Newspaper Christmas

From the Houston Chronicle Saturday, December 24, 2005: Apple Pie, Agnostic, Angel, Adore, Bible, Biggest Hearts, Bonfires, Blitzen, Belief, Bicycles, Bells, Beethoven, Bethlehem, Comet, Compassion, Caumaro, Clemency, Christmas Eve, Celebrate, Cranberry Sauce, Christians, Creed, Congregation, Comfort, Children, Coal, Communion, Candlelight, Chronicles of Narnia, The.

December, Donate Your Car, Democracy, Divine, Epiphany, Elves, Eucharist, Evangelical, Ecumenical, Evergreens, Egg Nog, Fun, Fruitcake, Freedom, Feasts, Faith, Family, Gift, Gingerbread, God, Greeting Cards, Gloria, Green, Grace.

Holiday Cheer, Hot Meals, Hymn, Holy, Hurricane Katrina, Hope, Home, Inclusiveness, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Joyish, Jesus, Joseph, Kindness, Kings (Three), La Posada, Lollipops & Licorice, Love, Liturgy.

Mary, Merry, Memories, Miracles (Seven), Ministering, Mystery, Midnight Mass, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Naughty or Nice, Noel, North Pole, Nutcracker, Nativity, Ornaments, Outlet Malls, Peace, Papa Noel, Poinsettias, Pumpkin Pie, Priest, Present, Praying, Prophets, Phone Calls Home.

Red Bucket, Reindeer Owners & Breeders Association, Retail, Reflection, Rosary, Rebirth, Souls, Star in the East, Sleigh, Survivors, Season’s Greetings, Spirits Up, Sacred Songs, Street Church, Stockings (Hung by the Chimney with Care), Shepherds, Skiing, Santa, St. Peter’s Basilica, St. Olaf, Tradition, Tree Lighting, Turkey, Toys, Vigil.

Water (into Wine), Watch Night, WOW, Winter Event, Worship, Wishes (Good).

Yuletide.

Seasonally Incorrect

An album of Christmas carols for the psychiatrically challenged advertising professional has just been released. The source has requested confidentiality.

Schizophrenia:
“Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Dementia:
“I Think I'll be Home for Christmas”

Narcissistic:
“Hark the Herald Angles Sing About Me”

Manic:
“Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Busses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and......”

Paranoid:
“Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me”

Borderline Personality Disorder:
“Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire”

Personality Disorder:
“You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why”

Multiple Personality Disorder:
“We Three Queens Disoriented Are”

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder:
“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...”

Only two shopping days left ‘til Christmas. Order your CD for immediately delivery.

Trishpix Clicks

An extra big Christmas thank-you goes to Trish Cramblet this year. For those of you that received my “Season’s Signals” card, you’ll note that Trish created the Three Wise Signalers who star in the show.

Trish is a terrific designer and collaborator to start with. Working with me and Paul Leigh, for example, Trish created the great Pointsmith logo a few years back – you can see it here.

Beyond this, she has become a lively and sometimes quirky illustrator, with works that tickle the mind as well as the fancy. I’ve taken the liberty of showing a couple of her illustrations in this post, and you can see much more of her work here.

The creator of “Dilbert,” Scott Adams, said, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Trish’s illustrations are not just commercially valuable. They qualify as art, at least for me. They just…click.

When I suggest to a client that we should use Trish to illustrate an ad or a brochure, I’m not only using a particular kind of visual to reinforce the message. I’m adding art to the mix. Vita brevis. Ars longa. Reason enough. Merry Christmas, Trish.

Illustrations © Trish Cramblet. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Sugar Plums

The precise meaning of “sugar plums” has reared its ugly head. Alas, even in this season of joy and spiritual renewal, the golden…uh…sugar plum of discord has been cast down.

One of Prism’s designers, Stacy Allen, finished some concepts that called for sugar plums. I saw these and said (out loud, unfortunately), “Those look more like candies than sugar plums. I always thought that sugar plums were literally plums and other fruits coated in crystallized sugar.”

