Part 2: A 2009 Letscher Collage Made for Richard’s Big Surprise.

It was like opening a giant box of Cracker Jacks.You’ve seen the “jaw-dropping effect” in cartoons (like this Roger Rabbit), but hardly ever in real life. My case offers the most important visual concerning this big surprise; no one was at the McMurtrey Gallery to capture it with a camera.

You’ll have to imagine it. I go with Barbara Nytes-Baron to pick up the large new photo discussed in the previous post. While the new piece was being wrapped, Liz Ashabraner casually handed up this jewel of a collage – above – and Barbara says, “Happy birthday. Happy anniversary. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.”

Barbara smiles this big. Liz smiles this big. The penny drops.

Barbara has not only purchased the Lance Letscher piece “Duck Walk” for me as a surprise; she’d been secretly planning it for months with Liz and gallery owner Roni McMurtrey. The conspirators dropped this excellent bombshell right on target.

My intrigue with Letscher’s work started because he’s a cut-up – of books. The Austin Chronicle described what the artist has been doing for years:

…poetic collages concocted from “found” papers – album covers, books, handwritten recipes, notes, and magazine clippings among them – which are meticulously cut and arranged into intriguing patterns and textures that open up worlds of thoughts and associations.

I have been admiring Letscher’s work for a long time. I examined his work repeatedly, not just here but in Galveston and Austin. I window-shopped his collages over and over again at McMurtrey Gallery, the artist’s Houston presenters since 2002. I wanted one of his pieces. Barbara got it for me. I do say my jaw dropped to the floor. And stayed there until I picked it and “Duck Walk” up and took everything back to Spring Branch.

Look closely at the piece and you'll see the illustrated yellow duckie walking on the bottom layer of board. Thank you: Roni, Liz and especially Barbara. How wonderful.

Part 1: New Doherty Photo Finds a Home in Spring Branch

We collect a photographer who combines art and science. It looks like a view from monochromatic kaleidoscope, but it’s a collaged photo…of an x-ray of…seeds. The artist, photographer Dornith Doherty, titled it “May.” (Barbara Nytes-Baron is in the middle here; art’s on your left and the photographer’s on your right.)

The piece did not arrive in our collection in the title month, the same May 2009 in which the photographer had her new show. We purchased it on a late spring evening at the McMurtrey Gallery, but did not bring it home until now. Which gave Barbara time to plan a bit of a surprise as well, for me. (You’ll be able to read about that in Part 2, ‘kay?)

Barbara has admired Doherty’s work for years – we have her “Apache Plume” in the living room; as you can see here, it’s completely different than “May.”

In fact, the entire “Archiving Eden” show demonstrates Doherty’s continual engagement not only with nature, but with technology too. The artist herself has written, “Eden” is a…photographic project that takes tiny forms of life – seeds – as its most basic subject.” And so it does: All the subjects of her new pieces come from the 500,000-seed storage vaults at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, CO. This is where the stuff of life (ag division) is kept safe, to preserve diversity; although a less involving website than that of the USDA/NGCRP would be difficult to discover.

The basic technique is x-ray photography – x-rays of bean sprouts, the seeds of ash trees and bananas and capers. While Doherty appears to focus narrowly on the tissue samples and the germinated seed varieties, viewers (like us) can’t ignore the technology she’s used to make art. She photographed the biological materials with the Center’s compact x-ray equipment and then aggregated those images into photos with singular images and collages.

We’re faced with (and charmed by) visions of literally seminal plant life moderated through Doherty’s “technoscopic vision.” An inch-long banana seed clone takes on a different meaning when it’s 15-by-15-inches square. Her pictures swirl about it in the printed spaces or collect in patterns in the middle of the photographic paper. It’s just odd to me that Wired magazine hasn’t featured Doherty for her convergences of life, art and technology.

Thanks to the artist and the McMurtrey Gallery for the chance to own a piece like “May.” Our new archival pigment photograph is not as big as “Apache Plume,” but measuring a yard square, it’s a whole lot larger than life.

