Purina® Diet*

I have two dogs and I was buying a large bag of Purina at Wal-Mart and was in line to check out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her no: I was starting The Purina Diet again, though I probably shouldn’t because I’d ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet. The way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.)

Horrified, she asked if I’d ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned.

I said, “No. I was sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.”

I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack – he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.

Stupid lady...why else would I buy dog food?!?

*This is a true story, according to its contributor. He has asked to remain anonymous. See how urban legends get started?

WEDGE Revamped

The new website for WEDGE Group has just gone live. It’s handsome and, if I do say so, elegant in form and simplicity. (I’m the co-creator and copywriter.)

Napoleon’s epigram about time is quoted often: “Ask me for anything but…” It’s sadly and particularly true of the investment business, especially in publicly held companies. For these unfortunates, the next quarter’s performance is far more important to the stock analysts on The Street than long-term returns.

Privately held WEDGE Group uses time to distinguish itself from other investment firms. It constitutes a unique selling proposition, a rarity in today’s financial world where millions of dollars are spent on hammering common-or-garden brand statements onto customers’ mental church doors.

To realize WEDGE Group’s USP, we combined outstanding input from the company’s management and transformed the brand presentation – while maintaining the brand itself.

“Time is the most valuable asset,” according to WEDGE. “Time enables its companies to gain noteworthy competitive advantages and achieve strong returns.”

Together, designer Kay Krenek and I created a high-concept website that relies on clean white space, dramatic visuals and stately copy that continually reveal brand attributes in layered detail, a scalpel instead of a hammer. It’s the kind of brand image quite a number of companies would like to have but don’t always achieve…because they’re rushing to sell something.

WEDGE Group’s “gift of time” is an unusual characteristic, a terrific contrast to the ordinary pace of commerce.

Krenek, whom I am fortunate to have as a design colleague, found the most marvelous clockwork photograph for the home page (as you can see). Her sensibility carries the website through a set of pages wherein we concentrate on imagery and brand-related text instead of overwhelming details and tricks. Bob Marberry is the web developer. The result is a purposeful re-presentation of the WEDGE Group.

Please: Review the new site and tell me what you think it does for the WEDGE brand.

“Tinieblo” Explained

The Starbucks prize for uncovering the meaning of tinieblo goes to NYC’s Peter Yonka – my brother-in-law, no less. Congratulations!

Jose Jaramillo Mejia is a columnist for the Colombian newspaper La Patria. I get the impression he’s this paper’s version of William Safire, writing about the meaning of words and phrases.

His article covers the meaning of tinieblo in detail: “a furtive lover of a lady” according to my machine translation. Señor Jaramillo calls it a neologism – a new coinage – with roots in the Latin word for “darkness,” the dark, lack of light.

Paraphrasing his column, ordinary lovers and young men are different from this guy: El Tinieblo does not fall in love with anybody; nobody falls in love with him. It is a pastime, a resource for sexual gratification without roots or commitments.

Unless Mexican Spanish is wildly different than Colombian Spanish – which it may well be – we’re drinking a mezcal whose brand name implies a Don Juan, a Casanova….perhaps a little bit more. (No, I don’t feel any different, thanks.)

Señor Jaramillo nominates tinieblo for the Royal Academy’s official dictionary of the Spanish language with the meaning of the occasional lover. Uh-huh. Peter deserves today’s award for “best research.” Happy drinking.

Photo by Corazón Girl with thanks.

El Tinieblo

On the back of the bottle of El Tinieblo mezcal I bought in Abasolo, the label describes the “close relationship between man and maguey from time immemorial.” Stirring words for a guy who’s more comfortable with gin and craft-brewed beers.

South of the border (down Mexico way), we stopped at the El Tinieblo mezcal distillery and museum, on the side of the highway from Reynosa down to our hunting rancho. Son Doug (the one on the right, apparently standing in a pothole) and I gave pride of place in the photo above to the distillery’s signage – it’s a big sign. You can read more about the distillery itself here. Also, I offer a mystery. Read on and language experts will find a challenge built right into this post.

Any road, why not collect…evidence…of an interesting brand, since the popularity of tequilas and mezcals continues to grow? A half-empty bottle of just such evidence is sitting beside my computer right now…76 proof.

A Spanish-language explanation of El Tinieblo reveals that the rancho began producing mezcal in 1865, using the “juice of the maguey.” One of the best known forms of mezcal, if I understand this correctly, is tequila – in fact, agave-based liquors that aren’t tequilas are, well, mezcals. Or…tequilas have to be made with blue agave while mezcal can be made with any: blue, white or silver agave…depending on how you read Spanish. One website says, “Mezcal is made from the agave plant. The agave is also used to make tequila but in a different process.”

If this is confusing, Google up “tequila” and “mezcal.” Wade through the details for yourself.

This post is about the brand – which does not appear anywhere on one of the best tequila-related sites, www.tequila.net. We’ll just have to wing it.

El Tinieblo mezcals (joven, reposado, añejo) are made by Mezcales de Tamaulipas in Jiminez – a good thing since Jimenez is one of just 11 municipalities in the state that have been officially designated Envasado de Origen by the government. The registered proprietor is Alfredo Perez Salinas.