“This is what sugar plums are,” she replied. “I looked up the term, and the dictionary definition is about hard candies.”

I backed out of the conversation, with all the grace of an elephant in a Wal-Mart aisle. But I thought, this can’t be right…or rather, I can’t have been wrong all these years, surely! From my very childhood, I knew the Clement Clarke Moore poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” wherein:

“The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.”

Moore wrote this poem in 1822, and although I’d once thought it was British, I discovered years ago it’s as American as your Aunt Sally’s johnnycakes. Nevertheless, I have always considered sugar plums an English confection, and a real fruit-based nosh.

Wrong, wrong, wrong – on a number of counts. (And Stacy is right.) Disdaining the ordinary dictionaries, I cannoned up immediately: The Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 10, page 118. The very first definition is “A small, round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavoured and coloured; a confit.” In other words, a hard candy. The first cite is from 1668, for the Lord’s sake! In the same listing, naturally, there’s the obligatory warning, circa 1859 from a country parson: “Sugar-plums…damage the teeth.”

Determined to pursue this controversy to its bitter (and for me, redemptive) end, I called my English experts, Bob and Edith Fusillo in Atlanta. When I popped the question, they were blank – but Edith felt as though she’d heard that it was some kind of candied fruit (Aha!, I thought).

Bob pointed me to the Vermont Country Store, where I discovered another story: “Visions of those darned sugarplums kept us up the whole night before Christmas year after year-wondering what the heck sugarplums were and why on earth they were dancing. Now we know: a blend of sweet plum compote and rich dark chocolate, formed into a truffle-like chocolate-coated candy that will have you dancing all night long.” Bob also sent me a recipe for a similar goodie.

And here at the Candy Warehouse, you can get something completely different: a plum-flavored, plum-shaped jell candy in a 10-pound case! Go crazy.

So having shaken the (admittedly weak) foundations of my world, I realize that there’s no single definition of what a sugar plum is – but most people will go the hard candy route. Next, they’ll be saying there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. Ha! Merry Christmas.

NOTE: “Mutts” cartoon © 2005 Patrick McDonnell. See www.muttscomics.com. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Tomorrow’s Solstice

In my opinion, winter ends – tomorrow! Here’s wishing you a wonderful Winter Solstice, which occurs Wednesday, December 21, 2005, at 1:35 PM EST. The shortest day and the longest night of the year are marked by the winter solstice, as explained here.

The abbreviated version is, tomorrow’s the day that the sun appears at its lowest point in the sky. Its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice; it appears to stop right there. That’s the origin of the word “solstice,” from Latin solstitium, from sol, “sun” and -stitium, “a stoppage.” Sun lovers like me are grateful: After the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter. Spring is on its way, even though it may not feel like it north of the Line - the longer days prove it. (I believe! I believe!)

It’s considered pagan now by many people, but the winter solstice used to be a time of great celebration in Europe and throughout the world. Most of humanity's existence was spent in times when it wasn’t really understood that there were predictable patterns in nature, and that the seasons followed a dependable cycle.

In those days, the sinking autumn noontime sun must have been scary. Would the sun ever return, or would it keep on sinking and disappear…forever? December 21st brought relief each year, as our forebears finally realized the sun would rise again. Light, warmth, and sunshine for crops would return soon. Tanning lotion would once again appear on the shelves at Walgreens and CVS.

So when you look up in the sky tomorrow, give a thought to the end of winter. It’s really coming – except in Minnesota.

“Untitled Winter Scene” by Ceil Rosenberg, Public Works of Art Project, 1934 Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, National Archives and Records Administration (MO 69-62).

Tequila Reposada

Last evening, The Prism Design Christmas party was at the home of Susan and John Reeves. Susan is the design firm’s principal. Warm, beautiful place. Good people. Good food. And the annual gift game. You know it: everyone brings a wrapped “mystery” gift; then everyone gets a number and either selects a present from the pile or steals one he or she likes from a previous player.

