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Disinformation Brand Study
As I try to develop the “brand name” of my work, I’ve been reading through various sources on branding. One of the biggest things they advocate is doing a competitive analysis. Basically look at individuals or groups who are successfully doing what you want to be doing yourself. Towards that end, I thought I’d spend some time having a closer look at the alternative/underground media & publishing company, Disinformation (sometimes called Disinfo).
Disinformation is a great example for me because they have excellent name recognition, a good reputation and a huge catalogue of books and media offerings.
Begun in 1996, Disinfo is a child of the “Good Old Days” of the internet, and it shows. Their site is organized according to the rather old (according to internet-time) model of a “web portal”, which basically is a collection of links and items from other websites. The tagline which appears in the browser window when you open the site is “The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness.” They seem to also focus pretty heavily on building a community of users, with offerings such as member blogs, email address, etc.
One of the major selling points of Disinformation as a brand name seems to be that they will embrace news stories and weird ideas which “reputable” news sources won’t touch with a fifty-foot pole. A 1997 article on Wired calls Disinformation “a guide to ‘extreme’ information that’s usually ignored or suppressed by media conglomerates”. Their corporate history attests to this fact, replete with a real-life mythology of battling with and being cancelled or having their funding cut by an ongoing series of corporate executives. This is good from a marketing perspective, because it shows that they aren’t just talking the talk, but are also walking the walk.
In that same interview, Richard Metzger, the company’s founder, refers to himself as a “subculture tour guide”. I like where he’s going with this as well. Though, for my own tastes, what they are missing really is a personal touch. Their corporate focus is very much on news, and even in some sense politics. They are about the struggle between the big guy and the little guy. Which is very dramatic, but not very up close, personal or human. I don’t feel like I really “know” Metzger or any of the other people who own and operate the site and company. (Perhaps this isn’t what they are looking for, but it’s a big part of what I’m looking for.) For me, the real sticking issue is that Disinfo has no voice, it has a concept (a logo, really) which then gathers together towards it many voices.
Going back to their logo, I’d say that it’s conveying this same message: respectability. The choice of font, and all the hard edges indicate that they are to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, the little devil logo I guess is their hook, the tricksterish glitch in their otherwise respectable facade.
Metzger elaborates on this and the name of the company in interview with the Potomac:
This is an ironic name: Disinformation, the mixture of truth and lies, the sort of tag line of Everything You Know Is Wrong. Why would you believe us anyway?
To me, the real trick of this name is like he said, that it’s ironic. Later in that interview, he mentions but doesn’t go into detail about the challenges of marketing to people who are highly skeptical. Their name, Disinfo, seems to be a deliberate attempt to give a sort of a nudge and wink to that skepticism. And the whole business of “Why would you believe us anyway” is also good because it encourages the audience to assert and maintain the identity they are bringing into the site to begin with. Plus it shows right up front that what they are concerned with isn’t so much “truth” as it is “information” (or rather, making money - they’re a business, after all, right? Makes sense.)
I’m also guessing that their logo is supposed to be an oblique (or direct) reference to the Napster logo.
In the middle to late 90’s, of course, Napster was not the corporate music whore that it is today. It started out as an underground service where people could swap music outside of the existing control and profit structures. Napster didn’t last long in that form as it got the corporate smackdown in short order. But it did force the hand of the music industry to launch their own services to counter the rising tide of file-sharing which internet users were taking into their own hands to meet their needs. Disinfo arose in that same environment and seems to be riding that same cultural mythology that goes something like: “Big business don’t look after you; they only look after themselves.” The solution and service these small counter-cultural competitors offer of course is that they do (supposedly) have your best interests at heart. All that really means of course, is that they actually understand how the subcultures work, and how the people in them think and feel - something which is notoriously difficult for ultra-big corporations to get and keep their finger on.
I’ve read several interviews with Metzger where he says that their ultimate goal is to be able to have a television station featuring all the weird, alternative and counter-cultural options which the Disinfo site and book catalogue now provide. Seems like a great goal, and I personally think it would be a huge success. But lots of cultural changes need to probably take place before that can happen. And this also means that as a company, Disinfo is going to be edging towards greater and greater respectability, and less and less one-to-one personal appeal. From my own perspective, I tend to think this one-to-one personal approach is where it’s at (although maybe it’s just where I’m at at this point in the development of my work).
If anybody has other ideas for occult, alternative, spiritual, conspiracy (or any combination of those) type brands, please drop them in the comments as I’d love to do more of these brand studies. It’s really helping me hone in on what I’m after.
- Notes: If God Is For Us
- Brand names: global language
- Why Disinformation?