Part of its most recent incarnation as a brand and an attempt to recapture the spirit of mezcaleras (or mezcal-making artisans) is the marketing help the company has received from 706 Design. The firm’s new website is under construction; the existing one doesn’t work too well but the outfit seems to have several offices throughout Mexico, plus locations in Argentina and the US.

706 Design has done the promotional materials for El Tinieblo mezcal, as well as the brand’s website (which also doesn’t work too well, but has a lot of information if you can get to it). It is difficult to determine just what parts of the brand the design firm has worked on, since the mezcal label’s antlered deer head seems to be an older element. It’s related to the hunting rancho of the same name, in the same area of Tamps. The 706 Design firm has done this work, too.

The freshest elements of the brand look are the logotype, surrounded by Mexican flag-colored bars and a starburst of agave in the center. El Tinieblo has a homemade air, though, when you compare it to better-known mezcal brands like La Fogata and (especially) the sophisticated Divino.

That may be purposeful. If the State of Tamaulipas, for example, is trying to revive the handcrafted mezcal industry and using the effort to establish jobs and grow tourism, then slightly “crafty” brand design fits the bill. Shuffling through websites, you can find other, better executions of the folk-art persuasion among the mezcals of Oaxaca far to the south.

Support your “local” brands. To try hand-crafted mezcal, just drive 150 kilometers south of McAllen, TX – a couple of hours by car. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a big-city liquor store buying some fakey corporate brand off the shelf.

Oh – the language challenge. I’m offering a contest-winning Starbucks gift card to anyone who can tell me the origin and English meaning of the word “tinieblo” – and I don’t mean the Colombian version you can find with a little digging on Google. First, I can’t believe that anyone would consciously name a consumer product after what’s obviously Colombian slang usage. Second, wouldn’t you think the product name would have something to do with the area or the rancho?

If you’re a fan of fine mezcals and tequilas, you might want to start stocking up now. A recent article in The Monitor newspaper which covers the Rio Grande Valley here in Texas announced that there’ll be a shortage of agave – in about seven years.

Yipes! Stripes!

The things I discover when I take a road trip: a total rebranding job southwest of Houston that I’d not been aware of before. (And no, it’s not an excuse to put a pretty girl up on the blog…merely an example...really.)

As I headed southwest for Mexico, to hunt the wily whitewing, I ran across my first Stripes© store in Goliad, TX. It’s a C-store (convenience store) hiding under a Valero gas canopy, my first sight of a new trade dress campaign that’s a year old. Apparently, I don’t get out enough.

I asked the counter clerk who operated Stripes. She could only tell me that the chain sold Valero gasoline and she thought its headquarters was in Corpus Christi. It is.

Susser Holdings Corporation tapped Houston-based BrandExtract to: help define and launch the new brand. BrandExtract crafted a complete identity package, including new logos and exterior store signage. The new look and feel will be taken to market via outdoor boards, weekly radio spots, in-store point-of-purchase signage, Stripes cups and other packaging. (It’s very thoughtful of Susser to mention the agency on its website.)

Then I arrived (with six of our eventual 10-man hunting party) in McAllen and found Stripes everywhere – the eastern Valley area alone has 60+ stores in the phone book. According to Susser, it’s one of the Top 20 operators of C-stores nationwide…and Stripes is the “new face” of the old Circle-K brand.

It’s a very good job – despite the apparent dissonance between the Stripes and Valero trade dressings. It doesn’t seem to hurt the company’s business at retail. And there may be some not-really-hidden reason behind the brand change.

According to a company press release, Susser began re-branding its convenience stores from the Circle-K licensed brand to Stripes in the second quarter of 2006. At approximately the same time, Susser began re-branding its fueling islands to Valero from CITGO after signing a new 12-year supply agreement in July 2006 – in the third quarter.

All the retail stores that were supplied by CITGO were to be supplied by Valero. It looks like Susser was one of the breakaways from CITGO in the wake of the remarks by Venezuelan President Chavez that so upset CITGO marketing partners here in the US.

The same February 2007 press release quoted Ron Coben, Susser’s CMO: “The main goal of this campaign was to transfer the goodwill that we have earned over the last decade as Circle K into even stronger customer loyalty as Stripes.”

One valid reason to re-brand a company or operating unit (especially one long-established) is to signal a change in direction – in this case, leaving behind old or no-longer-appropriate marks (Circle-K and CITGO) for new offerings (Valero).

Whether you agree that Valero’s teal-and-yellow looks a bit odd against the Stripes red-and-white, Coben’s team and BrandExtract have come up with a very strong identity – and you can see executions in addition to “Bikini Girl” here.

On the one hand, Wall Street doesn’t seem to have given Susser much credit for this particular effort. But given that it’s a year after the new brand’s rollout and every Stripes store I saw was crowded, I’d have to say the campaign is very successful: Customers have picked up on the brand transference. What’s the disconnect among Susser stakeholders? I’ll write Ron Coben to find out.

And hats off to Jonathan Fisher and the BrandExtract team for a neat ongoing campaign.

PS: Circle-K is still a going concern. Susser was a major licensee.

Spackle® Gone?

Dear Mr. Norton: the morning paper (see above) reminded me that another great trademark has bitten the dust – yours. Like “escalator," it seems to have happened over a number of years…and no one (including yourself and the other members of your family) seems to have noticed.

