Social Control

Despite my best intentions, it isn’t possible to capture everything that was presented this morning at “Demystifying Web 2.0: Using Social Media to Reach Healthcare Audiences.”

This summer’s seminar, put on by the Healthcare Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association-Houston, can be briefly reviewed here. However, the event went for two hours solid and could have gone another two – it was a full house listening to challenging speakers (four of them) with every ounce of attention they could muster at 7.30 on a Friday morning.

The basic plot: How healthcare organizations can or ought to use social media, like blogs; Facebook and MySpace; videos and podcasts to build better interactions between their brands (institutions) and their stakeholders – patients, patients’ families and friends, etc. There are already a lot of players in all these arenas: I wish you could have listened to the presentations.

The moderator was Katie Laird, of sunny disposition, an indefatigable blogger who’s Strategic Advisor for Houston-based Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.

Then there were two speakers each from the hospital side and the social media side – and this is really where deep issues could have surfaced, given enough time.

Hospitals? An exemplary case history was presented by Jennifer Texada of UTMDACC – that’s MD Anderson Cancer Center and a mouthful in any conversation. Texada presented an array of current programs and future plans that demonstrated how MD Anderson is building communities of interest among its patients and well as some of its staff. Chris Ferris countered with warm humor how far St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System has yet to go…although his organization is making progress.

From the Social Media Enablers’ side, passionate Paul Griffiths came in from Boston to present the MedTouch point of view – he’s the firm’s CEO and one of the leaders of social marketing for healthcare organizations. Griffiths firmly believes that information ought to be free, free (as in the “don’t tie me down” school of free) – and that no organization needs marketing copywriters to develop content. You understand that I’m not thrilled with this later idea from the perspective of my life’s profession, but he is a true visionary about the immense capabilities of social media and a thrilling speaker.

He was seconded by the compassionate Jay Drayer of Houston, founder of CareFlash. His firm developed and has deployed very successful “community” tools for putting patients and their families on the Web. CareFlash is remarkable story in itself.

In the seams of these presentations, there were several elemental struggles implied but never explored fully.

One is the issue of control. The healthcare facilities’ very real need for professional and legal control of content in social media environments was admitted – and some institutions can change to accommodate Griffith’s conviction that (eventually) the needs of the patient/caregiver community will win out despite legal departments and HIPAA laws. This is partially an issue of “stodge” and partially of medicine’s attention on cures.

Another issue never quite address was the other leg of the healthcare delivery system – the physicians. Many hospitals today are filled with service teams (nurses, techs, swampers, etc.) Doctors are frequently independent contractors and so are often not even billed through the same system. Unless key parts of a specific institution such as MD Anderson are featured in social media, how do you get doctors to be as socially open as patients want them to be?

Some hospitals don’t even allow patients or their families to access the Worldwide Web from inside the facility – there’s no WiFi, no “public computers” available for use.

It is likely that social media for healthcare audiences have developed way faster than most healthcare institutions or practitioners want or desire. These particular stakeholders see their stakeholders as packages to be conveyed through their systems (as Griffiths pointed out in an illustration of “the old way”).

Maybe this cast will be assembled again, for the edification of other attendees. I think you missed the beginnings of an immensely provocative conversation revolving around issues of social control – a tug of war happening now at your nearby hospital.

Thanks to the Healthcare SIG of AMA-Houston and all the speakers. Photograph © Yanik Chauvin from Dreamstime.com

Pompeiian Correctness

The Pompeii exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston ends in a few days. It’s an enjoyable and often striking collection of materials of all kinds, with lots of visitors. The displays are supposed to help us…connect with the victims whose hopes and fears were not so unlike ours today – that what the Museum’s website says.

After you complete the second-floor exhibit, there’s a short film with voiceover, demonstrating what happens when a volcano like Mt Vesuvius blows up – as it did in the Year 79. After the shots of booming pyroclastic flows and solidified tephra, the voiceover solemnly announces that because so many lives were lost centuries ago in Pompeii and Herculaneum, we (the exhibition’s viewing public) should be careful where we interact with nature.

This is crap. The mountain’s “green, wooded slopes” were home to farms, fields, animals and people for centuries. Until the storied eruption in 79 AD, Vesuvius hadn’t blown in 700 years.

MFAH did a fine job marketing this exhibition. But the victims’ “hopes and fears” are nothing like our own; the eruption caught the citizens of Pompeii completely by surprise.

Frankly, I wished MFAH would go startle somebody else with its witless pronouncements of ecological peril.

Painting: The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 1777, Pierre-Jacques Volaire.

Father’s Day

Rather than blog about the considerable advertising surrounding this “also-ran” day – will Xbox sales get a bump out of the Father’s Day event?, e.g. – I wanted something more personal.

On a day like today, I can be as old-fashioned as I like – say, quoting the Earl of Chesterfield’s continual advice to his son. There’s a marvelous Father’s Day column about Chesterfield by Eric Ormsby, in which Ormsby observes: Inattention, for Chesterfield, was a profound flaw and the one from which all others proceeded. “Want of thought,” as he put it, “is either folly or madness.” Why? Because success in the world depends upon quick and meticulous observation.

Or I can take you modern. Contemporary cartoonist Dan Piraro has said, You kids today have it easy. When I was a kid everything was HUGE. My dad was nearly four times bigger than me. You couldn’t even see the tops of counters...Then gradually everything became smaller until it was the manageable size it is today.

Dads don’t get a lot of credit, except when they do – and that’s when we appreciate it the most. (I’m speaking for all the dads ever now.)

There’s a photo that accompanies this post, of Brian Sabel helping son Matthew prepare for his bar mitzvah – by tying his tie. Maybe not the most profound picture ever taken…but utterly and completely true in the moment. There is no inattention here. And even though Brian is “nearly four times bigger” than Matthew now, Matt’ll will discover that things become more manageable as he grows up.

I had time to enjoy my daddy but not enough. I miss him to this day.

(BTW, it was Brian and Joel Sabel’s father, Sherman Sabel, who came to tell me of my father’s sudden and early death. It was Joel who took the father-son photo you see here, last month in Denver. I hope he won’t mind me using it here.)

To dads: Remember if you can that your futurity is in your hands. There’s often more than one kind of tie involved. Happy Father’s Day to you all.

The Client

Grant Johnston, Wood Group Gas Turbine Services, at WINDPOWER 2008.

Wind Power

Marketing and advertising folks presume it is self-evident that marketing is essential to organic growth. That’s not a universal truth, or even a revealed one, as far as many engineering and sales professionals are concerned. But if it’s true, some people at Wood Group Gas Turbine Services are getting it right, IMO.

