Sharp-Edged Beverage Marketing, The Red Bulletin Is a Product Worthy of Its Product.

The new “modern lifestyle magazine focusing on sport, people, art and culture” arrived in the Sunday edition of The Houston Chronicle and I’m real thankful. Otherwise, I would have missed Red Bull’s launch of the US edition of The Red Bulletin.

It’s the second month the sports-and-party drink has put more than a free million copies of the excellent publication in major metro newspapers like The Chron; the intro also included the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald and the New York Daily News.

I wish I could report that I’m squarely in its demographic – I’m not. But The Red Bulletin comes with a terrific range of people-oriented articles that are cleanly written: the edge doesn’t come from a fakey-hip style but from excellent copy. Add vivid photos and a powerful European design concept…this is an arresting property.

As mentioned in the AdAge launch announcement: Red Bull already publishes the magazine in countries including Great Britain, Germany, Poland, Austria, South Africa, New Zealand and Kuwait, with distribution totaling 3.4 million before the U. edition. Red Bull plans to add further editions later this year and in 2012.

I stopped an Outside subscription years ago as the quality of its writing (which was exceptionally high) fell off and the publication turned to full-time product flackery. My sub to Wired will be allowed to lapse because it has become an all-out product-sales hype machine with muddy direction and too many easy, smarmy articles.

The distinction I am pointing to is honesty. The Red Bulletin has been frank as well as smart in publicly owning its mission: support of global marketing efforts for the world’s best-selling energy drink (2010 saw a 15.8% increase in sales, worth US$1.5 billion).

Find and review a copy for yourself. The Red Bulletin is not going to drive me to buy the drink but my already deep interest in its marketing programs has taken another big jump. And the thinking part of Red Bull’s demographic will love it.

Chairman Meow! Combines Quirky Attraction, Chinese Propaganda Artform.

Last September, I was struck by an image that I stumbled over by accident: Chairman Meow, “Great Leader.” Among other visualizations, it’s the invention of designer Kevin McCormick. Since I’m a fan of Soviet-era art and design it is quirkily attractive. Not to mention, the Chairman has an immense range of friends, from Whippets of Mass Destruction (dogs) to Lolruses (marine mammals)…all available on ObeythePureBreed.com.

This is McCormick’s site on Cafepress.com and I thought it would give me a chance to explore a booming etail operation.

This is all down to the “T-shirt economy,” so called by Clive Thompson of Wired because creative people can turn their ideas into businesses by developing clothing and other decorated apparel. On Cafepress, according to reported figures, all this was worth more than $100 million in 2007, with an average 20% in profit.

I think McCormick’s designs deliver imagination and parody at the same time. He himself says, “I started combining propaganda art with heroic portraits of dogs. The designs also allowed me to make social and political commentary.”

His emails filled in some blanks for me, first about his visuals: The designs do resonate with buyers. People are really passionate about their pets, and they think that their breed is the best. My style isn’t original, but I think the concept is. It flips the idea of obedience in relation to pets, and I think seeing a Chihuahua as a dictator definitely is seen as surprising and amusing.
How is Cafepress working out? As far as marketing, a lot of that is trial and error. I have to sometimes be creative, as selling t-shirts through Cafepress is convenient and great, but not high profit margins. To make advertising worthwhile, I really have to make sure I’m reaching the right niches.
Is Cafepress a viable sales mechanism? One thing that I’ve done lately is a sticker campaign, where I distribute free Chairman Meow stickers from the site for people to put in public. People have responded well, and I've sent them all over the world. Not sure if that will translate to sales, but it’s fun knowing that the stickers are on almost every continent! (And new 2009 stickers are now available, BTW.)

I’ve highlighted other examples of this sort of design, like the art of Laura Smith, here. There’s just something about Chairman Meow that tickles me big-time – perhaps because it feels right. At the same time, McCormick is following, even expanding on, the etailer’s creed (according to Thompson): Let your content roam freely online, so it generates as large an audience as possible.
Content wants to be free. But remember that it is fans that drive sales so don’t lock your fans out. This is hard to do for business-to-business marketers unless you get real lucky.

Something else going on right now: Soviet-era art continues to have an impact on the street...none more recently that the Shepard Fairey-designed Obama Inauguration Poster. Designer McCormick says he admires street artist Fairey. But I’ll take McCormick’s lighthearted approach over heavy propaganda every time. Support world domination. Obey the kitty!

Thanks to Kevin McCormick and Obeythepurebreed.com for the excellent material.

Guarding Trademarks

For brand marketers, there's a good, quick briefing on the proper selection of trademarks: Read the “What’s in a Name?” article from BevNET Innovation, Issue 2, by lawyer Gregg R Sultan, here.

Long-form, though, it struck me that it’s relatively rare when information technology and copyright protection intersect. Today’s one of those days.

We’re at the dawn of what WIRED is now calling the “Petabyte Age.” That’s when there’s so much information available to us, the sheer mass of data demands what WIRED editor Chris Anderson says is an entirely different approach. He further pronounces: The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world.

Very cool thinking, yes? Except that one of the examples in the WIRED feature article is a DOD program called Essence – the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics. Though “100 megabytes of data come in every day,” the government can’t nail down the source(s) of the current salmonella outbreak that’s clobbered 1,000 people.

Big data may well become miraculous. But mistakes will still happen if your project is “untouched by human thought.” So we come back to creating and protecting a trademark and Sultan’s article. Here’re some snippets:

Businesses tend to pick names which describe a product to immediately alert the consumer to the product’s nature (e.g., “Lemon Lime Soda”)…in the long run, you probably won’t be able to distinguish your beverage from others or protect the name.

Sierra Mist for lemon-lime soda…is considered a suggestive mark because it doesn’t describe the product, but conveys the idea that it’s refreshing. Marks like these are easier to protect and enforce…

As I said up top, the entire article is concise; worth your reviewing as a “best practices” reminder. Radio Corporation of America was fine in 1919. Now, 90 years later, it wouldn’t hold up as a corporate or brand name. This is what lawyers are for in our day and age, along with creative people who understand what makes one brand name more powerful, more useful and more protectable than another.

It doesn’t matter how much data you crunch (and there are software programs that’ll invent brand name options by the thousands). Creating a great brand is a human endeavor; guarding its IP value is up to human beings every time. Every time.

Appreciation to Gregg R Sultan, Esq., for his white paper, © 2008, BevNET.com, Inc. Post art by Prism Design, Inc. Many thanks to Susan Reeves and Stacy Allen. The art is the binary (data) form of a client brand name – a free bottle of wine to the first person who identifies it.