A trademark used for a powder to be mixed with water or a ready-to-use plastic paste, SPACKLE was designed to fill cracks and holes in plaster before painting or papering. Today, the name usually appears in print in lowercase, either as a noun or as a verb. It’s actually a registered trademark of The Muralo Company of Bayonne, NJ. The original SPACKLE brand of products was introduced in 1926 and there’s plenty of information about it here.

The Muralo Company (Jim Norton, President) favors to independent paint and decorating products dealers – it doesn’t distribute through big-box/Home Center stores. Unlike Sherwin-Williams, another great brand, Muralo doesn’t own retail stores; it depends on “discriminating do-it-yourselfers and professional painting contractors.”

Other companies, including the aforementioned Sherwin-Williams and DAP, Inc., make “spackling paste.”

Despite a 100-year-plus history, the company hasn’t gone out of its way to protect its brand, though. The 1970 edition of The American College Dictionary doesn’t portray the word, whereas “Spackle” is clearly identified as a trademark in the ’99 edition of Encarta® World English Dictionary.

Why wouldn’t a small, family-owned company protect its valuable trademark? One answer may be distraction: The Muralo Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2003, to protect itself against asbestos claims – the same kinds of claims the brought down Johns-Manville. Although the company website’s latest press releases are almost a year old, there’s still a Contractor Incentive Program that’s good ‘til the end of this year: Muralo is still going.

I’m not sure distraction counts as an excuse. My daddy was using the word “spackle” as a verb back when I was a young ‘un…the practice is clearly an old one, despite the Encarta entry. And as you can see in “Zits,” it continues to this day.

Maybe someone from the company will let Signalwriter know why it has let its trademark slip into common usage. A trademark’s age doesn’t mean it has to lose its standing, as Coca-Cola proves.

“Zits” by Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman. © 2007 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

Opportunity Ads

Did you find yourself in a conversation about HACs and BOBs at last night’s art gallery opening? Didn’t think so. How about “High TAN crudes?” Not those either, huh?

Up and down every value chain, there are corners, segments and niches where the language gets arcane and the buzzwords turn mysterious. But somebody is working in these areas and that’s how these new print ads for Baker Petrolite came to be created.

The basic subject is crude oil. In the oil-refining business, operators have to control the costs of the crudes they process: the hydrocarbons that are turned into gasoline (among many other things). Crude oil streams are big cost items; so when refiners can get them, the least expensive crude oils really help margins. These are “opportunity crudes.”

They could be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff (BOBs) or high-acid crudes (HACs). They can be refined but they cause their own set of problems, like unanticipated corrosion. The cost of the crude will be lower, but the cost of refining them could be much higher unless you control the effects on your plant.
That’s the problem with opportunity: you can get a really good deal on something, but you ought to be prepared to deal with the consequences.

I’ve had an opportunity myself: to help Baker Petrolite create fractional-page ads that let refiners know and understand what the issues are – and how to be prepared. Controlling the potential damage caused by high-TAN or high metals crudes is one of the Baker Petrolite specialties.

“Be Prepared” is the main message of the ad series, in which we demonstrate one approach to conveying messages: headlines and copy say one thing while the photos portray a different but complementary theme.

Visually, we borrowed interest. We portray teamwork and partnership in challenging situations – specifically, alpine sports like ice-climbing or competitive bobsledding. Working with its customers is another Baker Petrolite specialty and we convey this with photographs. Visually, we borrowed interest.

Our copy, however, is specific: each of the ads in the series reveals a solution to the challenges of processing a particular kind of opportunity crude. The benefits are bullet-pointed.

It’s the headlines that generate the targeting in this advertising approach. Aside from appearing in specific magazines, this series is designed to (and will) attract readers who know what refining high-TAN crude, for example, entails.

Recognizing the specialized knowledge that’s involved in this niche creates “targets of opportunity” for the advertiser. No head-scratching over HACs and BOBs…just good readership.

Creating the ads was a team effort as well. Thanks to the Baker Petrolite team here and abroad for the opportunity to produce interesting work for marketing to refineries.

Tunguska Blast

Okay, I can’t help this. I stopped by my local pack-and-mail store, owned by Amir Brohi like since forever. I needed to send a fax (that really smacks of the 20th Century, doesn’t it?). There were these bottles on the counter, large, oddly shaped bottles and tiny oddly shaped bottles. Such is my introduction to Tunguska Blast. This is an energy drink apparently distributed like Amway products.

It comes from a company called CyberWize and it introduced Tunguska Blast to the world with...a unique and powerful platform of claims defensible only because of the power attributed to the Tunguska Effect: the most unique boost to energy and stamina, support to the immune system, increase of mental clarity, and enhancement of physical performance ever provided by a nutritional supplement.

Holy monkey fritters! What a marketing scheme. Beautifully done. According to CyberWize, it “absolutely changes” people’s lives.

Now for a little history: at 7.18AM on Tuesday, June 30, 1908, a meteor struck eastern Russia. According to, say, Matt Datillo: Central Siberia was a remote, hard-to-reach wilderness in 1908, but even so, there were witnesses to the event. Near Lake Baikal, villagers saw a bluish light move across the sky…they described it as being brighter than the sun…10 minutes later, there was a bright flash and a sharp noise that sounded like artillery fire.

