What did you do on the interwebs before Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest? When you didn’t have a Feedly full of design blogs, food blogs, and lifestyle blogs to read? Do you even remember? I do. I used to visit Vivian Lives every…single…day.
Does anyone else remember Vivian Livingston, the (literally) animated New York City marketing/PR executive dreamed up by real-life marketing/PR executive Sherrie Krantz?
The site is gone now, but back in 2000 with a few clicks of a mouse you could enter Vivian’s world. Kind of like we do now when we visit our favorite lifestyle blogs, except that Vivian and her life was a complete work of fiction.
I checked this site all of the time to see what Vivian was up to. I read her diary faithfully. It was my favorite “lifestyle blog” of 2000-2002ish. I kept up with her on her “live” Viv-cam to see what was going on with her during her day (pre-Twitter and Instagram voyeurism). I went inside her apartment to see what new books she was reading (pre-Goodreads) and what movies she was watching. I looked through her clothes, hung out on the message boards with other “Viv-Heads,” peeked into her refrigerator, and was completely obsessed with this made-up woman and her made-up world. It was awesome.
“Vivian” even got a publishing deal at Random House, “co-writing” her books with Sherrie Krantz. And why wouldn’t she? The fictional It Girl’s site was generating over six million visits a month, according to the Vivian Lives article on BrandChannel.
It’s interesting to think about that online community now, the sponsorships that fictional Vivian Livingston had compared to the similar ways that brands work with real live bloggers today. If your favorite blogger hosts a giveaway for some really cool product, you start to associate it with her. You’re like, “OMG, there are those ah-may-zing Ink Dish plates from Alyson Fox! The Jealous Curator has those. I want them too!”
I remember when Vivian got a bright red Jeep Liberty. She and her BFF Sophie would have all kinds of road trip adventures. Sometimes her dog, Omelette, would come along too.
In 2002 I had to get a new car. I bought a black Jeep Liberty. It works. Just saying.
P.S. Danielle – Give me the plates.