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Marketers see value in counterculture values
target.com
Target's Summer of Love collection includes Woodstock-themed posters, CDs, apparel, picnic blankets, coolers and mugs.
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Published: July 15, 2009
There was no merch table at Woodstock.
The estimated 400,000 who attended had to leave perhaps the most famous rock concert of all time with only their memories and maybe a ticket stub to commemorate the event.
Almost 40 years later, that void has been filled.
Visit a Target department store and you can outfit your own Woodstock nation in souvenir T-shirts. And wouldn't a Woodstock reversible picnic blanket and beach towel have come in handy back at Yasgur's Farm?
And surely the free granola, the "breakfast in bed for 400,000," as festival emcee Wavy Gravy put it, would have tasted better served on Woodstock paper plates, cleaned up with Woodstock napkins and washed down with a swig from a Woodstock tumbler.
The swag makes its debut on the eve of Woodstock's 40th anniversary, an era-defining event that lasted for three days, Aug. 15-18, 1969.
It's part of a collection called Summer of Love, which includes CDs, posters, apparel, picnic blankets, coolers and mugs, says Target spokesperson Leah Guimond.
The collection features "'60s-inspired fashion — bold, floral prints and striped patterns."
Woodstock, that outdoor gathering of peace, love and great rock 'n' roll, now inspires "fresh and trend-forward products," Guimond says. A suggestion that those trend-forward products could be pre-mud-splattered for authenticity is met with a polite "I don't get it" laugh.
So has Woodstock been reduced to a fashion statement, worn for a season and discarded?
Yes and no.
The concert's "anti-war, anti-capitalism" message certainly gets diluted, says Charlene Callahan, social psychology professor and acting provost at New College in Sarasota.
What's left is "a nice, convenient, positive image" with appeal to people "who don't want to know the details, especially marketers," Callahan says.
But that doesn't mean that at least some of the message isn't getting through.
"What happened at Woodstock, the key term is 'counterculture,' " Callahan says.
She sees some of that same dissatisfaction with prevailing values today, and a quest among young people to identify themselves as counterculture – against hyper-capitalism and war.
Woodstock helped youth of the '60s establish a group identity; and young people borrowing an identity from a previous generation isn't new, Callahan says.
"That goes back to the Renaissance, and the Beat generation of the '50s was borrowed by the hippies," Callahan says. "They buy into a myth and shave off the rough edges. It's a shortcut to a value system they may not really understand."
It has a power marketers do understand, though, Callahan notes. The music of Woodstock resonates powerfully as well.
"The music you listen to conveys who you think you are and how you want to be seen," Callahan says. "Researchers talk about musical 'badges.' A Woodstock T-shirt is a musical badge that says 'I'm different. I have values that go back to the '60s.' "
"If you're a kid searching for a way to convey a different identity, then there's Woodstock, this mythical event that represented something really good: peace, love and rock 'n' roll," Callahan says.
Besides, who knows where seeing the Woodstock legend on a beach towel or picnic blanket might lead?
"Hopefully, the kids will see that and it will cause them to pursue it further and check out the music," says Hugh Romney, better known as Wavy Gravy.
Romney, now a 73-year-old "activist clown" based in California, was also Woodstock's head of security. He told reporters his staff, "the please force" (as in "Hey, please don't do that"), would keep the peace with "seltzer bottles and cream pies."
If anyone embodies Woodstock's spirit, it's Wavy Gravy. If anyone has a right to be outraged by its commercialization, it's him.
And if anyone can find the bright spot in it, that's him, too.
"They're not just gonna wear a T-shirt that says Woodstock unless they have a clue what it was about," Romney insists. "The message transcends generations."
That message "has to do with not only peace and love but with sharing and caring and people taking care of each other."
It's a lot to ask of a T-shirt. But it's a start.
Music critic Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.
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