Snooki's handbags and the "Jersey Drift"

A week or so ago, a fun story made the rounds about the problems luxury handbag makers are having with Snooki, the surprising breakout star of MTV's Jersey Shore. As fans of the show know, Snooki almost never leaves the house without a designer handbag of one brand or another. It started with her ubiquitous purse from Coach, but since then she's branched out to a number of designers. What gives?

Well it turns out that all the various luxury handbag makers are sending Snooki  free handbags. But not their own handbags. According to the New York Observer:

Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here's the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other's bags! Competitors' bags!

Call it what you will — "preemptive product placement"? "unbranding"? — either way, it's brilliant, and it makes total sense. As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.

This is not a new problem. In the 2003 edition of Big Brother UK, London model Tânia do Nascimento gained notoriety for prancing about the house in a Burberry bikini, bragging about how she would use any winnings from the show to buy herself a set of breast implants. She was the leading edge of a bigger problem for the brand, which was its growing adoption by "chavs" (who are basically the British version of Jersey Shore guidos and ginas). 

And this was itself just part of a more general phenomenon, which Paul Fussell (in his essential book, Class) calls "prole drift" -- the tendency for upscale products and experiences to become popular with the working classes: 

Everything in the modern world drifts prole-ward all the time. Even the better classes have to wait in long lines, the quality of food degenerates, airline seating grows more cramped. In another 100 years, there will be no visible difference between the Soviet Union and the United States."

But if Burberry's response to the chavification of its brand was largely defensive (it simply stopped production of many of the lower-priced items that came in its signature plaid), the anti-Snooki gambit is something far more aggressive. Instead of waiting for their own products to get the Jersey Shore taint, they are waging class war against their major competitors.

This is an entirely predictable ratcheting up of the stakes, derived from the long-standing feature of branding, which is that it is largely expressed through negative preferences. It isn't what you actually consume that defines your taste, but what you wouldn't get caught dead wearing, driving, or eating.

But we need a better name for it than "unbranding" or "pre-emptive product placement." Does anyone have a good suggestion? "Jersey Drift" I like, except it's too passive. Send me an email if you have an idea.