PS: Watch of “Richard's wonderful surprise” coming in Part 2 of this story.

Upset at IKEA Logo Change? Get a Life.

Did IKEA really change its logo? Not as far as I can tell – can you? It’s weird, you know – talking about a Japanese logo one day, and stumbling across an apparent change to the IKEA logo type font that “erupted into controversy” – according to Houston Chronicle reporter Mary Tuma – the next.

Tuma poses an interview with Rice marketing prof Vikas Mittal: “…about ways companies can prevent brand blunders.” Mittal’s main point is that companies changing their logos really ought to consult with their customers first:

A typical redesign can take up to two years and cost $15 million to $20 million for a large company. Yet, there isn’t too much research done on how it affects their customers. Anything from size, typeface to color can trigger different associations…A lot of customers against this change see themselves connected to what IKEA represents – progressive, modern style. Changing the font jeopardizes all of those associations.

Fine except that it doesn’t appear IKEA changed the type font of its well-known logo. The company changed the typeface used in its catalogs, its corporate typeface, to Verdana from Futura.

Not logo change - body copy style change. Big diff – and virtually no difference at all, not in the grown-up world of life, the Universe and everything. It may be that some type designers and fans are strangely upset – one blog respondent said, “IKEA should change to Verdana. Futura is too good for IKEA, and they don’t really deserve to use it.”

There are several insightful explorations of the IKEA “font fiasco” online. Read the coverage provided by Jennifer Farley of Laughing Lion Design for a more complete review of what’s what. (The IKEA catalog cover images come from Brandacadabra’s Marius Ursache, who writes that “…as a designer, I feel betrayed.” Read his comments next.)

Gracious. I missed this minor outbreak of brand silliness amid the media’s far bigger reporting screw-up of the US Coast Guard’s Potomac River exercise yesterday. So, first, thanks to reporter Tuma for getting this “backlash” in front of me, even as I seriously question just how serious a problem IKEA really has.

Second, as even designer Ursache admits, “…this isn’t world hunger.” It’s not even worth a puff piece in the Chronicle. Ta for Saturday...

Yamato Transport One More Exercise in Japanese Branding Power.

Can a giant corporate brand deliver real warmth and charm?

Where do the great brands come from? Lots of iconic brands and their logos arrive from countries outside the US. Although there’s a strong slant to European firms, Japan’s brands are easily as strong or stronger in most market segments and ought to be highlighted more frequently. (I bet they’re even better known on the West Coast.)

Depending on your age, marital/family situation or even industry, you probably recognize the Toyota brand logo by now, if not exactly how it came to be. Honda. Shiseido. Sony and Nintendo are just as well known. On the other hand, you may not immediately identify Sanrio though everybody knows its corporate symbol, Hello Kitty® - now 35 years old.

Another cat-using approach is even more evocative and extremely effective: The mother cat carrying its kitten carefully between its teeth. This is the very familiar logo of Yamato Transport, visible on thousands of trucks all over Japan. It was introduced in 1957. It turns its back on the circles-and-squares school of logo design and graphically symbolizes the careful and efficient handling of goods.

It works as hard in B2B branding as it does B2C branding. And I ought to note than you need to be a frequenter of docks and commercial office parks to see it in this country; in the US, Yamato is focused on international freight shipping and does not compete directly against FedEx or UPS.

Like any great logo, it has a great story. “Yamato” itself was the name of ancient Japan and it founded private parcel delivery there 90 years ago…a long-lasting brand in the Japanese market. Looking at sites online, you can see that the delivery trucks are everywhere.

The mama-cat logo, though, only dates back to 1957. It’s a vivid example of the Japanese ability to see things – read brands – from angles that don’t quite match the sometimes gray-suited reputation of large Japanese corporations. On that note, comparing the Yamato brand to Nippon Express is worth doing.

The black cat trademark is immediately recognizable and people love it: There is no cultural baggage about black-cat-bad-luck in Japan. In Miyazaki’s animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Services,” about a young witch who leaves home to become a delivery girl, her familiar is a black cat. The original story was written in 1985 – I wonder if the cat – Jiji – came from Yamato Transport?

