Lifeless Snoozers

I’m about to do Korean Air (and other major international companies) a grave injustice – I guess. But the example ad above, featuring KA’s “reclining Kosmo Sleeper,” is ink-on-paper proof that The Economist has the most boring ads of any major weekly magazine on the planet Earth. They’re mostly tedious. They’re dreary, lifeless snoozers.

Please leave aside, for the moment, whether the entire Korean Air ad campaign, with TV spots created by director Michael Buckley, is good or bad. (This particular print ad has been called “Stunning” and “Absolutely brilliant.” Blog-posters say they love flying the airline.)

No, what I’m after is why The Economist, a massively important and very well-written news magazine, has such generally uninspiring advertising, week after week.

Well, I guess I know why, but I sort of forgot, and then the magazine itself reminded me. A recent article, “Heated arguments,” pointed out that attack ads are on the rise – in America. But, oh dear, the rest of the world still doesn’t like them: “Attack ads tend to go down badly in Europe and Asia.” And, “Some governments even ban them.”

The article really isn’t news, it’s observation. I learned about Europe’s unease with provocatively combative adverts at the knees of my Dialogue International colleagues.

So there are like these…rules…for ad campaigns that will run internationally. Outside-the-US Rule 1, no English-language puns – non-native speakers often don’t get the jokes and they can hardly ever be translated into other languages anyway.

Rule 2: Make only claims that can be proven in court – and if in doubt, don’t make them at all. So paging through, say, The Economist, you’ll see terribly boring ads for SAP or Royal Bank of Canada. (There’s often fancy watch ads on the back covers, though.)

“Stop the reader” is my Rule 1. I call The Economist ad slate boring because I don’t think the ads bring readers to a screeching halt. This doesn’t have to be done with funny headlines or provocative pronouncements . Use a dramatic photo once in a while. (What are you people paying your ad agencies for, anyway? Sleep-aid adverts?)

Wake up. Get a life. And only read The Economist for the articles.

Avocado Power…

A letter – via blog post – to Chris Whitley at Wood Group Renewable Energy Services.

Dear Chris: Can you make out the ad at all? For Mexican avocados? I honestly don’t know why I hadn’t suggested this idea to you before now but the new ad caught me by surprise.

Fresh from the back cover of this month’s issue of Cooking Light, I honestly never envisioned using slices of The Amazing AvocadoTM as rotor blades on high-efficiency wind turbines. Nope, not even when we were creating and producing the 2009 Renewable Energy Services print ads.

I also can’t determine if this new ad is part of the campaign that started in January, or the newer, second-half campaign. According to the trade press, the Avocados-from-Mexico Fall/Winter marketing program’ll run full-bore media campaigns in “the top avocado consumption markets” of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Chicago. (I can’t quite figure out Chicago, but there it is.)

According to a news release from Integrated Marketing Works in Newport Beach, CA, though, the “new” campaign won’t start ‘til early November. So maybe this particular ad comes out of the avocado organization’s NYC shop, Lewis and Neale.

In case you can’t read this photo, the headline is, “with nearly 20 vitamins and minerals, it’s nature’s power plant.” I guess it suits the Cooking Light audience. Our headlines are quite a bit better, of course. Still, the Mexican avocado campaign’s slated to reach 99 million consumers and that’s a lot of people, no fooling. So here’s the NEXT BIG IDEA for RES.

Let’s contact the Mexican Hass Avocado Importers Association (MHAIA) and do a joint marketing campaign. RES brings its exceptional, global knowledge of, and experience with, turbine MOR and wind farm operations. The importers bring the avocados…and we will find a vendor to supply the chips.

Everything gets promoted with “hospitality events” at the Turbo Show in Houston, as well as Power-Gen 2009 in Las Vegas. Avocados are, after all, a renewable resource. I guarantee – the renewable industry will NOT have seen anything like this!

All the best for a good week…Richard.

Print advertisement ® 2009, Mexican Hass Avocado Importers Association. All rights reserved.

Hardee’s Pottymouth?

Maybe you’d call ‘em “Joy Balls.” Maybe you’d call ‘em “Happy Holes.” Or maybe you would call the Parents Television Council, self-appointed targeter of programs it deems inappropriate for children (uhuh), and complain huffily about a new Hardee’s marketing campaign.

The PTC has called on Hardee’s franchisees asking them help kill the brand new Hardee’s Biscuit Holes TV commercials.