I did attend WINDPOWER 2008 last week to visit what is now Renewable Energy Services – a new business unit for client GTS. This part of the global energy services company maintains and repairs all types of turbines and generators, from aviation engines (smaller) to heavy industrial units (much, much larger). And effective power generation from the wind depends on…turbines and generators. So Renewable Energy Resources is taking its extensive MRO experience into the wind energy sector.

Prism Design created a booth and handout materials specifically for this new unit, and for this trade show. I’m glad to have participated in it all – particularly since this was another opportunity to adapt the KEEP ON TURNING brand I helped GTS create and maintain over the past two years.

It has also meant that the company can market its brand (as well as its services) much more strongly to an up-and-coming industry sector, like wind energy.

Now, recall what we said here about brand consistency? It’s a good idea (and a good return on investment) to build on elements that are already in the client’s brand vocabulary.

The branding challenges for GTS at WINDPOWER 2008 were graphic – all wind turbine pictures look the same. Susan Reeves, Terry Teutsch and Stacy Allen turned what could have been an ordinary photo into a landscape artfully fitted to the 20-foot-long booth space.

Take a close look at the top photo – a lot of art went into that horizon line. It stretches from one end of the booth to the other and reinforces the KEEP ON TURNING line beautifully.

By using the GTS brand elements in the handout materials, and ensuring that everyone who staffed the booth was fitted out with the distinctive Wood Group “gold” long-sleeve shirt, this new Renewable Energy Services group accomplished two marketing goals.

First, it picked up a bit of a…tailwind…from the Offshore Technology Conference, where Wood Group had a strong presence. Second, it introduced its targeted services to the wind energy market in a targeted – and branded – way. Think of this, then, as brand power.

The real compliment goes to the client, for recognizing what needed to happen at WINDPOWER 2008.

PS: Susan suggested I label this post “Show Turn Two” because it’s a look at another Wood Group Gas Turbine Services booth effect. Cute headline fer shure. But Signalwriter headlines are two words long and I try to stay consistent – even if I don’t always achieve the ideal.

Nail Gun

Do not try this at home – though George Chandler did. A nail gun “accidentally” fired a 2-1/2” nail into the top of his head. Uh-huh.

According to KCCT-TV (Kansas City, MO), this particular mishap occurred last week while Chandler, in Shawnee, KS, and a friend were doing a backyard project: The nail gun hose became tangled, causing the tool to fire one nail. Chandler said Monday he told his friend he didn't know where the nail went, but he felt a sting on the top of his head.

Thinking really, really hard, they soon realized that the nail was driven into Chandler’s head. So they called an ambulance and he was rushed to a hospital. An ER doctor used a common claw hammer to remove the nail.

He’s quoted as saying he feels “very lucky, very, very lucky” to have escaped serious injury. This unusual incident caught my eye because it doesn’t speak very well for the nail gun itself.

Interruptive safety note, via the Compliance Center: Nail guns have the capacity to fire several nails per second at a velocity over 1,000 feet per second. Although these physics will allow a nail gun to fire a projectile almost 4 inches into fully stressed concrete, when accidentally applied to the human body, the resulting damage can be severe…injuries to more critical areas of the body, such as the head, neck, and chest may occur.

That being said, this is a blog about marketing and advertising. Look at Ezinearticles.com for this helpful article: If you're in the market for a nail gun then you've either been watching too many B horror flicks or you've decided that an upcoming project is going to have too many nails for you to hammer in by hand. Choosing the right nail gun…and going to the hardware store or shopping online will be a much better experience for you if you go prepared with a little bit of knowledge.

I love the article – it’s helpful; very clear about choosing a nail gun based on building bird houses or barns – a hundred of ‘em a year. Which leads back what brand we’re dealing with here. It is unknown.

The news article didn’t identify the brand. Was it the Bostich 2-1/2” coil siding nailer (say, the well-known Model N66C-1) or the Max CN565S Coil Siding Nailer, selling new for a pricey $378 from ToolsPlus.com?

(I hope it wasn’t the new Makita AN922 because I had a torrid but very brief relationship – about 55 seconds – with Señorita Makita 2004…the 2008 models are lovely but whew!…this is advertising the old-fashioned way. I swear, though, the poster was for my son Doug, not me.)

Chandler wasn’t killed, thank the Lord. Still, the nail gun doesn’t seem to have done a very good job – or have I been watching too many B movies? The world doesn’t need another ineffective nail gun, you know.

On the other hand, imagine the ads you could do for this particular nail gun. I see a Chandler testimonial as merely the starting point.

PS: Note the last line in the Ezine article: Be safe, have fun - in that order! The x-ray above is not that of handyman Chandler. RLB.

“Poopzapper” Portrayed

Second installment, also from Graham Rust, is an “advanced technology” answer to the Fedog bag set I posted about yesterday.

The most effective solution, Graham wrote, is a team of helmeted guys riding along the pavement on quad bikes equipped with long vacuum cleaners, zapping (rather than “scooping”) the poop, a triumph of form over content.

Then: Rich! By an almost unbelievable coincidence, on the square below our office, Prague’s waste company is running a PR event, and so I have a photograph (above) of the poopzapper to add a multimedia dimension to your blog!

You have the thanks of the world, Graham. Nowhere else (not even on the Prague Municipal Waste Management website – I looked) has this powerful secret weapon in the war against dog poop been revealed. And Prague is doing PR events about it!

Prague Bag

This is a simple post about dogs and the people who love them. Sort of. It’s also a post about cities. Human ingenuity. Advertising. Let’s start with the fact that Rob Schoenbeck brought me a pass-along souvenir from his recent trip overseas: a Fedog bag (that’s it on the left).

In Czech, this is papírové sáčky na psí exkrementy – a paper set for dog crap. It was invented in 1995 because, “The daily amount of dogs’ excrements comes up to 20 tons in Prague alone.”

It’s a combination unit, the paper bag plus scooper plus advertising.

See how it works on the website – it offers an animated demo. “The paper bag is easily degradable in the nature. The scoop minimizes the aversion to pick up the excrement. The bag together with its content can be composted. The full bags can disposed of by burning, depositing in dumping grounds or recycled by composing.” I’m not making fun of the English writing here – I couldn’t even start in the original tongue.

I went straight to my long-time Dialogue International resource, Graham Rust, the great and powerful principal of Rust2 in The Czech Republic. He ‘splained:

Prague is plagued with dogs. It’s not like Bucharest which apparently has packs of feral dogs roaming the streets, but like citizens of all around the world, Praguers just don’t see the problem with keeping a huge animal in a fifth floor apartment in the city centre.

Some time ago the city installed special litter bits with bag dispensers (left) and sometimes you even see them being used.

The other glut we suffer from is advertising, on anything which stays still long enough, so it’s no surprise to see someone trying to sell space on this sharply targeted medium. Not sure there will be many takers. Public opinion on advertising is pretty low, but things are not so bad that we deserve a literal interpretation of McCluhan’s “the medium is the message.”

