“Where is it?” Chevy Advertises Volt but It’s (Still) Not Ready for Prime Time.

It’s been coming for at least two years. It was “formally” announced in a Chevrolet commercial aired during the 2008 Olympics. It became the butt of jokes during the Detroit meltdown – and so did General Motors.

It’s the Chevy Volt. Maybe it’ll get 230 miles-per-gallon-equivalent. Maybe it’ll never see the light of day, although the pre-production test cars have been completed. Maybe I’m being unfair. But you know, a car isn’t a software package – people who want to buy won’t wait on Volt vaporware (remember that term?). American consumers will buy Toyota hybrids and Hondas.

Commenting on Autoblog, “Owlafaye” noted:

The Volt is being designed according to General Motors’ old way of doing business. By the time it gets to market it will be an obvious anachronism. The advanced automotive technology from a myriad of other manufacturers, and due to debut at the time of (and before) the Volt, will bury this foolishness and relegate it to Edsel status.

I normally defend good marketing but it seems like Chevrolet has confused teasing the public with unfulfilled promises, again. Are you a believer? Too bad.

Betting McDonald’s Brand is Recession-Proof despite The Wall Street Journal.

On Thursday, McDonald’s got zinged by Julie Jargon writing in The Wall Street Journal. While admitting that “The recession helped McDonald’s Corp. more than other restaurant chains as consumers traded down to fast food,” the reporter also noted:

Lately, though, the company's same-store sales growth has begun to slow, leading some to wonder whether investment opportunity is shifting to the casual-dining sector…. If US unemployment continues to rise – as it did last month, to 9.8% – it could hamper any broader industry recovery and hurt McDonald’s results in the US, where the company gets most of its profit.

Now I have to say, first, that Jargon’s report is much more balanced than the excerpt implies. But second, the article knocks the company in front of a particular group of McDonald’s stakeholders that may have little interest in the brand but lots in the share price. Jargon raises a question where none really has existed.

I am not a shareholder. I’m not following the charts and the graphs. But I do think that the McDonald’s brand is extraordinarily strong. Unlike the US manufacturers of cars, consumers still love this brand and keep buying its products: It is America.

With McDonald’s, I believe that unique personality that no competitor can claim is the reputation of America’s Restaurant. How do we capitalize on that reputation? By relating McDonald’s to our lifestyle – our own human experience.

Jack Smith, who would retire as Group President and Deputy Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett, McDonald’s long-time ad agency, said those words in April, 1986, to the company’s franchisees. He said in the same speech:

Reputation advertising is the kind that works very hard on the…long-term sales and top of mind. You (McDonald’s) are America’s Restaurant and nobody’s going to take that away from you.

Over this past quarter-century or so, McDonald’s has, like the rest of us, suffered many slings and arrows, although I can’t recall personally suing the company for clumsily spilling apparently hot coffee over myself. It’s been criticized repeatedly for being too large. Too unresponsive. Too exploitive (of beef, grass lands, workers, plastics, paper products) and too liberal and too conservative. It has been accused, all by itself, of causing Americans to be fat.

Through all this, McDonald’s has hardly ever lost sight of the fact that it is, de facto, America’s Restaurant. That’s how the company behaves. That’s how the company responds to economic crises. That’s how its corporate behavior appears in radio and TV commercials, billboard, print ads, websites, promotions – well, you name it.

Leo Burnett’s Smith spoke 23 years ago about TV commercials that now appear to be old-fashioned. Yet McDonald’s keeps to the same vivid brand theme. And if it’s the World’s Restaurant now, instead of just America’s, I’m lovin’ it. It’s a fine long-term brand ROI.

Thanks to Rob Schoenbeck for the timely sharing of Jack Smith’s 1986 speech.

I Borrow an Ad Memory or Two about Armstrong and BBDO.