Now before you do anything else, do go to www.NameOurHoles.com and check out what this is about…I think it’s a clever, silly site supporting a clever campaign idea: Hardee’s is looking for a good brand name. The company’s mildly pottymouthed campaign has upset some family-values people, which has put a major Hardee’s franchisee (Ben Mayo Boddie) on one, offended side of the furball; and the fast-food company on the other. So far, Hardee’s is sticking by its creative, bless you, by Mendelsohn Zien Advertising in LA.

Chain Leader reported on the introduction – and the naming opportunity – quoting Hardee’s VP-Marketing, Brad Haley, this way:

We knew there would be a big market for Biscuit Holes when we learned that some of our biscuit bakers have been making a similar product for the rest of their restaurants’ staff and they loved them.

They really are irresistible and it’s almost impossible to eat just one. But what to call them was a big challenge. One of my favorite options was “Biznuts,” a cross between biscuits and donuts, since the closest thing to them are donut holes. But there were many other suggestions that were very funny. Unfortunately, I can’t repeat them here.

Well, that’s the key, isn’t it. I look at the commercials and think they’re pretty hilarious in a teenage, look-I-pierced-my-eyebrow kind of way. You might also notice that there are equal numbers of guys and gals, young people and old folks…all jumping into the naming fun with “B-Holes” and “A-Holes.” The website is almost brilliant, complete with sound effects and quick naming clips. Oh yes, and coupons!

This mild Hardee’s bathroom humor take is driving the family values set crazy. In a week that filled with over-reactions, the PTC “outrage” just seems to be the icing on the…biznuts.

And way less amusing than “mouthful-of-balls.”

Extra thanks to Dave Ibsen at Five Blogs Before Lunch for the heads-up and Stacy Allen, Prism Design, for the screen capture.

Copycat Palm

What you can’t see in this dreamy commercial still is the 1000+ kung fu artists surrounding that rock. They (and actress Tamara Hope) star in a new 60-second commercial Palm has released for its Pre. Appearing on the PalmInfocenter, “WebOShelp” also posted it to YouTube, calling it:

An impressive new ad for the webOS Palm Pre smartphone, directed by acclaimed film director Tarsem [Singh Dhandwar] and featuring over 1000 martial arts performers (orchestrated by Sun Yupeng), creating an artistic interpretation of unique features such as Synergy and Cards.

I call it a rip-off. While the mass-dancer idea has since appeared in a number of TV spots, the most original execution was the piece done for Turkey’s AKBank, part of a striking campaign that ran in 2006. At the time, this choreographic extravaganza was original and arresting.

Now, an Endgadget post seems to echo most online sentiments about the Palm Pre spot:

You want obsessive coverage eh, well here it is: the latest Palm Pre ad just unveiled on Facebook. No smack-talk, no smarmy reference to the competition, just an impassioned plea that approaches gently upon the pads of kittens, gazes in your direction, and then walks away. If we didn't know better, we'd guess that Pre was a new brand of feminine deodorant. Give it a whiff after the break.

Either somebody sold Palm a bill of goods, or Palm’s target audience has shifted big time.

PS: Palm Pre commercial director Tarsem showed his new feature film “The Fall,” at the 2008 International Istanbul Film Festival – which was sponsored by AKBank. I never found out who actually directed the AKBank commercial. I wonder..?

…and Indians!

A number of recent vacation photos that Frank White the Photographer shared with me enter the realm of that quote by Milton Glaser, “I am still astonished.” (I don’t ever want to be blasé about Indians.) Frank wrote:

Jo-Anne and I are back from our road trip. It was great! We went to Corinth on our way to Shiloh, and of course we had to stop at Elvis’s birthplace in Tupelo. The highlight of the trip was the reenactment at Fort Niagara. This was the largest to date. There were over four thousand re-enactors; soldiers plus wives and children.

J and I had never been to one of these before and were amazed at the attention to detail. They lived in tents for three days, all furnished as in 1759.

There were six phases to the siege, the first being the Wilderness Battle, where the French came out of the fort to fight the British in the open field. Labelle Famille was an ambush by the British when they discovered that French re-enforcements were on their way to the fort. This battle occurred about two miles south of the fort, lasted approximately twenty minutes and was a massacre.

White’s photos are here – excellent to see them. This photo of an Indian re-enactor, particularly, stopped me.