The engineer in me (of which there is precisely none, really) is intrigued with the concept of putting the carboard scooper inside the bag and putting the whole set in a handy dispenser. The city-dweller in me wishes to see this in the US, though we seem more conscious of the effect of many dogs on local sidewalks – and more willing to do something about it at the moment of generation.

The ad guy says, “This is outstanding – for somebody else’s clients.” And actually, I could see some real value if an entire city program was underwritten by a major veterinary clinic in the area or even a dog food manufacturer like Purina®. I can see Nestlé Purina PetCare underwriting an effort like this.

As Graham notes, the Fedog set is a precisely targeted medium – the smart advertiser could use that to its advantage and add a bit more environmental shine to its brand.

As I said, go to Fedog.cz – Czech it out for yourself.

Boom Brands

I just got back from the Permian Basin and the joint is jumpin’. Barbara and I traveled up to Denver on US 87 through Amarillo and back to Houston through eastern New Mexico to Fort Stockton, then I-10 homeward. I don’t think we drove from one horizon to another without seeing at least one workover under way, sometimes more. Probably isn’t a single truck-mounted rig or vac truck west of the Mississippi that’s available for new work.

At yesterday’s close, oil is $127 a barrel and gas is $11.70/MMBtu. Activity is up everywhere, from the Permian Basin of west Texas to the Barnett Shale of north central Texas and eastern New Mexico as well as in the dusty Panhandle and the Anadarko Basin of western Oklahoma. With so much money on the table, you’re looking at recompletions, infill drilling, installation of secondary recovery projects – and everything else that’ll squeeze more oil and gas out of existing reservoirs.

For energy-related brand-watchers, it’s a boom time. It’s no surprise to see the “bigs” like Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes.

But, e.g., I ran into a long-time colleague at OTC: Donna Smith is now Director of Communications for Stallion® Oilfield Services. Having thereby raised my consciousness – and thanks to her efforts for the company – I must have spotted every orange-and-black Stallion logo-ed vehicle and field office from Centerville (outbound) to Ozona (inbound). Key® Energy Services is out there in strength. There are hundreds more contractors and subs out in the field right now and you can play a sort of drive-by brand bingo on the roads out west.

Reading the papers, you’ll recognize that everyone is unhappy with the cost of oil or – more critically – the price of a gallon of gas at the corner station. I’d ask you, as marketers, to think about our “situation” from several, quite different angles.

First, the economic impact of oil and gas prices is creating opportunities for companies (and their employees) nationwide. That’s an economic good…as well as a particularly fine time for strongly branded firms with long-established customer relationships.

Second, this in an excellent period in which you should be building on and communicating the positives of your energy business brand. Let your stakeholders know if you are, in fact, doing well – and why. You’ll be creating a foundation of good brand impressions for the down cycle if and when it comes.

Third – and this is a personal note – maybe once time soon some oil company executive will stand up and ask Dianne Feinstein, “Just what, Senator, is your problem with the concept of profit?”

That’s enough for one weekend. All the best for a great June!

Any omissions or errors are my own. Photo © Jim Parkin Dreamstime.com

Inconvenient Brand

I swear: Driving past the highway off-ramp in lower Colorado at about 75 mph, the green sign said “Loaf ’N Lug.” I even pointed Barbara’s eyes to the exit, saying there was a convenience store called “Loaf ’N Lug.” (It’s the curse of speed, I tell you.)

I thought to myself, well, there are some pretty funny C-store names out in the world…I can see a billboard or TV commercial suggesting that customers “loaf on in and lug some stuff out.” Sort of a country-cousin approach to branding.

Come to find out the name of the outfit is Loaf ’N Jug. It’s a division of Kroger, headquartered in Pueblo, CO, that operates about 175 of them – mainly in Colorado and Wyoming, with a few other stores in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Mexico. (Kroger owns or operates half-dozen different C-store operations, from Tom Thumbs to Kwik Shops, in 16 states. It purchased the Loaf ’N Jug chain in 1986.)

Opinion of one: Kroger doesn’t seem to have done much with the brand except keep the stores up to date. Checking out the website, one among many different Kroger C-store operations, shows a bland face to stakeholders. Google “Loaf ’N Jug advertising” and you’ll read old news about the chain’s support of March of Dimes events – worthy promotions, but not a strong regional brand-builder.

It hasn’t nearly the attention-generating horsepower of, say, Susser Holdings’ Stripes® chain, which I wrote about here. As a convenience store brand, Loaf ’N Jug is not very convenient.

Since I haven’t talked to anyone at Loaf ’N Jug – and the Kroger acquisition is more than 20 years in the past – I can’t help but wonder where the chain got its brand name originally. Rather, I do know; but how odd to find such a classical reference in the highly rural Intermountain West.

If the brand comes from anywhere other than The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, I would be flabbergasted. I wonder just how many customers, loafing into these C-stores and lugging out some diet pop and Doritos®, recall the Persian poet and his well-known lines:

A book of poems, beneath a spreading bough.
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine,
And thou beside me, singing in the wilderness.

We always forget the last line: And wilderness is Paradise enow.

Somewhere back at the beginning of Loaf ’N Jug, I’d like to think that the chain’s founders imagined they were bringing some extras into Colorado to make the wilderness a bit more of a paradise…even if they decided to skip the poems.

Dalhart Superstar

I arrived in Dalhart, TX, one day last week to find most of it blowing east toward Oklahoma. Not perhaps the most brilliant introduction to a Northwest Texas town best known as the center of the 1930s’ Dust Bowl. That’s sure easy to understand, though; the west wind is driving the topsoil across the road as far as the eye could see.

Since I was driving north of US 87 from Amarillo, there wasn’t much choice about where Barbara and I were headed and there wasn’t any mistake when we arrived: Another middle-of-the-hinterlands town that was not looking like a jewel this past week.

(You may recall news of a wide band of “killer” tornadoes stretching from that part of Texas all the way up to Minnesota.)

It’s something of a boom town again, with the price of oil so high and plenty of activity in the ‘patch. You can poke around here to find out more about the various area attractions, such as the XIT Ranch Museum, Palo Duro Canyon or the Veterans Park on 7th Street – not as pretty last week as this post’s photo.

Really, I did not see Dalhart at its best.

What I did see, as I guided the Prius north along the windy street, was a tiny little building on the corner of the highway and Peach Avenue called Superstar Coffee Company: As far as I could tell, the only place between Amarillo and maybe Trinidad, CO, where I could get a decent cup of fresh coffee.

No Starbucks but a good attempt in the back of beyond, Lisa Silacci and her family moved to the Dalhart area last year on other business and she decided to open this coffee shop to catch the traffic passing up and down US 87 (called “Railroad Street”) in front of the grain elevators.

