Laptopism Convert

Dammit, Gary, the thing worked just the way you said it would.

Years of resisting the pull of a laptop have disappeared in just a couple of uses, so it’s good thing TFW Computers built it for me.

All its innards appear to be operating. Yesterday, though, was a bit humbling. Meeting with a client in Park 10, both he and I brought our laptops to the conference room – that’s when the room arranger told us the space didn’t have WiFi. , Sure enough, the automatic-wireless-network-seeker or whatever you call it told me in a dialogue box that there was no WiFi capability. The client asked if the company computer specialist could do anything for us – his office was just down the hall three doors.

We powered up the computers and started talking; I could see the computer guy walk out of his office, step up to the conference room door and ask, “Don’t you guys see the cables? They’re right there on the floor.”

While the client and I looked at each other like the instantaneous idjits we were, the computer guy politely picked up the in-room computer cables and plugged one into each of our laptops. While we stammered out thank-yous, he left the room with the kind of over-the-shoulder grin IT professionals reserve for the hopelessly maladroit.

Still, having tested it at Starbucks as well, the talks-into-thin-air business works just fine. The itsy-bitsy picture-taking camera thingy functions as it’s supposed to. And I must say that both the size (12.1” LCD) and the color (mine’s the high-gloss yellow one, remember?) have generated a lot of positive, even admiring comments, especially from colleagues of the graphic design persuasion.

I’m uncertain why I am so pleased that the notebook computer functions as advertised. But I’m a believer now. Thanks to you and the TFW gang for building it so neatly. All the best for Leap-Day…RLB.

Gordon Gorrie

“The only problem with press releases is that they go to the press.”

Flunking Ozarka

I’m going to ask Ozarka® Brand Natural Spring Water one more time: Please sell me just one of your Bottle Mate® XL water-bottle carriers. Here an extra opportunity to be responsive to your customers (well, me anyway).

I am getting older – you probably didn’t know this. As large as I am, I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t easily wrestle with the 5-gallon bottles (40 lbs or so each) in which Ozarka delivers water to us. The Ozarka routeman leaves them at the front door; our dispenser is at the back of the house.

Yesterday, I saw our routeman, Alex, use this really neat plastic handle to move the bottles. The specialized, easy-to-use tool is made of nylon and glass-reinforced polymers and it slips over the neck of the bottle so someone can just lift it with one hand. The name “Bottle Mate XL” is molded right into the handle. This is some good trick. I immediately wanted one of my own.

I asked Alex where I could buy one; he answered that it was issued to him by the company, it was the only one he had. He didn’t think the company sold them, and the only thing he could suggest was to call Ozarka’s 800 number. (BTW, Alex humped those bottles to the back of the house – the kind of nice gesture I’ve come to expect from Ozarka drivers – thank you.)

Okay, on to the telephone number, 1-800-678-4448. I called Ozarka (it’s one of many water brands owned by Nestlé Waters North America Inc.) and spoke with a very nice woman in Massachusetts. I explained what I was seeking, told her I was a long-time customer – and she replied that the company’s Bottle Mate XL was not available for Ozarka customers. Why not? She didn’t know.

I told her I’d be glad to pay for it...she still didn’t care; just repeated that the Bottle Mate XL wasn’t available for us civilians.

Now, do I waste more of my time trying to get one from Ozarka? Or search the web to find another source? According to the Internet, the Bottle Mate XL, so called because “In response to popular demand,” it has “an improved hand grip 33% larger for big hands or gloves in cold climates,” is manufactured by the Bottle Mate Company – which only sells the items 10 at a time. I’ll keep looking – I’ll find a singleton somewhere.

But right here, right now, there’s an opportunity for Ozarka (which I generally respect) to offer a relevant item, an adjunct to its normal line of products, to fit the changing needs of some of its customers…older guys who’d like to think they can lift 5-gallon water jugs but can’t do it as effortlessly as they used to. Don’t flunk this.

So attention, Kim Jeffery, President and CEO of Nestlé Waters North America. Listen up, Bob Davino, Nestlé Vice President of Marketing. Why not give me a call (713.598.4238)? Tell me you’ll sell one of these Bottle Mate XLs to me. I promise I won’t tell anybody else about it.

PS: If you can’t bend your rules for a good, long-term customer like me, I’ll call Pittsburgh Water Cooler Service in Glenshaw, PA…there’s a Bottle Mate XL for sale right on its website. Then won’t you be embarrassed?

Lazy Goldman

For art directors – even whole advertising agencies – see this simple lesson in how to ruin an ad message. The Asset Management arm of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), “the world’s most prestigious securities firm” according to AdBrands.net, has a new print advertisement.

