It’s Halloween night in Tokyo and, having been here only once before, I figured my best bet for an unguided tour of the freaks that come out at night is to visit Akihabara Electric Town. The area is hailed as one of the world’s biggest shopping centers for all kinds of gadgetry, PCs, videogames, and electronic parts ranging from thimble spools of copper wire to full-on motherboards. And then there’s all the Anime, Manga and other otaku delights … those are the real draw, especially if you’re a Westerner like me jacked up on green tea to power through the jet lag and looking for a good reason to rubberneck and maybe snap an interesting jpeg to email “Konichiwa, Mom.”

Otaku can be interpreted as the Japanese equivalent to the All-American geek, obsessed with technology and nerdy humor, but in some cases with a pronounced dark side or otherwise fetishy underbelly. William Gibson, who many know to be the father of cyberpunk, or at least the first to sell the concept in mass paperback quantities with his Neuromancer, volleyed the term otaku Stateside in 1996 in the novel Idoru, and pegged an otaku as a ‘pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-deficit’.

But in general it refers to an obsessive fan of anything, just more notably those who feast on Manga (Japanese comic books) and Anime, short for animation (if you didn’t know or guess), and often laser-focus their obsession on a particular title or zone like Gundam, or Transformers, or Miyazaki films, and even re-treads of such Holy Grails as our beloved Star Wars. Plus, there’s all the quote-unquote action figures and other anthropomorphic collectibles. This blog is at worst PG-13, so I won’t go into the objects of sexual obsession that are also quite prominent in the culture. (Therein lies the rub.) I will, however, admit mild disappointment that I didn’t see much of anything that could be categorized as startling. In fact, the most interesting obsession I found in Tokyo was the ubiquitous high-tech toilet.

Seriously, forget for the moment that having your toilet, public or otherwise, double as a biday isn’t exactly everyone’s bag, but why don’t we have at least some of these 21st Century features in the States? I mean, you open the stall door in a public bathroom and the lid automatically rises for you? And the seat is pre-heated to tropical levels? OK, sorry, yes, PG-13 here. Back to Akiba. Though the MPAA would likely cordon off some of the area’s shops with “no one 17 and under admitted,” those joints are really a very small minority, and typically back alley. It’s mostly good clean fun, less NC-17 and more NCC-1701 for all you Trekkie otakus out there (you know who you are). Just don’t try having Scotty beam you up from a Tokyo Toilet.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Far from the posh of the Singapore Suites, and pretty much at the back of the bus by comparison, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines is doing well by being cheap. According to this morning’s edition of The Standard, Oasis is celebrating its first birthday, having flown approximately 350,000 passengers this past year on its two routes (Hong Kong-London, Hong Kong-Vancouver). As “the world’s first long-haul budget operator,” the carrier has been successful to the point of forcing stalwarts such as Cathay Pacific and British Airways to slash prices on competitive routes.

But the more intriguing story is in the company living out its mission, which, according to one of its founders, Raymond Lee, is to not only “set up a successful airline, but to harness it as a force for social good.” Examples of their walking the talk include offering heavily discounted fares for teachers and the elderly. The company reportedly measures its IRR right alongside its “mission rate of return,” or the good it does for society by facilitating the exchange of cultures. Lee, who is a pastor in a local church, is also said to quote “examples of the kindness they have experienced from passengers” in his sermons. Talk about flying the friendly skies….

Posted by: Colin Mangham

But according to Singapore Airlines it better not be love; or at least not the making of it. There’s been a lot of well-earned hoopla about the Airbus A380 superjumbo and its inaugural commercial flight Thursday from Singapore to Sydney. Much of the media’s attention has been on the First Class (or as Virgin Atlantic will call it, Upper Class) suites, including two of 12 that feature a double bed.

If you’re thinking Mile High Club (and you’re not a Sox fan dancing in Denver’s LoDo), think again. “If couples used our double beds to engage in inappropriate activity, we would politely ask them to desist,” Singapore Airlines company spokesman Stephen Forshaw told the Times of London. “There are things that are acceptable on an aircraft and things that aren’t, and the rules for behavior in our double beds are the same ones that apply throughout the aircraft.” So with those bottomless flutes of champagne, wheels of oysters on the half-shell, and your snuggly-wuggly or other objet du desir within arm’s or leg’s reach in what are still tight quarters, regardless of how suite they are, it’s a no-fly zone.

