Chairman Meow! Combines Quirky Attraction, Chinese Propaganda Artform.

Last September, I was struck by an image that I stumbled over by accident: Chairman Meow, “Great Leader.” Among other visualizations, it’s the invention of designer Kevin McCormick. Since I’m a fan of Soviet-era art and design it is quirkily attractive. Not to mention, the Chairman has an immense range of friends, from Whippets of Mass Destruction (dogs) to Lolruses (marine mammals)…all available on ObeythePureBreed.com.

This is McCormick’s site on Cafepress.com and I thought it would give me a chance to explore a booming etail operation.

This is all down to the “T-shirt economy,” so called by Clive Thompson of Wired because creative people can turn their ideas into businesses by developing clothing and other decorated apparel. On Cafepress, according to reported figures, all this was worth more than $100 million in 2007, with an average 20% in profit.

I think McCormick’s designs deliver imagination and parody at the same time. He himself says, “I started combining propaganda art with heroic portraits of dogs. The designs also allowed me to make social and political commentary.”

His emails filled in some blanks for me, first about his visuals: The designs do resonate with buyers. People are really passionate about their pets, and they think that their breed is the best. My style isn’t original, but I think the concept is. It flips the idea of obedience in relation to pets, and I think seeing a Chihuahua as a dictator definitely is seen as surprising and amusing.
How is Cafepress working out? As far as marketing, a lot of that is trial and error. I have to sometimes be creative, as selling t-shirts through Cafepress is convenient and great, but not high profit margins. To make advertising worthwhile, I really have to make sure I’m reaching the right niches.
Is Cafepress a viable sales mechanism? One thing that I’ve done lately is a sticker campaign, where I distribute free Chairman Meow stickers from the site for people to put in public. People have responded well, and I've sent them all over the world. Not sure if that will translate to sales, but it’s fun knowing that the stickers are on almost every continent! (And new 2009 stickers are now available, BTW.)

I’ve highlighted other examples of this sort of design, like the art of Laura Smith, here. There’s just something about Chairman Meow that tickles me big-time – perhaps because it feels right. At the same time, McCormick is following, even expanding on, the etailer’s creed (according to Thompson): Let your content roam freely online, so it generates as large an audience as possible.
Content wants to be free. But remember that it is fans that drive sales so don’t lock your fans out. This is hard to do for business-to-business marketers unless you get real lucky.

Something else going on right now: Soviet-era art continues to have an impact on the street...none more recently that the Shepard Fairey-designed Obama Inauguration Poster. Designer McCormick says he admires street artist Fairey. But I’ll take McCormick’s lighthearted approach over heavy propaganda every time. Support world domination. Obey the kitty!

Thanks to Kevin McCormick and Obeythepurebreed.com for the excellent material.

Matchbook Advertising

We had been chatting about tiny posters – cinderellas – as advertising media (see below). Then (see below below) about Laura Smith, who’s channeling stamp artists from the era of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in the service of Mercedes and the Academy Awards.

Now I want you to recall the advertising power and art of the common paper matchbook – politically incorrect today to the nth degree. In fact, I’m doing you a service to remind you that matchbook advertising is “like having the impact of billboard advertising in the palm of your hand.”

I lifted this phrase direct from D D Bean & Sons Company website.

It’s www.matchbookadvertising.com and if you have any idea that you or your company can handle the oh-my-god pressure of matchbook marketing, you could start your journey with Peter Leach, the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

This site is not only a display of this matchbook company’s production and distribution capabilities. It will remind you of what was once a very powerful medium: Now dead and buried, along with cigarette smokers.

The challenge of using matchbooks – the real thing, not the ones with toothpicks or little notepads – is that so many people associate them with cigarette-smoking. How many humans think about the evils of cigarettes every time they see a matchbook? Most of them here in the US. Leach, who’s been in the “match business” for 35 years, says that over the past six to seven years, it’s changed dramatically, and for the worse. The advent of the Master Settlement Agreement killed Big Tobacco’s interest in book matches, so matchbook advertising is a dribble compared to a decade ago.

Leach makes an important distinction. In the good old days, the business was “space advertising.” This is classic matchbook advertising where the advertiser (like Prince Albert cigars) buys the space; the manufacturer (like D D Bean & Sons) distributes the matchbooks. The resulting book of matches, likely with a tobacco ad on it, was given to you free when you bought a pack of cigarettes.

Those good days are gone forever. Leach calls everything else “private label.” The matchbooks with customized art are sold to the advertiser (a hotel, a bar or a restaurant), who then distributes them to its customers.

The thousand-legal-cut demise of smoking isn’t the only indignity suffered by matchbook advertisers. Technologically, the disposable lighter really took over the “light business” over the past 15 years. Today, nine out of every 10 “lights” are provided by butane lighters.

