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Happy Valentine’s Day!(Carnal Flower)

Posted on by elemonated

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you have as lovely a one as I will with someone special!

First of all, it’s freezing where I’m writing this. Mr. Chokkattu’s new landlord sounds like a cheap bastard from all I’ve heard of him and seems to be illegally turning off the heat wherever he feels it would save him money. This is coming from a household that tries to keep the heating and cooling to a minimum, and regularly has to turn up the heat or up the air conditioning for guests; what I am experiencing is worse. I had my feet on a radiator for a while and that radiator has been shut off for god knows why.

Anyway, all this to say that this is not the optimal temperature for Carnal Flower, and I know this, so while I’m going to write my reactions based off of how I feel now, I’ve had Carnal Flower for a while and I know it’s an entirely different beast when allowed to bloom in say, 80 degree weather when driving to the beach, as I have worn it in the past.

Frederic Malle Carnal Flower, for those who may not know, was composed by Dominique Ropion. Mr. Ropion has concocted other potions for Frederic Malle, as well as Alexander McQueen, Burberry, Calvin Klein, Dior, Armani, Givenchy, Gucci, JLo, Kenzo, a regular crap-ton for Lancome, YSL, and the creator of Thierry Mugler’s Alien and Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb. His career has been a pretty veritable success, and I’m sure if we measured perfumers the way we measure musicians, he would have hit platinum or double platinum or whatever the distinction above that is by now. Read More

Wix Breakfast: Brand Personality!

Posted on by elemonated

Actually called: Wix Breakfast: Life Attracts Life- Give Your Brand a Personality Boost!  IMG_20150114_081015

School’s getting closer, so I decided to retrain myself for it by going to bed ridiculously late and waking up ridiculously early for a lecture! Yay! I found it on Eventbrite while browsing and took a chance.

And I’m really glad I did. It was a really interesting seminar, a little on the short side, full of little tips I would have never thought of, like how important emotional touchstones, big and small (“anything from a big brand experience to a tweet”), are to a customer base. There are tons of examples of these connections with consumers that I can think of. Some smaller gestures include Xbox’s (T, F) and T-Mobile’s (T, F) avid usage of their twitter handles and Facebook support apps to annual events like Krispy Kreme’s Day of the Dozens, Talk Like a Pirate, and National Doughnut Days. Everyone remembers larger political gestures like Oreo’s support for gay pride, to well-established, company-wide policies like Starbucks’ C.A.F.E Practices (they work with Conservation International to keep the farming sustainable) and TOMS Shoes policy of donating a pair of shoes for every pair purchased. All of them work to improve the perception of the brand and endear its consumers to it, while actually decreasing a little of the bad in the world at the same time. And of course, little gestures like that are key for small business owners to create their own communities; Milk Sugar Love’s content on their Facebook page regularly attempts to engage users with questions and relatable expressions.

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Musical plagiarism, misuse, and KPop

Posted on by elemonated

http://www.businessinsider.com/korean-singer-yoon-mi-rae-suing-sony-for-using-her-music-in-the-interview-2014-12

Basically, Tasha (legally, Yoonmirae, but I know her as the stage name Tasha and I like it), an old-school KPop/KRap star from the US is suing Sony for the use of her song “Payday” in The Interview. “Payday” is a great song, so I understand why they used it, and it makes sense in context when you read the lyrics. But, of course, the issue is that they didn’t get permission, and I’m pretty sure no SK star wants to be associated with something as belligerent to NK as The Interview. Especially if they don’t even technically have a stake in it, because Tasha is a quarter black, a quarter white, and from the US.

There have been a few weak responses surrounding this, including that she samples “a” Jackson5 song in “Payday”, and that Sony owns the rights to Jackson5 music, but I’m pretty sure, since no one I’ve read so far has been able to identify which song, it would fall under fair use because what’s sampled is too little to prosecute.

And anyway, music companies don’t even go after South Korean anymore because of the 2011 Korean Copyright Act, which opened up seemingly all copyrighted music to be used without the copyrighter’s permission. Whether or not this is only in-country (which I’m leaning towards) or not is unclear, though I’m sure it makes much harder for indie groups to succeed, which is unfortunate. This, of course, does not apply to Sony, because Sony is a Japanese company and the movie is a US movie; they still have to comply with international fair use laws and whatever they have in their system, and since the US is one of the only countries to fully recognize fair use, well.

With that in mind, there’s one more KPop-related scandal I wanted to touch upon. I’m not quite sure what the intention of the allegations are, since allegations against KPop stars don’t usually work out, and it can’t be publicity because taking on KPop fans is a bad idea (Mr. Bullock’s single is now rated 1 star on iTunes), but apparently YG is taking countermeasures against the allegations and it’s going to be fun to see a small guy take on one of the big three. It’s usually just Sony.