Corporate brands sometimes have difficulty expressing humanity, presuming they even want to do so. With “Black Cat Yamato,” this outfit started out there, achieving brand power over time.

Petrophysical Solutions’ New “Discoveries Drive Value” Brand Comes True

A new brand look - and words - for Petrophysical Solutions, Inc., starts with a map.We started rebranding Petrophysical Solutions – PSI – this past spring. You may have read this post about early phases. Now the Houston-based consulting firm’s just-launched website puts the cap on its public presence.

Wikipedia points out that petrophysicists help oil and gas engineers and other geoscientists understand the rock properties of the reservoir. PSI is clearly in the value-add business, though, and there’s more to the PSI brand than the basic nuts and bolts of petrophysics:

In every Age of Exploration, discoveries drive value. Even if these words never appeared in ancient maps or Renaissance geographies, they’re what PSI petrophysicists do today and every day.

We used antique maps to connect with value-driving discoveries. Watch this new site – every month, PSI’s president will create a new post about a particular map and its impact on the Age of Exploration. We’re calling this blog section CARTOLOGY.

I’m grateful to have helped invent it and write it. But even more: Thanks to Kay Krenek for the outstanding conceptualization-and-design partnership that has led us to this unusual visual approach. Thanks to Brian Bearden and Michelle Webb of Zephyr Salvo for the web development work.

Above all, thanks to the client for a chance to bring something special in the way of a marketing approach to oil and gas consulting.

Blausen Human Atlas – Next Step in Intimate Medical Marketing?

Today we consider a dramatic iPhone app from Balusen. But can it be marketed?There’s probably no conscious connection between the next American Marketing Association-Houston Healthcare SIG event and its venue…the Houston Zoo. Still, synch up your calendars now for Friday, September 25 – the SIG presents “Healthcare Marketing via Emerging Technologies.” Read all about three-hour event (including networking and a bite of breakfast) right here.

To be clear, this seminar’s not about those technologies themselves, which I am sure are quite excellent. This group of people will talk about how you might use some of the technologies to market to broad groups of customers – patient groups, physicians, nurses and so on.

The presenters will cover the marketing capabilities inherent in data analysis software (which should be challenging), and how hospitals are using e-marketing. Since I’ve helped create the program, I hope to hear some fresh ideas.

I have the biggest expectations of all for the Blausen Human Atlas and its iPhone application, especially after talking it over with Blausen Media CEO Bruce Blausen and Account Director Mike Hensgen. Blausen will be doing the presenting.

Why the high hopes? Well, who do you know who doesn’t have an iPhone yet? (Besides me, I mean.) According to blogger Greg Kaiser at the end of April, Apple had sold 21 million of them and that was before new models caught on. Big deal stuff, especially when you consider the iPhone can be a pretty amazing marketing implement.

But it’s not about the smartphone, it’s about the Blausen app on the smartphone. The “Human Atlas” lets users manipulate superbly detailed medical illustrations and animations at the touch of a finger. There’s a zoom feature that provides the ability to explore different body systems.

Blausen points out that a click of a button helps explain a complicated medical problem or diagnosis. Seeing the problem in pictures helps doctors (for example) relieve fears and concerns for all kinds of patients. Hensgen says that the individual experiences with the application are stunning: Learning and understanding are speeded up dramatically.

In selling the application, Blausen wants to leverage both the iPhone and web-delivered versions to give hospitals a competitive advantage in terms of communications. The hospitals’ medical and nursing staffs can take the educational opportunity right to the point of care, and deliver a patient experience that’s superior to any other.

Hensgen demo’d the Human Atlas on his iPhone for me; it’s dramatic. The tool also just got a perceptive nod from iPhone Medical App Review: …this is an app that could change the way physicians and providers communicate with patients. We've been using this application on a daily basis with our patients.

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, Blausen and Hensgen have a slightly different challenge. Can they envision (and communicate to SIG attendees) how an institution might combine its use of the Human Atlas with its hospital-wide iPhone platform – and then market the combination to its stakeholders?