Nevertheless, it’s quite a bird. I’ve seen CNN, and even a blip in the news zipper on Al Jazeera Asia, featuring it as breaking news today, and the half-page ad in The South China Morning Post boasts a profile of a demographically distinguished gentleman kicked back in a what has to be a Barcalounger on one end of the cabin. The airline, which holds the honor of being the first to fly the A380, calls it a “class beyond first.” Just remember to remain classy (or really, really quiet).

Posted by: Colin Mangham

I attended an inspiring charity event this past weekend for an organization called Drop in the Bucket. Great group, apparently a well-oiled and highly cost-effective non-profit, and they “do good stuff,” as emcee Annie Wood put it with a sparkle (ding!) in her smile.

The gist? They’re generating some healthy donations to build water wells in Uganda and (soon) other areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, primarily to get that good stuff to children there. To give you a taste in their own words (albeit before I implore you to click-click-click through their website), here’s a crib straight from the home page:

This is some seriously good stuff. And if you’re not familiar with the Roundabout Pumps that enable children to have a little bit of fun while bringing the water to dusty pales on the surface, that’s reason enough to check out dropinthebucket.org. Plus, it’s not just about clean drinking water, but also appropriate sanitation. Snapshot: This is a world in which a teenage girl can miss two weeks of school a month simply because she’s menstruating and it’s hygienically unsafe for her to leave home.

Please visit their site and at least sample a few of the richly detailed stories from Africa.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

A few months ago I wrote about some constituents of Generation X (hip-hip-hooray, go team) having what the author Douglas Coupland once called Boomer Envy with regards to the accumulation of material wealth and the foundation of security that can bring. At the same time, however, my generation has demonstrated a knack for focusing much less on the job itself and more on the leisure it affords us/them far beyond the cubicle (Coupland’s “veal-fattening pen”).

This mindset and behavior has has given rise to a ‘leisure class’ of sorts that wears hundred-dollar tees and routinely rings up four-figure sales at the likes of Best Buy, Pottery Barn and, until recently, major retail music chains (goodbye yellow brick road … may they R.I.P.). In turn, we’re seeing more and more adrenalized gallerias, festival marketplaces and other retail candylands that are places to socialize as much as they are spaces to shop.

Not that the leisure class is a totally new concept and terminology. Economist Thorsten Veblen wrote a book titled The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 (love that Wikipedia!). His essays provided what, in retrospect, appear to be prescient insights into budding consumerism in America, and he went so far as to apply some detailed accounts plucked from the annals of cultural anthropology to tie such leisurely behavior way back to tribal life.

Today, consumers, and particularly the GenX’ers with fattening disposable incomes, are increasingly spending more on leisure, and retail developers are finding more ways to make shopping a pursuit of leisure. In the twisty-turny parlance of marketing strategists and behavioral theorists, this is largely a function of non-utilitarian and hedonic outcomes, particularly with regards to a recreational shopper’s identity as a dimension of the consumer’s concept of self. Basically, the place you hang says a lot about you and your bros or BFF’s, like, totally.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

There’s no doubt about it, marketing can influence popular culture in such a way as to create self-fulfilling prophecies. In the U.S., there’s a common phrasing on a similar topic that questions, “does art imitate life, or life imitate art.” In many ways this poses a chicken-egg conundrum, and so begins the debate, does marketing imitate life, or does life imitate marketing?

According to Jane & Michael Stern’s Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, popular culture is the closest thing America has to a national faith. America was, they say, once a country of people who did things and made things, not just dreamed of things. As a result (or, is it instead a cause?), consumers have ‘relationships’ with goods that go far beyond utility … many brands convey identification with certain status groups. (No big surprise there, I know.)

This consumer dynamic is largely due to what I’ve heard in an academic setting referred to as a cultural production system (CPS), the constituents of which include not only the product manufacturers and service providers, but also the rich and famous celebrities, rock stars, retail environments, fashion magazines and anyone (or anything) else that influences consumer perceptions of what is to be desired and attained.

One of the three components of the CPS is a communications subsystem, which includes advertising agencies, opinion leaders and others who help assign symbolic meanings to products (i.e., Gucci equals ‘wealthy’). All along the watchtower there are cultural gatekeepers who act as tastemakers, or filters, for these symbolic representations in the media; radio deejays and fashion magazine editors, for example; and let’s not forget the influence many bloggers now have.

