Georg Simmel’s
essay, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” was written in 1903, but remains
largely relevant today, analyzing the effects of the city environment upon the
individual. Exploring Simmel’s findings in a more modern
and technologically connected context, in this case an ad campaign for the
Bugaboo Bee stroller, reveals that his theory of the modern metropolis and its
effect on man’s social consciousness and identity is both enforced by current
metropolitan and online environments, and inadequate for them. The often highly intimate nature of social
media content does not fit neatly into Simmel’s paradigm. The presence and behavior of children in
urban spaces tends not to correspond with Simmel’s descriptions of an inevitable
lack of social consciousness. The nature
and concept of social capital obfuscates his principle of objective reckoning,
and the way corporations capitalize on the individuality and online activity of
social media participants blurs the line between objective and subjective
behavior and judgment. Ultimately, as
the spectrum of stimulations leans toward the intimate, and
user-content-saturated realms available in social media, objective reckoning is
less likely to be based on tangible features, though more likely to be
entrenched in social capital, and social consciousness seems less likely to
experience the dearth that Simmel described.
Simmel: The
Metropolis and Mental Life
Simmel’s essay
claims that his inquiry into the meaning of specifically modern or metropolitan
life answers “the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the
adjustments to external forces.”
The essay largely explores the psychological coping of individuals to the high
level of stimulus in urban settings.
Simmel claims that the big city is dominated by fiscal objectivism (as
opposed to individual/emotive centered subjectivism) and that human interactions
in cities become short, impersonal, rational, and instrumental, lacking the
sense of community found in a small town. “The metropolis exacts from man as a
discriminating creature a different amount of consciousness than does rural
life.”
Thus he claims that the inner life of city dwellers is more intellectual than
emotional. People value time and money,
and the easily measured. Thus more
qualitative values are reduced to what can be “reckoned” and this leads to what
Simmel calls the “blasé attitude” of many city dwellers, a defense mechanism
against overstimulation that potentially alienates them from meaningful
interactions through their own indifference and discrimination.
Simmel also
emphasizes that, paradoxically, metropolitan dwellers have an elevated need for
a sense of unique, noticeable, recognized and valued identity. “The carrier of man’s value is no longer the
“general human being” in every individual, but rather man’s qualitative uniqueness
and irreplaceability.”
Their sense of identity will increase in importance to them as the level of
stimulation rises, and that in city environments the need to feel incomparable
or unmistakable will lead to distinct behaviors far less common in more rural
communities.
Navigating the
Bee Campaign
Interestingly,
each of these points made by Simmel are illustrated in the Bugaboo Bee online
ad campaign. Bugaboo is a Dutch mobility
company primarily manufacturing high-end strollers. Founded in 1999, the
company has placed a high priority on their online presence and online
marketing. In January of 2003, 100 years
after Simmel’s essay was published, Bugaboo released the Bee, touted as a
“complete urban stroller.” The company
followed up with the “Bee in the City” campaign platform
which was released in June of 2012 and which allegedly demonstrates the ways in
which the Bee’s design is well suited for navigating cities. But city living is never clearly defined in
any of Bugaboo’s campaign materials, and the implications of what
differentiates a city environment are only inferred. The metropolitan focus and assumptions of
Bugaboo’s Bee campaign mirror and challenge Georg Simmel’s essay.
In
analyzing the content of the Bugaboo Bee campaign, it is helpful to introduce a
further concept, outside of the scope of Simmel’s essay but directly related to
points in it. This is the idea of
“social capital.” The term was
introduced by Alexis de Tocqueville as early as 1890, but was not widely used
until the 1990s. Robert Putnam’s
definition of social capital is “the collective value of all social networks
and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each
other.” Pierre
Bourdieu also wrote extensively about the relation of social capital to upward
mobility through socially recognized class distinctions.
This
idea becomes relevant relative to Simmel’s exploration of intellectualism and
objectivity, as individuals are making decisions and “reckoning” value not only
in terms of money capital, but in terms of social capital as well. It is also
very relevant in exploration of the metropolitan need for incomparable
identity. Choices, objects, and actions
that are perceived to increase the concrete particularity or uniqueness of
one’s identity might be given reckoning weight in terms of social capital. The ability of a product to imply a certain
economic, social, or cultural status becomes in itself a feature of that
product, and an image-conscious consumer is likely to take that feature into
consideration as they valuate potential purchases.
Bugaboo’s
campaign for this “total urban stroller” can be considered in three separate
parts. First is the product website for
the Bugaboo Bee
where the main, traditional, video advertisement can be viewed and product
specifications and features are explorable.