She and her family are from the great Northwest where there’s a coffee shop on every corner and she says Dalhart needed one of these – it looks like she’s going to educate every rancher and oilfield hand on decent coffee one cup at a time.

I don’t know the whole story (and I didn’t have the camera as usual so there’s no photograph of the tiny drive-through outbuilding that Lisa and her husband Gary are using for Superstar). So I’m going to ask Lisa to send me a photo for another blog post a bit later on. I’m here to tell you, though, that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in that corner of US 87 and Peach – and by golly, she’s a member of the Dalhart Chamber of Commerce to prove it.

WOM: Next time you’re passing through Dalhart, “The XIT City,” stop off at the Superstar Coffee Company for a fresh cup of joe. Lisa’s got all the modern conveniences, flavors, even a buy-10-get-1-free card which she will initial for you instead of stamping or punching (Superstar isn’t that advanced yet).

There’ll be no inside seating for a while but you can drive yourself right up to the window and talk with Lisa her own self. And say hello for me. Just tell her I’m the guy passing through in the Prius. Okay?

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?

Mighty Wind

Using the major US political parties as examples (good or bad), the “energy industry” is a big tent. We no sooner put OTC.08 behind us than Houston throws the WINDPOWER 2008 conference and exhibition, 1-4 June.

WINDPOWER 2008 includes 300 speakers, 150 poster presentations and more than 50 sessions on leading wind energy topics. The exhibition will be an “impressive display from over 750 of the leading companies from all facets of the wind energy industry.” The list of exhibitors demonstrates what I mean.

There’s widespread disdain for ethanol and its subsidies (see some of that attitude here). But the general sense is that wind power is the fastest growing alternative energy segment available to us. The US Energy Department, in cooperation with “industry,” suggests that wind energy could generate 20% of US electricity by 2030 – a jump from about 1% today.

Even among traditional players in the hydrocarbon biz, there’s horsepower behind wind power. BP and GE are a couple of WINDPOWER 2008’s “Tera-Watt Sponsors,” though Sam Hopkins of Energy & Capital newsletter fame said recently Shell has pulled out of one offshore wind farm project. Still, I hope you won’t tell me you’ve missed the print campaigns from companies like Suzlon in The Economist, or GE’s imaginative wind turbine commercials. (And really, DON’T tell me you missed the GE “Vikings” TV spot.)

Even the last “briefing breakfast” of OTC that I attended, thanks to the UK Trade & Investment team, offered a good look at the potentiality of wind power as a supplemental resource – though speakers kept trying to sneak in hydro-dynamic power, it’s an offshore conference after all. Still, if you can engineer and maintain a monster FPSO offshore Nigeria, you can sure do the same for a wind farm offshore Connecticut or Denmark (like today’s post photo).

The event offers more opportunities for marketers. There are beaucoup large and small players who are in wind energy for good, solid business reasons as well as the chance to participate in greener initiatives. And if the Feds are right, we’re looking at 75,000 new and bigger wind turbines, a hell of an infrastructure jump. That’s a lot of “green collar” jobs added to our economy.

WINDPOWER 2008 won’t be as gimongous as OTC but I don’t want to miss it. Its projections mean not only more advertising – from retail (as described here, e.g.) to business-to-business.

It means more marketing: Giving customers solid “reasons to buy,” not just hot air.

Barbara’s Orbi

“Orbi combines the benefits of SafeCut technology with a unique, ergonomic design that makes it the most comfortable and easy-to-use can opener ever created.” This note is from LaPrima Shops, describing the GC11836 Can Opener created by Jump Design Inc. for Good Cook®.

“No more dangerous edges. This revolutionary opener cuts into the side of a can, leaving a smooth ridge and a top you can lift straight off with bare hands. The ergonomic handle is easy to turn.” So sayeth theKitchenStore.com under the can, jar and bottle opener category.

Bed, Bath & Beyond: “If you are tired of the awkwardness and strain of twisting and turning traditional can openers, try the Orbi Safe Cut Can Opener, the easiest, safest and most comfortable opener around. Not only does it leave lid and can edges completely smooth, but it prevents cross-contamination by never letting the blade or lid come in contact with food or fall inside the can. Plus, the Soft Touch comfort grip and user-friendly design make it great for those with arthritis, reduced grip strength, limited dexterity, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis.”

And our simple favorite from Amazon.com: “Open a can without bleeding.”

There’s no advertising that I’m aware of. Jump Design, in Loft 10b on Van Brunt Street in Brooklyn, is self-described as a small industrial design firm that specializes in designing innovative consumer products: In our spectacular office location we design inspired products which are sold at Target and other major stores.

The only contact name I’ve found is Jürgen M Parlowski. If what I suspect is true, he and his team have found a terrific model: Create “needful things,” match them up to marketing organizations, and let those companies do the selling. Jump Design (I’m seeing parts of Parlowski’s name here) just keeps on doing neat work.

Good Cook promises “a metamorphosis in kitchenware” and it does advertise. (The name is a registered trademark of Bradshaw International, Inc., and not to be confused with The Good Cook, from The Book of the Month Club.) Good Cook was launched in ’87 – good job there – and, according to its website, has now captured 43% of the market in drug and grocery stores. That’s superb testimony to the company’s products as well as its distribution methods.

But Barbara discovered the Orbi in a mail-order catalog, purchased it immediately and now swears that it is the best can opener she’s ever used. Since Barbara has arthritis and has had difficulty with can openers for years, this is more than a gadget – it’s a blessing.

There’s a WOM component to this story, too. Shortly after Barbara started using it, Philippe Holtzweiler came over from the UK for the Offshore Technology Conference (see here). In addition to being a combat shopper, he’s a gadgeteer of the first magnitude. Barbara showed him the Orbi and opened a couple of cans with it. Holtzweiler jumped on the Internet, ordered it up and had it delivered overnight. He took his Orbi back to Bishop Stortford with him after OTC was over.

I’m not so much of a gadget fan myself…but Barbara’s the perfectly suited consumer for this perfectly designed utensil: A match made, originally, in Brooklyn.

My OTC

This seems a good day to break cover and resume posting to the blog – especially since Susan Kirkland has written a post that a number of consultants will likely read and ponder. The energy industry does not come off well, though it’s really not the subject of Susan’s post.

As I mentioned in my response to it, though, I have devoted the past 30 days or more to maintaining connections with colleagues, clients and prospects at OTC.08 – this year’s Offshore Technology Conference here in Houston.

It’s the world's largest offshore energy event. This year’s attendance reached 75,092, the highest in 26 years and 11% more than in 2007: With more than one-half million square feet of exhibition area, the show included 2,500 companies from more than 35 countries in an area the size of 13 football fields.

With oil at $128/barrel, it’s not surprising that there is plenty to see (from gigantic hardware to advanced software) and do (visit clients on the show floor, shake and howdy with people from a dozen or more countries).