Such a charming reminiscence came out of The New York Times this week. Ad columnist Stuart Elliot offered a response from an older reader about the “proper” pronunciation of his agency’s name:

When I worked at BBDO, from June 1951 to March 1954, nobody in the agency called it anything other than “BBDO.” The switchboard operators who answered phone calls always answered in a very stylized, “This ... izz ... BBDO!” Outside the agency it was usually called, I guess, “BBD and O.”

One account I worked on was Armstrong Cork. I used to take the Pennsy to Lancaster at least twice a month. Everybody at Armstrong called the agency “Batten’s,” because Armstrong had been a client of the Batten Company for many years before Batten’s merger with Durstine, Osborn & Barton in 1928, which then morphed into Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn.

Elliott thanks the reader and answered:

Although “the Pennsy” – the Pennsylvania Railroad – is no longer chugging, Armstrong, now Armstrong World Industries, is a client of BBDO’s to this day.

Now perhaps it is lazy of me to make a post out of an existing story line, especially one featured in Elliott’s column. Armstrong has been a BBDO client for at least 58 years. I couldn’t track down the exact number (although I bet someone in New York knows it). I couldn’t honestly tell you that Armstrong doesn’t use other agencies of all sizes and shapes, either.

It is always fashionable to feature the medium-of-the-moment and fawn over the edgiest boutique. That is the nature of the new. But I point out that really long-time account retention is not only possible but continuously rewarding for all parts of the client-agency relationship. Frankly, it’s heartening right now to observe this kind of thing. I’m an alumnus of BBDO (though more recently than the early ’50s); I hope it’s true that great shops never die.

Whoever said “nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”

Thank you for the 1952 Armstrong Flooring ad from Retro Renovation, which notes that the “neutral grey works just fine with the orange and chartreuse paint.”

Making the “Winter Hawaiian” Shirt? Start with a Cilla Ramnek Fabric.

I’d give you the shirt off my back but first I want to blog about it. Then, after giving plenty of credit where it’s due, I’d like to wear it at least through the upcoming Houston version of winter. That’s because this is a sort of cold weather-weight Hawaiian shirt. I call it “Stockholm Syndrome.”

I had this made for me – really, I asked Barbara Nytes-Baron to make it for me because she can sew and I cannot. To start with, I’d wanted to get away from run-of-the-mill tropical prints. It’s a good thing I found this interesting fabric at Ikea…reminded me of lava lamps.

The not so good thing: It’s an upholstery fabric, which means it is quite a bit heavier than shirting. Still, Barbara had the sewing pattern and the patience – that’s how we came to invent this shout-it-out cold-weather camp shirt.

The fabric was created by a Swedish fabric designer, Cilla Ramnek. She’s said she doesn’t see any conflict between design, craft and art; but then, maybe she hasn’t found out yet what one of her fabrics has been turned into…not my own line of tropical wearables per se but an adventurous addition to the celebrated Baron collection of bold, bright tropical shirts. (I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille.)

No brands were hurt during the production of this winter/tropical camp shirt. Eat your hearts out, Mad Gringo and Hilo Hattie.

And if designer Ramnek throws up her hands and swears off fabric art forever, well, I’m heartily sorry. This shirt IMO makes a statement and it is not “Attention – this guy needs taste replacement surgery stat!” Be sure to look for us on the runway in NYC next Fashion Week…La Guardia 31.

Shirt: “Stockholm Syndrome.” Fabric: Saralisa Collection. Designer: Cilla Ramnek. Pattern: Simplicity #3852. Crafter: Barbara Nytes-Baron.

If a Better Boeing Brand Bombs, It’s Not So World-Ending.

Big is back. That’s the word from The Economist. The August 29, 2009 number even has a whale on the cover to emphasize its story, “The return of the corporate giant.” Big’s beautiful again even if for some of us the beauty part never went away. And The Economist mentions Boeing in the same sentence as Yahoo (in terms of 1998 capitalization, the nod went to Yahoo).

Coincidentally, in the 9/15/09 Marketing News, Elisabeth Sullivan wrote a three-pager about Boeing’s recent brand developments – her “Building a Better Brand” case study is available here. As a survey piece it’s not so bad but it leaves a couple of questions hanging around.