Copyright © 2009, Frank White Photography. All rights reserved. See also Niagara's 4th.

Pigeons Forward

#1: From “Wonder Weapons Between The Wars,” Army Magazine, June 1984. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved.

Snickers-Horace Pigeon Catapult (Great Britain, 1917). Mounted on a Snickers three-tonne, K-type lorry, the pigeon catapult was a natural follow-on to the more common pigeon vans used by the Royal Army Signal Corps (RASC) in World War I. The idea itself was born amid the rolling barrages of the French battlefields, as the RASC suffered increasingly prohibitive losses among its highly trained messenger pigeons.

At the Second Battle of the Somme, the pigeons suffered in in-flight casualty rate of 80 per cent.

Lt Col Vandemere Horace then suggested the concept of propelling the pigeons through the deadly curtains of fire at a higher rate of speed – in effect, a booster system. Several variants were tried, including a pneumatic gun and large rubber bands. But Col Horace, who had taken a second in Classics at Oxford (Balliol, ’01) insisted the Roman catapult was the answer.

Events proved him right. Properly synchronized, the catapult launcher was an amazing success during field trials on Salisbury Plain in 1916, where wet athletic socks were used to simulate the messenger pigeons. The special shields extending from the sides of the lorry (see drawing) protected the RASC crew from pigeons launched with acute trajectories, while padding on the upper shield sides preserved overshot birds from serious injury.

The use of the pigeon catapult was temporarily discontinued when an outbreak of trench molt devastated the entire stock of RASC messenger pigeons in June, 1917.

CITGO Answer

“I’m Sue and this is my CITGO” is the first line of a new TV commercial from CITGO, one of a finely crafted series of spots from “unconventional agency” BVK in Milwaukee.

The campaign’s matching print ads (like the Key West CITGO execution on the right) don’t deliver the eye-candy enjoyment that the broadcast commercials display.

So, before anything else go to the main engine of the new CITGO campaign – the Fueling Good website – and watch these commercials. Then consider that CITGO and its advertising agency have created a strong, enjoyable answer (or the beginnings of an answer) to the corporation’s biggest challenge: Its ownership by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The political activism of Venezuela’s president has caused very public difficulties for the company, whose largest retail operation is in the US…and always has been. In fact, it’s the embedded nature of the CITGO brand in America that is its saving grace and the foundation of this campaign.

Listen to the TV spots: “Every CITGO is locally owned.” You can hardly drive anywhere in 27 states without seeing CITGO service stations. Some are large and bright, some are small, even cozy. But every one offers the opportunity of a local story. A great local story.

CITGO’s E-Communications Manager Beth Palmer is also a valued, long-time colleague of mine – she’s the one that introduced me to the new TV campaign. Does “going local” work? I’d have to say that it does. Palmer even mentioned that the spot featuring Salisbury, NC, is being used by the local Tourism Authority (Rowan County, NC) because it is so strongly evocative of the town’s character and values.

That’s what CITGO and BVK have captured in these television commercials. Here are the feelings that have made local CITGO owners important participants in their communities…something that TV does so well. That these spots do so well.

One of the campaign’s lines is, “local and loyal.” I’d have argued about that last word except brand loyalty lies at the bottom of this new campaign and all its accompanying pieces. I think CITGO Marketing’s done an outstanding job. Tune in to these spots as I suggested and see what you think.

PS: You’ll find more details of the CITGO campaign in this BrandWeek article.

Vinegar War

It’s a simple one-page ad. I’d say that brand cant hasn’t been so well executed since the cheese toppings on certain frozen pizzas were accused, accurately but meaninglessly, of including casein (Glue?!?).

And I am particularly grateful to reporter Teresa Lindeman. After I saw the ad in Woman’s Day, I found her extensive article about the new Heinz campaign, “Vinegar wars spark high-octane Heinz ads,” in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette dated June 18. If the Heinz ad and Lindeman’s article aren’t required reading for some uni’s mass communications class, they ought to be.

When a single category’s worth almost $250 million and your price point’s down around your ankles, it’s time to “do something.” Anything. So here’s this Heinz condiment ad – a great example of advertising propaganda – asking homemakers that one provoking headline question:

“What field does your vinegar come from?”

