"Fuck Scion and fuck In The Red Records"

[Whitepages]

i don't think scion was only doing garage rock shows, and suddenly moved to metal. i think they've been sponsoring (or whatever) all kindsa shows from the get go.

Yea, before any of the garage 7"s or whatever came out, I remeber Scion people being all over the city handing out hip hop mix cd's and stuff. That had to be like 4 or 5 years ago maybe

[Maltodextrin]

There's a Canadian music award (like the Mercury in the UK, an award chosen for significant artistic achievement as opposed to an industry hype thing a la the Grammies) called the Polaris Prize, and this year there's a series of split 45s featuring the nominated acts. I was pretty surprised yesterday when I found out that was being sponsored by Scion. Drake and Fiest are among the 2012 nominees, but previous entries have included Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Fucked Up etc.

[smiller]

Julian Assange leaked this to me from some secret board room file.  It shows as u can clearly tell, the Fonze (Larry Hardy) attracts people to start coming over for some laughs and shit, but as you can clearly see the Devil ($cion interns) has placed a Scion in your way.  A ramp is conveniently tempting to jump over it to get to Larry, but the fuckin PROBLEM (as you can clearly fucking see) is the ramp makes you buy a Segway.  You cross-marketed fucks.  YOU GOT PLAID.  Now, as for the reality of the situation, you can clearly see you fuckin jump too far and Larry is like, "Oh fuck bro" and you clearly get impaled on a fuckin bloody deathstick.  As you can clearly see the fucking devil is cool and makes it all happen.  How else would he have glasses?  And by the way, THANKS FOR FUCKIN PLAYING!

I almost crashed my Scion laughing at this.

[SSR]

HEY IDIOTS! There is nothing to theorize about. What Scion has been doing is called Youth Marketing. Youth Marketing is as mainstream and non-controversial as Product Placement. What they are also doing is called Branding. Again, standard business. It was part of the Scion campaign when they launched the fucking brand in 2003. The whole idea is to build a "Cradle to Grave" brand. They want your first and last and every car to be a Scion and if not a Scion than a Toyota. They've always been very open about it. It is fucking written about constantly. This from 2006. Quit being fucking shocked about this shit.

Now, that Assange file, that is riveting!

[TheKLYAM]

HEY IDIOTS! There is nothing to theorize about. What Scion has been doing is called Youth Marketing. Youth Marketing is as mainstream and non-controversial as Product Placement. What they are also doing is called Branding. Again, standard business. It was part of the Scion campaign when they launched the fucking brand in 2003. The whole idea is to build a "Cradle to Grave" brand. They want your first and last and every car to be a Scion and if not a Scion than a Toyota. They've always been very open about it. It is fucking written about constantly. This from 2006. Quit being fucking shocked about this shit.

Now, that Assange file, that is riveting!

this is why you're the big cheese. not trying to kiss up or anything

[Scrod Prickknee]

HEY IDIOTS! There is nothing to theorize about. What Scion has been doing is called Youth Marketing. Youth Marketing is as mainstream and non-controversial as Product Placement. What they are also doing is called Branding. Again, standard business. It was part of the Scion campaign when they launched the fucking brand in 2003. The whole idea is to build a "Cradle to Grave" brand. They want your first and last and every car to be a Scion and if not a Scion than a Toyota. They've always been very open about it. It is fucking written about constantly. This from 2006. Quit being fucking shocked about this shit.

Now, that Assange file, that is riveting!

I've never even addressed the "why," it's fucking obvious what they think they're doing if you've ever worked in advertising/marketing. It's also the "hip" by association aspect.

[rnld]

I just bought a brand new Toyota , thanks In the Red!

[P-TNT]

My biggest gripe with Scion is that I have to buy all the interesting ones from Ebay and shit because I think there are no fucking Scions in the whole Europe.