The how-it-came-to-be article trumpets a cohesive brand identity story, carefully quoting Boeing’s Fritz Johnson and Jim Newcomb; Boeing’s ad agency Draftfcb; corporate design firm Methodologie Inc; and (wait for it) an aerospace and defense industry think tank exec, Teal Group VP Richard Aboulafia.

The narrative gravely mentions “brand DNA” and “triple helix” and “design roadmap.” All good things, all quite contemporary. “Everyone should be managing the brand,” Newcomb says, adding that every employee now is interested in Boeing’s branding process.

For public consumption, though, it seems like the Boeing brand is constantly being reinvented. Whatever happened to the Horizons Global Advertising Campaign that Draftfcb launched for the company at the very end of 2001?

Was that the same introduction as the much-touted $50-million “Boeing: Forever New Frontiers” global television and print advertising campaign? Boeing’s brand management VP Anne C Toulouse said at the time (January 2002):

This campaign captures the spirit of Boeing, celebrating the power of human imagination and technological achievements…the Boeing brand is one of our most valuable intangible assets. Our investments in the brand help strengthen the company's long-term business position.

Now the company’s apparently gone back to the drawing board. It’s possible that the spirit of the big company changed in the eight or so years since “Forever New Frontiers” went public. Eight years is a long time in major corporations these days. (It’s also like the sign I once saw in a 3M conference room, “We’re going to keep having meetings until we find out why there’s no work getting done around here.”)

More telling to me is the hesitation Marketing News attributed to Aboulafia, the defense industry think-tanker. He’s wary of endorsing any external manifestations of the Boeing “One brand, One company” strategy discussed in the Marketing News article. Maybe he suspects that a new mega-branding effort on the company’s part will have little if any impact on its military and civilian customers and prospects.

Boeing isn’t just a mighty big company, with more than 158,000 employees in the US and 70 countries. It’s a mighty big brand, too. It’s been the world’s premier manufacturer of commercial jets for 40 years and arguably the most influential producer of warplanes for, like, forever. Despite the company’s participation in a wide array of other industries, from finance to software, it is principally viewed as an ironmonger.

So it probably doesn’t matter if the corporate people are tinkering with the cohesiveness of the company image. Boeing’s products…fly. That’s a great brand.

PS: I spent a large part of my military service time with aircraft produced by McDonnell-Douglas, now a key part of Boeing: A-3s and A-4s, and the propeller-driven C-47s, C-54s, C-117s. I’m a long-ago member of Mach Nix, which may explain why I’m slow on the uptake: Why didn’t I write this blog post back in May, when Boeing per-share price was $29? Photo: USAF.

Darden in BrandWeek: “No discounting.” But if the menu’s big bucks...

It is the convergence of events that’s arresting, rather than the events themselves. As with the feature article by Elaine Wong in BrandWeek yesterday, combined with today’s arrival of The Capital Grille promotion from American Express that you see above.

BrandWeek is interviewing Drew Madsen, Darden Restaurants’ president and COO; the piece is titled “Why ‘Deep Discounting’ Is Not Always the Winning Recipe.” In the second paragraph, Darden goes on at length:

We’re also seeing a [bit] more pressure on our higher price, higher check [restaurant dining] concepts, so brands like The Capital Grille—a fine dining steakhouse that’s priced at $90 or so a person—have seen a bigger impact than Olive Garden, which is [around] $15 a person, and we’re seeing a little bit of a decline in the overall check…a big part of the check erosion is due to all of the deep discounting that’s going on with competitors trying to get more people [eating at restaurants]. That discounting is essentially sacrificed per person per check. That’s not the case at Darden.

There you go: No deep discounting at Darden Restaurants. It’s holding the line, maintaining “the integrity of our brands and the strength of our business model long-term.” Unless the menu’s so expensive that half a C-note doesn't count as...deep.