In no particular order, thanks to my colleagues – Rob Schoenbeck of area51, Philippe Holtzweiler of Hope Communications – who attended breakfasts, luncheons, cocktail events and the exhibition itself; handfuls of clients who welcomed me into their booths and their activities; hundreds of Englishmen, Scots, Germans, French and Belgians who opened up their hands and their hearts to meet one more Houstonian. And the thousands of OTC volunteers who, every year, make a trade exhibition like this possible.

Do you believe that doing better business depends on how effectively you can communicate benefits, advantages and features of your brand one-on-one?

OTC.08 was a massive example of how well you did your job. My clients did great, though I say so myself.

Matchbook Advertising

We had been chatting about tiny posters – cinderellas – as advertising media (see below). Then (see below below) about Laura Smith, who’s channeling stamp artists from the era of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in the service of Mercedes and the Academy Awards.

Now I want you to recall the advertising power and art of the common paper matchbook – politically incorrect today to the nth degree. In fact, I’m doing you a service to remind you that matchbook advertising is “like having the impact of billboard advertising in the palm of your hand.”

I lifted this phrase direct from D D Bean & Sons Company website.

It’s www.matchbookadvertising.com and if you have any idea that you or your company can handle the oh-my-god pressure of matchbook marketing, you could start your journey with Peter Leach, the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

This site is not only a display of this matchbook company’s production and distribution capabilities. It will remind you of what was once a very powerful medium: Now dead and buried, along with cigarette smokers.

The challenge of using matchbooks – the real thing, not the ones with toothpicks or little notepads – is that so many people associate them with cigarette-smoking. How many humans think about the evils of cigarettes every time they see a matchbook? Most of them here in the US. Leach, who’s been in the “match business” for 35 years, says that over the past six to seven years, it’s changed dramatically, and for the worse. The advent of the Master Settlement Agreement killed Big Tobacco’s interest in book matches, so matchbook advertising is a dribble compared to a decade ago.

Leach makes an important distinction. In the good old days, the business was “space advertising.” This is classic matchbook advertising where the advertiser (like Prince Albert cigars) buys the space; the manufacturer (like D D Bean & Sons) distributes the matchbooks. The resulting book of matches, likely with a tobacco ad on it, was given to you free when you bought a pack of cigarettes.

Those good days are gone forever. Leach calls everything else “private label.” The matchbooks with customized art are sold to the advertiser (a hotel, a bar or a restaurant), who then distributes them to its customers.

The thousand-legal-cut demise of smoking isn’t the only indignity suffered by matchbook advertisers. Technologically, the disposable lighter really took over the “light business” over the past 15 years. Today, nine out of every 10 “lights” are provided by butane lighters.

That’s a shame, because even after the trials and tribulations of the tobacco industry here in America, matchbooks are still surprisingly available…just not in the places you think you might find them or in the old, space-advertising formats.

Is it possible to find a company with any degree of PC sensitivity to use matchbook advertising? I think you have to determine if your client has a pretty sturdy sense of humor to take on this format.

For private labelers, good designers can help. First, there are still match companies like Bean and The Match Group that provide templates for graphic artists and art directors. Then, you want to refine your brand message both verbally and visually. Perhaps you noted the last couple of posts about outstanding illustrators working in the small spaces defined by, say, the matchbook.

There are also technical designers like Pasquale Chieffalo (here) and David Airey (here) who continue to experiment with the matchbook format. These outside-the-box applications might offer marketers and advertisers additional ways to use a strongly familiar medium in new, even surprising ways.

If your own creativity catches fire, drop me a line and I’ll pass it on to Leach, who’s looking for a few good ideas. Remember to close cover before striking.

Thanks and a tip of the Signalwriter cap to Peter Leach. The private-label 30-strike “Republic” sample courtesy of The Match Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cinderella Stories

When Laura Smith (see below) mentioned that her artistic influences did “poster art,” I misunderstood her – she pointed that out in a comment posted to the blog. In fact, an artist like A M Cassandre did a lot of these small pieces – the one to the left, dated 1928, measures 1.5 inches by 2.3 inches. If you look here, you’ll see a lot more.

I had to call a local stamp store to remind myself about what should have been a familiar term: Not poster stamps, but cinderellas – stamp-like labels that include charity stamps like Easter Seals as well as advertising material of all kinds.

This is where Smith’s understanding of a “poster stamp” comes from. It’s a miniature version of a poster designed to advertise an event or product and, according to one definition, the main characteristic of the true poster stamp is integrity of design.

Color schemes and layouts had to be carefully chosen because poster in such small sizes had to catch the eye quickly. Sometimes these worked, sometimes they didn’t. But since a number of older designers worked in this format, they’re outstanding source materials for contemporary illustrators – just like postage stamp designers.

Ta for the weekend!

Smith’s Art

Back when US postage stamps were boring, the countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact had much neater stuff. The Soviet Union, Communist Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria – they couldn’t produce a working refrigerator to save their lives. But they had TERRIFIC stamps.

The old-school artists of these countries combined 1960s “contemporary design” and art deco elements to produce damn outstanding philately…everything from Soviet space ships (factual and fictional) to folk heroes, holiday celebrations to sports figures.

Well, this post started because the American Marketing Association-Houston has been using several pieces of stock art by Laura Smith to advertise its upcoming Crystal Awards. I’m fond of Art Deco styling as well as good illustration. And I was curious about this particular “Laura Smith.”

As illustrators go, Smith is famous enough. She’s been written up and written about, with her growing up in, “a mid-century modern house in Manhattan Beach, CA (literally on the beach), where no one but her mother locked their doors.”

When she graduated from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, Smith moved to New York City to jump-start her career. After developing her style in New York for 12 years, she returned to California and set up shop in the Hollywood Hills, where she’s been ever since, producing dramatic or dynamic creations for advertisers, magazines and organizations from the American Public Works Association to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Given how many illustrators there are in the world – and from how many sources they draw inspiration – it’s awkward to single out just one, saying, “This is cool stuff.” There’s lots of that.

But after looking at Smith’s current work at www.laurasmithart.com, I realized, here’s an illustrator who had to have been looking over my shoulder when I was collecting Warsaw Pact stamps back in the ’60s.

She wrote me: There have been many artists that have influenced my work. I never tire of the French poster artist A M Cassandre. Otis Shepard always feels fresh to me (he was known for all the work he did for Wrigley’s). More recently I have been inspired by Mary Blair.

My earlier work was originally shaped by Ludwig Hohlwein. The pieces that you have singled out are probably a cross between Otis and Cassandre. And I believe that all the aforementioned artists with the exception of Mary Blair had work produced as poster stamps. I am not familiar with the postage stamps you refer to. Maybe we are talking about the same thing.