When the shock wave arrived, it knocked people off their feet and broke windows. It was so strong that people felt it’s force hundreds of miles away. In England, barographs, used to measure atmospheric pressure, showed fluctuations from the explosion. That night, and for weeks thereafter, night skies in the northern hemisphere contained a strange glow so bright it allowed people to read outside.

As far as CyberWize is concerned, this remarkable event has yielded this Tunguska Effect, amazing growth and energy fully certified by genuine Czarist Russian scientists. Which is all duplicated in this energy drink.

You have absolutely positively got to see the Tunguska Blast website ‘cause the brand story is…amazing. The testimonials are remarkable. Certainly you’ll believe them and in case you do, you can order a 4-pack of 32-ounce bottles right off the site for just $210!

Tunguska has always had a certain von Däniken appeal, like Chariots of the Gods, you know? Most of the serious literature, however, doesn’t mention CyberWize’s trademarked Tunguska Effect (although you can read, listen and see all about it on the website).

And the September 2007 number of Consumer Reports didn’t include this product in its “Upfront” review of an even dozen energy drinks – some with names that might actually be understood by the energy-drinking public: Amp, Full Throttle, Red Bull and so on.

Normally I would say that Tunguska Blast is pretty arcane, but the branding guys have really done their packaging and story-telling homework. This is brand marketing at its most fabulous and I use that word in its original denotation: like a fable.

The standard nutrition label is available online – buried in here somewhere may be the amount of caffeine or its equivalent. You’ll note when you read it that CyberWize cautions a consumer to drink just one ounce daily. That makes it about $1.64 an ounce…which is a heck of a lot more than even Starbucks charges for its “energy drink.”

Like I said, though, if you want to be trendy and cool, check out the brand story. It’s all in the brand story.

Naughty Lola

I want you to go right this minute to a blog post by Sunil Shibad, copywriting correspondent in Mumbai. He offers much more detail and plenty of samples from a new book of the same name – a compilation of the best lonely hearts ads from “The London Review of Books” – by David Rose.

The basis of the title: “They call me Naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46).”

Shibad really picks up on the weird and the witty and if that’s not enough, you can also a story on the NPR website. Read all about the ads and consider the people behind them.

What’s telling, from my POV, is that such messages from the heart (or from the mind) are often better and more freely expressed than ad messages. “Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away.” Messages – headlines – we create for clients are far more constrained than hopeful or forthright blurbs from people who will, as long as they wish it, remain anonymous. “Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth.” Each one is self-marketing and lead generation rolled into a single appeal.

Reading these personals reminds me that good copywriters ought to be learning from life – not from textbooks. What will attract readers, listeners or viewers? The human condition…and if they’re witty or wry, so much the better.

Thanks, Sunil, for a great intro to a terrific writer’s manual.

Salsa Mystery

If you want a bottle of Del Monte Thick & Chunky Salsa (Medium), you’ll find it on our table – and nowhere else. Del Monte stopped making its glass-jarred salsas “a few years ago,” according to the Del Monte Consumer Affairs people in Pittsburgh, PA.

Now don’t you go thinking that I’ve begun to specialize in condiments (even though I posted about pickles at end of July). No, salsas and hot sauces are now outselling ketchup in the US – and that makes writing about their sales and marketing quirks worthwhile. America’s growing Hispanic population is something we don’t tend to notice in Texas but it’s increasingly apparent to the rest of the nation.

Salsa is No. 2 behind tortillas in the “Top 10 Hispanic Food and Beverage Categories.” The research organization Packaged Facts projects that this segment of the US retail marketplace will reach $8.4 billion by 2011, up 48% from 2006.

These days, choose among “major’ US brands like Pace (Campbell Soup Company) and Old El Paso (General Mills); brand extensions like Doritos’ salsa, store brands; restaurant and private labels; Mexican competitors such as Victoria and Ortega; specialty brands like Frontera Foods’ Salpica. Some of these are obviously better than others. True confession: I’m not brand-loyal in this crowded category. I’m always willing to try a different brand or flavor variation. Heck, I even hang out at the Houston Hot Sauce Festival, suffering agonies in my search for the good, the bad and the ugly salsas.

If forced to select one brand, I’d go with Goldwater’s salsas out of Arizona…I mail-order them sometimes. Not a lot of heat but plenty of fruity taste.

Taste tests abound – and most of the marketing and advertising work is accomplished by [a] Valassis couponing and [b] store sampling – this is a kind of “trial by mouth.”

But I didn’t recall Del Monte’s branded salsa until Barbara pulled it out of the back of the cupboard. Reading the label was a little like stepping back in time, because there’s no nutrition information, no “best by” date. So I went to the Web to look it up. Surprise! No Del Monte Thick & Chunky Salsa. Del Monte has a lot of sites – food, corporate, even Fresh Del Monte. A little confusing but understandable in a company that’s been around so long.

