The importance of authenticity in marketing is much talked about but often misunderstood. In the book I looked at authenticity through the lens of hip hop culture, where authenticity is also of utmost importance, comparing Diddy’s confusing partnership with Burger King to 50 Cent’s more productive relationship with Vitamin Water.

This week both artists are at it again, and 50 still seems to be thinking more clearly about his brand than Diddy. Diddy recently teamed up with Burger King again to produce a Sean John-designed container for French fries, the ‘fry pod’. Lame concept aside, there is no authentic reason for these two brands to be working together. The video below posted by a bemused consumer says it all.

Meanwhile 50 is making marketing headlines this week, shunning a similar proposal from Taco Bell. Company president Greg Creed asked Fiddy to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent for a day to promote Taco Bell value meals—and then rap a lunch order, using the revised currency when referring to himself.

According to Ad Week’s Adfreak blog, “In return for all this, Taco Bell promised $10,000 to a charity of Fiddy’s choice. “We know that you adopted the name 50 Cent years ago as a metaphor for change,” Creed reportedly wrote. “We at Taco Bell are also huge advocates for change. … We encourage you to ‘Think outside the bun’ and hope you accept our offer.” The offer was not accepted. A rep for the rapper called the invitation a “sleazy and ill-conceived publicity stunt,” and Fiddy himself added, “When my legal team is finished with them, Taco Bell is going to have a new slogan: ‘We messed with the bull and got the horns!’ ”

I’m not quite sure what’s more ridiculous, Taco Bell thinking they could get 50 Cent to do anything, let alone change his name, for 10k, or Fiddy’s threats of legal action (for what exactly?). Nevertheless Fiddy made the right decision where Diddy did not. It amazes me that hip hop culture has been alive and kicking for over thirty years, and some of the world’s largest artists and brands still manage to misunderstand it every day of the week.

Thanks Cat!

I’ll be over in the UK next week for the launch of the book back in the homeland, and am honored that my good friends Harry and Ara at The Jump Off are throwing the official launch party for the book. The Jump Off, for the uninitiated, is the U.K.’s premier hip hop event. Part club night, part hip hop as sports entertainment show, there isn’t anything else quite like it either side of the Atlantic. As one as hosting one of the most competitive MC battles on the planet, each monthly night features a host of different competitions and events back to back from the ever broadening spectrum of hip hop entertainment. This month there’s a fashion show, photo shoot with the unstoppable Mr Paul H, jokes from comedian Slim and, in tune with the Launch, a B-Boy ‘Biters’ Battle. Goody bags go to the first 200 on the door courtesy of Hip Hop Connection, Touch, Jelly Belly, Penguin and Jump Off TV and copies of the book will be given away throughout the night.

The Jump Off takes place at Astoria 2, 165 Charing Cross Road, this Bank Holiday Monday 05 May 2008, the doors open at 8pm and tickets are £6 in advance or £10 Door.

Last week in San Jose, Attorney General Michael Mukasey made the claim that piracy is funding terrorism. “Counterfeiting and piracy generate huge profits, much of it flowing to organized crime” he said at the Tech Museum of Innovation. “Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities.”

Mukasey was widely criticized for this statement, partly because everyone is so bored of this administration using terrorism as an excuse for all kinds of ass-hattery, but mostly because he didn’t have any evidence to back up his claim. But he’s not the first person to say this, and he’s probably right, at least in part.

The revenue streams that fund terrorist organizations are both legitimate and dishonest, not to mention diverse, and trickle through complex financial networks that make Bear Stearns hedge funds look as sophisticated as a lemonade stands. Along with drugs, prostitution, slavery, identity theft, smuggling and all other forms of organized crime, it’s very likely that organized for-profit piracy is a source of funding for a number of terrorist outfits. Piracy is a low-risk illicit activity that can help all kinds of shady businesses save money. Why wouldn’t the terrrists be getting into it?

So ignoring, for a second, the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the flow of money from the oil industry, state sponsorship of terror, blood diamonds, the diversion of funds from suspect charities and all the other vastly more significant capers that fund terrorism, let’s assume piracy is the most threatening of all freedom-hating cash cows. If pirated software, DVDs and CDs are such a grave threat to Western civilization, then what Mukasey is really saying, without actually saying it, is that in the interests of national security and the American economy, not to mention freedom, peace and justice for all, we need to legalize file-sharing right now.

As Nate Anderson notes over at Ars Technica, General Mukasey “managed to make it through an entire speech on crime and intellectual property without suggesting that noncommercial P2P file-swappers are somehow equivalent to criminal gangs running huge Asian stamping operations.” Read between the lines people. What I think Mukasey is trying to tell us, without upsetting the RIAA, is that file-sharers are the good guys here. Freedom fighters. What he’s insinuating is that rendering pirate goods irrelevant by monetizing and legitimizing digital distribution in all its forms is a way to quash terrorist threats.

