Betsy: A pulp novel

By Federico Scarioni

Nicolae Cook is an intern at Victoria Corporation, a multinational marketing company. The enterprise is led by Mr. Zwanga, a dark and mysterious founder and CEO who speaks through Mrs. Lulu, his resourceful secretary and the only one in the building who has ever seen his face.

One day, Nicolae is sent on a mission (code: BETSY), which will take him on a crazy journey along the California coast. He’ll meet improbable characters and find himself tangled up in their often tragic lives.

He’ll also meet Ambrosia, a chewing gum spokeswoman who will change everything.

BETSY is a grotesque, pulp look at our consumer society. It’s a sarcastic, often scary revelation of the mechanisms behind sales strategies. We are watched, studied, labeled—we are all walking merchandise.

BETSY is a “marketing tale” whose pulp soul fits quite well in with the likes of Palahniuk and Ellis. – Alessandro Caliandro, sociologist

We read Lovecraft. We fight in the Fight Club. We live in American Psycho. We love the deep silence of the hours From Dusk till Dawn. Ashes. You can find us in a Grindhouse. The story is more important than the paper. Experience rules all of our lives when it runs on the road.

BETSY: we are all walking merchandise. – Nicolae Cook

This one? This one is a political novel. – Federico Scarioni

• Language: English
• Publisher: La Memoria del Mondo
• Release date: Jul 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9788898414895

Book preview

Contemporanea

Federico Scarioni

Betsy – a pulp novel

Translator: Sonia Lenardon

© La Memoria del Mondo Libreria Editrice

Via Garibaldi, 51 – Magenta (MI)

www.lamemoriadelmondo.it

[e-mail]

ISBN 9788898414895

Federico Scarioni

Betsy

a pulp novel

Translated by Sonia Lenardon

Preface

by Alessandro Caliandro

"We are fighting a sham battle with rockets and hydrogen bombs, while underneath the real struggle, the silent war, is for the possession of mens minds" Ernest Dichter, psychotherapist and marketing expert wrote in the early ‘60s.

I chose to begin this introduction with a quote that gives us quite a cynical, ruthless idea of the world of marketing. The cynical, ruthless side of the marketing world is exactly where Federico Scarioni sets his tale—Betsy is a story of marketing that well fits in with other pulp novels such as those by Palahniuk and Ellis.

The main character, Nicolae Cook, is given an original and yet perverse mission by his superiors at San Francisco’s Victoria Corporation—he’s to study the consumer habits of specific, unknown target audiences (such as homeless people, hippies, religious fanatics, etc.) in order to bombard them with made-to-measure marketing strategies.

Nicolae’s mission is an ethnography of consumers’ behavior, which is actually a quite common practice in the world of marketing. Companies all over the world—especially multinational corporations—are familiar with this method of research. Still, that there are any social groups unknown to brand managers is nothing but a myth. But let’s take a broader look at ethnography and its uses within the marketing field.

Ethnography (literally, description of the people) is a method of anthropological research based on the principle that, in order to truly learn about a given social group, one must directly observe the interactions within that group. For example, if an anthropologist decides to write about the culture of Australian natives, they won’t be able to do it while sitting at their desk in the university. They’ll have to pack a bag and live for a certain amount of time amongst the native tribe they have chosen to study.

This method was developed by anthropologists at the beginning of the 21st century, and it soon became popular with sociologists, especially with a group from the University of Chicago. During the ‘20s, Chicago underwent an impressive population increase due to the expanding of its industries. Immigrants came from all over Europe, prompting the University’s sociologists to do some research in order to understand the social changes within their city. Given the circumstances, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that Chicago’s sociologists were particularly interested in social phenomena such as marginalization. Their attention wasn’t focused solely on Polish and Italian immigrants, but also on local gangs, artists, homeless people, and other marginalized social groups. The Hobo by Nels Anderson (1923) is an in-depth analysis of people who chose to lead a nomadic existence, traveling from one city to another on cargo trains and making ends meet working odd jobs. The life of a hobo was often accompanied by poverty, discomfort, and struggles with addiction. Anderson, who’d already had some experience with vagrancy during his childhood, was able to give a precise portrait of hobos by spending some time in their world.

Although it’s not meant to be a marketing study, this type of research can bring back precious consumer data. By living in close contact with these people, we can still pick up marketing insights; whether we like it or not, everyone’s daily life is littered with consumer experiences. This was the case with Anthropology of Milan Central Station by Enzo Colombo and Gianmarco Navarini. The authors intended to give a thorough description of the world of the homeless people that gravitate towards and around Milan Central Station. By doing so, they also discovered that the homeless—who often are alcoholics—prefer to buy their wine in a carton, as it’s easier to carry around. In the same way, while studying the behavior of a hipster community in Dublin, James Cronin found out that their preferred beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon. It also happens to be the favorite beer of homeless people in Dublin, which gives the hipster group a sense of walking on the edge of society.

This type of data is gold to corporations, especially those who want to give a cool image to their products. This is why the cool hunter figure is so vital. Cool hunters are sociologists who submerge themselves in urban subcultures in order to study their social values, styles, lingos, and consumer habits. For example, Nike’s cool hunters studied Afro American ghettos at length, enabling the brand to have their products reach that particular social group. The same thing happened with Absolut Vodka and the gay community.

The practice of taking advantage of people’s sociality from a marketing point of view became even more advanced when Web 2.0 made an appearance. Amongst a vast case history, the instance of LEGO is worth inspecting. LEGO Factory is a website where users are invited to download digital design software that allows them to design their own LEGO models. The virtual models can then be sent to LEGO through the same website. On their part, LEGO gives a price to the designer for the manufacturing of the model and offers them the chance to place an order through the website. The design can also be shared with other members of the online community, who can either copy or modify it. Eventually, LEGO seizes the best designs and submits them to the general audience. The company recognizes the intellectual property of the young designers, but doesn’t offer any money compensation. Also, the people who buy these co-created models pay premium price, a much higher price compared to that one would pay for a regular LEGO model.

Nivea’s Black and White deodorant also responds to a very specific need. Nivea’s sociologists conducted an online study on specific social groups—namely, professional dancers, body builders, and fashion victims. They found that these groups expressed the need for a personal deodorant that wouldn’t leave yellow stains on white clothes or white stains on black clothes. Thus, the famous claim was born, which cleverly does nothing more than attribute to the product the qualities the consumers were