Bowling the Brand: CORROSION 2011 a Just-Right Re-Launching Pad for MATCOR.

Say you held a rebranding and everybody came? Week before last, MATCOR President and CEO Jeff Stello brought his whole gang to the NACE exposition in Houston.

To name just a few, Eileen Jacob and John Rothermel, Ted Huck and Carlos Fuentes came down from Doylestown-Pee-Ay, maybe the first time they’d been warm all winter. Helen Morgan came over from Mobile. Brian Biek and Rebecca Harding were at the convention center from the Houston office – and Trevor Eade, the company’s new Director of Marketing and Communications.

They brought the new MATCOR brand with them.

One of the marketing gamebook’s best plays is using a big tradeshow to create extra thrills about a client’s brand – past posts have highlighted Baker Hughes and Wood Group promos, for example.

Even though MATCOR has been creating cathodic protection products for more than 35 years, it has been readying itself for a bigger role, a leap into the comprehensive design and engineering of cathodic protection and corrosion prevention systems and the supporting services that are important today for a global company, with clients worldwide.

“Everybody at NACE” saw the new MATCOR…the total rebranded look. Being close to the company’s rebranding program reminds me that MATCOR is in the business of systemic cathodic protection and that frequently involves galvanic anodes.

In MATCOR’s case, “galvanic” means more than a direct current of electricity.

So, certainly, there was brand-new from top to bottom, from dramatic logo to purple color scheme to QR codes to bowling night. There was new literature, new (and memorable) handouts, a new corporate theme, a new client support program, a new Web 2.0 site.

The entire MATCOR team seemed to be powering some electric effect, as in intensely exciting. The week-long company presence was vivid and memorable and filled with personally powered interactions.

Stello clearly enjoyed the new excitement…but I don’t think he was distracted by it. He told me, “At the end of the day, we still have to execute, we still have to get the job done for every client on time and on budget.”

No matter how fast the company grows, keeping everybody’s eyes on the integrity part is still the secret to a 300 game.

MATCOR is a great Signalwrite client. Thanks to Jeff Stello and Trevor Eade for inviting me to participate in the adventure. All photos courtesy of Studio Holloman.

Evolutionary Musings from the Land of the Czechs – a Facebook Browsing Experience.

Sunday mornings on Facebook I ain’t doin’ nuthin’. Confess, this sometimes happens to you too. So I was browsing and stopped to look at some…posters, created by Tom Rust in Prague. Known Rust for years – here, read his self-description for yourself:

Designer, DJ, producer, guitarist who likes coke, strong coffee, tea, Pilsner, sucky sweets, muffins, Asian cuisine, green things, cats, vinyl, mpcs, my 909 and making music with all the above.

He comes from a wonderful quirky family, too, that’s another story. Anyhow, Rust created these posters, each footed by the word EVOLUTION.

Such a classic idea, early-versioned in 1863 by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins for Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature by T H Huxley. It’s been parodied and adapted ever since thereby confirming the visual power of the original concept.

Rust (who shares Huxley’s first name) takes the long-lasting meme in several fun ways. All these executions say “change.” The changes may not be recognized until they are presented in some visual progression. The evolution could be car models; there are some kicking automotive commercials on now doing something similar. Combat aircraft or Nintendo characters. MPCs or personal music-listening devices…PMLDs?

The question to be confronted in music, marketing, politics is, what hasn’t changed? This post didn’t begin with politics but it’s instructive to consider Rust’s “Evolution” meme in terms of, say, Middle Eastern and African dictators – who don’t change much at all.

Even Facebook has changed and in a damned short time frame, too. Read back to the protocols of Facebook etiquette from a few years back to see how people’s attitudes and behaviors have been transformed.

Man’s place in Nature becomes Man’s place on Facebook. And Woman’s, too.

Like Dan Nations has said: These are the small things that “just happen” when you have friends and family on Facebook and you check in on a regular basis. You find yourself drawn into their lives and into conversations you wouldn’t have otherwise had with them.

Spring Break in New Jersey #1: Of Death and Crocuses and Custom Truck Bodies.