If we can use digital distribution legally the way we are using it anyway, who needs $5 DVDs and bootleg copies of XP? (no one wants to pirate Vista, which isn’t something Microsoft should be too excited about) Prohibition style wars don’t work, this we know. Repealing prohibition got rid of the racketeers in the 1930s, so by Mukasey’s logic, monetizing file-sharing should take care of the terrorists right?

I feel safer already.

Current TV just put up an interview I did a few months back with Brooklyn producers John Carluccio and Mark Kotlinkski - They dug up some cool slides I haven’t seen before. Mark also has a production outfit called 88 Hip Hop which does some great stuff - look for his film The Mural Kings about legendary graffiti artists TATS CRU - which is well worth checking out.

I did an interview for Booz Allen Hamilton’s strategy + business magazine with Edward Baker - you can read it here.

Apologies for the lack of activity these last few days, was taking a break in Costa Rica, but normal activities have now resumed. While I was away a lot has been going on…

Lawrence Lessig might be running for congress.

Ji Lee developed the ultimate t-shirt for Red Sox fans.

Some great books came out, like Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody and Gerd Leonhard’s Music 2.0

The BBC thinks the Chinese model of music-as-advertising could be the answer, I think that loss of independence will damage music and all we’ll be left with is muzak. As a revenue stream sponsorship makes sense, but as the revenue stream, it will damage music. There needs to be royalties and licenses and other ways for people to earn money from their work. I think as prices of these things fall (which they will) the value artists can create will go up, because more people will be consuming their material.

The Pirate’s Dilemma: A Kung Fu Trilogy in Four Acts – Act 1: The Remix

Today is the day The Pirate’s Dilemma comes to a book store near you – a day I’ve been looking forward to for the last eighteen months, and it’s going to be a long one. I’ll be on The Brian Lehrer show at 11am, then doing lots of book signing around NY, and probably a bunch of other stuff I haven’t been told about yet, but it’s all good.

We’ve had a great run so far. The book has already received a 9 out of 10 review in Wired, was named one of Fast Company’s top five ‘Smart Books of 2008’, and BusinessWeek’s ‘Innovation of the Week.’ It’s been featured in local and national press up and down the country and there’s plenty more coming over the next few weeks and months. It’s been on all kinds of great blogs, featured everywhere from The New York Times/Freakonmics blog to streetwear site Hypebeast to U.K band Hadouken’s weblog. Seth Godin, the world’s biggest marketing writer, called it “stunning.” Frans Johansson, one of the planet’s finest innovation writers, called it “remarkable,” and Jeff Chang, one of the greatest music journalists of all time, described it as “a series of leaps of imagination (that) always lands with style.”

When I wrote this I thought people would be throwing tomatoes (still in their cans) at me for suggesting piracy is good for us, but I’ve been invited to speak up and down the country over the last few months, and been amazed and humbled by the positive reactions to the ideas in the book. It’s already doing well on pre-orders - I don’t know how many books can say they’ve been in Amazon’s top ten bestselling lists of ‘rap’ and ‘economics/free enterprise’ books at the same time, but The Pirate’s Dilemma is one of them.

Help me get up on that list this crucial first week by getting your copy today/tomorrow/sometime this week. If you have a blog/magazine/speech to make later today in New Hampshire – it would be great if you could get the book in there somehow. Purchase spares for your friends and loved ones, and strangers too. Even if you don’t care about piracy, or how the way we all use information is evolving, or how a nun in the 1940s invented disco, get one anyway. Even if you can’t read, the book is also great for lighting barbecues, stabilizing wobbly tables and eradicating small to medium sized rodents from your property. Do what you will with your copy, but help me make this year the year of the pirate.

One of the most exciting things happening today is the launch of the first of the four videos we made to celebrate/promote the ideas discussed in the book. Enjoy Act 1 of The Pirate’s Dilemma: A Kung Fu Trilogy in Four Acts responsibly above in all its YouTube grainy-ness, and also in full-flash glory here in a few hours. More on these later today and why they’re so different from other videos, but now I gotta sleep for a few hours.

All the best, and thanks for reading and sticking with me this far.

Matt

Poisonous Paragraphs has been one of my favorite blogs for a few years now, so it was great to get this glowing review from Dart Adams who runs the site. If you have any kind of interest in hip hop culture, this should be in your bookmarks.

Mr Adams writes: “This book is completely fascinating and it grabs your attention from the beginning to the end. I read it straight through in one sitting and I read it over again the day after I got it. You will be so engrossed that you really won’t want to put it down… If you’re looking for a new book to get get some wrinkles in your brain then this one comes highly recommended from me.”

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I’ve had a few requests for my slides over the last few months, but because most of them are pictures, they don’t make a lot of sense without audio, so I’ve thrown a six-minute sample of my stump speech up on slideshare as a slidecast. You can watch the whole thing above, download the audio here, and if you like the music bed I made for it, that’s also available here for download under a Creative Commons license.