So Yesterday - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,53
be wrapping for advertisements, but it's also a bible for a lifestyle: it tells readers what's going on, what to think about it, and, most importantly, what to buy next. That's why you get a ton of new junk mail every time you subscribe to a magazine - you've pigeonholed yourself as a snowboarder, ferret lover, or gadget buyer.
Advertisers divide humanity into marketing categories, tribes with names like Shotguns and Saddles, Inner City, or Bohemian Mix. Magazine subscriptions are the easiest way to tell who's what. In my hand I was holding a list of high-grade, uncut Blue Bloods. Hot property.
"Very pricey, like the rest of this operation."
"Well, I bet you Movable Hype didn't pay for it."
"Why not? Futura's made decent money over the years.
She nodded. "Sure, he has. But would he want everyone to know he was behind a job like this?" Her gesture took in the pages stretching along the walls. "Something so unoriginal and tame? Even if it's a great practical joke, it's pure imitation."
"Yeah, and also pretty likely to guarantee he never works in the magazine industry again."
"So somebody else paid for it. Someone involved with the anti-client."
I shrugged. "Even if we could find out who paid for the mailing list, wouldn't it just be a front company or something? Like Poo-Sham, Inc.?"
Jen nodded. "Maybe. But whoever's putting up the cash had to pay for the really expensive stuff in those gift bags: hundreds of bottles of Poo-Sham and Noble Savage, not to mention all those wireless cameras. Those aren't things you can just stick on your credit card. There must be some kind of money trail."
"Okay." I looked at the front door of the office, imagining keys jingling at any moment. At least this would get us out of here. "Where do we start?"
She lifted up the mailing list. "With this. Doesn't your friend Hillary work for Hoi Aristoi?"
"Hillary doesn't work for them; she just did some PR. And she's not my friend."
"Still, she'd tell you what she knows, wouldn't she?"
"Give me private information about a client? Why would Hillary do that?"
Jen grinned. "Because she's probably dying to find out who turned her head purple."
Chapter 27~28
Chapter 27
START WITH A MOLLUSK, WIND UP WITH AN EMPIRE.
Sounds tricky, but the Phoenicians managed it about four thousand years ago. Their tiny sliver of a kingdom was wedged between the Mediterranean Sea and a vast desert: no gold mines, no olive trees, no amber waves of grain anywhere in sight. The only thing the Phoenicians had going for them was a certain species of shellfish, commonly found lying around down at the beach. These shellfish were tasty but had one problem - if you ate too many of them, your teeth turned purple.
Naturally, most people were annoyed by this. They probably said stuff like, "Those shellfish aren't bad, but who wants purple teeth?" and didn't think much more about it.
Then one day an ancient Innovator got this crazy idea
Okay, imagine you live in Egypt or Greece or Persia back then and you're rich. You've got all the gold, olive oil, and grain you want. But all you ever get to wear is cloth robes that come in the following colors: light beige, medium beige, dark beige. You've seen the Bible movies: everyone's totally decked out in earth tones - that's all they had, that's all they could imagine having.
Then one day along comes a boatload of Phoenicians, and they're selling purple cloth. Purple!
Throw that beige wardrobe away!
For a while, purple is the thing, the biggest fad since that whole wheel craze. After a lifetime spent wearing sixteen shades of beige, everyone's lining up to buy the cool new cloth. The price is crazy high, partly due to demand and partly because it happens to take about 200,000 shellfish to make one ounce of dye, and pretty soon the Phoenicians are rolling in dough (actually, they're rolling in gold, olive oil, and grain, but you get the picture).
A trading empire is born. And talk about branding: Phoenicia is the ancient Greek word for "purple." You are what you sell.
After a while, however, an interesting thing happens. The people in charge decide that purple is too cool for just anyone to wear. First they tax purple cloth; then they pass a law forbidding the hoi polloi to wear purple (as if they could afford it); and finally, they make purple robes the sole property of kings and queens.
Over the centuries this dress code becomes so widespread and so ingrained that even