You do know we’re taking a Spring Break, away from Houston, right? Last year it was a 10-day cruise to the Panama Canal. Remember that? For 2011, it’s off to a destination that is just as foreign: New Jersey.

We’ll be visiting Rachel Baron and Alison Bond in North Bergen, NJ. I realized I hadn’t posted you about this specifically. So when Rachel called to let me know that “…the crocuses were all dead,” I thought I better catch you up.

Look for Barbara Nytes-Baron and me just across the river in North Bergen in a couple weeks. We have been…alerted about the oddball weather in that part of the world in this time period. Alison mentioned that it could get up into the 70s – that’s Fahrenheit. I told ‘em, I thought that was pretty impressive but that as far as we were concerned, the 70s is so last week.

That’s when Rachel mentioned the crocuses. Planted in various parts of the outdoor realm of their house, they have apparently fallen victim to this afternoon’s hailstorm. Dead, dead, dead. “Hail storm?”

“We hardly ever get hail storms in April. Really,” Rachel answered.

I’ve done some research on North Bergen, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the culture. I pointed out one discovery to the girls – all the elected officials (the Mayor and four City Commissioners) all have Italian-American last names: Sacco, Cabrera, Ferraro, Gargiulo, Pascual. It’ll be such a change for us, even if I’m doing Commissioners Cabrera and Pascual an injustice. Those could be Latino and Portuguese respectively.

Rachel pointed out, “They keep the streets clean, we keep voting for them.” Fair enough.

We’re genuinely looking forward to this and I will make every attempt to avoid embarrassing [1] the people who are opening their arms to us in hospitality and [2] Barbara.

Meantime, you’re probably wondering about the sign in the photo, the one that says “Highway Body Works?” I put North Bergen, NJ, through a Google Images search and this photo came up in third place. I thought it was appropriate for some mental reason, so mille grazie to the photographer, Vincenzo Aiosa.

Vincenzo – I’ll buy you a beer, meet me at the Italian bar around the corner from Rachel and Alison’s, okay? April 2 – it’s a date!

Operate Your Website for More than One Audience at a Time.

You’ll see this graphic when you go to Upstream Marketing’s revamped website. Principal Brian Bearden and I were looking for a way to simply show how many more audiences are affected by a company’s website than most businesspeople consider.

We drew an early version of the graphic on a prospect’s whiteboard. (It really wasn’t a blackboard – that’s so 20^th Century.) Even in the new website version, Bearden has kept the graphic expression simple.

The effects of the Web are indisputable; but listen, there are about 7.6 million businesses in the US alone (US Census, 2010). Which means that for every spectacularly savvy biz with a great website or two or three, there are maybe 10 or 15 that DO NOT realize all the impacts a website can have on their company’s sales, marketing and growth.

Effects on your audience(s) can be both positive and negative. So I view websites as “conversation changers.” Company managers can’t control every single conversation with a prospect, with an investment analyst, with a shareholder. Yet the website’s going to be the first place people go to have a conversation in both metaphorical and literal senses.

The graphic also imagines that some of the website’s exchanges ought to be two-way conversations, dialogues between you and customers, for example; or employees. Other interactions may be one-way: messages to prospects, perhaps, or trade press editors, at least to start with.

In a 50-word opening paragraph, the UpstreamMarketing.net “About” section says:

We believe that in today’s world more and more effective marketing and sales conversations start with the website. Your website. So our job is to build engaging, easy-to-use, industrial websites for process and manufacturing industries, engineering and service companies. Conversation-changers. Game-changers…the most effective sites – bar none.

I want you to be strategic about your website before you actually make changes, radical or not. SEO is important; content creation also. But deliberation counts for more. A thoughtless website can kill a sale.

The right website, one touched by human thinking, can change your sales or marketing or employee conversations for the better. This is provably true. The best websites can change your game.

To keep the total idea in mind, simple is what you can draw on a whiteboard.

PS: Having visualized this marvelous model, now I have to figure out how to apply it to my own Signalwrite.com site. I’ll get back to you on that.

“Andrex® Shea Butter Knickers” Drive TP into UK Top Brands List?