Second is the ancillary website and home base of the social media
campaign “Bee in the City”. This website
has instructions for participating in the social media campaign, allows access
to content created by other users, and primarily houses six 2-3 minute videos,
produced by Bugaboo, exploring individual families using the Bugaboo Bee
stroller in six different large cities around the world. The final part of the campaign is the social media
campaign and its invitation for users to “create their own [searchable]
gallery” of bugaboo bee images and tweets by using the hashtag
#beeinthecity. For users that are
following the company blog
or twitter feed
there are also games and contests with bugaboo strollers and stroller
accessories as prizes.
Analyzing the
Bee Campaign
These
three distinct components of the campaign form a spectrum of material
determined by several factors. At the
product website end of the spectrum the company has complete control of the
content. There are minimal
representations of human beings, and the emphasis is on features of the
stroller. At the social media end of the
spectrum, the company has no direct control over content, and humans, their
personalities, their implied social status, and their faces become a stronger
point of focus than the stroller itself.
The
product Website has as
its foremost and most prevalent feature the 44 second advertisement video.
The ad begins by showing the empty Bee stroller rolling out in front of a blank
video screen. Then, in sync with very
electric, percussive music the stroller appears to move in stop-motion, its
movement is relative to stop-motion images played out on the screen of navigating
city sidewalks. The effect is that the
stroller appears to be navigating the city environment, but with the filter of
the screen in place. While there are
clear manifestations of crowds of people, none of them are in focus and very
few of them are fully embodied. We see
most of them from the waist down, presumably the perspective of the
stroller. There are three other
strollers present in the video, all of them the Bugaboo Bee in different
colors. The seemingly self-animated
stroller in quick succession demonstrates all the features unique to the Bee. The video ends with a shot of a paved path in
a wooded area, the first green space shown in this ad. There is also only one
other person, a jogger, within the frame at that point. After this scene is introduced, there is a
jump-cut and the stroller is (suddenly) no longer in front of the screen, but
rather on the screen, rolling toward the horizon.
The
extremely fast-paced, stylized editing of the content of this video is very
demonstrative of the level of stimulation that Simmel claims will require
filtering. “The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality
consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the
swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.” It
also demonstrates an accommodation of reckoning by removing elements of the
personal or human from the scene. There
is no human interacting with the stroller in any way, despite the fact that the
purpose of a stroller is to facilitate human mobility needs. This streamlining acts as a filter, allowing
focus to remain on the product’s features and design, and is present in other
static elements of the product website, such as diagrams showing different configurations
of the stroller next to simple graphics indicative of the age and size of
children that each configuration could service. The decrease in consciousness
of the human elements allows an increase in objectivity and reckoning described
by Simmel. “[Money] hollows out the core of things: their individuality, their
specific value, and their incomparability.”
What
this ad does less effectively, perhaps, is to capitalize on social capital or
incomparable identity, and that void appears to have led to the creation of the
Bee in the City campaign.
The
Bee in the City Profiles
still contain many elements of decreased consciousness and intellectualism, but
by moving the content creation into real spaces with real families, a far more
organic and human effect is achieved. Despite the still-tightly edited and
highly controlled nature of the visual content, a very different aesthetic
experience occurs. There are profiles
from 6 cities: Berlin, Tokyo, New York, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Los
Angeles. The subjects of these short
films were arguably chosen to be representative of the ideal consumer for this
company. A product as expensive as a
bugaboo stroller (the basic model of the Bugaboo Bee starts at $650), usually
involves selling an idea as well as a product.
When a low-end umbrella stroller can be purchased for under $30, it can
be assumed that someone who spends more than 21 times that amount is buying
more than a stroller, they are buying social capital – and a contribution to
their sense of identity of self. The value of the product then becomes doubly
quantifiable. A consumer can reckon the
value of the product based on it’s tangible features relative to its price, but
also by the social capital of the implied perceived social status of the
product within the public, and the value of that status symbol to the consumer relative
to its price.
Even
the user-content end of the campaign spectrum is devoid of any of the aesthetic
blights inevitably present in real cities.
Consumers appear to be willing to play along with Bugaboo’s
brand-centric filter, creating an idealized picture of city living even in the
content they create. All things
unattractive are filtered or edited out of this virtual existence.
There
appears to be a very curated identity Bugaboo wants associated with this
product. Palpable evidence of a very specific
cool-factor and clear parameters of an elite target audience run throughout the
campaign. The proscribed consumer is very design-conscious, economically
stable, has plentiful discretionary time, is paid or consulted for their unique
sense of taste, is part of a dual-income household, and is comfortable with a
visibly unique self-identity evidenced in dress and grooming. This is distinctively not a product being
marketed toward cookie-cutter soccer moms.
