TM Clubcard
"Remember: Language is not Free"
The project TM club card of London based artist Rachel
Baker challenges big supermarket brands by using their logos
to undermine their digital marketing strategies. Starting
off with Tesco and Sainsbury she is now targeting Shell. Her
political internet project attempts to point out hwo
companies use copyright laws to shut up criticism and how
small the supposedly 'free' world of symbols actually is.
Until now Baker and her provider Irational.org were capable
of finding ways to stay out of reach of the overpowering
other.
Tesco Plc
Project Site
Recently, my ISP, IRATIONAL.ORG, received a solicitors
letter threatening legal action if my website was not
removed from the server within 8 days to protect the
interests of a certain 'Tesco Plc.' Tesco is the most
successful supermarket chain store in the UK outstripping
all competitors in the food retailing business. It is a
supermarket giant, a Zeus in the chain store pantheon, an
icon among consumer brand names.
Tesco Clubcard
Tescos introduction of a loyalty card in 1995 ensured an
advantage in the UK supermarket wars where the major players
were being out-priced and undercut by smaller, cheaper
chainstores. A pioneering marketing strategy was required
which concentrated on an existing customer base, a
persuasive strategy that offered incentives to remain loyal
to Tesco despite higher prices etc. The loyalty card system
rewards customers for shopping at Tesco. Customers
relinquish their personal details in exchange for an
in-store smartcard. They can then collect points for every
10 pounds spent and cash in their points claiming vouchers
or discounts. This card will help Tesco monitor the shopping
habits of individual customers and to stock accordingly. Its
the old stamp collecting system with database marketing
added.
Database Marketing
Feedback monitoring technologies and techniques allows
companies to analyse and exploit data held on individuals
and to target their market with militaristic precision. It
also allows the full implementation of the marketing trend
for building 'interactive' or 'personalised' relationships
between brands and individual customers.
Building Relationships With Brands Corporates rely very
heavily on brand identity and relationships. The penetration
of brand presence has to be overwhelming. Tesco branding
colonises public space in the high street and my private
space in the kitchen. Tescos is synonymous with the everyday
language of food - I submit to their language because it has
become indispensable to me and like many others I am
unavoidably dependent on it. Compounding this relationship
with consumers, the Clubcard encourages the idea that
customers are joining a 'club'. However, the members of this
club exist in separate datafields and remain, to all intents
and purposes, alienated from each other. The 'club' only
defines a relationship between the individual Clubcard
holder and Tescos superstore, with little contact encouraged
between other members. Some club!.
TM Clubcard
The project I created on the Web sought to
assimilate the brand identity of Tescos by hijacking their
Clubcard marketing strategy in order to create my own club
via a database that created connections not separations
between the members.
The web project creates a system which allows you to earn
points when you surf. Using Tesco clubcards that I had
obtained from various Tesco stores in London, it provides
the holder of the pirate card a 'reward' incentive to visit
selected websites. I have asked several website owners to
display the Clubcard logo on their pages. These websites
form the TM Clubcard catalogue. Visitors to these sites who
click on the Clubcard logo can order a card through an
Irational webform, or, if I have already sent them one, they
can register their visit to the host site with their PIN
no.and earn reward points. The webform asks for names and
addresses which I retain in a database, so that any PIN
registered visits to the catalogue of sites is tracked and
points allocated.
ParaSite
The unique PIN numbers on the plastic clubcards mean that I
can effectively parasite an existing network of individual
data-carriers and apply it to the Net. Also, my web site
contained direct lifts of logos and layouts from the real
Tesco Plc easily facilitates. Here, all identities,
including those cultivated by big companies, are unstable,
insecure, providing the opportunity, for those with the
desire, to change/intercept the relationship with a brand
name or distort its meaning. I was intrigued to see how the
Net provides marketing with controlled feedback mechanisms,
further intensifying and abstracting the relationships
between brand and consumer.
I imagined a threading of websites all displaying the Tesco
Clubcard logo which referred not to a supermarket food
giant, but to a wwweb club, illicitly created from the
machinery of a monstrous incorporated presence.
Shit into Gold - Datatrash into Datatreasure - Points Into
Prizes
Already the Net is overstuffed with excess data, with more
data than anyone can possibly need, creating a devaluation
of data- a data garbage dump.Part of the most laudable
processes of Net.Art is, I believe, to reconstitute all this
data, to reframe it or redirect it. A previous Net Art
project, Gold Medal Award , done in collaboration with
MoscowWWWarts, demonstrated the significance of this. In the
tradition of Duchamps 'Readymades', Found Web Pages were
reframed, literally in a design sense, and by linking them
to Found Art Criticism and the Gold Medal award provided an
Art context. I used the phrase 'turning shit into gold' to
describe this endeavour but because peoples evaluations of
'shit' and 'gold' differ there is an obvious paradox. The
marketer has a similar 'artistic' task in transforming
mundane product or brand into gold(capital), endowing it
with magical properties, for instance the accumulation of
'points' for some future reward. Merely by redirecting the
'points' incentive of the loyalty card schemes towards a
non-commercial end undermines the original context and
becomes more sociable. Recycling data as an ecological
exercise remains a key practice in maintaining the health of
the Net or any data-filled environments.