In case you can’t read the scan, its headline proclaims, “With more choice, it’s easier to tailor your portfolio.”

To play off this headline, an art director has used eight spools, each with a different colored thread. Eight photos, eight colors; fair enough. If you expect the average magazine reader to look at your ad for, say, two seconds. This art director was lazy, though.

Each of the eight photos is the same – except for the color of the thread. Take as close a look as you can. Each spool is the same as the others, including the printing on top. Each needle is stuck into the thread on the spool in precisely the same place, and threaded identically.

The art director (or production artist, or whoever) simply Photoshopped a different color onto each picture. Job over.

By running this ad, Goldman Sachs demonstrates that it will “tailor your portfolio” with pretty much the identical products they use for every other client. “We believe it’s important,” says the ad copy, “to consider diversification not only across different investment areas, but within those areas as well.”

Because some communications person wanted to cheap out (or sleep in), Goldman Sach’s important diversification consists of…different colors.

How much do you think the multi-billion-dollar outfit paid for this ad?

Donna Giles

Two elements appear today by popular demand. The “Chicken” version of the LACTROL® ad series is one. You can plainly see that this is a chicken. I wasn’t trying to hide it or anything. (This is a follow-up to the post just below.)

The other is the name of the tireless, imaginative CMS executive who spearheads the PhibroChem account: Donna Giles. I hadn’t meant to overlook her contribution to the campaign – which was actually turning it into a campaign in the first place. That’s Donna Giles, with my additional thanks.

LACTROL© Mooves

When you haven’t had a chance to use a cow or a pig in an ad campaign for a couple of decades, it’s nice to put ‘em up on the board. So thanks to Houston agency CMS for getting me involved, along with designer/art director Dan Fisler, in creating this new campaign.

Now appearing in ethanol-related publications, the new ads for PhibroChem’s LACTROL antimicrobial gave me a chance focus on consumers: Cows, pigs and chickens. (There’s a third ad with the chicken, that didn’t make it out of the hen house.)

As usual in business-to-business advertising, this wasn’t a straightforward assignment. PhibroChem Division of Phibro manufactures this LACTROL brand of virginiamyacin to effectively control the bacteria that occurs when corn ferments into alcohol. The bacteria reduces the production of ethanol.

At the same time, it contaminates “distiller’s grains” – the afterproduct of ethanol production that is used for animal feeds. Which means that animal feeds could be contaminated as well. Use LACTROL and ethanol producers can produce uncontaminated byproduct, which they can then sell for safer feeds.

Market-proven LACTROL also happens to have a “No Objection” letter from the US Food and Drug Administration. It’s a safety point and a selling point…the reasons behind PhibroChem’s moove into the feed contamination issue. (There’s another one of those awful puns – mark it up to Saturday.)

I’m glad to have had the chance to create the headlines and copy – a well done to Fisler for the art direction.

Bat Radarless

The Associated Press wired a story this morning about a newly discovered bat fossil. The fossilized remains answered a scientific question: When did bats gain their radar-like ability to navigate and locate airborne insects at night?

The answer is: After they started flying – as is evident to paleobiologists from this 152-million-year-old fossil.

This is well-known among avionics companies, however. A distant forerunner of existing airborne systems such as the E-10A aircraft’s Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) was ordered and installed in relatively early models of the bat family only as far back as 45 or 50 million years ago, according to Johann Flogl, airborne systems program manager for Raytheon. “The fossil microbat, Palaeochiropteryx tupaiodon, from Germany’s Messel deposits is over 45 million years old – there is an obvious installation, in fact.”

Although early contracts are no longer available for inspection, installations for a number of models of the Vespertilionidae family have been going on for millions of years. No information about the value of the orders for early airborne electronic systems is available.

Current airborne radar systems have far surpassed bats’ echo-location models; modern offensive radar can track evasive cars and wagons through city streets, and simultaneously track low-flying cruise missiles. Bats, on the other hand, have “ceased to be an economic market for most multi-national companies today,” says an anonymous spokesman for the US Defense Consortium.

The very early Wyoming bat lacks the airframe structure necessary to support the emission of “squeaky sounds” and the reception of resulting echoes. “This would have prevented a retrofit program. Too bat for him,” jokes Flogl.

Photo: Royal Ontario Museum and Nature.

Leaving Footprints?