This is a company with great brands, but Darden [NYSE: DRI] is only performing “fair” in the current economy. The company’s seen negative EPS growth this past year; it’s just reported a decline in same-store sales in five brands in the quarter that ended August 30, 2009.

Maybe there was a timing gap between the actual interview and its publication. Maybe it’s just an oversight; or the difficulty of knowing about single little promotion. I really did have to laugh, though, since the AMEX $50-off postcard arrived in the mail just 15 minutes after I read what Madsen had to say.

Give the interview a look. Madsen talks a good brand-value game. But he concludes his interview this way: Everyone can talk about having value and do what’s right or wrong when times are growing, but when things are tough, that’s when your values are put to the test.

I won’t be testing The Capital Grille’s values even with my “$50 gift certificate” promo – the menu’s still too pricey. Barbara has coupons for Red Lobster instead.

“Jesus is the Sticker on the Bumper of My Soul” Gets Real Lyrics.*

When your engine’s barely pulling
And the ride is kinda rough,
When your life is really feeling
Like it might be getting tough.

There’s a fine hands-on solution
Sure to ease the way you go:
Let the Lord be your mechanic!
He’s your all-time maintenance pro.

Well now Jesus is the sticker on the bumper of my soul.
He’s my whole trip’s ambition, the sum total of my goal.
And I’m getting better mileage from every tank of fuel
‘Cause my chassis’s free of evil and I know that I’m no fool.

Your lower tailgate panel
Could be dragging in the dirt.
You might find that some corrosion’s
Eaten out the engine skirt.

And that fender’s gotten dented
From your sinning, straying ways.
It is time you drove your spirit
To the good Lord’s service bays.

Well now Jesus is the sticker on the bumper of my soul.
He’s my whole trip’s ambition, the sum total of my goal.
And I’m getting better mileage from every tank of fuel
‘Cause my chassis’s free of evil and I know that I’m no fool.

Oh yes Jesus is the sticker on the bumper of my soul.
His Gospel is my owner’s guide, his Book my holy scroll.
He has polished out the wrinkles so it’s mighty clear to see
That I’m driving straight to glory, that my trip is heavenly.

*The song title was one of several created by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for their novel Good Omens, published originally in 1990 and later updated. So the title is their property. However, these lyrics are ©2009, Richard Laurence Baron.

**Of the hundreds of related bumper stickers on the Web, I picked the one above because I’m tickled by the two-sentiment combo. Don’t get excited – it’s just a blog illustration.

Vegemite Brand Struck with Major Silly Extension – Gets Hammered.

Hurry before Vegemite in Australia takes down its “new” home page, with the new brand extension name that just about every living human being Down Under has crapped all over. Go there – see the picture.

Hard on the news that original Monty Python member Terry Jones confirmed he became a father again this month (age 67) has come the shockin’ announcement of this branding failure in Australia – or maybe I’ve got these two items switched around.

Nevertheless, the makers of the salty, Brit-world-famous veggie spread (Kraft Foods Australia) attempted a bit of a brand extension. The new name is right on the label – slogan: “It’s Vegemite, but Different,” offering a more creamy, cheesy Vegemite. Stunning, really: The name choice did not resonate with outspoken brand loyalists in Oz. The Beeb reported:

It was never going to be easy tampering with a food spread considered iconic by some in Australia and New Zealand. But when Kraft, makers of Vegemite, chose a name for a new variation – iSnack2.0 – public distress forced an embarrassing U-turn.

The rumpus has continued to reverb worldwide; pundits are comparing it to the “New Coke” branding disaster. Mike Damon of Damon Medical Communications sent me the news – he knows I collect oddments like this. He said, effectively, what were those Aussie marketers thinking? With this bizarre attempt to make the old brand…relevant?

This much is true: When you mess with a cultural icon, you damn well better find out if the culture’s going to let you make a mess. This is a key part of the Stakeholder Rule and Signalwriter has had something to say about this.

Vegemite is multi-generationally familiar – even passionately loved. The salty-tasty spread was invented in 1922 but it was the Aussie soldiers in WWII that really made the product a critical part of life Down Under.