Finally, I called the Del Monte Consumer Affairs hotline: 1-800-543-3090. This is answered, as I noted above, in Pittsburgh…not exactly the place I’d pick for salsa information. The TSR was very polite, became puzzled and then engaged. She’d never heard of Del Monte Thick & Chunky Salsa. After checking with her supervisor and discovering that Barbara had purchased our bottle at a dollar store some years back, she was finally able to explain that Del Monte had made salsas in the early ‘90s, but ceased production “five or six years ago.” (Thanks, Niki!)

Too bad in a way: It’s pretty good salsa, even long past its freshness date – Barbara insists it’s the preservatives. (And Niki was able to tell me it was made in America. My “customer experience” with Del Monte’s hotline was a good one.)

Del Monte is a great trademark. It’s the kind of company that could bring real muscle to the salsa category in terms of its experience with packing fresh fruits and vegetables.

I guess Del Monte’s management couldn’t wait for the salsa boom to arrive. Today, it would take a lot of horsepower to grab some market share out of the crowded salsa category and Del Monte’s got a lot of tomatoes to pick.

Still, I would have liked to try Del Monte Thick & Chunky Salsa (Hot).

Mambo Floridiana

Chip Weber of Rubber Chicken for the Soul commented on my blog post about my new Moon Dog shirt. He loaded up on classic Mambo Loud Shirts from Australia and sells the remainder of the stock on eBay as well as on his own site. Now he cruises the Web for people who write about wild and crazy tropicals and offers them even better deals on these out-of-production spectaculars: a form of word-of-mouth advertising that’s perhaps a little slow, but he sure does hit his targets: the best kind of shout-out there is.

He’s 52 and 6”5” tall – he thinks that size has a lot to do with Mambo. He met some Aussies in Hong Kong in the mid-90s who were wearing Mambo shirts and fell in love with ‘em. (These days, Chip and his wife Jenny hang out down on Merritt Island in Florida.) He picked up a few shirts a decade ago.

When Mambo sold out, Weber found a “secret” source for these shirts and bought them all – the whole story will come out when he’s sold them. Instead of having a couple in his collection, he’s got, like, 85.

Dare Jennings, who started Mambo Graphics in Oz, originally asked Reg Mombassa to design t-shirts and Loud Shirts for him. Mombassa has said, “A pair of oscillating buttocks or a heaving chest provide an excellent perpetual motion armature over which to stretch the illustrated fabric, giving the images on the cloth the illusion of life and self-motivation.”

I’m glad to think of these loud shirts as having a life of their own – even if the buttocks and chests Mombassa was thinking about little resemble my own. Hey, I’m just a collector here.

So I did ask Weber to send along “Day of the Dead” (pictures above) as well as “Mambo Tropicana Lounge,” which will shock those who know me: this one’s a little quieter than usual. Still, it’s got a great chest on it. Thanks to the big guy from Florida.

PS: What I heard from Weber is that Mambo is actually Jennings’ acronym for Means for Acquiring Models, Bucks and Opiates.

“Flash” Spoilt?

I could hardly do worse to the just-premiered “Flash Gordon” series on Sci-Fi than the lemony Tom Shales has done here – so I won’t. I will say (though you know I don’t normally review anything from the small screen) that Alex Raymond, who first drew the original “Flash Gordon” in 1934, is hardly spinning in his grave.

Unless, of course, you think of him as “Spinner” Raymond. Because “Flash Gordon” is a brand that’s been stepped on so many times, it’s like street dope.

In fact, Raymond was commissioned to draw up Flash to compete with the already popular “Buck Rogers” comic strip. It was a knock-off brand from the get-go. Ruling the spaceways and battling Ming the Merciless 10 years before I was born, that’s a long run…fueled by a huge variety of updates, re-makes, homages, parodies and other variations. Today, Jim Keefe is drawing the strip.

Let’s not forget the Flash Gordon brand t-shirts, action figures and an absolutely spiffy toy ray gun, too.

Come, come: let’s not get too bothered that the current generation of Sci-Fi channeleers will never know who Jean Rogers, Melody Anderson and Ornella Muti were (but whom you can read about here). We’ll just keep our own memories of this great character brand to ourselves. Save Mongo!

Truth Expected

The day before the integrity article appeared in Advertising Age (see below), Jim Blackburn wrote an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle “Outlook” section. You can read the entire article here – or read this take-out:

I want truth from the corporations in my community. I know that corporations must make a profit. I acknowledge that aspect of a corporation, and so should the company. By definition, a corporation is an entity that is created to generate profit (unless the entity is a nonprofit corporation). I hope that other goals and objectives enter into corporate thinking, but all of us should recognize that profit is a primary concern – and please do not disrespect me by pretending otherwise.

Similarly, when there is a crisis or a problem, I expect the truth. Don’t tell us that there is no problem when one exists. The priority in an accident is the safety and health of the community.

Blackburn is not only an environmental lawyer. He’s a professor of the subject in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University. This is clearly stated in the article’s descriptive paragraph about him.

I point this out because this blog is supposed to be about marketing and advertising and so is this post. Blackburn specifically asks, “What should we ask of corporations in our lives?” His answers are as much about marketing as they are about environmentalism.

Blackburn’s expectations, in order, include competency, truth (see above), relationship, respect and trust, conscience, social contract, a view to the future, and partnership. It seems to him that these concepts are “good starting points” for change. They’re just as valid for advertising as they are for production or operations.