That’s a shame, because even after the trials and tribulations of the tobacco industry here in America, matchbooks are still surprisingly available…just not in the places you think you might find them or in the old, space-advertising formats.

Is it possible to find a company with any degree of PC sensitivity to use matchbook advertising? I think you have to determine if your client has a pretty sturdy sense of humor to take on this format.

For private labelers, good designers can help. First, there are still match companies like Bean and The Match Group that provide templates for graphic artists and art directors. Then, you want to refine your brand message both verbally and visually. Perhaps you noted the last couple of posts about outstanding illustrators working in the small spaces defined by, say, the matchbook.

There are also technical designers like Pasquale Chieffalo (here) and David Airey (here) who continue to experiment with the matchbook format. These outside-the-box applications might offer marketers and advertisers additional ways to use a strongly familiar medium in new, even surprising ways.

If your own creativity catches fire, drop me a line and I’ll pass it on to Leach, who’s looking for a few good ideas. Remember to close cover before striking.

Thanks and a tip of the Signalwriter cap to Peter Leach. The private-label 30-strike “Republic” sample courtesy of The Match Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cinderella Stories

When Laura Smith (see below) mentioned that her artistic influences did “poster art,” I misunderstood her – she pointed that out in a comment posted to the blog. In fact, an artist like A M Cassandre did a lot of these small pieces – the one to the left, dated 1928, measures 1.5 inches by 2.3 inches. If you look here, you’ll see a lot more.

I had to call a local stamp store to remind myself about what should have been a familiar term: Not poster stamps, but cinderellas – stamp-like labels that include charity stamps like Easter Seals as well as advertising material of all kinds.

This is where Smith’s understanding of a “poster stamp” comes from. It’s a miniature version of a poster designed to advertise an event or product and, according to one definition, the main characteristic of the true poster stamp is integrity of design.

Color schemes and layouts had to be carefully chosen because poster in such small sizes had to catch the eye quickly. Sometimes these worked, sometimes they didn’t. But since a number of older designers worked in this format, they’re outstanding source materials for contemporary illustrators – just like postage stamp designers.

Ta for the weekend!

Smith’s Art

Back when US postage stamps were boring, the countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact had much neater stuff. The Soviet Union, Communist Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria – they couldn’t produce a working refrigerator to save their lives. But they had TERRIFIC stamps.

The old-school artists of these countries combined 1960s “contemporary design” and art deco elements to produce damn outstanding philately…everything from Soviet space ships (factual and fictional) to folk heroes, holiday celebrations to sports figures.

Well, this post started because the American Marketing Association-Houston has been using several pieces of stock art by Laura Smith to advertise its upcoming Crystal Awards. I’m fond of Art Deco styling as well as good illustration. And I was curious about this particular “Laura Smith.”

As illustrators go, Smith is famous enough. She’s been written up and written about, with her growing up in, “a mid-century modern house in Manhattan Beach, CA (literally on the beach), where no one but her mother locked their doors.”

When she graduated from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, Smith moved to New York City to jump-start her career. After developing her style in New York for 12 years, she returned to California and set up shop in the Hollywood Hills, where she’s been ever since, producing dramatic or dynamic creations for advertisers, magazines and organizations from the American Public Works Association to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Given how many illustrators there are in the world – and from how many sources they draw inspiration – it’s awkward to single out just one, saying, “This is cool stuff.” There’s lots of that.

But after looking at Smith’s current work at www.laurasmithart.com, I realized, here’s an illustrator who had to have been looking over my shoulder when I was collecting Warsaw Pact stamps back in the ’60s.

She wrote me: There have been many artists that have influenced my work. I never tire of the French poster artist A M Cassandre. Otis Shepard always feels fresh to me (he was known for all the work he did for Wrigley’s). More recently I have been inspired by Mary Blair.

My earlier work was originally shaped by Ludwig Hohlwein. The pieces that you have singled out are probably a cross between Otis and Cassandre. And I believe that all the aforementioned artists with the exception of Mary Blair had work produced as poster stamps. I am not familiar with the postage stamps you refer to. Maybe we are talking about the same thing.

I think we are. The resemblance between her work and the postage stamps of Soviet-era Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary is remarkable. Examples? If Blogger cooperates, two Smith pieces are on top; then a Soviet Russian stamp and then a Polish stamp, circa 1965.

I testify to the similarities. With Smith’s work, I set Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine and return to the days when the War was Cold and a gallon of regular (leaded) cost 31¢.

Today scholars call this sort of thing “ephemera.” For me, it’s reminiscence. So thanks, Laura. Who says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?