What’s a social networker to do? There’s no doubt that marketers don’t (or no longer ought to) broadcast messages to a massive, passive audience. There’s a reason which the term “opinion leaders” goes back to 1955…but you can contrast this idea to some of the recent Super Bowl XLII – interesting if you have a leading opinion about Dalmatians or Richard Simmons (I was bemused by the Bridgestone commercials, so sue me).

“The Cluetrain Manifesto” was written almost 10 years back and it is now accepted that markets are conversations. I won’t even put that in quotes, it’s becoming a bit tattered.

More and more new mechanisms – like Facebook – are being used for marketing. More social conversations. More prospective marketing interactions. So web marketers are hoping that social networks like Facebook will take Internet advertising into its “fourth phase,” beyond search advertising. Marketers not only want to observe consumers’ conversations (via tracking), they want to participate in those conversations.

Okay – social media is on the right path. One possible challenge, though, is that you may not be able to leave the party once you’ve joined it – I mean like the Communist Party, not the St. Andrew’s Day bash at your local.

Too long a lead? Apparently, you never actually disappear from Facebook. Even if you opt out of sharing information. Even if you deactivate your account. According to a copyrighted story by Maria Aspan in yesterday’s New York Times, “Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data.”

As Aspan says, disenchanted users can’t disappear from the site without leaving footprints unless they rigorously delete their data, line by line, and then deactivate. (You can read more, by blogger Steven Mansour, in his own dramatic post here – which is also mentioned in the NYT article…very in-your-face.)

So it’s social interaction vs personal privacy. On the one side, you ought to be responsible enough to realize that your personal stuff is, like, on billboards where everyone can see it, right? Yep, you may very well regret showing off those tattoos (or body parts) at some future point in your life. But there’s no 1984 here, no way to go back most of the time and erase those embarrassing – or even worse – items. So social interaction websites ought to be touched with some human thought…yours.

On the other side, (most) marketers don’t really want to know in detail what you did after leaving the bar with your work buddies Friday night. Marketers normally want “you” in specific portions, not you in particular and personally. Why? Principally, I think, because they don’t have the time for one-to-one selling, though this does occur. I choose not to speak for the government.

I was just invited to join the Only in Houston group on Facebook and since I use the site, I thought, “Why not?” Maybe Ann Iverson will buy me a Martini. I don’t believe any information I have on Facebook will horrify anyone, I don’t care about that. Maybe I’ll have more conversations this way.

But do consider that every participant in a conversation leaves footprints (I know, it’s a mixed metaphor). A talented marketer, advertiser or publicist will follow those footprints and, perhaps, try to engage you in additional conversations. That’s what we’re paid to do, we want to involve you somehow in the brands we represent. The real trick is to make the action – and the conversation – meaningful to both parties in the conversation. How come? The Internet is a two-way street. The person leaving the footprints can easily track yours as well.

If you want to stop leaving footprints altogether, it’s going to you take a lot of work.

Big Read

I meant to write about the Big Read on Sunday but I was involved with a “big read” of my own, trying to finish The Age of Turbulence. It’s not exactly portable. Plus, this post is meant to be a preview; something fun’s coming later in the year.

The idea that reading needs to be marketed is a little strange to me – but then I remember Woody Allen saying, “I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It was about Russia.”

The Big Read is “an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts to restore reading to American culture.” I’m in favor of it and there’s a strong push nationally for the program.

Our First Lady, Laura Bush, has been touring the country about The Big Read – good PR for the initiative from the nicest First Lady (so I hear) that’s been in The White House since…well…her mother-in-law. Maybe nicer. The most significant promoter of reading in this country is Oprah Winfrey and more power to her (although she seems to be doing fine even without my best wishes).

What are you doing to help? Suppose you’re an ad agency, or PR firm, or graphic design outfit – and you think reading is vitally important not only to America but to democracy as a concept.

And you want to do some pro bono work that’ll get you more noticed? (Most agencies have to turn this kind of thing away ‘cause it eats their lunch, right? This is not a topic I want to get into right now.) You go to The Big Read website, maybe read some of the very good blog by David Kipen. And you’re inspired to find out where in your neighborhood, city or county you can lend a hand…as a professional marketer and communicator. Go ahead. I think it’ll be a great idea. Plenty of books to choose from, too.

Some advertising agencies get publicly involved in promoting The Big Read but they’re hard to find. White Light Advertising in Bridgeport, CT, worked on the media plan for The Big Read initiative in the southwestern part of the state – the agency used radio, cable TV ads, bus wraps and grassroots programs. The news is on the agency’s website, which is where the ad above came from.

I would have liked to see some results of this particular campaign – but maybe it shows up with kids checking out more library books…or adults getting turned on to something they would no otherwise have even considered. (“I only read the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue for the articles!”)