I think we are. The resemblance between her work and the postage stamps of Soviet-era Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary is remarkable. Examples? If Blogger cooperates, two Smith pieces are on top; then a Soviet Russian stamp and then a Polish stamp, circa 1965.

I testify to the similarities. With Smith’s work, I set Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine and return to the days when the War was Cold and a gallon of regular (leaded) cost 31¢.

Today scholars call this sort of thing “ephemera.” For me, it’s reminiscence. So thanks, Laura. Who says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?

Rowena’s Read

How to make a little go a long way when it comes to marketing?

Remember, back in February, I blogged about The BIG Read – the national program that tries to interest everybody in reading?

One marketing effort I particularly mentioned was the program being developed by White Light Advertising. The agency’s principal, Rowena White, promised to fill me in on what her team created for The BIG Read of Bridgeport and Shelton, CT – the featured book is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

The agency created and produced a 13” x 19” double fold, four-color calendar brochure. White says: 11” x 17” was too small –we upgraded at no additional cost. The front cover (6.5” x 9.5”) opens into a book and author profile (13” x 9.5”). Then the second fold opens into a 13” x 19” Calendar of Events. The back cover (6.5” x 9.5”) lists locations to pick up free books, and sponsor support.

White Light created a 4-column x 7" newspaper ad to run in the hometown weekly papers for Bridgeport and Shelton for two weeks; then wrote the radio announcements and had them produced for the local full-service AM and NPR radio stations. White notes: The NPR radio cash schedule is 100% matched by a no-charge schedule, in exchange for which we included about 300 of their programming brochures in the BIG Read Goodie Bags.

All the media was negotiated “hard-core” at not-for-profit rates plus added value items. The brochure fee was strictly the hard cost paid to the print manufacturer. The newspaper was at a discounted combo rate of 20% off, plus additional 10% for being not-for-profit. (White is sure they’ll also include an editorial story based on press releases that went out and the Kick-Off Press Conference with Bridgeport’s Mayor Bill Finch.)

White’s final comment: I can say with confidence that we maximized the little total marketing dollars and are receiving far more than double the value.

So the BIG Read gets a big boost in Bridgeport (and Shelton). And White Light gets a tip of the blogger’s bonnet for demonstrating how to make passion work for a heartfelt campaign.

More INEXS™

Additional new INEXS collateral – thanks to Prism Design for the extra photos. (Terry, you look marvelous. Really.)

Rebranding INEXS™

Human beings power a better brand story. For INEXS, the geological and geophysical (G&G) consulting company, we’ve used its human focus to re-define its brand. Created a new logo and brand graphics. Spread the word about its new, copyrighted slogan: “Human-Powered Geoscience.” And begun to reinforce emotional attachments among customers and prospects.

This post won’t be the first or last time you hear that a good brand is built on a good story, or rebuilt on a new one.

INEXS used to be an acronym for Interactive Exploration Solutions. Now it stands alone…we joke about it’s being “the other rock group,” an internalized sense of humor that matches the company’s human-ness.

We’ve been working the past few months to re-invent the INEXS brand and its marketing because the company President/CEO has strongly felt the need to refine the focus of his G&G consulting company; to differentiate it from the competition; to make it more distinctive in a very noisy marketplace.

To create the new INEXS brand story, we started by examining the company’s stakeholders* and how INEXS interacts with them.

Revealed: Since the early 1980s, plenty of major oilfield companies have made their fortunes creating, packaging and selling increasingly more sophisticated G&G software (i.e., technologies) to help oil & gas companies find more hydrocarbons. Conclusion: There is intense competition for the “technology mind-space” in G&G consulting.

INEXS has to be “other,” to position itself against the technological emphasis of its competitors by its personability and its human imagery.

It’s not technology that finds oil and gas reserves. It’s human beings. That’s the distinctive new brand story. For almost 20 years, INEXS has emphasized the long-term relationships they have with their customers. INEXS people connect their customers to successful prospects.

For INEXS, the value of every project to every client has to be obvious. When INEXS people help customers find one more drilling opportunity that leads to a profitable discovery, they fulfill the INEXS part of the relationship.

INEXS is not only about the project or the assignment – a decisive brand benefit. It's about the asset team members and managers the company works with every day. They trust INEXS to deliver success.

We re-constructed an INEXS brand story on the new theme: “Human-Powered Geoscience.” No other company in the G&G consulting arena emphasizes the human part of the exploration equation so thoroughly.

New communications, like the revamped INEXS website, will continue that emphasis…creating visual messages that are clear and concise.

The team that’s making this story come to life for INEXS includes Prism Design for the new logo and brand graphics. Naumann Blanchard LLC is handling public relations. Zephyr Salvo is the web enabler. And me? I’m the strategist and stakeholders’ storyteller.

I’m grateful to everyone at INEXS for allowing me to help develop this superb, tightly focused rebranding effort. They’re ensuring that the story and the brand meet their customers’ expectations.

*The Stakeholder Rule says a company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders. “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Poison, Again

Have you marketers noticed? Plastic is back in the barrel – it’s the awful, no-good-for-you-and-especially-your-babies ingredient that so common in everyday life it might as well be oxygen (which is also bad for you in certain concentrations).

The attention paid to the “evils of bisphenol A (BPA)” seems to have reached a sudden crescendo. Now, like saccharine, Alar and a host of other products, the media has started fear-mongering big-time. In fact the issue surfaced months ago and been tracked by bloggers, industry and government consistently.

What I haven’t seen is widespread witch-hunting of the plastics industry, a nice change from the days of the dreaded polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and their widespread contamination. It’s worth noting – at least for marketers – that plastics companies like Dow Chemical and Bayer are responding sensibly but cautiously.

I realize this makes me sound like an industry apologist (also again). However, the media makes a balanced and fair examination of the issue difficult. Remember that these BPA-related suspicions are founded only on experiments involving mice. A good deal of space has been dedicated to the warnings of Frederick vom Sall, who’s a biology prof at the University of Missouri and an anti-BPA advocate. According to the Houston Chronicle, vom Sall “…doesn’t eat or drink anything from a can and never heats food in plastic containers. He doesn’t use plastic silverware or drink from plastic cups, though he freezes food in some plastic containers. He doesn’t put plastic in the dishwasher, because the chemical escapes when heated.” This seems extreme to me.

Still, it’s so difficult to figure out what’s safe and what’s not safe in today’s world, common sense and intelligent marketing will go a long way. For example, my friends at Thermos have pushed up notice of their stainless steel bottles and jars.

You can also try the Kleen Kanteen sippy cup (shown above left) which has a certain style – also in steel. You can’t beat steel and think of the advantages of your prospective reduction in recyclables, as I noted in this January Signalwriter post.

OTC Precog

Precognition – “precog” – is knowledge in advance of an event, especially by extrasensory perception.

