Recovery Ahead? The “Reset Economy” in Marketing, Advertising and Promotion.

BrandWeek’s Elaine Wong interviewed Steve Pacheco, marketing communications director at FedEx, because the company’s not going to be advertising on the Super Bowl again this year. One thing he said goes like this:

There is a new [way of thinking] in America and beyond where folks are sort of reexamining events. It’s been called the “reset economy” to some degree, and so, we’re giving every marketing investment greater scrutiny than before. In this case, we want to leverage the FedEx Orange Bowl investment in a more powerful and impactful way, [to the point where] we’ll be well served not to have advertised in the Super Bowl, and to have our own Super Bowl with the FedEx Orange Bowl.

Pacheco forgot to credit Jeff Immelt with coining the phrase, at least according to Business Week. The biz-mag quoted the GE CEO himself when he named our current econ challenge the “Reset economy.” He feels that people’s expectations are in the process of being ‘reset’ from the past decade.

Immelt says the reset will impact everything from what’s sold and produced to the prices we pay. That’s an obvious view, but Mary Jo Martin, principal of research firm Cynapsus, agrees with him about resetting expectations: “Things are likely not going to be like the good old days for quite some time – if ever. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.”

To Trevor Eade, Director of Marketing/Communications at EMS, it’s like going back to using a stick-shift instead of an automatic transmission. “Our programs were on automatic, with a smooth momentum. (Everyone had a wonderful ride.) Now we’re learning how to drive all over again, with bumps and crunches when shifting.

“We’re forced to use fewer resources and adopt new techniques. We’ll get to the same destination but a little more frazzled.”

And for CITGO E-Communications Manager Beth Palmer the focus is broader, keeping both programs and executions in mind. “The reset economy means that in 2010 we continue to scrutinize and re-think every aspect of HOW we deliver,” she maintains, “while still dazzling our customers.”

Whether you’re frazzled or dazzled, NPR host/novelist Kurt Andersen can help. A few weeks back, the AMA interviewed him about the start-fresh state-of-mind. It’s a pretty damn encouraging view titled, “Hitting the reset button.” He finishes up the transcript this way:

As companies die – and as terrifying as that can be for people in manufacturing, retailing, media, and all the obviously challenged industries – people don't stop wanting the things they provided.

You might be encouraged by reading the entire transcript. (His similarly titled book Reset is enjoyable too.)

Then visualize a new game in which marketing, advertising and promotion are still in demand because your clients and prospects won’t stop wanting the things that your company delivers. That’s the right reset.

PS. Thanks to AMA-ers Trevor Eade, Mary Jo Martin and Beth Palmer for participating in this post; and to Prism Design for help with the photo-illustration.

Save the Wild Rice – for Thanksgiving 2009 at the Martins’ House.

Happy Thanksgiving. This year, we’ve accepted an invitation to spend the day with David and MaryJo Martin. While planning for this, it struck me that we never see much in the way of advertising for wild rice.

First of all, I suppose, is because it’s…wild. Second, it’s been a cottage industry. Ricing was a two-people-per-boat proposition – poler and knocker. The poler moved the canoe through the rice bed. The knocker bent the stems over and struck ‘em together, so the rice fell into the bottom of the canoe. Some kernels fell into the water to re-seed the rice beds.

That’s the way wild rice is still harvested on certain American Indian reservations – by hand, in boats. In 2001, Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Land Recovery Project wrote:

Wild rice or zizania palustris is actually a grass, sharing only some genetic strains with other rice crops internationally. That special nature is part of what drives its niche market and the millions of dollars now behind the industry. Over the past thirty years what the Creator gave to the Anishinaabeg has become a profit making enterprise for many others.

The $21 million wild rice business is largely dominated by just a few paddy rice firms. Their interest in genetic work on wild rice stems largely from their own economic interests, not environmental, humanitarian, or tribal interests.

Wild rice is Minnesota’s official state grain, with 4-6 million pounds produced annually. Minnesota is one of the world’s largest cultivated wild rice-growing states. But California is now tops in wild rice production. And there is marketing for wild rice: A California Wild Rice Advisory Board; a Minnesota Cultivated Wild Rice Council too. Together, they support the International Wild Rice Association. Visit the IWRA website and you’ll find some mighty nice recipes.

Today you won’t have click through. Barbara’s got her pretty-darn-famous wild rice dish ready to take to the Martins’ house for dinner – we’re looking forward to the get-together. The Barbara Nytes-Baron Genuine Minnesota Wild Rice Casserole recipe goes like this.

First, get some wild rice – we’d be glad if you purchased it from one of the tribal stores up north like the White Lake Ojibwe or Red Lake Nation. (“Cultivated wild rice” is an oxymoron.)

INGREDIENTS
1 cup wild rice
1 can chicken stock
½ cup dried fruit, hydrated in wine
¼ cup dried mushrooms, hydrated in wine
¼ cup chopped onions
¼ cup chopped black olives
¼ cup chopped celery
¼ cup chopped nuts
Butter or olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

PREPARATIONS
Soak fruit and mushrooms
Sauté the onions, olives, celery and nuts in the butter or oil
Mix all in a 1-quart casserole
Bake with the turkey for 1 to 2 hours (usually at 325°F)
Stir during second hour, cover with foil

Rice should be cooked and liquid evaporated – add more liquid (wine, stock) if the rice needs to cook more. Serve hot. May your 2009 Thanksgiving holiday be blessed.

Big Texan

I told Philippe Holtzweiler about this. I mentioned it to at least two Belgians who looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. Half a dozen Scots were extremely skeptical, if not downright disbelieving: Nobody, nobody in the world, could eat a 72-ounce steak (that's 2.4 kilos, right?) in 60 minutes.

We're talking about The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, friends, where the current record-holder is a young man weighing in at 195 pounds – he ate the entire piece of meat plus all the fixings in just 53 minutes. The restaurant and its challenge has been around for years and is well-known among aficionados of Americana.

(If you eat the entire steak and all the fixins' you get the entire meal free. We were told that someone tries the challenge approximately once a week – and one person out of seven is successful.)

I first ran across it, oh, a dozen or more years ago when Mary Jo Martin (now of Cynapsus), Alan Vera and I came up to Amarillo to work with a company called Corporate Systems...we ate at the place although even then I had zero inclination to try eating a single piece of beef as big as a dinner plate and almost three inches thick.

The restaurant is still booming – Barbara and I visited it this evening on our way into Amarillo, our stopover on this week's road trip to Denver. It's still serving great gobbets of beef, though they've added slots and an electronic shooting gallery opposite the bar (I don't remember these last time I was up this way.

And yes, the restaurant still offers the humongous steak and it's even more intimidating now that we're trying to cut down. Nevertheless, we had a couple of good pieces of beef (not even in the same county, size-wise, as the 72-ouncer). We resisted our waitress's blandishments about dessert – imagine trying to eat a piece of chocolate cake the same dimensions as a Hoyo de Monterey cigar box!

I wanted you to know, though, that if there's such a thing as “wretched excess” (or even died-and-gone-to-Heaven steak and lots of it) you can still drop into Amarillo. If it weren't a 600-plus-mile car trip, I'd have driven the gaggle of OTC visitors up here myself, just to see their eyes bug out.

You'll just have to come up yourselves. Oh yes, special for Cameron Wallace: The Big Texan has Stella Artois on draft for $3.95...how many glasses do you want with your steak?