Zombie brands.

A few months ago, both the Independent and Monocle ran articles about Harris Tweed, the Scottish woven tweed company that is ubiquitous with quality and romance of a bygone era. It seems Harris Tweed has hit a rough patch, which is a shame since their brand still has a loyal following as well as a burgeoning new fanbase. So, why doesn't someone step in and do something it?

Alber Elbaz did it for Lanvin. IWC did it with A. Lange & Söhne. They took a heritage brand that was synonymous with quality but struggling/defunct/tired, and brought it back to life. The brand became relevant again. How? Because each brand stayed true to their origins; they maintained that authenticity that garnered their reputation to begin with, which kept its core following while attracting more.

This isn't just relevant to apparel either. Remember what Christopher Nolan did for Batman, or Sci Fi did for Battlestar Galactica, or JJ Abrams did for Star Trek. They breathed new life into brands without alienating the original fanbase and kept them through the new inception while attracting a new generation of fans. It's just all about authenticity. Miss that and you miss the ball completely (McG, I'm looking at you).

So, in short, somebody save Harris Tweed. You won't be sorry.

Also, while you're at it, PLEASE do something about their website.

The new Ed McMahon.

I think someone should cast Cleverbot as the co-host of a new reality show. Who's with me?

Somewhere, Darwin is crying.

The evolution of the hipster, according to Paste Magazine.

image courtesy of Paste Magazine.

Gabriel is SO the new Edward.

Are angels the new vampires? Could be, according to Publisher's Weekly*. Turns out that you're not the only one that thinks the vampire trend is over-saturated (at least for now).

We're swiftly approaching the downswing of vampires' cyclical popularity, so until it starts swinging back the other way (could be a while considering it took us over a decade after the Interview with a Vampire phase in the early 90's), audiences are going to need something else to quench their paranormal thirst. Couple this with the burgeoning fascination with religious iconography that's only going to grow as we approach 2012's end of the world hysteria and you've got a market ready for an influx of angels.

*It's also worth noting that while Publisher's Weekly refers only to children/tween fiction in their article, this could forecast a larger trend for the market. After all, Anne Rice's latest novel, Angel Time, debuted this month at #13 on the New York Times Bestseller list and in January, Bold Films is releasing their angel-packed apocalypse film, Legion.

Required reading.

The Economist had a couple of fantastic articles this week about the future of entertainment. The first examines the divergence of entertainment between big blockbusters and niche media:

Creative types who are accustomed to lavishing money on moderately appealing projects will have to do more with less. Or they must learn how to move between big-budget blockbusters and niche, small-budget fare, observing the different genre and budget constraints that apply in these worlds. A few forward-looking folk, such as Steven Soderbergh, a film-maker, are already doing this. Some will find shelter. Premium television channels such as HBO, which are built on passion more than popularity, offer some protection from chill market winds. So do state broadcasters like the BBC.

And the second dives deep to explain the anatomy of the hit:

Although you might expect people who seek out obscure products to derive more pleasure from their discoveries than those who simply trudge off to see the occasional blockbuster, the opposite is true. Tom Tan and Serguei Netessine of Wharton Business School have analysed reviews on Netflix, a popular American outfit that dispatches DVDs by post and asks subscribers to rate the films they have rented. They find that blockbusters get better ratings from the people who have watched them than more obscure ones do. Even the critically loathed “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is awarded four stars out of five. Ms Elberse of Harvard Business School has found the same of ratings on Quickflix, the Australian equivalent of Netflix.

Perhaps the best explanation of why this might be so was offered in 1963. In “Formal Theories of Mass Behaviour”, William McPhee noted that a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type. (Many other studies have since reached the same conclusion.) A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.

What's the take-away? If you do niche programming, embrace it. Do it and do it well. If not, go big or go home. The middle ground is quickly sinking.

The force is strong with this one.

The New York Times Magazine had a great article about ThinkGeek's Tauntaun Sleeping Bag and the power of a dedicated fanbase. ThinkGeek developed this product with the hopes of getting approval from Lucasfilm, but when they couldn't even get in for a meeting, they gave up and just included the product on their site as a joke on April Fool's Day.

Cue the fans. The product was so popular that ThinkGeek consumers (a few who happened to work at Lucasfilm) managed to stir up enough emails, phone calls, and jedi mind tricks so that the product is now actually in production and offered on the ThinkGeek website. Enjoy, and watch out for those Wampa attacks.

image courtesy of ThinkGeek

Dear Microsoft.

My husband and I just realized that we had our Xbox on all day (approximately 14 hours) yesterday. Only about 4 of those hours were spent on video games.

Microsoft, you have created a one-stop shop for movies, music, video games, and social media where even a non-gamer like me is comfortable to navigate my way through. It's not just a video game console anymore; it's an entertainment hub of which even Apple is probably jealous. So start marketing your product like that. Just a thought.

Thanks.

Losing my religion.

So, yeah, Obama left God out of his Thanksgiving Proclamation. And while middle America reels, the rest of us should take note. God isn't as popular as he used to be in these 50 states. As NPR reported in August, agnosticism and atheism are on the rise in the US with 15 percent of Americans claiming they have "no religious affiliation." That figured has doubled since 1990.

That's not to say God is going anywhere. Christianity is still the heart and soul of the majority, but with the numbers of non-believers continuing to rise (especially in young people and college students), you have to guess that the desire for more like-minded media will rise as well.

2012: Duck and Cover

The end is near, and it happens to be coming in the shape of cash cow. I'm talking about 2012 (!), the end of the world (!), the apocalypse (!).

It's no secret this one is in full swing. Networks like Discovery and History have been striking ratings gold with documentaries about predicting the end of the world for a while now. The movie 2012 was also released in theaters this month with a $65 million opening weekend (and already has a tv spin-off in the works), and Tim LaHaye, co-author of the megaselling Left Behind series, is starting a new series of apocalyptic novels called, appropriately enough, The End.

So what's the news? We all only have to look on the front page of any of the trades to see this one coming. But we've also already been through this hysteria before, and recently. Just 10 years ago, the country was up to their eyeballs in apocalyptic media, fearing the turn of the millenium and Y2K. So how is thing time going to be different? One (hyphenated) word: post-apocalypse. 2007 saw the beginning of this with the release of the hit I Am Legend. Fast-forward to now: the 2012 series being developed for ABC is set after the events in the movie and focuses on humans rebuilding in the aftermath. Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning (and best-selling) novel The Road was just made into a feature film. And there's even a trend of post-apocalyptic fiction coming to the children and tween's fiction market, according to Publisher's Weekly.

A new twist on a very old idea, but still slowly gaining steam. As for me, I'm just waiting to see if AMC can take advantage of this trend with their Walking Dead series before that zombie wave jumps the shark. Here's hoping.