I can’t see much further through a brick wall than the next fella. But last night, at the American Marketing Association Houston second annual pre-Offshore Technology Conference networker, I wondered if anyone could see lightning far off on the watery horizon.

Here’s the price of oil holding at US$115 a barrel and attendance at this Mixer was down compared to last year.

This is no fault of its excellent hosts and sponsors: It was a good time at a good venue. However, to justify this post, I ought to be able to find something reasonably profound to say about all this.

What I learned is that every person I spoke with has had a different business experience through the first quarter of this year. Some people have been struggling and this is in a market that feeds off the Energy Sector, which continues its growth. To be clear, no one I met last night had to testify about his or her “obscene profits” before the US Congress – obviously I am hanging with the wrong crowd.

Here’s the deal about OTC .08: One of the world’s largest trade shows, it opens at Reliant Center here on 5 May. It’s the Houston version of the Texas State Fair, Ringling Brothers Circus and a Bob-the-Builder Convention rolled into one huge event, with more than 70,000 “offshore E&P professionals” and more that 2,000 exhibiting companies.

That lightning you see on the horizon? I sense that’s the sparking of opportunity, precognition of fresh business for marketers. The truth is out there. Get your rear ends down to Reliant Center when the OTC doors open.

All the official OTC hotels are sold out, but if you’re serious, you can stay here with us. And thanks to the hosts and sponsors for last night’s get-together. (The AMA’s Sherri Scott caught me with my enthusiasm showing…again. I have got to be careful around that woman!) Have a great weekend.

Collier’s Back

Having explored the Wild West (living in Seattle, hiking the mountains, etc.), Steve Collier has returned to Houston. We saw the back of him in 2004, when he left town to join GalleryPlayer, a digital imaging start-up in Washington State. He’s appeared several times on Signalwriter – here, for example.

Michael Strickland put together a welcome-home party for him last evening at Jim Goode’s Armadillo Palace. A lot of the old gang was there (I’m certain to leave out a few names…Lord, I should have written them all down): Ron Scott, Hugh McDonnold and Frances Theil, Bill Large, Brad Gaber, Jim Sanders, John Brannen, Buddy Pritchard, Jay and Carol Loucks, Kent Simmons, Amber and Doug Timmermeyer.

Steve makes a wicked gumbo and creates pretty good art, too. I (for one) am glad he decided to return to the city.

Since he is a “full-service” creative director, graphic designer, packaging professional, type expert and illustrator, it’s a gen-u-wine pleasure greeting his return and drinking a couple Shiners to celebrate it. We just have to make certain that he stays put this time.

Steve’s “The Wild West” is available as a fine art print from www.art.com – just too good to pass up.

Hope Springs

The year I was born, there were no flying cars. You may find this hard to believe but it is true. Since then, only getting the mail to and from Europe by rocket hasn’t worked out. And those submarine cruises to Antarctica…I remember some magazine assuring me those were just around the corner.

Everything else has pretty much arrived as predicted, from television in color (National Geographic) to the rise of nationalism (George Orwell). In fact – screwy as this sounds – some Republican commentators are trying to return “Communism” to its previous position as bugaboo-in-chief, forgetting that we’ve all been there and done that.

If I had to pass along anything to you on my birthday, it’s that [1] people are generally a lot more solid, and less capable of being frightened, than the politicians believe; and [2] politicians on virtually every level of government have to be continually reminded that they work for us and not the other way ‘round.

No one – a district attorney, a governor, a presidential candidate, a CEO – has an automatic right to my respect. It deserves to be earned by good acts and right actions.

I expect a company to stand behind its product or service 100%, but I recognize that breakage may occur and I may be the one doing the breaking. I expect the president of a major corporation to take responsibility for the actions of his (or her) company. Although I have been frequently disappointed in my expectations, I continue to live in hope.

I hope Doug delivers my flying car today.

Refocusing CLARION®

Some of us talked about green chemistry at lunch last week. It’s a new way of looking at chemicals, not banning them one at a time but using them more smartly in the first place: Eliminate waste, use renewable or environmentally benign materials and avoid relying on toxic reagents and solvents when designing chemical products.

Now, thanks to CITGO, there’s a spiffy example of repurposing an existing brand to answer the dictates (real or envisioned) of green chemistry. Like many vertically integrated oil companies, CITGO has produced a wide variety of industrial and commercial lubricants for many years. Many of these were purposely formulated years ago to meet the rigorous demands of, say, the food processing business, or pharmaceutical manufacturing. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established standards for cleanliness and purity of these “white oils.”

CITGO had branded many of these lubes with the name Clarion, a word derived from Latin meaning “clear,” some years back.

Today, CLARION is the newly established brand identity for an entire line of specially formulated white oils – you’ll find them on this new website, just launched last month. Credits for this rebranding effort start with the CITGO Lubricants Division itself, which recognized that there are more brand marketing opportunities (and channels) available than there used to be.

BVK in Milwaukee, CITGO’s advertising agency, created the new CLARION logo (“it looks pure and simple”) and is working on the look of the new line’s sales literature.

CITGO marketing personnel have been responsible for getting the new website up and running. And Richard Laurence Baron (c’est moi!) created the strategically oriented copy platform for these materials, starting with “The Earth deserves a new standard in lubricants.”

None of this would work if CITGO didn’t have the R&D and product history to back up the new line. Company chemists and blenders created oils and greases that help reduce ecological impacts, from pure “water white” oils for food manufacturing to environmentally tuned lubes for marine operations – without sacrificing on-the-job performance.

No product line (especially one from CITGO, for political reasons) will survive contact with the marketplace without being able to deliver on its promises.

But if CLARION White Oils take off, look at the corporate benefits: CITGO has a real, proven, environmental product/program initiative to add to its overall social responsibility story. It’s an honest story. And by assembling all the green chemistry products under a single brand name, it offers the potential of a concentrated revenue stream, instead of fragmented earnings from an SKU here and an SKU there.

Thank you, Jennifer Stanley and Yvonne Hale, Roger Tucker, Dave Kunkel, Karl Schmidt and Mark Betner for involving me in the start-up. CLARION will be supplementing the new website with print advertising, literature, product PR and marketer presentations.

This is how you refocus an existing brand. Can the company build a new market for it? Stay tuned; maybe we’ll find out together.

No Absoluts?

You think this is a pile-on post but you are mistaken – maybe.

In fact, it’s relatively rare for just one ad to raise such a ruckus. But that is what the Mexico City agency Teran/TWBA has accomplished with this particular execution of the year-old IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD advertising campaign. Unless you live in a hole in the ground or work on Wall Street, you have to be aware of the hell that’s been raised over this ad.

The best tracker of the story – and chief hell-raiser – is Michelle Malkin. Head for her michellemalkin.com website to review the whole tale…the good, the bad and the ugly.