Maybe this is a good time to get the Houston chapter of the American Marketing Association involved…an organization filled with enthusiasts! Any road, keep an ear cocked for the next Big Read initiative that comes your way. There are plenty of worthy causes but this one won’t force you to pedal 180 miles to Austin.

Daughter Downunder

A quick Saturday note: I’m directing you to the “Australia or Bust! ‘08” blog (remember, just click on that word and you’ll go there). Over the next four months, it will describe the adventures of Rachel Elizabeth Baron and Alison Bond in Oz, where they’ve traveled to work, hang out and get away from the New York winter.

First, there’s the obligatory joke; you know, the one that starts with the Texan rancher who goes to Australia for a vacation – and because a little “bidness” never hurts, he drops by a National Farmers’ Federation party.

There he meets an Aussie farmer and they get to talking…which leads to a visit to the Australian’s farm – called a station down under.

Followed by the Aussie’s faithful bluey, they stroll around the station and the Australian shows off his extensive wheat field. The Texan says, “Oh! We have wheat fields that are at least twice as big as that.”

They walk a little further, and the Aussie points out his herd of cattle (no sheep on this station). The Texan immediately says, “Well dang, we’ve got longhorns that are at least twice as big as your critters.”

The conversation is, pretty obviously, dying out when the Texan sees a herd of kangaroos hopping through the field. He double-takes, then asks, "What are hell are those?”

The Aussie replies offhandedly, “Don't you have any grasshoppers in Texas, mate?”

Now Rachel and Alison are a long way from home. I know they’d appreciate hearing from you, especially since it’s so easy. Under any particular post, click on the word “comments.” That’ll take you to a fill-in-the-blanks area in which you can…uh…comment.

They’d appreciate hearing from you, I bet, especially with the size of them grasshoppers.

Coffee Plantation

Before there was Starbucks in Phoenix, Arizona, there was Coffee Plantation. I met an elderly medico, Dr. Joe Kennedy of the VA, in the chain’s Biltmore Fashion Park store on East Camelback Road. “You used to come in, it would be crowded, and you’d hear every language on the planet!”

It’s still popular but to a visitor, it has the feel on an also-ran – Starbucks in the measuring stick now, the brand to which other coffee chains are compared. The fact of the matter is, Barbara and I were in Phoenix for family business, weren’t really out to enjoy ourselves – and could hardly find a good cup of coffee. (We stayed in the McDowell & 32nd Street area…not much around there.) First, anybody who thinks Dunkin’ Donuts is a challenge for Starbucks needs to drop into one or two of the DDs in Phoenix: Yuck. Second, even McDonalds coffee didn’t seem to have a good taste.

Yes – I’m a coffee snob. Then somebody told me about Coffee Plantation and I thought riding the brand would be worthwhile. I ought to be clear: the cup of “Ethiopian” coffee I had at Coffee Plantation was as good, as fresh and powerful as any African I’ve had. Thanks for that.

On the other hand, this isn’t a chain that goes (or has gone) out of its way to make itself more competitive, at least not based on my single visit. Because of the ubiquitous nature of Starbucks trade dress, this Coffee Plantation store looks similar, but a bit bigger. It offers a couple of computers and plenty of seating. There are fresh pastries available.

But there’s a real sense of has-been to the Coffee Plantation store. (As far as I can tell, the chain was once owned by Diedrich Coffee, but no longer – perhaps some managers bought it out?) No billboards I could find. No strong brand merchandizing, no back-story material. None of the customer involvement devices for which Starbucks is famous. Presuming I’ve even got the right website, Coffee Plantation is stuck in the last century electronically. There’s worse, and I’m not alone in perceiving it.

Take a look at the store reviews on Yelp.com. Scottsdale’s Christy L noted, “As I approached the counter the employees were bent over by the milk cooler, so engrossed in a conversation that they failed to notice my presence.” Thomas S of Phoenix chimed in, “Just because you have the word Plantation, implying old Southern American charm, in your name doesn't mean you can’t provide modern services like clean restrooms? Perhaps you could sweep the floor. And wipe down the counter. Oh, I know, maybe the pigeon poo could be scraped off the tables.”

The feeling of the store is cheap goods and cheap labor– the polar opposite of bustling, smiling Starbucks baristas. And yes again, this is based on a single visit.

Bad service drives out good customers. No matter how popular the chain was once upon a time, it seems as though Phoenix’s Coffee Plantation brand could use a double shot of espresso right about now.