Such symbols become ingrained within our cultures and the line between a marketed fantasy and actual reality has become blurred to the point that marketing appears to exert a self-fulfilling prophecy: if ‘it’ is marketed as ‘cool’, then it may very well become cool; and when it’s cool, it’s marketed as being even cooler. Until, of course, it’s no longer cool because too many uncool people have bought into it. But that’s for the tastemakers to decide, huh?

p.s. the title of this post is a hat’s tip to the group Love & Rockets. In the late ’80s they were selling cool like no tomorrow. These days, unfortunately, they have no new tale to tell.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

The UK alt-rock band Radiohead, of which I’m a longtime fan, is breaking new ground once again. This time by releasing their new album, “In Rainbows,” first only through their own website, nowhere else, at least not until “early next year” when they plan to do a “traditional CD release.” But that’s not the clincher. They’re actually leaving the price field blank, allowing consumers to decide how much they want to pay for it.

I’ve crawled a few sites including NME.com, the Atlantic and others, and the consensus is that it’s not just a novel approach but a psychologically grounded one to boot. According to BPI (the British Phonographic Institute), only one in 20 music downloads is actually paid for. So part of the thinking, it’s thought, is that the band is hoping to tug on the moral and/or ethical codes of a few non-paying types in hopes that they’ll cough up at least a buck or so and thereby capture sales that would have been lost anyway. As The Telegraph states it, “in effect, it puts a moral impetus on the listener to either reward the musician, or acknowledge their own greed.”

Meanwhile, the serious Radiohead loyalists, of which I will guess there’s maybe a million at this point worldwide, will feel a duty to pay a reasonable amount, i.e. at or above what would typically be market price, about $10 USD. In fact, I just “chose” to pay £5.00 for an “In Rainbows” download I can grab on October 10. Note that that’s for a pre-order though … putting another spin on this situation. I’ve not even heard the album yet, so I’m only forecasting, if you will, its value. But that’s easy enough for this fan, as I’d buy it even if it were complete junk.

No doubt the band is totally banking on die-hards like me in the early-adopter phase leading up to the exclusive release, and then again through to the conventional release next year. Only, this isn’t Apple gouging its iPhone early-adopters (mostly legions of Apple loyalists, myself included) then giving them store credit (to spend more money with Apple) when they dropped the price through the floor to effectively reward the masses who waited it out.

Not that I’m actually upset about that either. I love my iPhone almost to a point of embarrassment, and will drop a hundred bucks in the Apple store any chance you give me. Hmm. Maybe I’ll plop that store credit down on a pair of those fancy Shure Triple TruAcoustic MicroSpeakers for a fat five bills. I bet if I crank ‘em way, way up I can even hear my credit card whimpering.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

A little over a year ago I blogged about Sony having been toppled from the innovation roost by Apple, Samsung and others. “Sony should be quicker in getting truly innovative products to market. One word: iPod. Think back to the disruptive product that was the Sony Walkman in 1979. Sony’s not leading the charge like it has in the past. Samsung grabbed (and still holds) significant market share that could have been Sony’s in the DLP/LCD TV market, especially given Sony’s Trinitron brand penetration in conventional CRT’s” (“Sony Still the One and Only?”, 02 September 06).

As we might have guessed, they weren’t sleeping but feverishly plotting over in R&D, at least with regards to the flat-panel TV market. According to Reuters and a handful of sources today, Sony will be launching an ultra-thin flat TV in December. The new set features an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that the Tokyo-based manufacturer is betting on to grab market share from the dominant LCD (smaller sized displays) and plasma (larger, e.g., 50 inches and up) technologies.

“Sony, the world’s No.2 liquid crystal display TV maker behind Samsung Electronics Co, expects the 11-inch OLED TV with a thickness of 3 mm to sell for 200,000 yen ($1,740), almost as high as retail prices of some of its own 40-inch LCD models” (Reuters). Differentiating benefits are said to be energy efficiency, weight and an ever-smaller footprint (ultra-thin … 3mm).

I won’t say that Sony heard a Who, but they certainly do seem to be listening to consumers (and the rings of cash registers, not that any of them still “ring” anymore). But innovation is not just about leaps and incremental gains on quality, economics and feature sets, but speed to market. “Some people have said attractive products are slow to come at Sony despite its technological strength,” Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told a news conference at its Tokyo headquarters. “I want this world’s first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony’s technological prowess. I want this to be the flag under which we charge forwards to turn the fortunes around,” he said.

Bravo. Now let’s see what they do about the iPod (not that I would actually switch!).

Posted by: Colin Mangham