A consumer wishing to distinguish herself may feel that this product
would communicate that she is not one of the crowd, but belongs rather to an
elite class of design-savvy hipsters. The
existence and highlighting of stroller accessories from the brand’s Andy Warhol
collection make this correlation unmistakable.
Bugaboo has
very carefully chosen the subjects for these profiles then, to be in keeping
with the “identity of self” that they want their customers to believe that they
are buying. They are all involved in
design or social media careers (or both).
They all visit museums or art galleries within their short
profiles. They are also solidly selected
from within a niche of art and design centered living. None of them appear to be single parents, or
show any inclination toward making decisions based on economic
restrictions. These are, as curated,
people who are maximizing their urban experience. They are maximizing benefits of city living
(access to culture and design) while seemingly impervious to its challenges
(cost of living or tight quarters). They
also appear to be maximizing benefits and minimizing inconveniences of parenting. There is no indication that they’ve had to
make accommodations in their adult-centric lives by introducing children into
their families.
As
we observe these individuals, there are invariably mixed patterns of the degree
of interpersonal consciousness displayed in the adults. We do not see the
all-inclusive blasé attitude Simmel described, but there are elements of it. Jarno
(profile #5, Amsterdam) actively avoids other pedestrians in one shot, but is
also seen congenially chatting with his shopkeeper friend Nielleke. He appears to be utterly alone with his son
inside the Stedelijk museum, but is then seen chatting with the barista while
ordering a coffee afterward. It is
possible that blasé is too incompatible with the vibrancy of unique identity
the brand is seeking to establish.
The
profiles that include ambulatory children are even more mixed in the
consciousness portrayed. Joy’s family
(profile #6, Los Angeles) actively engages with farmer’s market musicians and a
vendor playing hopscotch. And the baby-wearing that occurs in profile #2 (Nyoro
and Rinko, Tokyo) introduces and heightens interpersonal consciousness, as do
scenes in that profile where children are apparently oblivious to the personal
space of others. Indeed, once children
and their own volition are introduced, it becomes complicated for the films to
keep the focus on the adults’ experience with the stroller, which is really
what they are trying to sell. The
children’s greater engagement with their environments becomes a secondary, more
ephemeral focus of the films and a more difficult, though not altogether
impossible, factor to brand and sell. Likely
for this reason footage of the children is kept to a minimum in each of the
City Profiles.
Simmel’s
description of the metropolitan man simply doesn’t ring true for the
metropolitan baby, “The metropolitan type of man…exists in a thousand individual
variants- develops an organ protecting him against the threatening currents and
discrepancies of his external environment which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his
heart.”
These children are, at best, still developing that protective organ. Their
response to their environment is far more conscious and sensitive than that of
their adult counterparts. Their
unpredictable interactions with their environment are likely why we see so
little of them in these profiles.
(Phoenix, profile 5, appears to do nothing but sleep in his stroller).
It is far more difficult for behavior with such a high level of consciousness
to be converted into a marketable, relatable identity directly corresponding
with the product.
Simmel’s
assumption that the metropolitan man has already developed callousness toward
the quantity of humanity he encounters is oddly silent about just how and when
he becomes that way. It appears that
metropolitan kids, despite having only known the city environment, do not
conform to Simmel’s expectations for urban behavior. Callousness is, then potentially as much an
adult tendency as a city-dweller’s tendency.
There
is a strong theme of incomparability, reminiscent of the paradoxical need
described by Simmel, running throughout these profile videos, as each profiled
parent appears to be firmly in control of their own destiny and the design of
their environment. Based on what is
presented it appears that discretionary time is a limitless resource for these
people, and that they use it to enrich their incomparable, unique, value-laden
lives with culturally rich, rather adult-centric activities. In short, they are the kind of chic that a
consumer might be willing to spend nearly $700 to self-inculcate.
This
imbuing of the product with implied social capital is likely to be an effective
marketing tool when considered relative to an audience fitting Simmel’s
description of a metropolitan man. “Life is composed more and more of these
impersonal contents and offerings which tend to displace the genuine personal
colorations and incomparabilities. This
results in the individual’s summoning the utmost in uniqueness and
particularization, in order to preserve his most personal core. He has to exaggerate this personal element in
order to remain audible even to himself.” Bugaboo
seems to believe Simmel’s claim that urban men (and women) are exceptionally
desperate to define their identity with exaggerated, even exorbitant
elements. The company recognizes a
willingness in its customers to invest in an otherwise rote product if they can
purposefully absorb it into their constructed identity. They cater to this
impulse.