Liquid Al

For all my carryings-on about functional beverages, take note of the brand stories in both “Tunguska Event” and yesterday’s “Functional Beveraging.” Next, consider the coincidence that came my way yesterday.

Here’s another. Lauren Rottet curated “Imperative Design” which opened last night at the Barbara Davis Gallery. The most impressive piece in a very good show was the Ross Lovegrove “Liquid Al Bench” you see above – more than 10 feet long, 2 feet high…a brilliantly present example of the industrial designer’s vision and art. (Al in this case means aluminum: It’s a single piece of milled aluminum, polished to a mirror finish.)

What has this bench got to do with advertising and marketing? Because Lovegrove is an industrial designer, he creates objects for companies to sell. But he does it from his own, rigorously disciplined point of view, one he calls “fat-free design.”

Take the time to listen to Lovegrove explain it here and you’ll discover that he articulates the power of organic design eloquently. Credits it as essential to modern creativity: Natural forces take away what they don’t need and deliver maximum beauty.

His life and vision are filled with natural and organic forms (sea shells and elephant skulls). They inform his work all the time. Look again at Liquid Al Bench. It’s more than a cheap seat. It’s a giant dinosaur bone as art. He reveals his growing interest in “single-surface structures and how they flow” in the video I linked above, from February 2005. I am just seeing the real thing now, here in Houston, three years later.

Where this post comes full circle is Lovegrove’s design for the terrific new PET bottle for Ty Nant Spring Water Ltd.

We’re back in brand-land: A water company engaging a world-class designer to create an “impossible to produce” bottle that, in Lovegrove’s words, seems to be utterly insubstantial until you fill it with water. Only then does the bottle itself take on a variety of art forms, depending on the level of the liquid in the container. He’s “put a skin” on water. His design and the production of the bottles is part of the Ty Nant brand story.

It is past proving that great industrial design is critical to great branding, especially on the product side of our business. Lovegrove’s water bottle is a case in point – one you can hold in your hand. More difficult is bringing the concept of design into intangibles (like natural gas) or services (like geoseismic interpretation). But it can be done if you work at it…and great examples are all around us.

What if we asked Lovegrove to design your next website? Besides one hell of an invoice, what do you think he’d deliver?

“Liquid Al Bench” photo from Barbara Davis Gallery with thanks. PET bottle photo from Ty Nant.

Functional Beveraging?

In case you’ve been MIA the last few years, functional beverages (often called “neutraceuticals”) are drinks fortified with dietary supplements and herbal medicines. I last wrote about the category in “Tunguska Blast,” a September post.

This multi-billion dollar industry isn’t slowing down. As a branded category, it generates an immense amount of brand work and a lot of attention.

The category as a whole is “swarming with hype.” So I picked one at random, Celsius. An ad for the product appears above.

According to its write-up on Red Chip.com, this drink: is widely credited by experts and the media with having created a completely new category of functional foods that burn calories without sacrificing taste. Celsius is designed to be a great replacement beverage for people who want to enjoy the taste of a soda and crave the energy of an energy drink or coffee but, don’t want the calories and chemicals that are found in many of these beverages.

Though the company continues to announce distribution agreements, its current stock price is about 11¢, down from a 52-week high of $3.67 – so perhaps Celsius is not performing at its peak.

Functional beverages existed when I was growing up. My first one was Milk, Homogenized, Mark 1. The implied brand promise was, “Grow up tall.” I suppose it worked because I’m six-and-a-half feet tall still. I then migrated quickly to coffee (heavily laced with the aforementioned milk), thereby gaining early experience with caffeine. My daddy tried to introduce me to beer – a functional beverage with centuries of performance data behind it – but it took a long time for me to get with that program.

I also cheerfully confess to being a long-time fan of Gatorade® sports drink – hundreds of miles of cycling proved its value to me.

So I don’t intend to pick on Celsius particularly. It’s one example of the creative branding that’s going on in this category. But nothing drives a brand out of business faster than empty promises. Drinks that offer higher forms of enlightenment or better bedroom performance should be taken with a grain of salt. Admire the brand story and the packaging all you like. Then check out the claims for yourself.

Sheetrock® Recognition

Home ownership resonates as deeply today as it did a century ago. Even in a digital age, brick and mortar (or plywood and Sheetrock) are what stabilize us and make us feel at home.

How is it that an 80-year-old economist like Alan Greenspan consciously realizes that a word he’s using on page 230 of his new book is a trademark? And thousands of other Americans don’t have clue that he’s writing about a 96-year-old staple of the US marketing scene? With just an initial capital letter “S” the long-time Fed Chairman simply recognized the trademarked status of USG’s gypsum wallboard in the paragraph above…and passed on to other things.