In a Sunday story reporting the Top 10 Brands in British grocery stores, it wasn’t the news about best seller Coca-Cola that attracted me. I was riveted by Andrex – the toilet paper that’s the No 9 brand in the grocery stores over yonder. (It is in The Grocer ’s annual Britain’s 100 Biggest Brands survey.)

The puppy is so charming – and the “Be kind to your behind” slogan so clearly British – I could hardly wait to get to the brand’s website. That’s when I discovered the most luxurious toilet tissue ever has tapped Ayten Gasson, identified as a British lingerie designer, to create its limited edition range of Andrex brand Shea Butter Knickers. Just ₤10 the pair.

Now I have received certain – so to say squeamish – comments about using a beautiful, luscious, four-color photo of Italian lingerie model Elizabetta Canalis in a previous Signalwriter post. This time I’m playing safe: you get the pup. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

However, Dear British colleagues, here’s your chance to help me get to the bottom, ha ha, of this special announcement. American’s have had their own love affairs with TP (“Please don’t squeeze the Charmin’,” 504 TV commercials, etc.)

So give us the story behind Andrex, ha ha. Some of us Yanks want to know what we are missing.

Strange Fish and Sea Monsters: “Continue the Campaign” Marks New PSI Ads.

When I first had the chance to work with PSI’s Bill Price and Neal Peeler, we created a new brand image – maybe you remember reading the post about it. At the time, I wrote:

The new PSI brand campaign takes “Petrophysics that Pays Off” vividly to market. The company devotes more time – and expertise – coming up with a consistent, comprehensive interpretation that represents all the information gathered.

PSI (Petrophysical Solutions, Inc) asked Signalwrite Marketing back to create new ads for 2011. The deceptively simple campaign begins this month in magazines reaching the upstream part of the oilfield exploration and production market, the “geophysics” space out there in the world.

The word “consistent…” also means continuing the campaign. Keep building the brand at the same time you’re opening new sales opportunities. The way Lyn Pilch and Susanne Thiede-Barnet of the Pilch/Barnet agency wrote about consistent ad messaging is right in line with our combined thinking:

Investor-minded advertisers know that consistently repeating your message creates confidence in potential customers. This is the basis for brand image-based advertising. Consistency should be the bedrock of any effective advertising campaign. Without consistency, no advertising campaign can be effective.

The 2011 PSI ad set brings brand consistency to market with fresh touches thanks to Kay Krenek for design and art direction, and photographer Michael Hart.

We reinforced the ad messages (of using proven performance to reduce risks, of PSI expertise in shale plays) with a new map from the PSI collection at the top of each ad. My fave (top) is the 1612 Abraham Ortelius map from his Theatrum. Its portrayal of strange fish and sea monsters is perfect for conveying the idea of the risks that exploration professionals face every day. This outing, though, we used a contemporary Hart photo of PSI’s consulting petrophysicists to counter the risk.

The 1873 US Geology Survey map of Texas and Louisiana (bottom) clearly conveys the broad swath of opportunities available in shale plays when explorationists have hands-on, minds-on PSI people behind them. Completely different feel in this map/landscape photo set…still within the PSI brand.

“Continue the campaign” is a great watchword, an idea I’m glad to be able to deliver for PSI. Thanks to great clients and a fine creative team for the fish, the sea monsters and the broad open ranges of fresh advertising.

Oh, yeah: “Petrophysics that Pays Off” and “Discoveries Drive Value” are trademarks of Petrophysical Solutions, Inc. All the rights are reserved.

I Wrote This – Fortunately, Great Clients and Designers Were Involved.

In 2010, I participated in the BP wellness calendar and it came out very well – you can read about that excellent project here.

Now the 2011 Calendar is in play, titled “I Can.” It is described in the most recent post on the Prism Design blog.

Whole different year now. But same great team of people, same fine clients. Thank you very much, everyone, for the chance to be involved again.

Keeping the Record Tidy for Bradford's Kinetic Sculpture (Pre-Art Car Era).

