- This video is brought to you by Raycon.
(light music)
What's up, guys?
Michael here.
In case you've been trapped
in a Weezer-branded snuggie since 2009,
allow us to bring you up to speed.
Everyone is obsessed with merch.
There's the McDonald's chicken nugget pillow.
There's A24's film-themed candles
and logo-emblazoned packing tape.
There's merch for your favorite radio station,
your favorite art museum,
even your favorite fake girl boss.
Hell, there's even merch
that lets you loudly and proudly identify as
a salt aficionado.
It hasn't always been this way.
Merch used to be something we bought
to remember that Green Day concert
where we almost made out with our crush.
Almost.
Or it was that ugly/depressing swag
thrust upon us by everyone
from Citibank to the Humane Society.
But, as journalist Adam Bluestein
observes in a recent Marker article,
"People are now not only willing
"to adorn themselves in branded merch,
"they actually go to great lengths
"to seek it out
"and want to pay for it."
So what explains the merch revolution?
What does it mean
when we actively seek out
a plate from our favorite restaurant
or shorts from our favorite billionaire?
Are we in heaven, hell,
or a swag-ified purgatory?
Let's bravely find out in this
Wisecrack Edition: Why Everything is Merch Now.
But before we get into it,
I want to talk about today's sponsor, Raycon.
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And now, back to the show.
Now, for simplicity's sake,
we're gonna define merch as products,
often shirts, hats, or tote bags,
that advertise a brand or company
which typically doesn't make
shirts, hats, or tote bags.
So, your capital-G Gucci belt?
Not merch.
Your T-shirt proudly showing off
your favorite egg salad sandwich?
Totally merch.
And a real thing.
On a basic level,
the concept of merch is pretty simple.
It conveys taste,
whether in film distributors, makeup, music,
and even iced tea.
But for merch to fully emerge
as such a cornerstone of contemporary consumption,
a few things had to happen.
First off, what constitutes high-status spending
had to change dramatically.
See, for most of human history,
producing consumer goods required artisan handiwork,
and was thus very expensive.
So, it was easy
for the very wealthy to show off
via luxurious spending on items
most people could never
dream of affording.
In early Pompeii,
that meant hiring an artist
to painstakingly craft
a mosaic for your wall.
In Victorian England,
it hilariously meant displaying
medicine in your parlor
to show you could afford
to see a doctor.
Less wealthy people would then
find cheaper ways to copy
rich people's spending habits,
via shortcuts like wallpaper,
or painting porcelain to look like gold.
In 1899, economist and sociologist
Thorstein Veblen dubbed
these wealth-establishing purchases
by the "leisure class"
conspicuous consumption.
These were any goods
purchased in large part
to convey high socioeconomic status.
Now, a lot has changed since 1899.
The Second Industrial Revolution,
coupled with increasingly
sophisticated manufacturing practices,
dramatically decreased
the cost of consumer goods.
Since then, buying fancy hair ribbons,
or leather-bound encyclopedias
has become a lot less expensive.
This made it increasingly easy
for less wealthy folks
to copy the consumption habits
of the uber-wealthy.
They signaled aspirational wealth
through dress, home decor, and so on.
Nowadays, in fact,
poor and middle-class folks
spend proportionately much more
on conspicuous consumption
than the wealthy do.
This poses a problem,
as scholar Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
explains in her book,
"The Sum of Small Things."
She asks, "If acquisition of material goods
"is now fairly accessible to all,
"how do wealthy elites maintain their status?"
According to Currid-Halkett,
the answer can be seen in the rise
of the "aspirational class,"
which has effectively
replaced the "leisure class."
The aspirational class is defined
less by wealth than by cultural capital.
Like knowing which Ethiopian restaurant to go to,
or which magazine to read.
As brand strategist Ana Andjelic
writes in her recent book,
"The Business of Aspiration,"
"Modern aspiration is not about
"having money to buy things,
"but having the taste to know what to buy."
That is to say,
members of the aspirational class
don't choose to consume goods and services
based on what will make them look rich.
Rather, they choose based on
what conforms to their taste,
which is largely based on their values.
That's in part because
a lot of aspirational class members
aren't even rich in the first place.
They're merely culturally savvy.
They buy products based on
what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
called "objectified cultural capital."
I.e., the way certain objects
accrue cultural and symbolic value,
rather than simple monetary value.
As Currid-Halkett elaborates,
the aspirational class
"finds subtle symbols, cultural capital,
"and language to distinguish itself
"from other groups."