When you decide to take your brand to war, propaganda is a key element. Propaganda goes beyond advertising. It’s “…communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause.” The cause, in this case, is the natural organic goodness of Heinz vinegar. The victor wins back lost market share and gets better grocery-store margins.

Lindeman leads with exactly the right touch: The image disturbs. On the one side, stand black towers of an oil facility, and on the other, green stalks of corn plants are seen against a blue sky.

No matter that the oilfield’s 1940s-era rigs comes from some deep photo archive, maybe an Andreas Feininger shot from Life. No matter that it’s difficult to find petroleum-distilled table vinegar in any US supermarket.

No matter, in fact, that it’s neither illegal nor unhealthy to use vinegar distilled from hydrocarbons. The creative does a heckuva job for Heinz, which clearly wants careful homemakers to react strongly to the imagery of the ad. (The full-page advert is supported by a handful a handful of other fine executions under the general campaign theme, HEINZ. GROWN, NOT MADE.TM)

The need for campaign is covered in delicious detail in the Lindeman article; the most telling point invokes the commoditization of vinegar.

Private-label vinegars are cleaning up. Collectively, they’re outselling the Heinz products more than three-to-one. Heinz lost 10%-plus share in unit sales last year. That’s a lot of millions. That’s worth a small war and Heinz has chosen its ground. Every label I read at Kroger’s and HEB says the store brands are made from natural products, too. But Heinz is planting doubt and doing a damn fine job of it.

The first volley of the war, this ad campaign is brand-building on a narrowly focused but national scale. Not to mention propagandizing at the same time.

I’m counting on Lindeman to let me know how the battles go.

The blog post headline is taken from the article by Teresa F Lindeman first published on June 18, 2009. All rights reserved and a fine piece of business journalism, too. A concise post on the “Tiny Choices” blog by Karina Tipton and Jenn Sturiale has outlined the issue of natural- versus synthetic-based vinegars.

Parrot’s Joke

Two old guys, Abe and Sol, sat on a bench in a park feeding pigeons and talking about baseball, just like they did every day. Abe turns to Sol and says, “Do you think there's baseball in heaven?”

Sol thinks about it for a minute and replies, “I dunno, Abe. But let’s make a deal: If I die first, I will come back and tell you, and if you die first, you come back and tell me, if there is baseball in heaven.”

They shake on it and, sadly, a few months later poor Abe passes on. One day soon afterward, Sol is sitting there feeding the pigeons by himself when he hears a voice whisper, “Sol... Sol....”

Sol responds, “Abe! Is that you?”

“Yes it is, Sol,” whispers the spirit of Abe.

Sol, still amazed, asks, “So, is there baseball in heaven?”

“Well,” says Abe, “I got good news and I got bad news.”

“Gimme the good news first,” says Sol.

Abe replies, “Well...there is baseball in heaven.”

Sol says, “That's great! What news could be bad enough to ruin that!?”

Abe sighs and whispers, “You're pitching on Friday.”

I cribbed this from the Galveston Parrot, “the Gulf Coast’s Favorite Newspaper.” It was too good not to share, so thanks to the Parrot.

Fish “Exits”

The intersection of branding and the ease of taking offense happens a lot more often than you think. So I simply laughed out loud when I read a quote attributed to New Jersey Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando: “…it’s a bad idea to associate a highway with alcohol. Flying Fish has answered the authority’s concerns with disclaimers that the beer isn't endorsed by the authority.”

See, Flying Fish is naming a limited series of new beers after infamous New Jersey turnpike exits. In fact, the brewery (which was named 2009’s Top Beverage Artisan in the state) has gone so far as to [a] trademark the “Exit Series of beers” and [b] establish a nifty sub-site with an interactive map of the exits themselves. Take a look at this in case you are driving through the Liberty-and-Prosperity State.

The NJ Turnpike people are upset. So are the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers – normally a worthy organization but now a little too strident for its own good. This geographically isolated uproar reminds me of a verse I read years ago:

Hide, hide, Witch,
The good folk come to burn thee.
Their keen enjoyment hid beneath
The gothic mask of duty.

These days, brewers and vintners have more opportunities for “branding fun,” and Flying Fish has managed to stir up a lot of press for a little beer brand. I say, more power to brewery president Gene Muller and his gang – and will some kind Jersey Devil please pick up a few bottles for me before the next Exit SeriesTM beer is sold out?

Niagara’s 4th

Happy Independence Day.