(So yes, we’re talking about the Stakeholder Rule© again). Am I belaboring this unmercifully? I’m waiting for more advertisers to catch on to the idea that social interactions can influence how brands are perceived in the marketplace, and how the companies behind those brands perform.

This is an issue for every worker, every consumer…every stakeholder, in fact. Join the vanguard of our particular “proletariat” – the class of people who want to hold the owners of capital and the means of production responsible and responsive. Besides, if you always tell the truth, you won’t have to remember what stories you make up.

“Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Truth “Official”

Praise be to God, it’s now fully endorsed: “Integrity in marketing is not optional.” I know this is the new hosanna because Lynn Upshaw says so in a July 30 article in Advertising Age, addressed to Chief Marketing Officers.

Upshaw is a marketing consultant and a faculty member at the UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. His book proclaims “truth” is the answer in a skeptical world and I’m glad he’s has written it.

What amuses me is that by publishing his article, Ad Age endorses the concept. By implication, truth is the next big thing.

If companies (and governments) would adopt this odd idea of telling the truth, it would make a nice change from screwing every stakeholder in sight – I do believe I’ve mentioned this a time or two.

Think of Upshaw’s article (if you can access it) as necessary reading, if only to help reinforce the idea that ethical behavior is good for business: “Last year, more than 75% of Opinion Research respondents said they preferred to buy from a company that operates ethically, even if they have to pay more.”

I’d like to thank the editors of Ad Age for agreeing to portray this truth thingy where many readers might be able to read it.

Bettter yet, buy Upshaw’s book and review the companies (such as Herman Miller and Johnson & Johnson) he accuses of telling the truth to stakeholders. They’re practicing what he preaches.

Thanks to Susan Kirkland for bringing this article to my attention.

Hoven’s Joke

An old-time Southern, hellfire-and-brimstone country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young men, the boy didn’t really know what he wanted to do, and he didn’t seem too concerned about it.

One day, while the boy was away at school, his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy’s room and placed on his study table four objects: a Bible, a silver dollar, a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey and a Playboy magazine.

“I’ll just hide behind the door,” the old preacher said to himself. “When he comes home from school this afternoon, I’ll see which object he picks up.

“If it’s the Holy Bible, he’s going to be a preacher like me, and what a blessing that would be!

“If he picks up the dollar, he’s going to be a businessman, and that would be okay, too.

“But Lord, if he picks up the bottle, he’s going to be a no-good, low-down drunkard. What a shame that would be! And worst of all.... if he picks up that magazine, he’s gonna be a skirt-chasin’ no-good bum.”

The old man waited anxiously, and soon heard his son’s footsteps as he entered the house whistling and headed for his room. The boy tossed his books on the bed. As he turned to leave the room, he spotted the objects on the table. With curiosity in his eye, he walked over to inspect them.

Finally, he reached out and placed the Bible under his arm. He picked up the silver dollar, flipped it once in the air and dropped it into his pocket. Then he uncorked the bottle and took a big drink while he admired Playboy’s Miss July.

“Lord, have mercy!” the old preacher disgustedly whispered. “He’s gonna be a Congressman!”

There’s no gag like an old one, so thanks to Paul Hoven for this great story; and Wikipedia Commons for the photo.

Mt. Olive

Maybe because Mt. Olive brand pickles come from North Carolina, it can be excused from believing much of what has been written about brand loyalty.

For example, an article in the July 1 issue of The New York Times quotes Marian Salzman, CMO of JWT and author of Next Now: Trends for the Future:

“Because everything is on a faster cycle, there’s no ability to ever be satiated,” said Ms. Salzman, who adds that consumers show little evidence of brand loyalty, moving quickly on to a new fad or product.

On the other hand, there’s ample evidence of utter ignorance about consumer habits in flyover land – at least based on Salzman. I doubt she grew in the Carolinas.

“In a pickle… which do you prefer? The big fat dill pickles. But honestly, ANY pickles as long as they are Mt. Olive Pickles.” That’s Karen’s determination of on her MySpace blog. (Anecdotal? Of course it’s anecdotal – the opposite of “next-now forecasting.”)

So: Mt. Olive Pickle Company formally organized itself in early 1926 with a group of investors who had to find another way to support local farmers after the original plan to sell brined cucumbers to other pickle manufacturers failed. Today, according to its website, it is the best-selling brand of pickles in the Southeastern US and the second biggest selling brand of pickles, peppers and relishes in America.

Kind of hard to believe, I know. It’s likely you’ve never heard of this brand. I know about it because there is a jar or two on our dinner table every evening: we shop at HEB here and Mt. Olive is heavily stocked at HEB. It’s the…pickles here….as well as hot pickled okra, peppers, lime-flavored dill strips…more that 250 SKUs in all.

What about…you know, Vlasik? Glad you asked. In a rigorous scientific survey of the Thursday Night Martini Gang – 15 respondents – twice as many said they bought Vlasic pickles than any other brand. Claussen and Heinz received three “buys” each. One mentioned she purchases Dixie Rose.

It’s a complicated category – pickles, peppers and relishes – with refrigerated and shelf-stable versions abounding. But Vlasic (with its classic Groucho Marx stork) is owned by Aurora Foods*, Claussen by Kraft Foods, and Heinz by…uh…Heinz – the original pickle empire-builder.