And if those "subtle symbols"
include an ironic dad hat,
all the better.
But let's leave the aspirational class
aside for a second.
Because innovation in manufacturing
also allowed for one other big consumer shift.
The rise of merch.
The core of the merch industry
has long been that classic printed T-shirt.
Cheap to make
and typically cheap to buy.
Printed shirts were probably first used
for the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."
In the film,
workers in the Emerald City
wear shirts that read "Oz"
as they restuff the Scarecrow.
Printed shirts went political in 1948,
urging you to vote for noted
never-president Thomas E. Dewey.
Who did not invent the Dewey decimal system.
That's when printing businesses in Miami
started manufacturing screen-printed
T-shirts and towels
adorned with popular vacation resorts' logos.
We found evidence of a similar racket
in 1950s Cincinnati.
One of those companies
scored the license for merchandising Disney,
and things would escalate.
But what really changed
the future of merch was technology.
Specifically, innovations in
screen printing in the 60s.
Couple that with the youth cultural revolution,
and merch was poised to explode.
As the British rock invasion
captivated the hearts and ears of the youth,
buying band merch
became a prime way
to express your hipness.
Importantly, printed shirts
also quickly became a major tool
of the counterculture
to signal alignment
with protest groups and social causes.
But merch wouldn't stay stuck
in the counterculture.
In the 1970s,
the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino wondered,
what if merch could become a bigger business
than our actual business?
They were almost right.
Merch now accounts for up to 40% of their revenue.
This is indicative of something else
that was also happening.
See, throughout the 70s and 80s,
increasingly-cutthroat competition
amongst similar brands
would change marketing forever.
Suddenly, brands had to start selling consumers
not on quality and/or innovation,
but on the brand itself.
As researchers wrote
for Management Communication Quarterly,
this was "the elevation of branding's importance
"as a communication strategy
"in navigating a crowded market."
In other words,
brands became less about
what they made
and more about who they were.
The easiest way to be someone cool?
Copy the counterculture, of course.
Scholar Paul Clements
notes that marketers in the 80s and 90s
had grown up during
the height of the counterculture.
They savvily copied that era's
"impression of rebellion and revolt"
in their marketing.
Remember that final scene of Mad Men?
♪ I'd like to buy the world a home ♪
- In post-Draper years,
that also looked like Burger King declaring that
"Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules."
Or Toyota calling their new Subra "revolutionary."
Over the following decades,
corporate branding,
and with it corporate merch,
would continue to pull from countercultures
to maintain their cool image.
They'd especially take inspiration
from skateboarding, rap,
and internet communities,
grabbing font styles
and other design elements.
In recent years,
brands like makeup company Glossier
would also start to "borrow" streetwear brand
Supreme's marketing style.
They, too, manufacture scarcity
for popular merch
in order to generate hype.
And over the past 10 years,
merch has become more important than ever,
increasingly infiltrating fashion
and culture at large.
This has been helped along, again,
by increasingly streamlined
manufacturing and distribution,
as well as, you guessed it, the internet.
And these days,
you don't have to be Disney
for merch to be profitable.
The rise of micromerch
catering to niche markets
now sustains everyone
from musicians to podcasters
to makeup influencers.
Many creators now supplement their incomes
with genuinely cool merch,
some of which might even feature
a certain monocle-wearing jackass.
During the pandemic,
merch became especially vital
for those local bars, restaurants, and bookstores
with enough cache to sell you
on a cute tank-top,
branded weed grinder,
or a pair of earrings shaped like a sandwich.
The entangled phenomena
of the value-obsessed aspirational class,
the value-laden brand,
and of course, cheap manufacturing,
all converged to facilitate the rise of merch.
As Amanda Mull writes in The Atlantic,
"For decades, Americans have been trained
"to see logos and slogans
"as a primary means of self-expression
"and even as a way of telegraphing values."
And nothing does so more clearly than merch.
But what is merch really doing,
on a deeper level?
To understand, let's return
to the aspirational class.
The way we see it,
merch has become a new kind
of conspicuous consumption.
Rather than showing off
how wealthy you are,
though, it acts as a potent flex
about your cultural savviness and your values.
Merch is the natural culmination of consumption
as an expression of identity.
And if that consumption happens
to be just a little bit ironic,
a la the KFC crocs that sold out in 30 minutes,
well, that's all the better.
Some of this is the result
of successful marketing.
Over the past decade,
as brand competition has increased
even more than it did in the 80s,
branding has increasingly shifted
to become more value-oriented.