Conclusions
and directions for future analysis
As
selling the consumer on the social capital (or “cool-factor”) of this product
becomes as important as demonstrating its tangible features, the extension of
the Bugaboo Bee advertising campaign into more user-content based social media
seems enormously effectual. The
invitation to consumers to essentially become a part of the brand, and ingrain
it into their own personal branding certainly reinforces the idea that this
product has the power to positively alter the identity of its owner. But the social media platform created by
Bugaboo also creates an augmented sense of control and particularity for those
who use it. Each participant who uses
the hashtag #beeinthecity on either of the larger social media platforms
Twitter or Instagram automatically has created for them their own gallery on
the Bee in the City website.
This empowering invitation to consumers to cultivate and curate an identity for
themselves, tied to this product, is likely to touch a powerful chord with an
urban dweller wrestling with the kind of insecurity Simmel describes.
These
social media platforms, and the potential they create for interacting with a
larger group of prospective peers than the pace of physical city life may
facilitate, also enlarges the sense of identity for users, for “Man does not
end with the limits of his body or the area comprising his immediate activity.
Rather it is the range of the person constituted by the sum of effects
emanating from him temporally and spatially.”
The sum of those effects can certainly seem amplified when they are instantly
shared with a receptive virtual audience.
In fact, participation in such a platform seems to simultaneously intensify
and circumvent different factors of Simmel’s metropolitan inner-life. On the one hand, online social mediums
dramatically increase both the pace and intensity of stimulation available to
users, and very likely affect the level of sensitivity and consciousness in
comparable ways. But conversely, in a
campaign like this there is an increase in the types of affirming, personal
interactions that seem poised to fill the need for “intimate emotional
relations between persons…founded in their individuality.”
The potential to have an increase in human interaction that is
disproportionately steeped in affirmation, like-mindedness, and intimacy
(relative to interpersonal experiences in a public urban area) creates an
environment of stimulation that does not foster a proportionate decrease in
social consciousness.
So
while the Bugaboo Bee campaigns seem to be about facilitating the needs of
families, they are more effectively fulfilling a goal of creating an illusion,
or possibly even a reality of social capital for the adults considering this
purchase. The material in the campaign
is ultimately only nominally about meeting physical, practical needs of the
children using the products, and far more about meeting emotional, social, and
psychological needs of the adults pushing them around. While children are mildly present in most of
the Bee in the City portion of the campaign, they are primarily tropes, and
their wills, interests, or volition are invisible compared to that of their
parents. The adult need for an
incomparable sense of self in urban environments becomes the ultimate driving
force and selling point of the ad campaign.
As
one looks across the spectrum of the entire product campaign, the trend is that
the less direct control the company had over the production of content, the
more the campaign becomes about lifestyle and identity and less about product
features. Once fully immersed in the
social media end of that spectrum, it no longer matters that the Bee is a
“complete urban stroller,” it matters that is a “chic stroller” poised to
positively affect the identity of the consumer. Bugaboo seems to be eager to subversively
embrace the cool-factor while purportedly focusing on more tangible features.
This
same spectrum also demonstrates a marked change in the appearance of
identifiable embodied persons. As the product information website and video
have a notable lack of human bodies, at the social media end of the spectrum,
the twitter feed is bursting with faces and their personalities. It appears that as social media platforms are
used to fulfill the need for establishing unique, unmistakable identity, then
the increase in stimulation available there may not result in a proportional
decrease in consciousness.
Based
on this example, many of Simmel’s observations about urban life still ring
true, but had he been able to observe the hyper-connectedness of the Internet
and social media, he may not have restricted his concern about overstimulation
to the city dweller. His principles of
filtering and reckoning are relevant for any person attempting to discriminate
and filter the quantity of content available online, regardless of location. The
intensely social and personal nature of many social media platforms may also
have given him pause. There seems to be
a gap in his 1903 theory when the content of the stimulation is deeply personal
and entrenched in social capital rather than the impersonality of a money
economy, as is evident in social media in the early 21st
century. Applying Simmel’s own theories
to cover this gap, we find a tension of overstimulation and fiscal reckoning
versus intimacy and unique identity that can be applied beyond the Bugaboo Bee
campaign to the evolving world of online social and commercial media.
Works
Cited
Putnam, Robert. (2000), “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community” (Simon and Schuster).
Simmel, Georg. (1903, Copyright 1950), “The Metropolis
and Mental Life” (The Free Press, New York) Copyright 1950.
Putnam, Robert. (2000),
“Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community” (Simon and
Schuster).
http://www.bugaboo.com/learn/bugaboo-bee