Twenty years before the American Revolution, Britain and France fought for control of North America in a conflict known as the French and Indian War.

In July 1759 a British army, accompanied by almost 1,000 Iroquois allies, laid siege to French-held Fort Niagara. After 19 days, the fort’s walls had been breached by artillery fire, and a French and Indian relief column was defeated just a mile from the fort in a bloody morning battle. On July 25, the French surrendered the fort, ushering in an era of British control of the Great Lakes.

Today Old Fort Niagara is a National Historic Landmark and New York State Historic Site that welcomes more than 100,000 visitors every year. It offers a unique collection of original military architecture and fortifications from the 18th Century and the 19th Century, as well as living history events and programs, historical exhibits and collections, archaeology, and education.

Six years after Fort Niagara fell some citizens of Boston created the first Liberty Tree. Farmers going to market discovered that an effigy had been hung a big elm tree in Deacon Elliott’s grove. The hanged figure represented Boston merchant Andrew Oliver who’d agreed to collect a new “Stamp Tax” levied on the colonists by Parliament to pay for that war.

American colonists really, really resented having to pay the Mother Country for warring on their behalf (this kind of thing probably sounds familiar to you). That Liberty Tree was the first sign there was going to be trouble between America and Britain. It was one of the earliest conceptual expressions of liberty itself.

Thinking liberty led to independence and the document with the word in its title. As soon as it appeared in 1776, the talking heads of the day started arguing about what liberty, freedom and equality really meant. But the writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was typically ambiguous – he wrote that the text was intended “to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”

Now it’s two-and-a-half centuries since the siege in upstate New York. Jo-Anne and Frank White the Photographer are in Youngstown celebrating the 4th of July and the 250th anniversary of the Fort Niagara battle. Frank has promised to send holiday snaps. Meantime I’ll sponge the ones you see here. And Barbara and I will be celebrating with Sam and Georgia Akers in the Heights.

Whether you’re in Houston or Youngstown or Paris or Baghdad, let’s join in observing the 4th. Listen to the Declaration of Independence, that “expression of the American mind,” right here. Let it stir you up.

We have the liberty to enjoy the widest range of freedoms in the world. Today, we commemorate the independence that gave us that liberty.

Happy 4th of July.

Vacation photography by “Klare and John” Shober posted on Panoramio, from whence I borrowed them.

King? Partner?

I’ve been reviewing the new article Lee Hayden just published, “Customer Feedback: the Key to Stable Growth.”

Hayden’s a colleague from the AMA-Houston Healthcare SIG so I was anxious to see what he had to say. Which is, customers are now at the top of every business’s organizational hierarchy. If they’re not, they should be.

Perhaps you’ve read articles or even books on the subject. So you already know that this king-of-the-hill model is strong. Just a couple of reasons? One, Hayden says, “Smarter use of customer feedback can differentiate your brand, products and services in a tough market.” Two, “It is likely the best opportunity to gain stable growth while competition experiences massive customer losses.” Good thoughts for bad times.

But maybe you haven’t read all those business books. Maybe you’re involved in a company whose customers are not treated like royalty, like this joke from the fast food business:

What’s the difference between customers and vegetables?
Customers have arms and legs.

Start changing this attitude by reading Hayden’s piece – download it here. Then see how you can make learning about your customers pay off.

Listen, though. At the end of this new century’s first decade, what if customer-on-top is just an intermediate stage? I’ve chatted in a number of posts about “stakeholder management” and making certain that your customers become part of two-way (or more) conversations.

This is the distributed model. The customer’s not king of your heap but a partner in your brand and your business. The newer representation is one where customer potency isn’t royal privilege but power-sharing agreement.

Think about the several hundred million Facebook users who stopped the company’s attempt to change the platform dead in its tracks. Without realizing it, Facebook had given its user-fans enough power so that “customers” have a significant say in how this company operates. And there are no shares of stock in sight.

That’s where Hayden has led me with his article, which I haven’t given enough space to. But it has certainly steered me in some interest stakeholder directions. Thanks, Lee.

Charts from David Armano, L+E blog, with appreciation.

Bean Blog

True confession: I am associated with the firm responsible for a new blog, Use Your Bean. It’s the new online thing from Prism Design here in Houston. Principal Susan Reeves says it’s “evidentiary.”