Too many trademarks are lost through inattention – but USG (formerly, the United States Gypsum Company) has very carefully protected its flagship brands, like Sheetrock panels and joint compounds, for years and years of careful attention. How many years?

Blogger Greg notes here that Sheetrock was invented in 1912: At least that’s the earliest patent date I have on the sheetrock that was used in my house in the late teens or 20s. When they added the bathroom to the kitchen they used sheetrock. On the back of each piece was a sticker with instructions for storing and hanging the sheetrock. At the bottom are a series of patent dates and the earliest one is June 11, 1912. The photo on the left is from Greg’s blog. (Wikipedia says 1916 – so be careful of your sources.)

Sheetrock brand gypsum board didn’t catch on broadly until after World War II, when the demand for housing boomed and labor wasn’t available to do complex lath-and-plaster walls quickly enough. It has been almost literally a foundation product of the American housing industry for the past 50+ years.

As I said, though, my attention was caught by Greenspan’s proper use of the brand name right in the middle of his new opus, The Age of Turbulence. When you read the book, you’ll understand why. He spent his early years as an economist closely studying and reporting on a huge range of industrial statistics – as a consultant for giant US corporations. He’s not simply one of the world’s great economic experts, he’s a living compendium of American industrial history. So he knows his Sheetrock – and it ends up as a proper noun in his book. Good on you, Greenspan.

Noguchi Christmas

Isamu Noguchi produced this “iconic” coffee table in 1944, the year before I was born. I first saw one in 1966 or so, in the home of Bob and Edith Fusillo, in Atlanta – about the same time I was learning other really important stuff like “the Goon Show” and who Barbara Hepworth was.

This table has been written about so much (here, for example), it’s like Googling Shakespeare. It has been on my mind, in my mind, for more than 40 years.

Because the table is still being manufactured by Herman Miller, Inc., in Zeeland, MI – and because I saw one on the showroom floor at Design Within Reach here in Houston – I received it for Christmas.

Thank you, Bob and Edith, for the teaching. Thank you, Barbara, for the gifting.

“Tide” Demo

Stuck for a product demonstration? Tune into YouTube and watch the “Tide” stop-motion TV spot. Already the winner of a bronze medal at Cannes and much caressed by aficionados (here, for example) of fine advertising, it’s a wonderful concept, beautifully executed.

Here’s a spoiler on the off-chance you haven’t seen it: The spot is for a storage company: The Big Yellow Self Storage Company is a UK chain with about 50 locations so far. Being able to reserve a storage space on line is a very nice touch, because one of the firm’s shining characteristics is a strong focus on customer relationship management. (This had been a slow-growth area for far too many companies outside the US – it seems to be paying off for Big Yellow.)

“Tide” was created by London agency CHI & Partners in Rathbone Street, London; and directed by Dougal Wilson, already well recognized for his music videos. He said in an interview that he grew up as part of “a quite practical and technical family;” it shows up in this TV commercial. Drew Lightfoot was the animation director. The stop-motion videography appears so simple in concept, but it’s built up with incredible detail.

Best of all, you can see a three-and-a-half-minute “making of” video here. It shows the waves of dinner services; household appliances and tools; and – eventually – large-scale furniture. As one of the property masters comments, it’s the largest shopping trip he’s ever done!

The point of this post (unlike many another comment about “Tide” going around the Web) is that this commercial is a product demo, with a wise look at our culture built into it. If you’ve ever believed that the last one with all the toys when he dies, wins, then this spot will resonate: What do you do with all the toys once you’ve got ‘em?

Many companies do product demos: Cars, appliances, consumer electronics, offshore oil rigs, you name it. The trick is to create a difference in the minds of your viewers. “Tide” succeeds in this very well. I’d like the chance to make it work for business-to-business clients – especially heavy industry.

Great spot, guys!

Watch This

Already nominated by some as the “cool compass watch,” you could have checked out the Tissot T-Touch (Reference: T33.7.8.92) in print ads featuring MotoGP World Champ Nicky Hayden.

It’s more than a titanium watch with a black carbon face, according to Tissot – not news – but it does have this analog compass feature, which Hayden points to in print and on the Tissot website, in an LED screen.

It took me back, I tell you. When I was stationed at Cecil Field Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, FL, back in the day, I used to hang with a group of guys, among whom was “Dave.”