- God Brand
- Beliefnet Brand Study
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- Next: A Candle Question
September 1st, 2005 at 3:03 pm
Actually, disinfo didn’t used to be just a mere impersonal web-portal, the in my opinion, boring incarnation it has now. When it started, there was quite a bit of original content from the web-editor (Alex Burns?), occasionally from Metzger and from a whole bunch of other contributors. I even made a contribution, as a co-author of an article on Zappa and that was the great part about it, in my mind. That you really could contribute. You could investigate shit, submit an article and they’d put it up if it was good and/or covered something they hadn’t. All that changed in late 2002 when they basically just became the thing you see now. And I don’t really wast my time going there now, as places to click on links to shit are a dime a dozen. And I want to look at original content, an actual author’s thoughts before I go clicking on links to other shit. Incidentally, this was about the time they decided to shift into book publishing in a hardcore way.
But blah, blah blah–I’m being nostalgic and bitter. My point is that what YOU do that is good is create your own original content so there’s a reason to care about what’s on the site beyond a hip logo or buying a cool e-mail address or whatever. And if you’re gonna link to articles, you have a take on them–again, it’s a personal thing that magically makes me care enough to check out a link. Anywayznit. Let me stop.
In terms of other models for you to look at in improving or enhancing what you do, I can’t think of anything right now, but as soon as I do, I’ll send you a link and absolve myself of the above ranting.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Did you ever see that episode of the Tom Green SHow where he had a pizza delivery service called ‘Undercutters Pizza”?
SOmeone would order a pizza, he’s show up a few minutes after the regualr pizza delivery guy with a cut-rate pizza and offer to sell it for less than the one they ordered.
He had all of the garnishes and toppings in a toolbox unde his arm so he could add them as needed in order to compete
Several people were so enraged by this stunt they literally chased him down their driveways, screaming and flailing their arms
“No I’m not interested in competive bididing on a friggin’ pizza!” LOL.
“No, but look, it’s day-old dough, that means big savings for you!” he’d reply, scampering backwards away from the fists and the flying spittle.
In that spirit might I humbly suggest MISINFORMATION as a brand ID
The discount conspiracy clearinghouse, LOL
No fresh news here, we just recycle the old crap that nobody believed in teh first place, not even the hardcore conspiracy folks
LOL
Might be a funny parody anyway
September 1st, 2005 at 3:10 pm
No no, the above ranting was really useful, hebrides. I never got into Disinfo back in the old days, so I appreciate hearing that’s what they started out doing. And I’m glad to hear that other people find their website now tedious at best.
They do have a few good articles mixed in, but they are hard to find. And the site is impossible to browse and lacks coherency. I think what they ought to do might be to change over a lot of their information into a Wiki format - take their profiles and histories of groups and individuals and open it up to public revision and control. Might be very successful.
I only have one of their books, the Book of Lies. I found it mediocre at best. It’s just too many authors spewing on too many topics without a clear voice or focus. Kind of a scatter-shot approach which is very impersonal, though there are some good pieces within it. I looked through one of their non-occult books at one point and it was the same problem except a lot worse in terms of focus.
Really, I can see how that’s a successful business model from their end though (if not from mine). They don’t have to write content, they just license it. They don’t even have to work with or develop authors - they just snap up anybody who reaches a certain status, and then they do the combined cash-in on their collective name recognition bundled under the Disinfo brand name. It’s a lot less work for the actual company, cause they’re just farming it all out. The content suffers in an enormous way though, in my opinion.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Back in the mid-90s DInsfo was on a much smaller scale
I actually wrote back and forth with Metzger a couple of times cause he was gonna start a gnosticism section (can’t remember if he ever did or not)
Then their whole thing goy huge and basically turned into a licensing/portal mosel as you mention above
WHat do you mean by “develop authors”? WHo does that?
The WIki model is a good idea, I have thought about that too, even have a wiki set up on enemies.com but haven’t decided what to do w. it
http://www.occultopedia.com/ is taken unfortunately and not that great either
September 1st, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Yeah I guess you’re right
September 1st, 2005 at 3:28 pm
No it wasn’t a rhetorical question. I really wante dto know what you meant. I guess I could extrapolate from context but you seem media-saavy so as an aspiring author myself I figured I’d take the bait and ask.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:33 pm
I guess what I was saying was more like what Hebrides suggested about the early days. People were encouraged to submit work, and it was published. It’s more like developing a stable or bullpen of contributors and then drawing on them for projects as needed.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:37 pm
disinfo used to be so great back in 1999/2000. they’d do these awesome ‘dossiers’ on different topics and it seemed like they had a new one every day. now i rarely visit disinfo, if ever, ’cause they only feature politics and technology on their webpage. imho, they got too big, too fast and got out of hand. of course, if you’re involved in the community over there you’d prolly think differently.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Yeah, the dossiers, that’s what I was referring to. Those are awesome. If they smacked those into a Wiki, that would rule
September 1st, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Yeah, the old days. I mis-typed–Disinfo changed at the end of ‘01, not ‘02. But the old model was something pretty great. And I think if you wanted to do something like that, with “dossiers” on stuff (what would ya call ‘em? mojo hands?) that are written by you and from other contributors, that would work great and if other writers have blogs, you could link to that stuff, too…Maybe even do an Amazon-type thing with them. “People who liked that essay, also liked…”–and link. And it would be great for those of us who don’t own computers or have a blog!