I take that word in several different ways, presuming that I’ve spelt it right from the starting blocks). It’s evident that the Prismatics are interested in fresh ideas. More important, in the “worth a thousand words” category, the blog posts offer photographic proof of Prism’s design thinking.

Now that Sister Mary Ignatius explains it all for you (with apologies to Christopher Durang) I’m certain you’ll just rush right over there…to the blog. It may be even more compelling that one neat idea coming out of this idea blog is the swag offer, “Want to trade?” It makes me feel a bit sad that I already have this stuff. If you don’t though – and have something you want to barter – check it out.

Sunday Best

Forty-year-old Southeast Asia joke: You know you’ve been stationed in the Philippines too long when you save your best flip-flops to wear on Sunday.

In today’s advertising supplements (the “season’s hottest”):

Reef Krystal
BCBGirls French
Volatile Mimi
Reef Butter
Reef Jet Setter

Kenneth Cole Golden Glam
Volatile Ariel
Tredz Chelsea
Nike Celso
Cobian Zuma

Gotchas
Tredz Snake Print
Sperry Santa Cruz
Tredz Siesta II
Tredz Baja

North Face Base Camp
Teva Bowen Coastal
Camden Nubucks
Teva Mush
UGG Fluffies

Reef Little Ahi
Chaco Flip
North Face Slippy
Sanuk Who’s Afraid
Reef Sweet Pea

Reef Philthy Grom
Havaianas Camuflada
Mossimo Gemma
Chaco Hipthong ($75)
PechePlatinum Crocodile ($400)

We were such trend-setters, back when we’d drop a five-centavo coin (.05₱) on the floor of the jitney and then get down on our hands and knees searching for it. See also jandals.

“Fellow Citizens”

June must be the month for Frank White the Photographer and history. Yesterday, White and I visited the Museum of Southern History (whose existence we didn’t suspect, so much for advertising!) for a traveling exhibition about Generals Robert E Lee and Ulysses S Grant (which neither of us had ever heard of). No pictures were taken.

But we did see a well-executed traveling exhibition, of quite high quality, in an unlikely place.

The campus of Houston Baptist University is, on the one hand, not exactly the spot for a museum of any kind. It turns out to have…three, the “University Museums.” I wonder, though, if HBU’s Dunham Bible Museum (a pearl of a presentation, BTW) will get the play that this exhibit will generate. Houston doesn’t get much Civil War action, exhibit-wise. It looked to me as though there’ll be steady traffic by people who have done a lot of ACW reading and touring.

HBU Curator Erin Price and her team have done good work fitting the Virginia Historical Society-New York Historical Society exhibit into the Uni’s space. There are some great artifacts: General Grant's handwritten terms of surrender to Lee on April 9, 1865 best of all. (You can read about these here.)

Extra enjoyment: Take advantage of The University Museums docents’ pleasant tour. It’ll give you an excellent overview – even though it’s asking a lot of a 30-minute oral presentation to cover decades of issues and history. Then you can wander the compact exhibition at your leisure.

There’s enough before-and-after the actual battles of the Civil War about each man so you get a sense of the two men as humans, not simply heroes. And there’s a bit of a goal overall. This first exhibition to present Grant and Lee together intends for us to consider how they “became” American ideals. They became fellow citizens and they worked at it.

That 1900 cigar label nails it: A great attempt at marketing a solution to the sectional differences that, 30+ years after the War, were hardly at rest. Look, July 4th is just around the corner of the calendar. See if you can squeeze in a visit to “Lee and Grant.”

“Fellow Citizens,” inner cigar box label with full-color profile portraits of Confederate and Union Civil War generals Lee and Grant; chromolithographed and embossed on coated stock. By Calvert Lithographic Company. Considered one of the icons of Civil War cigar box label sets for its subject matter, artistic beauty and technical merit. From PBA Galleries with thanks.

Wright Stop

You won’t find advertising for the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield – the wonderful restoration of a Frank Lloyd Wright home now owned and operated by the State of Illinois itself.

Two reasons for no ads. One. All of the state, and particularly its capital, is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abe Lincoln. Newspapers, travel guides and the Illinois Tourism website are chock-a-block with Bicentennial events. That’s proper. That’s damned exciting. If you have any feeling for President Lincoln, you’ll visit Springfield this summer.