The hostess’s instruction was to bring a creative gift under $15. Barbara selected the number for us – it was “8.” So when our turn came up, I looked over the pile and pulled out a present. I tore off the wrapping (in your basic guy mode). Inside was a cardboard package with a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses. But what a hoot of a bottle!

Tequila Reposado “Hijos de Villa” comes in a bottle blown in the shape of a .45 Colt Automatic Pistol. Wonderful – as you can see from the photograph. It was brought to the party by Jim Prejean from AIM Investments.

I had to Google it – and this “collectible limited edition” comes with a story. This package was produced to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Licores Veracruz Distillery and the third generation of the Villanueva family. It’s numbered – mine is Botella No. 18842. Because of the custom-blown bottle, in the shape of the .45 Auto, it also displays a bit of the craft-art of the Mexican Indios. (Apparently, a large part of marketing specialty tequilas and mezcals involves craft-made bottles.)

It's too cool...especially since I'm not up on the edge of the tequila trend. Had everyone laughing. And surprisingly, no one stole it from me. Reposado is translated as “Aged” for alcoholic purposes.

There’s way more to Licores Veracruz – you should read all about it here. Meantime, Susan, thanks for the party. Thanks, Jim, for the genuinely creative gift. I am, at the last, reminded of Mae West’s line and apologize for revising it: “Is that a bottle of tequila in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

Photo from Mexcor, Inc., with thanks.

Mirus Campaign

A colleague just back from a year-and-a-half’s stint overseas just wrote me about the joys of networking. In part, today’s post is about networking. I was referred to Mirus, a software company, by yet another colleague. The referral was a stroke of good fortune: I gained a client and a working relationship that's making a visible difference.

Redefining a company for more effective marketing is one of the most rewarding activities I undertake. Consulting with the company’s principals, sharpening their thinking about the company’s service as it has developed into a specific, niche-oriented business over the past several year, have allowed them to be much more focused when they go to market. And led me to be an even better practitioner.

The work is beginning to show up now in trade shows throughout the US and in advertising. And that leads back to networking. When the time came to turn our mutual thinking and writing into visible materials, I referred my client in turn to 20/20 Exhibits. Artistic credit for the new work goes to Quentin Bourgeois, one of 20/20’s graphic designers, for turning our messages into vivid, arresting trade show panels like the one on the right.

It’s a nice day to say “Thank You” to everyone involved in the new campaign - and especially the client, without whom none of the above would have happened. (In itself, an interesting and overlooked fact of our business.) Happy Saturday.

Finally, Photos

Some of the city’s outstanding photographers showed up at the surprise birthday party for Rosario Laudicina (see the November 20th post). Arthur Meyerson and Nash Baker to name two.

Despite the occasion, the evening’s entire photographic armament consisted of just two Fuji disposables, the photographs from which have been delivered by Bill Large. Unlike Signalwriter, the take was thin. I did want to show a pair of pix to prove that a party actually happened – mostly because of Kelly Melone, on the left, the capo di tutti capi for the event, elegant hostess, and all-time chef migliore.

The photograph on the right shows Rosario received the tributes appropriate to his birthday, with Jo Babic and Belinda Large to his left. Next time Rosario has a 60th birthday, I think we should insist on a little more talent behind the lens, or add Photoshop to my own skill set (which is not likely to happen this century). Great people/party/food/drink.

Wireless Installation

How to install a wireless security system in Texas, by Georgia Akers:

Go to a second-hand store, buy a pair of men's used work boots, a really BIG pair. Put them outside your front door on top of a copy of Guns and Ammo magazine. Put a dog dish beside it, a really BIG dish.

Leave a note on your front door that says something like “Bubba, Big Mike and I have gone to get more ammunition – back in 1/2 an hr. Try not to piss-off the pitbulls, they just been wormed.”

Professionally Speaking

There are times when every professional organization reaches out for additional advice and assistance – especially outside its own area of competence. So yesterday, at San Antonio’s famous Menger Hotel, Mary Jo Martin addressed members of the Brain Injury Association of America – the BIAA. This organization’s members, private practices all over the US, are dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitation of cognitive brain injuries.

