Was this the best unintentional marketing campaign ever?
And other Stuff I Loved for the week of July 25
Old pal Sahil Bloom (one of the best follows in all of Twitter-land) posed this question recently:
Unequivocally, Sahil, yes. Yes, a hundred times over.
For those of you who never got to experience the thrill of scouring the clearance bins at a record store for “edgy” material, a quick recap.
The “Parental Advisory” label was the compromise in a bitter feud between the Parents Music Resource Center (PRMC), led by Tipper Gore, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Believe it or not, there was a time in this country when free speech and censorship was really in the crosshairs on Capitol Hill — and we have musicians like Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and Luther Campbell to thank for pushing back.
Anyways, these warning labels started appearing on albums in the late 80’s, and if the intent was to deter kids away from consuming this type of content then it failed miserably. There was a time in my adolescence where, depending on the genre, you were suspect (or worse, perceived as soft) if the music you put out didn’t have a “Parental Advisory” label. This was especially true in hip-hop, and in the nü-metal craze of the late ’90s. Good acts became legendary. Bad acts became manageable.
Bloom’s intent in pointing this out was to demonstrate one of the earliest examples of “Streisand Effect”, where an attempt to suppress something only brings more attention and/or notoriety to it.1
But back to the original question — honestly, it’s hard to argue that it’s not one of the most unintentionally genius marketing campaigns of all time. Even to this day, its imitations inspire the edgy within all of us. Look no further than the “Straight Outta” generator Beats By Dre launched in tandem with the release of the Straight Outta Compton movie. You’re lying if you tell me you didn’t create your own.
Here’s some other stuff I loved from this past week…
Papi’s HOF moment, and why perception matters
David Oritz, the Big Papi, the most clutch postseason hitter of my lifetime, is officially in Cooperstown. I previously wrote about how preposterous it is that the two most iconic Boston sports heroes of my lifetime — Papi and Tom Brady — only came here after nobody else wanted them.
The biggest lesson I talked about in that column is the value of failure before success. When you fail first, it forces you to look inward and change the context of your problems. It motivates you. It sharpens you. It forces you to come back to the table with something nobody could possibly say “no” to.
But this goes the other way, too. Papi’s career represents another lesson here that we see way too often in sports, in business, in marketing, anywhere in life where the people manning the controls get so caught up in their own genius that they stop seeing the big picture, and stop growing.
Much is made of the fact that Papi didn’t fit in with the Twins’ “small ball” style. In his final season in Minnesota, which ended in a trip to the ALCS, Ortiz ranked third on the team in home runs, RBI and OPS. But manufacturing runs wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t exactly a graceful baserunner. By any definition, he’s an unorthodox.
You know how the story ends. Minnesota’s loss was Theo Epstein’s once-in-a-lifetime treasure. Papi finished his career as one of only four players in MLB history with 500 home runs and at least three World Series titles. The other three are Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson and Mickey Mantle. Holy shit.
It’s impossible not to look back on the first decade of the millennium and think the Twins’ pride about their precious little “system” got in the way of a World Series or two. Think about what Ortiz’s bat would have done for a lineup that already had Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter. Not to mention an excellent rotation led by a prime Johan Santana, who won two Cy Young’s in three years.
Hindsight is 20/20, but this is like if the Warriors traded away Stephen Curry after his rookie year because he couldn’t run the Princeton offense. Yes, he was a lottery pick after a darling college career; but he was also a unique talent that needed a unique system to thrive. Steve Kerr, a first-time head coach, chose to look at him with a fresh set of eyes, and the rest is history.
But think about how many talented players you didn’t hear the Twins passing on because they didn’t fit their mold. They’ve come around since — a few years ago they set the single-season MLB record for most home runs by a team — but they’ve still yet to make a World Series in over 30 years.
Another great ‘losing team staring at the scoreboard’ moment
Northampton native Jarrod Neumann won the hardest shot competition at the PLL All-Star Game, with a blistering 118 mph.
Last month, I wrote a column about my favorite scene-setting lede in deadline sportswriting — the kid from the losing team staring a thousand yards at the scoreboard. Whether it’s Stefon Diggs staring at the Arrowhead confetti, or a high school kid from Leominster taking a knee at the 50-yard line an hour after the field clears, there’s nothing like it.
Seeing Jarrod’s name pop up again reminded me of another great “losing player staring the scoreboard” moment after the 2011 MIAA Division 1 Semifinals at Worcester’s DCU Center. Jarrod was an exceptional basketball player for Northampton High, named to our first-ever ESPNBoston All-State Team. But he was no match for St. John’s of Shrewsbury and its hulking future NFL star Richard Rodgers, who won easily to punch their third straight state final berth.