“Scrap Daddy” – Houston artist Mark David Bradford – is being honored with a 20-year retrospective at The Art Car Museum now. Art critic Douglas Britt wrote this past week:

Bradford’s 20-year survey is an unqualified triumph for a master of the art form the museum was born to celebrate — and whose emergence influenced him to increase the scale and ambition of his work. Combining motors with treasures of the scrap heap, Bradford’s art cars depict fantastical creatures and totemic figures with majesty and ferocity.

Bradford’s also known as “prolific.” I bet nobody knows that his scrap art began with different idea forms – including the four pieces in our own collection.

“Hurricane Chimes” here is the largest of the works. Mark told us years back that he imagined the drillpipe sections would swing back and forth in a high wind.

I first wrote about it in the Houston Chronicle Stormwatchers blog, when Rita came our way; the post is still on line here. I am sorry to report that HC never performed as we hoped: It didn’t ring no matter how hard the wind blew, even when Ike came through.

Doing a post about pieces purchased 20-plus years ago has its drawbacks, one of which is that no amount of writing can make these works compare with the fire-breathing motorized dragons Bradford’s been constructing the past decade or two. And even though the outdoor pieces have been repainted, they clearly can use another refurb. We have been thrilled to have them, though – our own showy art for outdoors Spring Branch.

Shown: Mark David Bradford, “Hurricane Chimes.” Steel pipe. Houston, 1989.

From Rome #4: Praying for Another Italian Import.

Herewith, the final post created for PAN in Rome. I re-post it today on Signalwriter because, you  know, we all need more beauty in our lives. The subject matter is much more natural in the Italian version.

Americans are even more aware of another Italian name – or at least a face: Elizabetta Canalis. She is currently George Clooney’s girlfriend* so there’s plenty of envy to cover both sides of the human race, male and female.

Why does this matter to advertising people? Because Ms Canalis is currently starring in ads and videos for fashion designer Roberto Cavalli – her second year in the lead role. Since Italian fashion gets as much marketing attention as Italian cars, the new Roberto Cavalli print campaign, photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, has gained celebrity attention worldwide. (If there’s a fashion or gossip blog on the planet that hasn’t already posted about this, it must be in Iran.)

Americans slowly began to learn about this particular cutting-edge campaign from the London Daily Mail, where Italian designer Cavalli said, “For my new underwear collection I chose Elisabetta again, my ideal of a woman…she was perfect in enhancing the spirit of this advertising campaign!”

But we know more about Cavalli since he’s a major presence on a popular US TV program, “America’s Next Top Model,” on the Warner Bros./CBS broadcast network The CW. It is one more demonstration that there are no real borders between marketing, advertising, public relations and entertainment, at least in the consumer marketplace.

The photographs ain’t bad either.

*Are Clooney and Canalis together in a Fiat ad? Perhaps here. Photo of: Elizabetta Canalis © Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott for Roberto Cavalli – all rights reserved.

From Rome #3: “FIAT Arrives – the Second Time Around…”

In the previous post, PAN had translated the FIAT post I’d submitted into Italian for its clients and prospects. Here is the original…more or less.

One classy Italian that’s coming back to America is the new Fiat 500. The tiny comeback is premiering as part of Fiat’s new alliance with Chrysler Corporation.

The last time Fiat sold cars in the US under its own brand name, Ronald Reagan was President, Terms of Endearment won the Oscar for the Best Picture and Michael Jackson took home a Grammy for “Beat It.” That was 1984.

(Twenty years earlier in ‘64, when I was…younger…a friend and I drove his microscopic Fiat 500 to Seattle, Washington, from Atlanta, Georgia. It was an excruciating round trip for someone my size: 4400 miles or 7000 kilometers. I look forward to discovering if the new 500 is more appealing.)

So in just a few weeks, the first Fiat 500s will roll into the carmaker’s new US showrooms. There’s already one in Austin, TX. The new car is supposed to be priced at US$15,500 for the basic model. For those who enjoy life’s little luxuries, there’s a model with all the premium bits for US$25,500.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, also the CEO of Chrysler, believes that the time is just right to relaunch the Fiat marque. He says in Ad Age magazine, “We want Fiat to be a global brand, and the 500 is the perfect vehicle with which to re-open the conversation with Americans.”