To paraphrase Harvard professor Theodore Levitt: Marketing is different than selling. Marketing views the entire business process as a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.

The implication (to me) is “user intimacy” – the inherent opportunity to bring customers much, much closer to a brand. Register for September 25. We’ll find out together how “technologies” like the-palm-of-your-hand Human-Atlas-plus iPhone combination will take us to the next level of healthcare marketing.

A big thank-you to Bruce Blausen and Mike Hensgen for helping me think ahead on this topic. Photos courtesy of Blausen Media.

Sell the Sizzle: When the "Excellent Cork" is Better than the Wine...

More news by accident from Spain: I have seen the future (of wine bottles, at least) and it’s a cherry-red Excellent Cork.

Straight out of a bottle of Iberian red – see below – I took out this plug of polímero termoplástico as easy as pie. It’s produced in Alicante, Spain by the eponymous company. Its website is worth a look-see, even if you can’t read Español, because it gets its message across easily.

These guys are in the plastic stopper business and its probably a better option, cost-wise, than glass stoppers. A Spanish wine-blogger, Benito Otrero, has posted about these synthetic stoppers here.

I am sorry to tell you the wine that this Excellent Cork came out of is a bottle of Chapillon Cuvee Harmonie circa 2006 – also Spanish. And therein lies the problem: This is [a] not a terribly good-tasting blend (90% petit verdot and 10% tannat) despite its “90” score from The Wine Advocate. The estate has its own blog and since I’ve read this review on the Internet it must be true. Right.

Also [b], the bottle comes with an immediate nose that says SKUNK big time. I do not know if it is the wine or the stopper. And the plonk doesn’t really improve with breathing. So…you can pick up this wine but really, only for the terrific new corking mechanism.

The Excellent Cork you gotta see!

Spanish Brandorama is How a Wine Giant Goes to Market.

You won’t find an aficionado’s discussion of Peñasol sangria on any wine blog – no devotional dissection of taste and alcoholic content. This stuff’s $5 a screw-top bottle at HEB.

Or, if you purchase the same wine from Whole Foods instead (where’s it’s one of the chain’s “365” products), you can enjoy this toothsome description:

Bursting with the sun drenched flavors of a hot Spanish summer, this Sangria is a refreshing blend of red wine, citrus fruit flavors, and a special spice extract. Add sliced peaches, apples, oranges, or other fruits for a delicious aperitif or try it with grilled meat. Serve well chilled. Sangria makes every day a special occasion.

It’s the same sweetened red wine as HEB’s and today’s lesson, about multi-branding – or versioning, as the Spanish wine-maker Félix Solís prefers it. Robin Goldstein, a great foodie blogger, covered “the biggest wine producer you’ve never heard of” back in May.

Félix Solís Avantis is humongous! Almost 53 million gallons of wine flows out of one industrial-size operation – but you can read all this on Goldstein’s Blind Taste blog. What’s important is how the giant wine-maker goes to market. From one facility and 10 wines, the company produces around 400 different brands and sells them in various parts of the world (the corner of Gessner and Kempwood, Houston, being one).

Goldstein points out: “Versioning” a product – varying it slightly and selling it under different brand names – is a well-known technique in marketing courses at business schools; among other things, it’s often a way of getting around laws that ban price discrimination.
No price discrimination here. In a market the size of America, there are so many price-points that Félix Solís Avantis can slot a wine into every category on the wine value chain and let a wide variety of customers sort out which brands thrive. When a company has so much “product” available, it’s a self-seeking, self-branding approach: What kind of wine do you want?

“Versioning” is at work in the retail gasoline market, but not where we can see it very well. For every branded gallon at Chevron, there’s a dozen or a hundred at non-chain stations…like HEB, as a matter of fact. (One bottle, Peñasol sangria = two-or-so gallons of gas).

Interbrand maintains, “Name changes of products and services are rare.” I don’t think this division of Omnicom had Félix Solís Avantis in mind when it wrote the White Paper.

“Hi, Honey.”