TradeMark Infringement - BAKERS FINEST
Beautifully and coherently documented, descriptions of my
site and Tescos site arrived courtesy of Willoughby &
Partners pointing out the severe crimes that had been
committed. These included Copyright Infringement, Trademark
Infringement and Passing Off. The absurdity of a major
corporation defending itself from the actions of a small net
project was evident in this instance: Tescos have
trademarked the words BAKERS FINEST for selling breads and
cakes. I had used the words BAKERS FINEST on my site to
publicise a second-hand jumble sale of all my finest
clothing (special offers to Clubcard holders). Since my
surname is Baker, and I was not selling bread or cakes,
their allegations of Trademark Infringement would not, on
advice, have stood up in court.
TM
As we get nearer to the situation whereby phrases,words,
names are proprietised into commercial use, the TradeMark
issue becomes increasingly insane. Property in relation to
abstract signs as opposed to physical objects and borders
throws up a whole new contest, particularly in the digital
realm of the Net. Shoplifting products from Tescos is much
less of a threat than shoplifting their signs and symbols.
The ultimate contest for me is to steal the meaning away
from the TM trademark sign itself, so prevalent on the pages
of the WWW
Passing Off
The most serious criminal allegation stated that I had
deceptively obtained confidential information from users by
passing off as Tesco Plc. It was evident to Tesco's
solicitors that people had sent personal details because I
had published the database on a webpage called Personal Data
Fairy. However this database is dysfunctional. All the
information had been confused. I occasionally send erroneous
junk mail to TM Clubcard holders. Members receive
communication addressing other members on the database, or
the database reveals itself with programming mistakes
printed on the mailout. This strategy ensures that
recipients know that they are on a database, that it is
dysfunctional, and, more importantly, that there are other
members of the club with whom potential contact is possible.
I had emailed all 45 members of the database asking if they
had assumed I was the real Tescos. 3 replied that they had.
Most people realised the context of the project.
Retaliation
After the site became 'hot' it raised several ideas about
how to circumvent the Tescos solicitors and the legalities
of Copyright and Trademark on the Net. These issues contain
much unmarked legal terrain as yet, and the dynamics of the
Net lends itself to many tactics of escape and
transformation. The most popular solution was to evacuate
the pages from Irational and send them to a series of 'safe
sites' on different international servers. They would move
on as soon as Tesco Plc caught up with it. Effectively it
would became a site on the run, appearing and disappearing
along chains in the datasphere. However, since it is not a
self-contained site and dependent on links to the various
catalogue sites, the maintainence involved in this tactic
would be problematic.
I settled on a strategy inspired by Alexei Shulgin of
Moscowwwarts (one of the Clubcard catalogue sites) whereby
the site remains on Irational but changes its trademark
target. Any big company company with a loyalty card scheme
is eligible for parasitical treatment. The project s
trajectory could be a series of solicitors letters each
telling a story of a different loyalty card hijack and
trademark transference.
J Sainsbury Plc
So the TM clubcard is no longer called Tescos. Currently it
has chosen J Sainsbury, Tesco's main supermarket rival, as
its host, with all the accompanying branding lifted straight
from the official J Sainsbury website. Something that became
apparent in the standoff between Irational and Tescos was
the potential benefits a big company like Tesco would have
in being 'sponsored' on the Net by a cutting-edge net.art
name like Irational. In a climate of competing brand
presence (with art competing in the same environment as
commerce), and with artists increasingly obliged to depend
on commercial sponsorship, a reversal of this relationship
of patronage would make an interesting 'cross-marketing'
project. Anyone interested?
Postscript
For the last few weeks Irational server statistics have
revealed ongoing visits from our friends Tesco and
Sainsbury. (The Sainsbury visitor has the email address -
lachesis is a snake that kills its prey by constriction). On
2nd July, as anticipated, Sainsburys sent a solicitors
letter to Irational expressing similar grievances as Tescos
i.e the unofficial awarding of Reward points over the
Internet. Again, they have provided me with full
documentation of my site. But they have gone one step
further than Tesco in demanding that I hand over printouts
of the data I've collected through the webforms. This
presents another question - who owns the database? Before we
agree to their terms we have demanded some of our own. (see
the reaction of Irational.
Rachel Baker