What’s odd is that the goofy (and rather jejune) campaign premiered a year ago, its various executions got a lot of praise – the US TV and print executions came out of TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York City…and you can review various examples on Duncan’s Print. TBWA Creative Director Rob Smiley said at the time, “As the story unfolds you can expect commentary on topics and ideas big and small, serious and humorous, timeless and of the moment.”

Depending on your POV then, Absolut creative is either cutting edge or overly obvious. I put the “Pregnant Guy” into the latter category but quite a few people loved it, apparently believing that this was a fresh idea.

Yet in a semantic sense, IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD represents a contradiction in terms. Either you drink enough the trademarked vodka to enable yourself to view men as capable of becoming pregnant – or you deny the “absolute” that only females of mammalian species can bear young. That’s not commentary, that’s contradiction.

Interpreting the Mexican Absolut ad offers choices. One, it is about contradiction –Mexico might be better off if its ruler of the moment hadn’t sold a huge portion of the country to the US some 150 years ago.

Two, it’s about guzzling too much vodka – envisioning the country as it used to be takes a bottle or two.

Or three, this is a very funny ad (which it actually is) because Absolut’s world is NEVER about the real world.

Over-reaction to a single ad in a single campaign about a single product may be a fact, but it’s hardly crucial in the life of the world. It’s not as though, as one commentator suggested, Absolut’s agencies created an ad showing a map of “Greater Germany” circa 1942, covering France and Poland. Is it?

PS: I’m sending a note to my Dialogue International contacts in Europe to see if they have any opinions about this nationalistic shouting match. I’ll be interested in their comments, if they choose to share ‘em.

Billboards, Farewell

I suppose it is official, now that it’s been announced: the City of Houston has struck a deal with Clear Channel Outdoor to make 831 outdoor boards “disappear” before the end of 2008. Another source indicates that Clear Channel Outdoor has 4,500 facings in Houston, so it’ll lose 18% or so of its displays. (Is my math right?)

Everyone that could be reached before press time is elated: Mayor Bill White, Ed Wulfe of Scenic Houston, Mack Fowler of the Quality of Life Coalition. Clear Channel Outdoor lawyers, however, could not be reached for comment. Clearing out the “visual pollution” of billboards is part of a renewed national trend.

Elation is no doubt a relative thing. Clear Channel Outdoor is the world’s largest outdoor advertising company: “In the United States, the company operates just under 200,000 advertising displays.” This makes the boards it will remove from the Houston area a drop in its national bucket. In any case, there’s been a deal cut and the company gets some profitable arrangements for its trouble, as you can read from the article.

The deal just affects the Clear Channel Outdoor boards – don’t you be thinking that outdoor advertising’s going to vanish from the city. There are other owners and operators like CBS Outdoor, SignAd, Reliant Media…the deal doesn’t have anything to say about these hoardings.

If you’re a true believer in the evils of outdoor signage, history is against you. Billboards (UK: hoardings) have been around for centuries. There’s a marvelous engraving of “Modern Advertising: A Railways Station” in A History of Advertising that shows outdoor ads for everything from sherry to insurance policies of Ede’s Patent American Eye Liquid – “Every Disease of the Eye Cured.”

That same book indicated that the growth of advertising in general “has been attended by an almost entire revulsion of mode.” That’s in 1874, mind you. I suppose the anti-billboard crowd is filled with such revulsion.

Now I am against your general overall ugly city look. As Houston (especially under Mayor White) becomes greener and more attractive, taking down 800 or so billboards may be a help.

However, here’s my self-confessed that’s-how-I-make-my-living aspect.

A great billboard is a thing of beauty – often a visual delight, like the one above created for Adidas for the 2006 World Cup. Anita Bath blogged last year, “Due to the abundance of bad roadside ads, I typically admire cool, funny, or just amazingly creative billboards while driving.”

Me, too. Because, in print, you just don’t get many opportunities to make people laugh or cry or buy when they’re driving past your message at 60 miles per hour.

Bye-bye, billboards.

Yarrow’s “Thoughtcrime”

If you’re of a certain age and thinking (even distantly) about getting out of your 9-to-5 job, Andrew L Yarrow will scare the living crap out of you.

In advance of the publication of his new book, Forgive Us Our Debts, Yarrow is hitting the opinion pages (like this one) and university campuses with a message that talks about baby boomers behind their backs – and accuses every one of them of being “unpatriotic.”

Why? Because he’s convinced that Americans who retire early are unpatriotic and selfish…and his telling the world about it is being powered by a fairly impressive media push. So this is a post about propaganda rather than PR…or the borderline between the two.

In his opinion pieces, Yarrow says that “dropping out of the workforce while still in one’s prime means ending one’s contributions to American’s strength.” He’d have us believe that deciding to stop working after 20 or 30 years (35 in my case) means “mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s future and leeching trillions of taxpayer dollars from the economy.”

This is profoundly wrong on many levels. Since when is freedom of choice in this country unpatriotic? If I choose to retire from the workforce, surely that’s my option and not the government’s to mandate? Yet here is Professor Yarrow lauding the efforts of US Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) for attempting to eliminate this choice by increasing federal taxation on Social Security payments.

People who retire after decades of work are NOT leeching millions of taxpayer dollars from the economy – they have [1] created those dollars in the first place because they are the taxpayers; and [2] paid into the Social Security system for all those years, working hard to secure their own futures.

Yarrow would seem to be well qualified to make these accusations, since he’s vice president and Washington director of “non-partisan” Public Agenda, teaches modern US history at American University, and is a former reporter for The New York Times. He’s also, it is clear, a big fan of the book by George Orwell called 1984. Because Yarrow’s screed against baby boomer retirement is a classic example of double-think – when a set of words is given an entirely new meaning and we buy into it.

Yarrow’s vision – and his deep misunderstanding of the American workforce – is dystopian in the extreme. He wants the government to step in and make it difficult (if not criminal) to retire “early” because retirement is not patriotic, because there’s something about the “middle age retirement program” that deeply disturbs him. He seriously wishes to “help middle-age workers fund their retraining and education.”

Yarrow is dangerous to the American way of work because he appears to be convinced that the only class of people who can continue to support our way of life are between the ages of 55 and 65, it seems.

What’s going to happen to this country if the baby boomers take a time-out? Yarrow calls people who think of retiring “profoundly selfish.” This IS propaganda. And it is a remarkable accusation considering that it’s precisely today’s so-called young-old workforce that has built this nation into one of the economic wonders of the world.

We have kept America at the top of the list when it comes to productivity in virtually every global ranking. I can only presume that Yarrow recognizes that 20-somethings or 30-somethings aren’t going to be able to contribute their share of the national tax base. Lower tax revenues always frighten Liberals.

It’s like the next chapter in the 1984 Thought Police manual. And recall if you will that thoughtcrime does not entail death – merely indoctrination.