(You may recall Mary Jo and I co-authored a white paper, "Why Does Research Cost So Much?" several months ago; see the October 17th post. On the other hand, who remembers back that far?)

As principal of Knowledge-Based Marketing LLC, Mary Jo was invited to present two sessions about marketing at the BIAA’s Brain Injury Business Practice College, to advance members’ knowledge of marketing basics and encourage them to share marketing experiences and “best practices.”

The Practice College offered distinct session tracks for CEOs, CFOs, and Sales/Marketing professionals, with topics as diverse as crisis management strategies, referral management, sales personnel’s compensation…and marketing.

Mary Jo made two very successful hour-long presentations to over 50% of the attendees, including CFOs and CEOs - some representing practices with up to 300 beds. She told me in a telephone call yesterday afternoon, “Even though these practices are so utterly different than most business-to-business firms, the elements of gathering and using information to measure their marketing is just as important – and just as learnable.”

If you’d like a free copy of Mary Jo’s presentation, “Core Marketing Concepts – a 60-Minute Crash Course,” e-mail her at maryjom@kbasedmkt.com. She’ll be glad to share it with you.

Deep Zaltman

Yesterday, I posted the answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The question was posed in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to DEEP THOUGHT, the so-named computer created by some hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings.

When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be 42, DEEP THOUGHT’s creators sheepishly realize that they don't really know what the question is. DEEP THOUGHT itself doesn’t know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe, and Everything; but offers to design an even more powerful computer (which turns out to be the planet Earth) to calculate it.

After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by a Vogon destructor fleet five minutes before the computation is complete. Instead, it turns out that they could have asked Professor Gerald Zaltman.

My blog-watching friend Rob Schoenbeck sent me an article, “What people don't know they know: Professor's seven ‘deep metaphors’ probe the psyche of consumers,” by a fairly well-known Canadian columnist, Diane Francis.

I went to her Web site to find out more about the article and the subject, only the link is down. So I Googled Zaltman, who is a Harvard Business School professor since 1991; and came up with this – which I suggest you read for the complete story of ‘The Mind of the Market.’

The article notes, “Zaltman's eponymous research tool, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, called ZMET for short, was designed to illuminate exactly these kinds of human conundrums, in order to observe how they might serve the study of consumer behavior.

“Zaltman’s work actually cuts across a number of boundaries. He’s a co-director…of the Mind of the Market lab, a state of the art center at HBS that utilizes ZMET in addition to digital imaging, for corporate clients as well as MBA and Executive Education students. He's also involved in Harvard's interdisciplinary initiative Mind/Brain/Behavior, and studies neuroimaging techniques as applied to market research.” Zaltman modeled his technique after a lot of basic theories of the human mind. To name just a few:

• Most thought, emotion, and learning occur without awareness.
• Emotion and reason are equally important.
• Memory is story-based and readily distorted.
• Conscious thoughts occur as images* (which the ZMET interviewee collects and manipulates with some help from the researchers).

His process is attracting oodles of attention from major companies who want to get the “real answers” to questions like customer loyalty, brand choice, and other Holy Grails of modern marketing: “remarkable insights into the motivations — and minds — within the marketplace.”

One of the results of ZMET is a composite image of what the subject thinks ands feels, like the one* upper left. In theory, then, Zaltman can deliver a picture which answers the original question put to DEEP THOUGHT by the race of pan-dimensional beings.Or – in another version of the theory – this is just part of the ongoing computation experiment set running 10 million years ago. Because (despite the proof of our own eyes when we see what TxDOT is doing to Interstate 10) the Vogons haven’t actually arrived yet.

The Answer

In Saturday's post (in which I've been accused of bragging), I inadvertently presented a famous question about the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer appears at the right.

Meantime, I will refrain from mentioning what I'm doing with this Sunday: a beautiful day here in Houston, though. Right. That's it. I'm off. Talk with you tomorrow.