Still, Mt. Olive Pickle Company is an independent: apparently, America’s largest independent pickle-maker and hence an independent brand as well. Its stats (depending on where you can find them) make this pretty impressive for a company that still based in its hometown after 80 years.

Also, the brand is intimately tied to its hometown, Mt. Olive, NC; with more than 5,000 people a little bit north and east of Fayetteville. And a mighty fine town it is, apparently, which has grown with the pickle company. But not too much. There’s a yearly North Carolina Pickle Festival; a New Year’s Eve Pickle Drop that’s quite popular; and a Pickle Palooza Picnic each spring. The cohesion between brand and town may appear to be old-fashioned, but it’s a far cry from conglomerates’ relationships with their stakeholders.

Mt. Olive Pickle Company has had its run-ins with labor organizers the last few years; these conflicts appear to be resolved. This post isn’t up to the four-score of years’ worth of company history that the brand deserves. But I sure to like the thought of a brand that gives back so obviously to its community – every time I open a jar.

Two final notes. No store-bought brand of pickle is worthy in Boston, apparently. According this article from The Boston Globe, Katie Johnston Chase ran a tasting contest: “Claussen was unenthusiastically voted the winner, and a few of the selections seemed downright revolting.” I’m not kidding: read the sour reviews for yourself.

Turn the other cheek (to stuff a pickle in it): “I eat these because they're good enough and for North Carolina state pride,” blogger Rob Matthews says here. Another anecdote…or a data point?

*Be certain to read some of the material Rob Schoenbeck assembled in the first comment to this post – just click on the word.

Technosurround Hell?

In “Dyepot,” a blog out of Portland, OR, the writer mentions the word technosurround, another neologism from Kim Stanley Robinson (see here). In the blogger’s notes, she explains Robinson’s view that “…This can be overwhelming: too much is like being high or in a shaman-state all the time.”

I ran across the word again myself while I was reading the book and Googled it up. “Dyepot” was the only place it turned up as a single word.

Like Robinson’s previous idea, it struck me there’s a marketing implication in the concept of technosurround – from several directions.

Like one of Robinson’s inspirations, the idea of a world-encompassing, omnipresent advertising presence comes from the novels of Phillip Dick, best expressed on the screen in movies such as “Bladerunner” (1982) and “Minority Report” (2002). Writer Michael Stroud wrote in Wired that in one of the movie’s scenes, fugitive John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is accosted by an interactive video advertisement on a wall: “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now.”

The film’s production designer, Alex McDowell, is quoted in Stroud’s article: “There’s a logical progression from the way the Internet works now to more enveloping, environmental advertising that’s networked.” McDowell is describing the growing use of increasingly personalized ads – currently blooming on our Internet.

We’re building the technosurround now. This past Thursday, the Houston chapter of the Business Marketing Association brought the current iteration of the Online Marketing Summit to town. It was well-attended and lively.

One thing was very clear: the Internet is its own industry, like the energy industry and the healthcare industry – and it has its own fairly focused agenda. It’s in the Internet industry’s interest to maximally increase everyone’s involvement with the Worldwide Web.

It means that “web marketers” have become this decade’s version of TV network marketers, and radio network marketers before that: give us all your money and we’ll make sure people pay more attention to your product or your service.

Unlike the technosurrounds previously established by other forms of mass media, the new version is personally interactive, like the cell phone you’re carrying around with you right now – and don’t you wish it was an iPhone?

Danger, Will Robinson: The “Minority Report” theme is that the technosurround eventually captures and tracks each and every one of us – to the detriment of freedom and liberty (two quite different concepts, actually).

The blessing is “social media” and the ability it gives us to rage against the machine, if we’re so inclined. Just like this blog, or even more provocative blogs and other forms of interactive communication. Just remember that if China can control the Web content that its population can access, so can America.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I welcome the integration of social media with Web marketing…it’s a powerful way to enact the Stakeholder Rule© on behalf of companies and institutions. On the other hand, I absolutely, positively do not want Amazon (for example) to be all that familiar with my reading habits or any of my other idiosyncracies. Technosurround be damned.

“Richard Laurence Baron, you could use a Guinness right now.”

Above, a futuristic Reebok ad from “Minority Report.” “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Show Turn

To keep building the brand, keep your brand look consistent: thus sayeth the rule. So when you want something different in the way of a tradeshow handout, you build on elements that already exist in a client’s brand look and architecture.

Wood Group Gas Turbine Services has just such a new brand look, recently instituted under the guidance of its managers.

Prism Design and I share the concept creation and execution honors. It began with a new theme line, KEEP ON TURNING, and has continued with a clean, crisp design, four colored versions of the planet Earth, and the use of “global” photographs which portray the worldwide extent of Gas Turbine Services’ business.

The new print look is consistent with the overall Wood Group branding strategy while reinforcing customer benefits in a marketscape that spans so broad a category as “rotating equipment.” That’s turbines for the less well informed. On the Prism side, design honors go to Susan Reeves, Terry Teutsch, Stacy Allen and Miss Anne Stovall. It is applied initially to a new brochure, datasheets and advertising.

