The Weekly Roundup (week of 1.8)
Is being ridiculed through memes still good press??
1. Josh Wine becomes a meme…. and a bestselling wine?
It all started as an innocent tweet for this unsuspecting man sharing his love for cheap alternatives to the undrinkable sewage fluid that is Stella and Barefoot. He probably expected a couple of hundred likes, maybe a few replies, but what he got was a legitimate pile-on. And god dammit it was hilarious. Check out the replies to the original tweet, which got a brutal ratio (more replies or quote tweets than likes).
A majority of the nearly 3000 quote tweets and replies to the original tweet co-signing Josh Wine were filled with mockery and deridement. But what started as cyberbullying turned into a meme, which turned into an organic awareness campaign for Josh Wine.
For the marketing department at Josh Wine who isn’t active on Twitter, they’re probably still trying to figure out just what the fuck is going on but I have a feeling they’re probably celebrating the success/ridicule? It’s a weird time to be in the marketing space because, on one hand, you would think being ridiculed in memes is a bad thing, but at the same time press is press and this is undoubtedly raising a ton of awareness for Josh Wine.
We’ll see how this continues to develop and just how powerful the meme becomes, but you could certainly call this a win for the affordable wine company. Personally, I find it to be a good option if you’re looking for something really cheap. Go grab yourself a bottle of Josh tonight 😉
2. When is a bad photograph good?
It’s a good question and one that Juergen Teller provokes on an annual basis for W magazine.
When most celebrity magazine covers barely register, why do Teller’s pop? “They’re really loud and they’re really different,” says W Magazine’s editor, Sara Moonves. “Juergen almost makes a mini-movie while we’re doing this, and it sparks a lot of thought in people the way that every great movie does. It creates a performance.”
Contemporary magazine covers and Instagram have trained us to gaze upon celebrities as Photoshopped, shapewear-smoothed soft serve. But Teller’s photographs — he shot the magazine’s portfolios in 2020 and 2021, and returns this year after a two-year hiatus — are a mischievous jab at the Hollywood machine, or an affront to the sacred pact of glamour.
Teller’s approach here is fresh and exciting, moreover, it also has a unique ability to provoke critics and fans alike to reappropriate the images into memes. And as we saw with Josh Wine, it doesn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative, praise or ridicule, the more the images spread the better it is for your brand or campaign.
These past few months and the last year as a whole have seen a barrage of photoshoots go viral, most recently Jeremy Allen White for CK and Barry Kheogan for GQ and it makes me wonder if editorial teams at large are encouraging their photographers to optimize for meme potential. Read the WaPo piece on Teller here.
3. Notes on AI from Sean Monahan
Yeah that’s right, another Sean Monahan piece. Read it, you will think about the world in a different light.
4. The People Who Brought You Travis Kelce
A plan was hatched to make the football player “as famous as the Rock.” It began long before you might guess.
Read this piece to learn more about the management team behind Travis Kelce’s meteoric rise as America’s favorite football player.