Postless Saturday

The great diarists – John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys, Chips Channon – wrote about everything and anything; but mostly about their social scenes. I have explained to people who ask that being a blogger is somewhat like being a diarist online. It has always seemed to me, though, that certain diarists (e.g., Marcus Aurelius) only wrote when they were bored or weren’t terribly busy.

Today’s post isn’t about what I’m writing for the blog. I’m busy writing for my living: a new brochure about commissioning deepwater drilling rigs.
Unless you’re in the industry, this particular sort of mechanical wonder may not have drifted across your consciousness. Unless you’ve been watching the results of the awful 2005 hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, you won’t have noted that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs in the GOM. Offshore drilling and production platforms are among the most complex machines built by modern human beings. Tremendously exciting and well worth writing about.

So – please excuse me today. No musings on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (including advertising). No social scandal, no gossip about prominent personalities living or dead. I have work to do. Saturdays are sometimes like that.

© Photographer: Bob Evangelista Agency: Dreamstime.com

Eli’s Birthday

Today, a fanciful game of “Connections” about the fate of American marketing and advertising.

Eli Whitney was born on this date in 1765 in Westboro, MA. Whitney invented the cotton gin and developed the concept of mass production of interchangeable parts. We can blame the cotton gin for a lot of problems, but the idea of interchangeable parts – that’s the springboard of the Industrial Revolution and the start of today’s game.

Of those Americans who might be able to answer the question, “Who invented the automobile?”, most would say Henry Ford. But Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile – he married the already-invented motor car to the techniques of the assembly line.

Mass production demands mass consumption. How to get you the masses to consume? Advertising…eventually. His concept of mass production put American on wheels, his advertising urged Americans to buy cars, and the Ford Motor Company became one of America’s industrial behemoths.

As early as 1928, Herbert Hoover was campaigning for President with the slogan, “A chicken in every pot and and a car in every garage.”

Along with the readily available automobile, Henry Ford is also credited with inventing the American middle class. Last week, one portion of the middle class, in the form of the American Family Association, seems to have “forced” Ford to stop some of its advertising, for the Jaguar and Land Rover marks, in gay magazines.

A number of people are writing about market forces and their effects on advertising – like Alan Murray in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (page A2).

So today, the anniversary of Whitney’s birth, serves as a reasonable occasion to look at how advertisers and advertising agencies respond to public pressure. Our American freedoms give every group an opportunity to persuade corporations to behave the way the group wishes. It’s part of our way of life.

In the wake of our industry’s craven response to the apparent furor of non-smokers over the success of the Joe Camel advertising campaign, I’ve been looking for a chance to tell our industry, “Grow a spine.” Today’s the day.

These connections are a real stretch – I admit it. This is a blog after all and only rarely splenetic. But happy birthday anyway, Eli Whitney.

Whitney engraving from Wikipedia.com with thanks.

USS Arizona

“A US battleship of the Pennsylvania class, commissioned in 1916. It was sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It sank so rapidly that of the 1,400 men on board, 1,103 were lost (over half the total casualties suffered by the entire fleet at Pearl Harbor). Now enshrined as a memorial, with her crew considered buried at sea, the Arizona remains in commission as the senior ship of the US Pacific Fleet.”

Quick, John, Dictionary of Weapons & Military Terms, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973. Official US Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

Tyson Offers

Through one of my SoFlow discussion groups, Dawn Douglass (whose Web site here is worth more than one look) pointed the way to an AdAge.com news item that begins:

“Tyson Foods has launched a faith-based marketing initiative that is offering consumers free downloadable prayer booklets at the same time the company has placed 128 part-time chaplains in 78 food-processing plants across the country.”

Felt this is pretty brave of a company these days, no matter what you think of the poultry industry. So I went here to take a look. Sure enough, there’s a booklet on offer, “designed to help you discover (or rediscover) the joy and power of saying a word of thanks at mealtime.”