A note on the scattershot-ness of the Disinfo anthologies: All of the content from the first book was pulled straight from the dossiers. So, having read all those, I had no reason to buy the book, unless I wanted to just show how cool and underground I was to the squares. I wonder if that’s how they put together the other anthologies as well.
September 1st, 2005 at 4:46 pm
Alex Burns has a simply styled but effective blog ‘The Terror of the Situation’:
http://www.loudwire.net/users/alexburns/
September 1st, 2005 at 5:11 pm
small communities recognise and help one another. as communities grow they tend to become cities and become impersonal and everyone goes to the airport strip to hang out. but seriously, disinfo was bound to go that way. do we remember our roots?not often, but we need to grow to survive.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:10 pm
On the point of that “alternative” news channel, I doubt Disinformation has the clout to bring it about. Plus, I’ve seen their tv show. About a third of it was entertaning, the rest boring attempts at shock (imho).
Also, one of the fellows responsible for the Guerrilla News Network was in the works with many big names to bring about what was then known as “Channel Zero.” It was to be this new international channel, from what I remember, that would focus on the legitimate news un-polluted by corporate influence and ad dollar pursuasion.
Fortunately, he raised quite a bit of money for the endeavour and had a lot of people behind him.
Unfortunately, he blew the money on partying and blew himself up into a bag of wind. After he lost the capital and investors, he re-focused himself and got involved in the GNN movement online.
Recently there’s been articles in the alternative newsweeklies and I believe in The Globe & Mail, one of Canada’s nationals, about a new start-up. Except that this one is being hosted by big name journalists from Canada, United States, England, and elsewhere. The technology is being discussed as it’d be a pay-per-view news service â la CBC Newsworld, BBC News Service, and CNN. Because it would be supported solely by subscriptions, there’d be absolutely no commercial pursuasion (except to keep itself on-air). It would not be limited to one continent either, as they’d be focusing on world news with, I believe, region-specific content online or something.
I wish I could remember the name of it, or those involved. I was reading of it a couple months ago, but I can’t find anything online cuz I am at a loss for searchable terms.
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
I’m also guessing that their logo is supposed to be an oblique (or direct) reference to the Napster logo.
Nitpick time. According to BoingBoing and Wired’s Xeni Jardin, it’s all contrariwise:
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Okay, well either way it’s similar and they’re still operating off a similar cultural paradigm. That’s all I was trying to say.
September 4th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
Ah, the good old days of Disinfo, they sort of led me to ruin my life. I trace it back to reading the Dossier on JFK and linking to an article that said “the intention behind the assassination was not political but sorcerous…” and that was that. Now I have graven images in my room and concentrate on funny-looking symbols during sex.
I do miss the old format, but I think in many ways Disinfo may have completely mined the internet for links to the bizarre. While it could all stand updating, especially the dossier links, it seems to have covered just about damn near everything. I subscribe to their newsletter, and Burns actually mentioned recent editorial discussions of having a Wiki format.
Disinfo TV, some of it was good, some of it was boring. Metzger’s Infinity Factory talk show worked better–Metzger gives off a strange, awkward vibe during the Disinfo TV interviews, but seems focused and confident during the Infinity Factory.
Tim and others, I think a useful aspect to study is Disinfo’s actual history of funding and ownership, in relation to the various mutations the site has undergone… They have gone from being an internet portal to a publishing house, basically by baiting-and-switching on corporate sponsors: “You want hip and unusual? We’ll give it to you…” Very “When the going gets wierd the wierd turn pro.” It seems to me like the current focus is on publishing, and it’s kind of revealing. I like their anthologies, and I think that the Book of Lies is fairly focused: look through the essays by P-Orridge, on Burroughs, and on drugs, which is all very much post-modern magic, if you will; the rest, though, does seem like fluffy filler. There’s a lot of theory but not much in the way of practical application. I’m a theorist myself, but lacking a real occult teacher, I need some hand-holding with the “how-to” part sometimes, like you said, “impersonal.”
September 26th, 2005 at 1:39 am
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