Marketing can enable almost anything to be sold to the unsuspecting; for black to appear white and vice versa; and even the most wallet-wary to part with their money. It should be said, too, that marketing can also be a good thing and make people aware of products and services that can genuinely make a positive difference to their lives. For me, marketing tends to bring out my cynical side, so, it is with my full-on cynical journalist cap on that I approach the opportunity for fans of the band Broken Bells to download 3D printable merchandising.
3D printing is a buzzword. Buzzwords get audiences. Audiences are numbered targets for marketeers. Thousands, hopefully millions, potentially billions of people who are not yet aware that their lives will be better for parting with money in exchange for product Y or service Z. Journalists need buzzwords. I am a journalist. If 3D printing wasn’t a buzzword I wouldn’t be writing this.
If people are excited about ecological issues, put ‘environmentally friendly’ on your horse-meat masquerading as supermarket spaghetti bolognesi. If people are excited about smart-phones give your coffee vending machine a look like a smart-phone app layout. If the people are excited about 3D printing, throw in some 3D printable merchandising.
In terms of downloading random marketing items to 3D print all I can advise is think twice, asking yourself all the while whether this really will make your life more interesting and/or better. And if you decide yes, I can only encourage you to feel empowered, now able to make choices about the materials your custom manufacturing device prints them in.
In the realm of 3D printing, with its potential for creating more sustainable consumption cycles via biodegrable materials such as PLA, marketing merchandise could either go the direction of horsemeat, or solve the problem of packaging pointless pish for product appeal producing endless plastic waste that does nothing more than add to landfill sites that merely pollute.
Some may nod in agreement. Some may roll their eyes at my saying this. But today home 3D printing is a fledgling trend, a nascent technology. The more popular it becomes, the more plastic (among other materials) that it will use. I’d rather make a point out of this today, and often, than wait to see if millions of people are 3D printing pointless items only to sustain landfill sites in a few years time. I feel I’d be ignoring the wider issues otherwise.
That said, the marketing team behind Broken Bells have produced some quality looking items. The orb particularly captures the Zeitgeist of unusual geometric forms created by 3D printing. Broken Bells just happen to have fallen as a band when I have chosen marketing and 3D printing to be the subject. They are perfectly viable items to download to print if you you want them.
Do you need them? That’s for you to decide of course. But if you do, please print in PLA, or recycle after you are bored of looking at them within a few months. I’ll be saying this in articles about functionless marketing printables until it’s as habitual as associating condoms with safe sex. After all, a bit of plastic (or rubber!) can make a lot of difference.