The on-line excerpts are very broad-ranging, so I have taken the liberty of showing you some – it’s good for the spirit:

“Thank you for the food we eat; Thank you for the friends we meet; Thank you for our work and play; Thank you, God, for a happy day.”

“Cristo, pan de vida, Ven y bendice esta comida. Amen. Christ, bread of life, Come and bless this food. Amen.”

“Hail, hail, hail, may happiness come. May food come. May corn come. Just as the farmers work and look forward to the reaping, So may we sit again as we are sitting now.”

“Bénedic, Dómine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi. Per Chritum Dóminum nostrum. Amen. Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the grub. Amen.”

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth.”

“Some hae meat and canna eat, And some would eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit.”

“For what we are about to receive, May the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.”

“Good Lord - Bless these sinners as they eat their dinners. Amen.”

“Great God, accept our gratitude,
For the great gifts on us bestowed.
For raiment, shelter and for food.
Great God, our gratitude we bring,
Accept our humble offering,
For all the gifts on us bestowed,
Thy name be evermore adored.”

“God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food. By his hands, we are fed. Let us thank him for our bread. Amen.”

And from the US Coast Guard Chaplain Program:

“Our Father, we are mindful of those who have friends but no food...and those who have food but no friends. We thank you this day we have both. Help us to befriend the friendless and to share our substance with those who hunger. Amen.”

It’s good to be thankful for the things we have – and say so out loud, especially when we share our blessings with others. This Tyson initiative (one of many) is another way to build community...which is always a good thing. I, for one, intend to ask how their program is playing out. More about this as the season progresses.

Logo and excerpts are from Tyson Foods, Inc. Thank you for the loan.

Christmas Poaching

“How about an egg-poaching toaster?” she asks. “It’s against the King’s law to poach the royal eggs,” says I, wondering what she was talking about. Barbara winces as she often does at my jokes and continues, “No, I’m talking about this Egg Poaching Toaster in the new Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue – right here.”

Ah, the catalogue: “Offering the Best, the Only and the Unexpected for 157 years.” One of the official starts of the Christmas shopping season. It like Neiman Marcus for the upper-middle-class, filled with shiny gadgets to catch the eye and empty the pocketbook. More than the early seasonal displays, more than the often-clever TV commercials, the constant arrival of the catalogues in the mailbox advertising all mod cons for gadget garages throughout the Western world still signals the March of Shopping Progress – despite the Internet.

I have decided against the poacher, despite the arresting fact that “this countertop device makes a complete breakfast sandwich in just four minutes…” Although my eye was caught by The Children’s ATM Bank shown directly underneath, this is the kind of marketing I can now resist.

This is hardly the first or only time that someone will remark on the drive to make the Christmas shopping season profitable for retailers everywhere. Gadgeteering is part of the American psyche, maybe humanity’s psyche, but I have run out of room for these things, I guess. Consumables (like holiday candy trays) are probably to blame in my case: carrying around the gifties in caloric form rather than having them clutter up the household landscape.

Yet it is a constant battle, isn’t it. I noted in the September 6 number of Family Circle (page 81), that one cannot “speed your weight loss results” without stocking up on the shiny plastic Cheese Grater, the chromed Vegetable Steamer, and the handy Olive Oil Sprayer. Say, did you know that “you’ll use about half as much cheese if you shred it first?”

Let ‘em roll on, says I. ‘Tis the season to be merry, and if the definition of “merry” includes getting a breakfast sandwich in four minutes, go for it. The retailers will thank you, the economy will thank you. And I, who make a better living in a boom economy, will thank you. (PS: The Egg Poacher’s stock number is BX-72727 – and thanks to Hammacher Schlemmer for the photo.)

Apologies, Eh?

In an earlier post, I wrongly identified Toronto as the national capital of Canada. A brief and amiable reply corrected my error. Canada’s SOG is Ottawa, in the Province of Ontario. This year 2005 marks the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Ottawa as a city. On January 1, 1855, the town of Bytown became the City of Ottawa.