Dave was cool when I didn’t know what cool was, or a geek of the first water prior to the arrival of “geek.” The rest of us wore wrist watches but Dave wore an olive-drab plastic wrist compass. It became not unusual (indeed, common) for us, upon exiting one of many bars in Jax, to ask him, “What direction is it, Dave?” He’d peer down at his Compass, Wrist, Liquid-Filled, made of Bakelite, and tell us. Most of these were made by the Superior Magneto Corporation of Long Island City, NY.

You could pick up your own OD wrist compass in any Army surplus store, but Dave had his from his World War paratroop daddy. I can tell you, though, that there were no full-page ads in Wired featuring rockers and motor sports stars.

Today, Swiss watch manufacturers advertise in both old- and new-fashioned ways: in print or out-of-home media with beautiful photos of their time pieces plus various movie stars; and carry them over to their up-to-the-minute websites.

If you haven’t looked into the Breitling website, take a quick, visual peek: It’s cutting-edge and fun, especially if you like go-fast airplanes. Omega, Tag Heuer, the Armitron Automatic – it’s hard to keep ‘em straight, even if you remember which movie star is flacking which timepiece. Which one is cooler than the others? Hard to say, though some brands do go on: Rolex for one; and Patek Philippe for another, currently running a very nice ad campaign called “Generations,” which you can see here under its Communications button.

So back to Hayden and the Tissot T-Touch in titanium – with compass. If you’re tempted, you can shop on line; on awatches.com it’s $795 plus shipping. Or $596 on Amazon. The Breitling Navitimer Heritage, on the other hand, tips the scale at $20k. Coolness costs.

But remembering when we asked Dave what direction it was? That’s priceless.

Nepal Publicity?

It’s been all over the Internet already – but I couldn’t resist (since I just ran across this).

As reported by Reuters here, officials at Nepal Airlines sacrificed a pair of goats to help solve a technical problem with one of its Boeing 757-200 aircraft. (The national flag carrier has two of these.) “The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” according to an airline official quoted by Reuters. No one has revealed the nature of the technical problem.

It’s important to note that Nepal Airlines was propitiating Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, by sacrificing the goats. Because it has been so widely reported as a news oddity, why am I bringing this up now, four months after it was originally reported?

I haven’t seen that the goat sacrifice has had much of an impact on the brand itself. (Well, aside from the reaction from PETA.) On the other hand, it isn’t what you’d call a major brand – not with just two B-757s and seven DeHavilland Twin Otters.

Still, it’s a 50-year-old brand. It deserves some respect. If I had any connection with Nepal whatsoever, I’d pitch in. Why? Because there’s an opportunity to create a cross-cultural experience that has been ignored by the bloggers and the news bureaus.

Think of this, then, as a PR test case. Perhaps the Nepal Airlines people felt that this kind of religious practice is so common that it didn’t deserve notice. But the story’s obviously made its way around the world – and has had a modest but still negative impact on the airline’s reputation.

What would a good PR practitioner do? What would you do (instead of making fun of the Nepalese) to help build the brand with this goat story? Any answers from public relations professionals would be welcome – because, as the airline’s slogan says, “there is no place on this Earth like Nepal” and it deserves a fair shake.

Green(er) Cup

If, with three sentences on a slip of paper, I could help you turn your company just a little “greener,” would you be interested?

You can do it if you make insulated travel tumblers available to your employees and customers as one of your corporate ad specialties. The one in the photo above is a stainless steel model…but after all these years, there are literally hundreds of styles, all built on the same general principles: a hand-sized container with [a] double-wall vacuum insulation and [b] a firm-fitting, non-spill top or lid with [c] a slide opening.

Here are my three sentences (and see four spiffier options below):

Use this insulated mug next time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store, instead of taking your beverage out in a disposal cup. And keep using it again and again: You could save your local landfill – and the environment – a lot of waste. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

Think of this as the ad-specialty version of repurposing content if you like. Truth is, our environment could use a little help on the to-go cup front. Writing in the November 2007 issue of Fresh Cup, Lois Maffeo makes a couple of telling points.

First, the standard paper-and-plastic go cup is a key part of the retail coffee biz. You know it – everybody knows it. You only have to look around at how many people are carrying Starbucks go cups into meetings…and just about everywhere else.

Second, the “average American office worker’s annual consumption of 500 beverages in disposal cups” means that trash baskets, garbage trucks and landfills are overwhelmed with the things. These are objects made of paper or plastic (or both) that are put to use for an estimated 20-30 minutes. Maffeo says that the conventional go cup is one of America’s quickest paths to the waste stream: buy it, use it, throw it away. In half an hour tops.