What I like about the new, full-page newspaper ad for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes® Touch of Honey cereal print is its attempted nostalgia. I saw it on the back page of Wednesday’s Flavor section in the Houston Chronicle. This print ad’s so new it’s not on line yet. Time to use your imagination:

Step 1. Take Kellogg’s classic 50-year-old version of “Sweetheart of the Corn” (above), complete with white gloves – I think they’re channeling Peyton Place without the lust.

Step 2. Replace the old corn flakes box with this new, Touch of Honey box (shown left). The headline is, “Our sweetheart now has something a little sweeter.” And overlay a mild golden glow on the visual. The suburban goddess visual is even labeled Circa 1958.

Unfortunately, mix these elements together and you get another bland ad.

One food blogger said back in May, the sweetening tries to makes the corn flakes “slightly less damn boring.” I don’t think the Kellogg’s advertising agency is going to change that product review very much.

According to a PR release issued by Kellogg’s: The market for honey-sweetened products is expanding among the adult population in the United States. In fact, last year the category grew by 7.5 percent. New Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with a Touch of Honey provides that subtle taste of natural honey people want.

I suggest it’s way too subtle for the category: The product is stuck between corn flakes and frosted flakes. Maybe the ad is targeted at consumers who didn’t find Kellogg’s Corn Flakes lackluster four or five decades ago. Really, I wish Kellogg’s had tried a little harder with this one. Why launch an extension of a powerful brand with so little fanfare?

1958 ad visual courtesy of PZR Services with thanks.

B Verse

B is for banner.
B is for bell.
B is for Baron
Whose writing is swell.

Doggerel, you know, is venial – a sin that I do practice from time to time. I didn’t really resist when I stumbled across a set of poems from furthest New Jersey. Marci McGowan displays 25 letter poems, for her First Grade Class website at HW Mountz Elementary School in Spring Lake, NJ – “right on the Atlantic Ocean!” Her B poem reads:

B is for box.

B is for bell.

B is for bucket

In my well.

Much better. And I’m being sentimental: My own favorite early-days school teacher was Frances McGowen. The school was E Rivers Elementary in Atlanta, still there. My McGowen was a long time ago…I’ll keep why I remember her name so well to myself. Despite the coincidence, thanks to both of you.

Go, Otters!

Thirty years ago, a US president was attacked by a swamp rabbit. After three decades, I can understand that this famous-at-the-time Jimmy Carter incident wouldn’t be top of mind. It did float to the top of mine, though, because of another news item making its way round the Worldwide Web right now.

“Woman says she was bitten repeated by otters” – that’s been the usual headline. Why this story, about an Austrian vacationer (Brigitte France) gnawed on by two, possibly three otters while swimming in a Wisconsin lake, is news is beyond me.

Still, I couldn’t resist Googling “Otters, advertising.” The first thing that came up was the Erie Otters. Unbelievable, really. In Houston, I suddenly remember there’s an American Hockey League team called the Aeros. Despite winning seasons, I scarcely think of it.

Now there’s this logo – this thing – staring me in the face. It’s the “primary logo” of the Erie Otters of Erie, PA, in use since 1997. This is the team (brand) mascot, Shooter.

Shooter the Otter is supposed to be wearing a “home jersey,” though the animal looks topless to me. (Really, how would I know? I can barely recall going to a Minnesota North Stars game or two when I lived in Minneapolis.) The team is now in its 13th season – it was founded in ’96 and is part of the Ontario Hockey League.

This otter’s not alone in the OHL. There’re Greyhounds (Sault Ste Marie) and Wolves (Sudbury), IceDogs (Niagara) and Bulls (Belleville). The Ontario Hockey League features 20 teams, but the Otters, Plymouth Whalers and Saginaw Spirit are the only League members based in the United States. The Otters play the IceDogs at Tullio Arena on August 29th, BTW.

Like most sports franchises today (including hockey), the Otters have a fine marketing engine – at least it looks comprehensive from this distance. Aggressive branding. Involving website that includes programs for fans of all ages, plenty of news, statistics and shopping. Facebook pages for loyal fans...and the franchise actively Twitters. Shooter’s team is wrapping its stakeholders up in a great big otter hug and, with a premium single-game ticket costing just $14.50, it’s way more affordable than big-market teams can deliver. I’m certain Shooter will be optioned by Disney soon.