I hereby apologize to Ottawans – and to Leigh and Loren Lerner, and to Peter Francey, who are likely quite ashamed of me at this point. Here's to a happier Sunday for all Canadians.

Tiny Timberwolves

Welcome to branding gone wacky. Driving behind a family van in my neighborhood, I realized one of its bumper stickers identified the driver as the parent of a kid attending Terrace Elementary School, one of more than 30 elementary schools in the Spring Branch ISD system.

It’s the same elementary school that two of my children attended. But somewhere along the years, it has adopted a new mascot. Now, this elementary school’s teams are called Timberwolves – complete with a wolf’s head with fangs showing.

First-graders named Timberwolves? Like after the large gray wolves (Canis lupus) that used to be prime carnivores throughout northern North America and Eurasia? I happen to like wolves. But there’s something…aggressive…in the mascot name; it doesn’t exactly represent the kind of environment I’d want to dump young kiddos into.

Now, if Terrace Elementary School adopted its mascot to honor the US Army’s famous 104th Infantry Division, then I’m all in favor – that’s the unit patch pictured to the left. Somehow, though, I doubt it. This adoption of aggressive beasties as mascots has become epidemic in the American school system and it has descended to the elementary school level. I guess the more appropriate Timberpups never came up.

A quick local check has turned up Cougars, Lions, and Tigers; Bears, Bulldogs, and Huskies; Falcons and Eagles (both good raptors); even a Gator or two. These outnumber the Mustangs and the Dolphins – and Pandas (which at least deliver a warm, fuzzy feel) by a wide margin.

Shucks, when I went to Marist School in Atlanta, we were the Cadets, because we were a military school after all. Curiously, long after I had graduated and the school became a co-ed general education institution without a National Defense Cadet Corps program, the mascot became the War Eagle. Go figure.

Will this trend continue its bloodthirsty advance? Do we look forward to Cobras, Hyenas, Killer Whales? (These probably exist by now.) How about John F. Kennedy Elementary’s Fifth Grade soccer team becoming the “Bloody-Fanged, Prairie Dog-Rending Wildcats?”

Oh, for the days of Crickets and Chipmunks.

Don’t Shout

Clients change advertising and PR agencies for a variety of reasons…the agency-search consultants tell us so. You can check out consultants’ Web sites, you can talk to (or read interviews with) big-scale agency executives. The reasons will appear to be different depending on fashion. Maybe the old agency’s creative is “stale.” Maybe one party is just plain tired or fed up with the other.

There are as many different reasons for changing agencies as there are people who do the changing…because, I think, of the “quality of the interaction.”

This is a double-barreled challenge.

First, agency executives say clients are not looking for better creative so much as they are looking for changes in the quality of the interaction between their customers and their messages. You may choose to define this change any number of ways, which is what companies large and small are doing by cutting budgets for traditional media (radio and broadcast TV) and exploring new media – everything from hot cable shows to word-of-mouth or “guerilla” marketing.

In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Lowe Worldwide Chairman Mark Wnek said that “…many creative executives are not ready for change. There is a profound love affair between creative executives and the little 30-second Hollywood films they create.” (That’s p. B28, 11/30, for non-subscribers.)

Improving the interactions between the clients’ messages and prospective customers, as demonstrated (for example) by the multi-media work for the Mini automobile and redefining quality-of-life a la Target department stores, suddenly makes for better sales, and therefore better client-agency relationships. Or at least better relations between the client and whomever is the trendy purveyor of the apparent solution.

Second is the old “interface” problem between the client people and the agency people. Good relationships in this context are worth their weight in gold. Bad ones lead to more changes.

In a post that’s meant to be relatively short, I don’t know how much detail you need about this part of the client-agency relationship. But I suggest that good chemistry is far more important in the selection and retention of marcom suppliers than most professionals credit.

In both cases, Miss Manners would perhaps say, “Stop shouting.” Amiability is perhaps worth more than some people think.

What do you think?

© Photographer: Peter Hansen Agency: Dreamstime.com