{"id":1077,"date":"2011-11-11T05:56:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T05:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/11\/medieval-marketing\/"},"modified":"2011-11-11T05:56:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T05:56:00","slug":"medieval-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/11\/medieval-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Medieval marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/boingboing\/iBag\/~3\/pLYTqskVsLE\/medieval-marketing.html\">Medieval marketing<\/a>: <\/p>\n<p>Grant McCracken, a research affiliate at MIT and the author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0465022049\/boingboing\">Chief Culture Officer<\/a>, writes about the appeal of &#8220;hidden messages&#8221; in popular culture. Fnord.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The medieval world took for granted that the universe was filled with<br \/>secret messages, placed there by God and the correspondences on which<br \/>the world was built. What did not come from God or nature was made by<br \/>man in the form of emblems, icons, and insignia insinuated into public<br \/>life. The home of Sir Francis Bacon was covered with arcana. Only<br \/>people with a keen eye and a university education could make sense of<br \/>it.<\/p>\n<p>By the 20th century, all of this was stripped out by the modernist<br \/>impulse that said form should be about manifest function, not secret<br \/>meaning. This world was rendered perfectly clear, rational, and<br \/>transparent. No decoding necessary. Consider Mies van der Rohe&#8217;s<br \/>Seagram building. Or Charles and Ray Eames&#8217; lounge chair. What you saw<br \/>was what you got.<\/p>\n<p>Marketing was created in this moment. And the idea was complete<br \/>transparency. Marketing came to stand for big, bold, simple messages,<br \/>fired repeatedly at a mass target. &#8220;Keep it simple, stupid&#8221; was the<br \/>order of the day. This was a world of absolute clarity and shameless<br \/>repetition.<\/p>\n<p>How things change. The 21st century loves a puzzle. We have the skill<br \/>and the patience. We have quicker eyes. No couch potatoes, we. Perhaps<br \/>it&#8217;s that we now live with so much noise that we are better at<br \/>decoding signals. We are ready for secret messages. To judge from the<br \/>rest of popular culture, we are hungry for them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/cs\/2011\/10\/medieval_marketing.html\">Medieval Marketing<\/a> <em>(Thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/radar.oreilly.com\/dale\/\">Dale<\/a>!)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=f7ac02a72e165867dec31ec2ef8b0ebd&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=f7ac02a72e165867dec31ec2ef8b0ebd&#038;p=1\"><\/a><br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/segment-pixel.invitemedia.com\/pixel?code=TechCons&#038;partnerID=167&#038;key=segment\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/insight.adsrvr.org\/track\/evnt\/?ct=0:dupdmqp&#038;adv=wouzn4v&#038;fmt=3\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/boingboing\/iBag\/~4\/pLYTqskVsLE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Medieval marketing: Grant McCracken, a research affiliate at MIT and the author of Chief Culture Officer, writes about the appeal of &#8220;hidden messages&#8221; in popular culture. Fnord. The medieval world took for granted that the universe was filled withsecret messages, placed there by God and the correspondences on whichthe world was built. What did not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-hn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}