Two. The marvelous Wright-designed and built attraction was closed by ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whom even the Associated Press credits as being greedy, tactless and hair-obsessed. Our docent, without quite saying so, indicated that Blagojevich hates Springfield…he went out of his way to make closing the beautifully restored Dana-Thomas house part of his budget-cutting program. So Illinois temporarily closed the Dana-Thomas House to the public as of December 1, 2008.

The joke is on Blagojevich. He’s been shut down; the Dana-Thomas House reopened on April 23, 2009.

Here’s a terrific architechtural masterpiece – really does warrant that term – that hasn’t yet been re-listed on the “Enjoy Illinois” website. We found a listing of the house in the AAA Illinois Guidebook as we were driving south from Chicago.

Pre-vacation, when Frank White the Photographer found out we were driving to Chicago, and then home to Houston through Springfield, he kindly (and forcefully) suggested that we stop at the Lincoln house, or the cemetery where Father Abraham is buried.

He was horrified when I told him, after we got back, that we’d toured the classic Dana-Thomas House instead. But for people who love Wright’s architectural elegance (Barbara) or marketers that think a large part of Wright’s creativity is in his attention to detail (Richard), it was natural to pull off the Interstate, drive down the gridded streets of Springfield and find the home. Those red tickets let us into a bygone world.

Tourism advertising is not an established practice area for me. Say that America has 50 retail “stores” (states), each one with dozens or hundreds of “products” (events, attractions, historical sites, reenactments, state and regional parks) – the noise level is intense. With so many demands on our attention, I’m glad we spotted the Dana-Thomas House listing. We made the Wright stop, advertising or not.

PS: See far better photos of the House here.

Astronauts? Moon?

May I have 55 words with you? (Or perhaps a few more?)

The New York Times’ Stuart Elliott reminded me today that the 40th anniversary of Americans’ first walk on the moon is July 20. Covering the upcoming event in his column, Elliot collected a number of companies and brands that are celebrating the anniversary to make points and move products.

Elliott highlights Louis Vuitton luggage as one of these celebrants – in which the company uses the Annie Liebowitz photo above as part of a print ad campaign. It's a superb picture. Even more enjoyable: Louis Vuitton Journeys is now running a purpose-built video tribute, featuring the same three astronauts as in the Liebowitz picture: Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell.

In 1969, I was already in the service. I recall feeling pretty proud that Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, was a former Navy officer. It’s a thrill to see the anniversary roll up on us, even if I wasn’t paying proper attention.

I have to laugh about what might have caused Elliott to inquire about Tang, though.

His column ends with a comment about the famously connected breakfast drink, which NASA started using for space flights in 1965: “We in fact have no plans” for ads about the moon landing, said Bridget MacConnell, a spokeswoman for Kraft Foods, which sells Tang. “The focus for our powdered beverages right now is on Crystal Light and Kool-Aid.”

Does Elliott have a lingering ritualistic attachment to “Coneheads,” the 1993 Dan Akroyd-Jane Curtin movie? One of its most famous bits starts with the Coneheads’ daughter (played by Michelle Burke):

Connie: I think I'll have some Tang. Prymatt Conehead: Ah Tang, the drink astronauts took to the moon. Beldar Conehead: Astronauts to the moon? [Beldar and Prymatt laugh]

Forty years back, Tang’s connection with the US space program was being advertised to sell product. What’s different now? Well, our astronauts could take along a better brand of luggage today.

Dumpling Dynasty

Welcome glorious, beautiful and esteemed web visitor, may your stay at the home of Wu and Wu be full of double happiness and splendid astonishment.

This is the greeting you see first on the Dumpling Dynasty website – a remarkable voyage into one woman's self-proclaimed dream to be the Queen of Asian Kitsch. And boy, does she succeed!

I have to mention that (once again) Rachel Elizabeth Baron and Alison Bond brought this line of products to my attention, having purchased the astounding travel bag you see above. Made of cheesy but durable industrial plastic, the New Jersey roadtrippers purchased this marvel at Pearl River in NYC's Chinatown.

Note the darling, wide-eyed Asian sailor girl on the bag. The equally wide-eyed fawn. The mysterious lantern with its smiling face (which appears as a striding radish on the reverse side of the tote). These are continuing characters in the stock company created by “super-talented Brit illustrator Fiona Hewitt” and her husband, Andy Tainton. Certainly, the products are made in China but created, illustrated and joyously promoted from East Sussex, UK.