One answer that’s being stirred (not shaken) by the cup industry…uh, the paper product manufacturers…is creating go cups with renewable resources, or post-consumer recycled content. And this is a good one, even if it means that retailers who offer compostable cups will pay two or three cents more per cup than for a paper cup. We’ll end up paying for that, but it’s worth it for the benefit.

The better, greener answer is the insulated travel cup or tumbler – the one that you’re likely already making available to customers and prospects. (And no, I am not being paid by the Advertising Specialty Institute for this post…no promotional fees for me, thank you. Although I am open to discuss…)

No one but you and I will know if you start putting a bit of paper inside each of your company’s promotional tumblers; and add a little extra environmental messaging to your corporate brand platform.

I asked some of my colleagues if they could make my own sentences sharper or wittier. They did. With thanks to each, here are their suggestions.

1. “I cut the word count by 37% but don’t think it’s any more provocative,” Graham Rust of Rust2 in Prague said. His option:

Use this insulated mug every time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store (instead of taking yet another disposable cup) and you’ll cut local landfill, and help our environment. Thanks, from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

2. A different take from long-time Houston copywriter Bill Holicek goes like this:

Call me Max the Mug! Use me again and again at your coffee shop and carryout. You save our trees and landfills. And show eco-friendly clout.

3. From “New Jersey Jack” Goldenberg on the East Coast:

Adding waste to the environment? Stop! Littering Earth with disposable coffee cups? Stop! Start using this insulated mug ever time you drink a cup of Joe! From the Green Thinkers at XYZ Company.

4. The principal of Simply Communicate, Jamie Roark, sent this one:

Enjoy this insulated mug instead of a disposable cup each time you visit your favorite coffee spot. Know that every time you sip, the environment sighs. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

However you say it, you can help save the planet – one cup of coffee at a time.

I owe the idea of this post to Bobbie Ireland and Fran LaGrone at Wood Group (who sent me the photo); and Maggie Seeliger at KBR. All of them, at various times, have given me one or more insulated travel tumblers with their corporate logos on them. I use these tumblers a lot…just the way I describe in this post. And thanks to everyone for participating.

Triscuit® Romance

A new print ad for Triscuit ‘Rosemary & Olive Oil’ crackers caught my attention and amusement – it’s hard to make out the headline in this scan, so I’ll quote it for you to read:

Jessica opened her box of Rosemary & Olive Oil Triscuit crackers. The aroma instantly transported her to the countryside. One bite, and she’d finally found the complexity and flavor she craved, a combination sadly missing from the pretty boy in the ascot.

This is classy and sassy – just the thing for a brand that’s under reconstruction – and beautifully targeted to its audience. You’d hardly think this cracker is more than 100 years old. You can read even more about the cracker itself here.

But the story is never so simple as that. When you Google “Triscuit,” you’ll discover that in the past year, the brand has been at the center of some remarkable upsets in the ad biz, as well as the subject of dozens of blog posts (like here and here).

Writing in The New York Times last April, Stuart Elliott broke the story that Kraft Foods was unhappy with its biggest ad agency, JWT, and showed its displeasure by shifting six brands (worth $160+ millions) to other agencies. That’s put the hurt on JWT big-time.

It looks like the Triscuit business, worth about $12.8 millions, ended up at Euro RSCG in New York, along with the Ritz cracker assignment ($32.1 millions).

Some dissatisfaction has been expressed about Kraft North America’s customer service. Freshbooks’ blogger also noted, “Nabisco has not domain-proofed their brand by buying Triscuits.com.” This was back in April; now you can, in fact, type in Triscuit.com and go right to a micro-site for the brand.

Meanwhile, new Triscuit flavors have been very popular with consumers, with lots of positive comments (e.g., mezediet.com).

Back to the ad itself, which bears a 2008 copyright. I’d led by this to conclude that the ad is from Euro RSCG and my hat’s off to the creative team. Yes, I know it’s quite popular to slam guys – but for the women in the audience, this execution is laugh-worthy.

I also compliment the team on the human touches which put this ad “in contact” with the audience: a lovely woman but no stick figure, a certain dreamy quality to the execution, reinforced by the tagline, “A tasty romance awaits.”

I expect I’ll be old(er) and gray(er) before I see this kind of advertising for, say, oilfield technology. Try as I might, I can’t ever see any E&P company going with a headline like:

Ray-Bob opened the carton with his new CX-370A drill bit inside. The fresh oil covering the layers of its diamond cutters instantly recalled his glory days on the rig floor – he knew he’d finally found the penetration and the sheer power missing from his life since Norma’d left him for that landman in Lafayette.

Ah, well. There’s always the Triscuits.