did she get that way? Her image on the cover of her first record, Frank, was that of "a pretty type unconvinced of her appeal … a woman whose conservative taste in clothes gave no hint of the transformation she would effect by the time she released her second, and final, album, Back to Black.

"The way she looked before she made herself into the Amy Winehouse we know, who became an icon, who beat Lady Gaga to the Cleopatra eye makeup and the beehive hairdo, is a demure young lady out on the town," says Joe Levy, chief content officer of Maxim. "The woman on the cover of ‘Back to Black’ is clearly wearing her makeup as armor," Joe continues. "She is someone who is outside the conventional world, beautiful but fierce, and who is making music that means to take possession of that world." All of this perhaps runs counter to the gathering narrative that Amy Winehouse was, like Janis Joplin and others before her, a victim.

"Self-victimization as outsiderness, self-sacrifice as a form of rebellion is a classic bad-girl stance," says NPR’s Ann Powers, who says Amy was fully "engaged and aware of what she was doing." Just as her musical style "borrowed from Motown, Stax, punk and early hip-hop — her personal style was also a known collage," says Joe Levy. "There was a certain moment in the ’90s when, if you were headed downtown and turned left, every girl looked like Bettie Page … But they did not do what Winehouse did, mixing Bettie Page with Brigitte Bardot and adding that little bit of Ronnie Spector." It was all very deliberate, and yet, as John Waters points out, "It all looked like it came very naturally to her." Including, sadly, the number 27.

Shoppers employ a decision process that’s unrelated to consumer attitudes. By Al Wittemen and Paul Price. The premise of shopper marketing sounds simple enough: how to connect with shoppers in a way that solves their problems quickly and easily. Delivering on that premise, however, is not nearly so simple for one reason more than any other: the path-to-purchase is not linear; it’s multi-dimensional.