Fiat is going to have to prove that its new car is not just fun to drive – the brand’s got to overcome American resistance to small cars. (BMW’s Mini Cooper brand has lots of cool but not a large market share.) There’s also the reliability challenge – quality became a major problem with the old Fiat models back in the early 1980s.

The ad industry’s waiting to see what the new US ad agency for Fiat, Impatto, is going to do. Run by Italian-American Michael D’Antonio, it’s a boutique shop that’s been selected to handle creative duties and event strategy for the new car launch. The Michigan-based agency has created the car’s slogan for America, “Life is best when driven.” (See above.)

According to MSNBC, Impatto and Fiat will use both traditional marketing channels and “alternative methods” for the introduction, including event-based “graffiti walls” being set up in key US markets; and social media. The alternatives sound like the same kinds of tactics used by BMW Mini and its first ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

PS: Want to see the new FIAT in southeast Texas? Initially, Northside FIAT of Houston will get the first cars. The dealership will start off sharing space with Spring Chrysler Jeep Dodge at 21027 Interstate 45 North, exit 70A.

From Rome #2: “La piccola Fiat arriva in America…”

Un classico italiano che ritorna in America: la nuova FIAT 500. La piccola di casa FIAT è la “prima assoluta” della nuova alleanza con Chrysler Corporation.

L’ultima volta che un auto è stata venduta in USA con il marchio FIAT il presidente era Ronald Reagan, “Voglia di tenerezza” vinceva l’Oscar per il miglior film e Michael Jackson portava a casa un Grammy per “Beat It.” Era il 1984.

Vent’anni prima (1964), quando io ero ancora più giovane, un mio amico ed io guidammo una microscopica Fiat 500 da Atlanta a Seattle. Fu un viaggio andata e ritorno straziante per uno della mia taglia: 4400 miglia, circa 7000 km. Non vedo l’ora di scoprire se la nuova 500 è più attraente.

Così, fra poche settimane la prima FIAT 500 entrerà nei nuovi showroom USA della casa italiana. C’e n’è già uno ad Austin, Texas. Il modello base sarà venduto a 15.500 dollari (11.500 €), ma per chi ama i piccoli lussi, il modello superaccessoriato sale a 25.500 dollari (quasi 19.000 euro).

Sergio Marchionne crede che sia il momento giusto di rilanciare il marchio FIAT in USA e ha affermato sulla testata AD Age: “Vogliamo che FIAT sia marca globale e la 500 è il modello giusto per riaprire il dialogo con gli americani”.

Ma FIAT dovrà dimostrare che la nuova 500 non è solo divertente da guidare, - FIAT deve superare le resistenze degli americani verso le auto piccole (la Mini Cooper è considerata molto cool, ma ha una piccola quota di mercato). C’è soprattutto la sfida dell’affidabilità, visto che la qualità era il problema maggiore dei vecchi modelli FIAT degli anni ‘80.

Il mercato della pubblicità è curioso di vedere cosa farà la nuova agenzia USA di FIAT, Impatto, una boutique creativa guidata da un italo - americano, Michael D’Antonio, che è stata selezionata per gestire creatività ed eventi per il lancio della nuova auto. L’agenzia del Michigan ha già creato lo slogan per l’America : “Life is best when driven.”

Sembra che FIAT utilizzerà sia i canali di marketing tradizionale che “metodi alternativi” per il lancio, compresi eventi basati su “muri di graffiti” che verranno organizzati nei mercati chiave e nei social media. Una tattica che sembra simile a quella già usata da BMW.

THIS PHOTO: New Fiat 500 and old model from Fiatpic.com – all rights reserved.

From Rome #1: It’s a Post, It’s a Blurb – and There Will Be Italian...

The next few Signalwriter posts come from content specially created for PAN Advertising in Rome. Gianfranco Vallana, Managing Director of the long-time Dialogue International affiliate, wrote:

In PAN we are sending e-mail news about the agency work to clients and prospects. They have good opening rates, but to be honest we need to raise the interest and the impact.