[hugebomber]

I've never even addressed the "why," it's fucking obvious what they think they're doing if you've ever worked in advertising/marketing. It's also the "hip" by association aspect.

this is what i was thinking.  the why part is understood.   the key component is the hip factor.   why isn't scion kissing the greasy and unwashed asses of juggalos ?   they are a "youth market" with all the trappings and codifiers of a scene such as garage punk or goth, etc.
would anyone be quite so alarmed if Scion was promoting neo-folk shows ?  probably not over here, but the bozos at WFMU and aquarius would be UP IN ARMS.   

its perfectly natural to take offense when a precious thing you greatly appreciate is suddenly getting it's leg humped by
corporate whores.   the idea that you can't escape this type of thing is bullshit.   it seems like you could follow the example of a band like negativland who could dice up this phony shit with a couple of well worded press releases.   

[SSR]

Read that article I linked to: They "why" is explicit: They know that by targeting bands (in any genre) that are not in the mainstream they can be seen as hip to the mainstream. They are not looking to snagging fans of those bands but people who desperately seek to be cool by chasing what is hip - which is a much much bigger market. That is the hip by association that trickknee refers to.

If you ask "why those bands", again see the article. Scion has people who look for bands that are not in the mainstream and toss them aside once the bands start to get popular. What was new to me was that Scion was doing 250 pressings of underground hip hop vinyl as far back as 2004. That they were pressing vinyl shouldnt be surprising. I mean if they figured out that underground bands were what they needed to market themselves as a hip car, vinyl would be the next step. From there they look to other underground scenes that are vinyl obsessed.

A few years ago, there was a huff in San Francisco because an ad agency hired some taggers to bomb parts of the city with a product name and slogan. It took a few days (and one of the taggers getting popped) for the city to figure out that it was an ad campaign. The agency tried to explain itself by saying that this was the "cutting edge" of "guerrilla marketing." They still got fined something like $20,000 (which I assume they settled for half that, less than what they got paid for the campaign), but the spokesperson for the agency considered it a success. By using tagging and, ironically, by getting busted they were able to brand the product as rebellious, something that always sells. Plus they got way more news coverage than they would have had not they been busted. Each story mentioned the product, thus getting the name out there and reenforcing the rebelliousness of the product's user. I am pretty sure that the product was something like an energy drink - whatever it was, it wasnt anything that would appeal to people who would take offense of the tagging.

While Scion doesnt have people out there spraypainting their name about (though they do have millions of stickers made and given away for free, and stuck up on lamp posts and like places), the principle is still the same...and it is part of mainstream marketing culture.

In other news
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Beastie-Boys-rapper-s-will-bars-ad-use-of-his-work-3778509.php

[Whet Bull]

would anyone be quite so alarmed if Scion was promoting neo-folk shows ?  probably not over here, but the bozos at WFMU and aquarius would be UP IN ARMS.   

That cracked me up, and you're right.  There would be outrage. 

The "why" that SSR explains above was discussed in shorthand pages ago as soon as somebody mentioned Thomas Frank. 

I happen to think it's a very poor strategy and as I said, my hunch is it was chosen because it's cheap -- very, very cheap.  Much cheaper than conventional advertising or sponsorship.  If the company wants to capture a demographic that that can afford a new car, but is stupid enough to value "rebelliousness" AND ALSO accept a canned corporate version of "cool", they should hire BJORK.  Or better yet, BJORK and MATTHEW BARNEY.  To shill for their quirky, piece of shit car.  Kind of like Absolut hiring Warhol and Keith Haring, or Coors Light and Ford hiring Bob Seger, or Glidden and countless others hiring Dali in the sixties.They can't afford to, so the money instead is spread across dozens of artists whose participation can be bought cheaply. 

It seems to me that the climate for youth culture marketing and branding has changed dramatically since the days of Rolling Rock TV commercials, Max Blagg, and Rollins shilling for The Gap.  This underground music campaign may be a textbook marketing scheme but my intuition tells me it is Out Of Step With The World. 



http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/971670/stereolab-play-bell-atlantic-fest.jhtml

[Liquid Omar]

The war is over, 30 years from now Scion cars will be remembered as the banadana of the 00s garage rock movement.

[bradxxx]

30 years from now "the 00s garage rock movement" if it is remembered at all, will be about as noteworthy as a bandana...

[Jared]

There's a movement?   

[Whet Bull]

Yeah.  A bowel movement.