Meanwhile, there’s a marketing opportunity for Shooter’s franchise: Make certain that the Austrian woman and her husband spend their next US holiday in Erie, PA, as a guest of the team. Go, Otters!

Sheep Flight

Never mind the t-shirts reading, Free the Rochester 47. You passengers don’t deserve it. What are you – sheep? Forty-seven of you are kept aboard Continental Express Flight 2816 Friday night, and every one of you just sat there? Nobody popped an overwing exit hatch? Nobody stormed the fuselage doors? Baaa. Baaa.

“They wound up stuck on the 50-seat aircraft more than nine hours, three in the air and six on the tarmac outside the terminal in Rochester, Minn.” This is all over the news. All over the blogs. ExpressJet Airlines screwed up so badly, they’re probably talking about it on Venus.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that this nine-hour coal-mine trap is the price of Americans wanting cheap flights. You are consumers. You are customers. You are...stakeholders! What did you all do? Anything? Nothing.

Here’s what you do: Dial 9-1-1. “Hello, Rochester Emergency Services? We’re being held captive. It’s awful – we can’t get out. The airport. Flight 2816. We CAN’T get out. Help….(fade to gurgle).” Then call the Minnesota State Patrol. Then call WCCO-TV. Then call The New York Times.

You’ve got the most powerful weapon against corporate stupidity in existence...the cell phone. Try using it next time.

Baaa.

Hope’s “Bores”

Today’s post comes from Philippe Holtzweiler, Principal of Hope Communications in the UK and long-time Dailogue colleague. To begin with, he refers to my own Lifeless Snoozers. Take it away, Philippe.

Dearest Richard, obviously, your biting humour is keeping its sharp edge and it was very entertaining, as usual, to read your blog on dull advertising (the one on waste was not wasted either). As you time and again extend your blog into an intercontinental chronicles, may I contribute two further examples?

I have been preparing for some time a large-scale conference on communications between France and Germany (marketing-wise and beyond) and I have collected a few nicely boring ads to underscore and entertain some peculiarities.

1. Kneipp Mineral Water. It is probably just a bedical drip bottle turned upside down, with the difference that drip liquids are seldom carbonated. It will “keep your life in balance,” says the claim. To me, this acts as a potent incentive for a very rough ride on the wild side. By the way, it’s a brand new campaign, not one from the ‘70s.
2. Mazda. This one dates back to 2005…a fascinating example of a specifically French brand of obscure dullness: The dullness that appeals to your intellect. French marketers like the idea of advertising as a self-sorting device to exclude the morons and reward the cognoscenti. So if you get the point, you are clever enough to earn the product. And if you don’t, well, stupidity will not kill you (and if it would, you are outside the target group anyway).

I suspect it gives a feeling of cleverness to the creative director, too, as a welcome side effect. So here you are. Did you get it (you need no French at all)?

It took me at least five minutes (and all my ambition not to fall into the “moron” case). That new Mazda (not shown) is sooo fast that it takes a giant board to attract within a split second the driver’s attention to the hiker’s destination. Why San Diego? I suppose the art director just wanted to go to Arizona at the client’s expense for a shooting on location and a couple of cold beers (you cannot buy a picture that bad from any image bank, so it’s the only option).

SIGNALWRITER: Are you sure you want to hammer on the Mazda “San Diego” ad, Philippe? Although it is by JWT Paris (“French marketers”), it did win a 2nd Prize at Prix Club des Directeurs Artistiques 2005 for individual print, and a Bronze Lion at Cannes in 2006 in the Cars & Automotive Services category.

HOLTZWEILER: This is an example of self-congratulation at its very best. As I have always suspected (and know from my own experience), there is a strong ‘feel good myself and be part of it’ motivation in those ads, along the line ‘look how damn clever we all are.’

Very obviously, this seems to get out of control when a jury congregates.