Dumpling Dynasty's “petite delights” are a world all their own – a retro range that's as quirky and charming (and oddly functional) as anything I've seen in a year. It's very sophisticated, possibly the kind of visual humor that takes a sense of humor born and bred in the land of the Monty Pythons.

The illustrations are flawless, one of those excellent adventures in cultural referencing that can be so wryly evocative...like the Chairman Meow work of Kevin McCormick.

Go the the Dumpling Dynasty product page, check out the Bunny Kit as a worthy example: This is a brilliant, brilliant kit with everything you need in it (including the stuffing) to make your own bunny. Plus, to prove we are totally in tune with the needs of the world's greatest creative minds, we have included a beautiful 'the adventures of my bunny' notepad and pencil set.

I suppose marketing a product line like this is classic word-of-mouth, a leading-edge-cool thing that attentive kitsch shoppers like Baron and Bond pick up on without conscious thought. Review the products and purchase them for yourself. Become the first one on your block to visit the “Wu and Wu Wonderland!”

Schell's Blonde

About 150 years back, Augie Schell started a brewery in New Ulm, Minnesota. It was just one of hundreds of breweries in the state. I recall being told that, as late as 1950, there were more than 200 independent brewers still operating in Minnesota; by the time I moved to Minneapolis in 1972 there were just a handful left.

August Schell Brewing Company was one of them; the outfit keeps on keeping on. Now that I'm 1300 miles away in Texas, it's hard to be certain just why Schell has survived and thrived, but I put it down to good brewing – and hanging on 'til the micro-brew trend caught on. (In this regard, it's acting like Shiner's in Texas.) Today, the New Ulm brewery lists two “original” brews, five year-round craft beers, two Grain Belt brand beers and seven – count 'em – seven “seasonals.”

So here I am in Minnesota on during a gorgeous, completely unseasonal early summer week. Sure enough, the craft-brew culture is alive and well here. I stumbled onto Schell's blonde double-bock, Maifest, and I gotta say it's outstanding. I'd asked about what the restaurant was offering and when Nick-the-Manager said he had this seasonal from Schell so I had to sample it – it's part of my job, right?

Smooth as smooth and malty sweet (a “unique” taste), Maifest is a seasonal specialty beer offered in the spring months. It is brewed with a blend of three different specialty malts and the finest imported and domestic hops. It's a Helles Bock-style beer from Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in Munich, classic “May beer” and ohboyohboy it is tasty!

I hereby report that this is fine beer* on a Monday afternoon at the beginning of June. If you don't believe me, double-check with Barbara who helped me sample it. Years ago, Ranier Brewing in Washington state made a hit of advertising “the beer here.” Today, in rural Central Minnesota, Schell's is still showing why that counts.

As nearly as I can tell, the advertising is word-of-mouth big-time. So here's the word. Try Maifest before its season is over. Ta from the road...

*Served and consumed at The Fishtale Bar and Grill (no “e” on the end, bless 'em), New Prague, MN.

Yankee Land

Way down upon the Wabash
Such a land was never known.
If Adam had passed over it
The land he’d surely own.
He’d swear it was the Garden
He play’d in as a boy,
And straightway called it “Eden”
In the State of Illinois.

Well, that’s where we’re headed now. Eventually. Off on our “late spring break” of a road trip. Yankee Land. Minnesota is our first destination, then on to Chicago for a family wedding. All around, we’ve been promised fair weather…no snow, in other words.

I’m not certain I believe those promisers, even if they’re family. You know as well as I do that the states “north of the Line” are the next best thing to Arctic regions.

Bless ‘em, they’re channeling travel ads, just like the verses that begin and end this post. This traditional folksong was damned popular in the early 1800s. Property speculators used it to attract settlers and sell land in the “fertile land of El-A-Noy.” Don’t you dare believe it – I have been in Chicago in the middle of winter and the wind that comes off Lake Michigan freezes the cones off the pine trees. Starting around October.

Today we’re driving north. Unlike those early 19th Century settlers, we’re using our Prius. The mpg’s not as good as oxen but we’ll get there faster. I’ll keep up the blog while on the road. Later, y’all.

She’s bounded by the Wabash,
The Ohio and the Lakes,
She’s crawfish in the swampy lands,
The milk-sick and the shakes.
But these are slight diversions
And take not from the joy
Of living in this garden land,
The State of Illinois.