I’ll never forget coming back to press row courtside after finishing interviews, a few of us buzzing away on our laptops, and seeing Jarrod re-emerge from the tunnel, by himself, to retrace his steps on the court of every shot he’d missed that night. Holding his follow-through like it was a photo shoot. Staring at the rim like he was trying to hypnotize it.
This was probably the greatest lede I never got to write, because the Blue Devils didn’t make it back the next season for Jarrod’s senior year. Believe me, I had this one on the back burner ready for a sauté.
Michael Mann’s attraction to ‘twilight zones’
New York Times Magazine has an excellent piece on Michael Mann, one of my favorite movie directors ever, that is worth the long time poring over.
Mann is one of the few directors whose signatures are unmistakable. My favorite is his establishing shots of night-time cityscapes, most notably in the epic heist thriller Heat and the criminally-underrated Collateral.
The piece takes a deeper examination of his career as a whole, and really paints a picture of an unapologetically method director. To the point about scene-setting, I found this passage pretty revealing about his approach, and what shaped it:
When Mann describes the path he took to filmmaking, he often mentions formative screenings in college of “Dr. Strangelove” and G.W. Pabst’s Weimar-era landmark “Joyless Street.” But on a couple of occasions, he has recalled an earlier, inexplicable thrill he got “just driving under a steel bridge on a rainy night” and looking up at its gargantuan span, or moving along “those caged iron bridges” around Chicago, their latticeworks cutting up the landscape into a multitude of flickering frames. This excitement wasn’t something that Mann associated with filmmaking at first, but it lingered in his eventual understanding of himself as an artist. If you’re an admirer of Mann’s movies — which exude a hard-hammered visual poetry and tell stories of men traversing liminal realms, searching for things just beyond their grasp — this is as perfect an artistic origin story as you could hope for. “I have an attraction to these twilight zones,” he said.
This card trick from Fulham FC star Antonee Robinson is astonishing. If he can do half that magic on the field, I like the USMNT’s chances in Qatar this fall.
This thread on why Nike is actually ruining NBA jerseys makes a lot of salient points. My biggest gripe is that Nike rolls out so many different jerseys in such volume that when they finally hit on a good one — for instance, the Phoenix Suns’ “The Valley” jersey — they don’t let them breathe enough before they’re onto the next one. I’m a fan of what Nike’s doing, but I hope they take some lessons as they continue to really experiment with MLB jerseys2. It’s important to keep pushing boundaries. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “There is no honest way to explain the edge, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
I got a kick out of this Outside piece on an anonymous artist who in 2020 started installing road signs inscribed with poems. Highly innovative, highly creative, and probably a welcome break from the monotony for all who pass.
RIP Paul Sorvino, a titan of the gangster film genre. As someone whose heart melts every night watching my 6-year-old daughter act out entire movie scenes in our living room, I feel this moment right here with every fiber:
That is the greatest gift of all.
One last thing…
I don’t know who else needs to hear this besides me, but Seth Godin’s blog about embracing constraints hit home with me this week…
And vs Or.
Leading a project is about causing the death of a million ‘ands’.
There was a long line at the ice cream stand, but the person in front wasn’t budging. The customer had narrowed down the choice to four flavors, but they were paralyzed, unable to choose.
It’s not because any of the flavors wouldn’t be fine. They were all good choices. It’s because choosing one flavor meant not having the other three. Getting an ice cream had turned into a dance with regret.
You can’t build a luxury car that’s also inexpensive, AND drives well off-road, AND is very fast AND super safe. You can’t create an event that’s intimate, open to all comers, proven, resilient for any weather, held outdoors and unique.
We focus on the frustration of losing an ‘and’ when we get nervous about the decisions we’re asked to make, when we are hesitant about commitment. And we obsess over the constraints we’ve already accepted because it slows us down and amplifies our fears.
Instead of focusing on what we’re building, we focus on the paths that are no longer open.
If we’re going to create anything at all, if we’re going to ship the work, the positive path is to look for the constraints and grab them. They’re the point. No constraints, no project. When we see them as stepping stones on the way to the work we hope to do, they’re not a problem, they’re a sign that we’re onto something.
Managing a project is the craft of picking this ‘or’ that. ‘And’ isn’t often welcome because ‘and’ is a trap.
I feel support and disdain for the All-Star Game uniforms really split differently down generational lines. The only folks I seemed to hear complaining were older generations who grew up with players wearing their actual uniforms on the field, while younger generations seemed to appreciate them more.