As Andjelic writes,
"Brands shifted from increasing
"value of their products through utility,
"competitive comparison, and creative advertising."
Instead, she explains,
they focus on things like
sustainability, artisanship, and community
"in order to give their products
"identity and singularity."
You're not wearing a Moon Juice shirt
because it fits better,
you're wearing it to show you value
wellness, clean living and crystals.
Lighting up an A24 Horror candle
shows that you value independent cinema.
Even if you, like me,
are too scared to actually watch "Midsommar."
Their cultural potency
can render merch even more desirable
than the "real" brand products themselves.
As Bluestein notes,
"Whether or not they are actually
"buying your core product,
"merch with a point of view can resonate
"with people who are somehow
"finding it to be a form of self-expression."
Merch, in representing a brand
or artist's cultural cache,
confers that same status onto the buyer.
People are telegraphing their values
and tastes by associating themselves
with Jstor over Lexis Nexis
or with Cashapp over Venmo.
But to really understand
why a New Yorker tote bag
means so much to so many people,
let's return to what brands as a whole mean.
As media scholar Adam Arvidsson
writes in his book,
"Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture,"
"Although brands have a long history
"as a commercial institution,
"reaching as far back as the 18th century,
"their position as central components
"of the social fabric
"was established in the 1980s."
As we noted earlier,
this was around the time
when branding became
less about the product
and more about the story
or "personality" of the brand itself.
The result was powerful.
As Arvidsson elaborates,
"Brands now became something
"of an omnipresent tool
"by means of which identity,
"social relations and shared experiences
"could be constructed."
The web of modern brands
thus helps establish
a "common social world" that we all inhabit.
This happened at the same time
as the late 20th century
collapse of community,
amidst widespread urbanization,
privatization of public spaces, and so on.
So you maybe used to identify
largely as a Catholic,
or a Dane, or a New Yorker.
But the erosion of religious, ethnic, cultural,
and other public communities
also erodes the significance of that identity.
As Andjelic writes,
"We are going through
"the imagined community renaissance,
"thanks to modern brands stepping in
"as the social constructs of belonging
"left vacant by traditional institutions."
She notes that, "Increasingly,
"brands target communities over customers."
Merch is an obvious way of telegraphing
your membership to a branded community,
whether via tote bag or koozie.
And for the aspirational class,
distinguished not by furs and jewels
but by their taste,
belonging to the right
branded communities is paramount.
Lighting a dinnertime candle
in Victorian England meant
you had access to something
rare and expensive.
Today, sprinkling responsibly-sourced spices
on your dinner isn't about conferring wealth,
which few of us have anyway.
It's more about living your taste and values.
It's not about "prestige and exclusivity"
but about "identity and belonging"
to certain taste communities.
And because humans are very literal creatures,
we've fixated on
the most literal way to do this.
Buy merch that spells out
your taste for everyone to see.
And this isn't inherently sinister.
Here at Wisecrack,
we love good merch.
In fact, each of us owns an estimated average
of 1.75 Grateful Dead T-shirts,
although I kind of skew the curve on that.
But this one is like colored,
and this one is like a whiter thing.
This one has a totally different font
and it's from a different tour,
and this one was limited edition.
Okay, they're all the same.
But we think it's interesting
that as young peoples' economic opportunities
become less and less plentiful,
our consumption habits
are becoming increasingly
important to our identities.
As Andjelic notes,
"Unable to succeed economically,
"millennials are turning their attention
"to everyday things with an almost obsessive,
"laser-like focus."
It's why really liking coffee
or doing the right type of yoga
can almost constitute
an entire personality these days.
But, what if our obsession with taste,
and thus, with cool merch,
really has much more to do with
what we can't afford?
You know, the little things
like houses, cars, advanced degrees,
and quality medical care.
Unable to achieve the markers of success
that our parents and grandparents aspired to,
we've found other ways
to make our lives feel
richer and more meaningful.
And more power to us for that.
But merch has emerged as an easy
and relatively inexpensive way
to accrue social capital.
Especially in a world where most of us
might never have,
you know, capital-capital.
It's enough to make you want
to take a nice long hit
from your limited-edition
Seth-Rogen-sculpted pipe.
But what do you guys think?
Is the popularity of merch
a sinister indicator of
how much is wrong with our economy?
Or is it just a fun way
to signal that you, too,
enjoy eating Oreos?
Let us know in the comments.
Big thanks to our patrons
for aligning yourselves
with the Wisecrack brand.
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And as always, thanks for watching.
Later.
(upbeat music)