I insist – and I take the risk of being considered outdated – on the fact that there are some fantastically witty, clever, to-the-point ads produced by big agencies (although rather by Wieden & Kennedy or the defunct Fallon McElligott and Rice or some of the best UK agencies than by JWT)…this one, on a very objective plane, just misses the point altogether. There is only one point in advertising: To increase the target group’s urge to buy the product. That might begin with ads that are no riddles.

As Rosser Reeves – I'm well aware that nobody at JWT Paris ever even heard of him – once said (more or less), “Do you want art? Or do you want that damned sales curve to move up again?”

Amicalement…Philippe.

Trash Future

The Waste Connections corporate slogan stared at me from the back of the big blue garbage truck: “Connect with the Future®.” It is also on the sides of the truck. The mud flaps, too.

“Connect with the Future.”

What it’s supposed to mean? Connect where? Connect how? This bland slogan is not paid off on the company website. Not in ads, what I can find of ‘em. It reminds me of the old Buckaroo Banzai offering, “Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: Where the Future Begins Tomorrow.” What is Waste Connections promising a consumer? A facilities manager? A building landlord?

Houston-based Waste Management, on the other hand, has a slogan that ties directly to the green corporate trade dress (“Think Green®”). In just two words, it’s kept on working hard on a variety of levels – consumer, community, corporate.

I want to ask CEO Ron Mittelstaedt just what we’re supposed to connect to? I think the question’s an honest one, since we’re going to be seeing more of these big blue Waste Connections garbage barges around here.

There’s a big shake-out in trash. California-based Waste Connections is profiting these days, so it’s buying up other outfits. Several may be familiar to you. There’s Harold LeMay in Washington State. (Never heard of that.) Oregon-based Sanipac? (Nope.) Aha: Republic Services! You’ve seen those trucks…kind of a red-brown.

Last year this time, Republic Services was America’s third-largest waste hauling firm. It then bought the nation’s second-largest, Allied Waste Industries. According to the well-known “Waste Age 100” list – latest version is 2007 – Houston’s own Waste Management (green trucks, right?) was Number 1. Allied was 2, Republic was 3…and Waste Connections was Number 7.

Today (I guess) Waste Connections is America’s second biggest hauler. The future of garbage in our country is compacting. Or consolidation. Perhaps that is what Waste Connections means – connect with the firm’s future. Because this outfit’s outlook is rather rosy. America’s garbage is a real good long-term business.

Even though this is a low-interest market segment, it would be worthwhile studying which corporation has a better image, on Main Street and on Wall Street. Waste Management with its forward-thinking two-word tag? Or Waste Connections?

I’ll never prove it but there’s a case to be made for good branding – even if it’s all garbage.

Beer Summit

Like news features from a celebrity funeral that report what attendees were wearing, it’s been a fascinating week on the beer front – but not so much for advertisers (as far as I know).

The New York Times printed, “Barack Obama, the first black US president, said it was a ‘friendly, thoughtful’ conversation over beer at the White House with prominent Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, who is black, and police Sergeant James Crowley, who is white.” Is there anybody that doesn’t know about this?

The New York Post, among others, reported, “Obama sipped Bud Light served in a frosty mug, sitting in a white shirt with his jacket off. Crowley, in a dark suit and tie, drank a Blue Moon, a Colorado-brewed, Belgian-style wheat beer served with lemon. Gates, who was also in a dark suit, drank a Sam Adams Light. Biden, in a white shirt, sipped a non-alcoholic beer.”

Don’t read much into those brands – sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. Still, there’s been much chat about which beers should actually have been served – mainly opinionaters demanding American-made brewskis (and I suspect was a timing issue).

Me? I only suggest, on this summer Saturday morning, that one brewery alone should have been tapped to supply the beer for this important DC meet-up: Summit Brewing, St. Paul, MN.

Let the brand fit the occasion, I say! And maybe Minneapolis-based Rotor Design would create a nice poster (like this one) for the President’s next brew-chew. Golly – look at the clock. It’s time for a cold one. See ya!

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.