Our clients then challenged us to come up with something different in the way of a handout, a theoretically simplified version of the larger suite of materials. Along the way, Teutsch (Prism’s design director) came up with…well, a turn on the brand’s KEEP ON TURNING foundation: the idea we call “Paper Globe.”

Forgive my enthusiasm – it’s turned out very well indeed. The three-dimensionalized realization (whew!) of the brand concept is specially printed and die-cut so it fits into an engineer’s shirt pocket. It perfectly mirrors the Gas Turbine Services brand look, delivers critical information in an unforgettable fashion, and serves as a display piece as well.

The design and the execution are the results of a lot of tradeshow experience: an exhibition piece should transcend the informational and achieve the memorable. In addition to “continuing the campaign,” Wood Group Gas Turbine Services’ Paper Globe is more than a show turn – it’s a show stopper (if I say so myself).

Thanks to Wood Group Gas Turbine Services for
the opportunity to produce such outstanding work.

Nonlinear Tipping

You can call it the “Law of Unintended Consequences” if you like. I prefer to think of certain situations as nonlinear tipping points. This phrase comes from Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson – he’s referring in this particular novel to the idea that a major global climate shift can happen in as little as three years:

It was such a radical notion that it had forced climatologists to acknowledge that there must be nonlinear tipping points in the global climate, leading to general acceptance of what was really a new concept…abrupt climate change.

Now apply this concept to marketing. Two examples come immediately to mind.

Who would have expected (or anticipated) that Enron would collapse so suddenly – and take an entire multi-billion-dollar natural gas marketing industry with it? With hindsight, Enron-watchers could, in fact, reconstruct the snarky deals which would bring the company down…so this part reflects 20/20 hindsight. But to topple a complete industry? I think this makes it nonlinear.

Who would have expected that Wal-Mart’s hiring of advertising chief Julie Roehm from Chrysler in February 2006 would lead to such a massive, indeed radical change in the major retailer’s relationships with its stakeholders? In fact, Roehm says in this article, “I was hired by Wal-Mart as a change agent a little less than a year ago.” So the objective was clear (in her view) from the outset; it’s this progress of events that led Wal-Mart to a non-linear tipping point.

So (according to this argument), abrupt changes in the marketscape can happen quickly – as with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force “guerilla marketing” campaign’s unusual effects on Boston…ultimately silly in this case.

But I wonder if there are other nonlinear tipping events in progress right now: ones that we’ll recognize only in hindsight. Or when something blows up in a marketer’s face.

Photo © Destonian, Dreamstime.com

CoVi Technologies

So many videos have been posted on YouTube, you might not have seen the one captured by a garage surveillance camera. Click on the link - watch the clip. It’s funny, a slice of life that could happen anywhere, anytime – and get captured on a security-cam.

For a security team, though, it’s far from perfect. You can’t really make out the faces of the couple in the clutch or the license plates on the cars. The images are blurry and indistinct (for which I’m sure our young lovers are eternally grateful).

Enter CoVi Technologies and the world’s only high-definition video surveillance system – aside from those of the US National Security Agency. Most conventional systems installed today record and display video with less than perfect clarity. CoVi is the first company to offer the highest quality standard at every point of contact, from initial image capture to access, storage and management – anytime, anywhere. Picture-perfect – you can see the differences on the company’s website.

The challenge, for CoVi, has been to create a coherent selling message and brand architecture that are as clear and focused as its cutting-edge technology. Which is where the Austin-based designer Gayle Smith and I came in.

Honestly, the joy of working with a client on a new brochure is as much in the crafting of the message (verbally and graphically) as in the final result – the printed piece whose cover appears above. We collaborated directly with CoVi’s Director of Channel Marketing, Stacy Saxon, and company CEO Barry Walker.

Together, we combined the three distinctive features of CoVi’s exceptional tech into [1] a single, benefit-oriented message and [2] a new graphic look that makes the company look like the genuine category leader it is and will help drive its marketing.

That’s the purpose of the cover’s bold “Q3” that matches the CoVi red: the thinking that’s gone into the company’s technologies offers a single answer to the three questions that bedevil the firm’s target audiences: corporate and governmental managers, IT personnel and security teams. (Why? Because it’s not enough to capture high-definition video – it’s got to be available through a company’s IT network and usable by security personnel on a real-time basis, that’s why.) And these are just three of the CoVi stakeholder groups.

I’ll brazenly quote from Saxon’s response to us: The concepts were beyond my expectations. Even though I knew to expect great things I was pleasantly surprised at how ‘dead on’ the concepts turned out. I was concerned that CoVi’s message was fluid but you guys ‘got it’ and articulated it very accurately both word-wise and graphics-wise. I’m just extremely excited about this project and thrilled to be working with you both – you make a great team.

It’s refreshing to see us (CoVi) develop a professional piece like this – sharp, crisp copy and that edgy/progressive tone/style that we want. I also really appreciate you guys working with us on the quick-turn needs; thank you for accommodating that requirement.

Thanks again so much to you both - you're very easy and enjoyable to work with and your work is pretty terrific too!

And thanks to CoVi, which demonstrates one more time that great clients get great work. Maybe next time, we’ll be able to see precisely who’s kissing whom in Zone 3, Level 2 of that garage.