The shaken reactions to iSnack 2.0 are a caution to branders and brand marketers. But I believe this misstep can be fixed if Kraft Foods Australia and the Vegemite brand managers are quick and smart. Australians and New Zealanders have enough of a sense of humor so that they’d accept an apology, a straightforward “Sorry, we mucked this up” from Kraft. Right, you guys?

Kraft is re-starting its clever public-picks-the-name campaign (yes, the one that yielded the really awful new name). For sure, the firm’s going to get a lot of grief, like iFumbled 2.1; and the jokes have been popping for days. But the brand is well-loved. Aussies are nice people. Everyone will get over this fast and I bet the sales won’t be at all hurt. If Kraft does issue a real apology, the brand will recover even faster. Now please – pass the Veeta-Vita-Vegemite.

Houston Copywriter Does Not Shy from New Self-Promotion Tactic.

Subject: Urgent Business Diversification Request

First, we must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its being utterly confidential and very “top secret.”

Second, your ability to consider the matter of this great opportunity involving a pending transaction requiring maximum confidence is recognized by all the nations of the world, so then naturally we must write to you.

We represent a top website writer of the nationwide business community who is interested in doing business with your company utilizing talents when are presently spellbound in a relationship with a single client. In order to commence this business I solicit your assistance to enable this copywriter to diversify with work on your account, liberating the aforementioned trapped writer.

The source of this capability is as follows. The present civilian government having emphasized “shovel-ready projects” as a top priority, so we have identified a lot of writing opportunities which are presently floating in the national business community ready for proceeding.

However, by virtue of the admirable person’s position as a copywriter of excellent magnitude who is closely involved with a client no matter how estimable, he cannot solicit business in his own name. We have therefore been delegated as a matter of trust by this worthy copywriter to look for business relationship partners outside the boundaries of Spring Branch, USA.

We have agreed to share the capabilities of this writer with you thus: 30% for the new account owner, 93% for us (the senders of this letter to you), 42% to be used in settling taxation and all local and foreign expenses, and 95% for the esteemed writer himself.

This transaction is 100% safe. We hope to commence this transaction with your fine selves latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the following information from you, namely, your company’s signed and stamped letterhead paper – it will enable us to write letters of claim and job description respectively. This way, we will use your company’s name to re-award the contract to the copywriter and apply for payment.

We are looking forward to doing this business with you. Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter – we will send detailed information about the copywriter when we have heard from you.

Yours in friendship international,

Dr Aron Bachir

PLEASE QUOTE THIS REFERENCE NUMBER (SJ/P/419/2009) IN ALL YOUR RESPONSES.

Note: This is a parody but the “Nigerian Scam” is no joke. It is named after the number of the article in the Nigerian constitution that deals with this fraud, 419. These scammers cheat more than 50,000 people a year out of their hard-earned savings. Get smarter: Read all about 419 here. (And thanks to Susan Reeves for the graphic.)

Asked and Answered: Blausen Medical Closes the Loop.

Is a couple of billboard executions all it takes? Apparently so. Three weeks or so back, Signalwriter asked:

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, [Bruce] Blausen and [Mike] 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?

The SIG event went off yesterday (at the Houston Zoo, thank you very much) with more than a hundred healthcare marketing professionals in the audience. During this extensive, five-speaker seminar, Bruce Blausen answered the question I posed above. The key to his presentation, “Driving Business with Mobile Apps,” was identifying what today’s most effective patient education tool is, in his view: narrated animation on a mobile phone platform.

Then, for the close of his talk, he created and displayed a quartet of speculative billboards (two shown here) that tie “Human Atlas” mobile app and iPhone into single, brand-oriented messages on behalf of prospective hospital users.

That famous “picture worth a thousand words” thing can hardly be demonstrated more clearly than these boards: the answers to my questions, at least. Well done, Blausen.

Concepts courtesy of Blausen Medical. Some elements may be properties of stock photo houses – all rights reserved to element owners.

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.