We don’t want to offer boring news, and we don’t want to compete with professional editors, but we noted that Italian specialized press usually don’t publish a lot of news from abroad. So we think we could get the attention of our targets sending a short list of news, opinion or curiosities about marketing and communications in other countries, written by our Dialogue friends.

As one of our major objectives is to highlight Dialogue and internationality in our positioning platform…bingo!

And the kindliest note of all, sent to me as a Chairman Emeritus of the organization:

We suddenly realized that we’d like to have also you on board. We cannot forget USA and Texas!

I submitted several items which Gianfranco and his team combined with many others from Dialogue members throughout Europe and the US, under the title Blurb. Pan is using this word (which doesn’t exist in the Italian language) to draw attention to news that’s interesting to its clients and prospects, from the world of communication beyond Italy’s borders.

Dear readers: there’s more to come. Watch for my posts (in Italian and English). They’re re-posted here on Signalwriter courtesy of Vallana; long-time colleague Giorgio Bonifazi Razzanti, PAN’s Creative Director, and the rest of team in Rome. May all your emails have superb open rates!

Important, Concise…Best of All, New Oil & Gas Bumper Sticker is Yours for Zip.

Winter NAPE begins today in Houston – a conference at which millions of dollars’ worth of oil and gas deals are going to be made. Maybe more than that. Maybe billions. Life in “the bidness” keeps on being exciting.

So today, just in time for NAPE, this spiffy bumper-decorator is formally available. Revisiting an idea portrayed here in December, it seems too…adventurous…to leave behind.

This official “God Loves Hydrocarbons” bumper sticker has your name on it (in a figurative sense.) Thanks to major design help by Ken Bullock of Bullock Studios, it looks significantly better than December’s rough version. Now a strong black on provocative yellow, the thought-sticker is flexible, long-lasting – and sure to generate countless discussions in what I am certain will be a civil manner.

It’s even free, as the headline notes. Send me a note, I’ll try to get you one by mail. Perhaps I can collect a stamp or two from you later.

Or just ask for one when you see me. I’m happy to share.

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, What Drives a “Gnomeo and Juliet” to Market?

The newest animated film, “Gnomeo and Juliet,” is described this way:

An animated version of Shakespeare’s play, where Gnomeo…and Juliet…are would-be lovers from rival garden-based families.

Sure, it’s the “Disney version.” Some people out there seem to love it. New York magazine online announced that this animated film grossed $25.5 million. Already. And Variety’s Justin Chang wrote last week that the romantic comedy restaging – Shakespeare with lawn ornaments – is a winner.

I love animation and I looked at some trailers online. I have watched at least 18 minutes of musical and non-musical trailers, posted to IMDB.com and YouTube, more than 20% of the movie. Based on this viewing alone, the new movie is…awful.

So am I a snob or a marketer? (Okay, DON’T answer that.) But I’m going to put on my pointy marketer’s hat and suggest why these things come to be. First suggestion – that $25.5 million I mentioned earlier. There’s big money in kids’ animation, doesn’t matter how awful it may appear to adults. If the star-crossed garden gnomes are at all popular, the producers are going to make a bundle.

Two, follow the money which leads to adults. They will continue to take children to these films because tragedy’s turned into comedy…even when the comedic vision is itself a tragedy. Families seek out innocent-ish entertainment that will keep their children’s eyes glued to the big screen and their mouths mostly closed. (And families really do enjoy laughing together, which is a Good Thing.)

Third, keep the factory busy. Animation has gained so many great moments in the past few years – thanks to Pixar, for example – that animation studios worldwide have millions of bucks tied up in computer power to produce this high-end stuff. “Computer farms” are, in a word, huge! Nobody wants that investment to sit idle.

These thoughts are conjectural, Honestly, I wish someone out there in Hollywoodland would stumble across this post and set me straight.

Meantime, we’re going to make judgements. The principal at Full Tilt Communications, MaryJane Mudd, wrote after taking her children to see it:

Sitting through dreadful “Gnomeo and Juliet” with the kids, made worse by the fact that my beloved Elton John has sold out…Dreadful, dreadful I tell you.

And because my own appreciation of the film is already influenced by people whose words I trust (e g, Mudd), I am not going to see it until I can watch it for free.

As marketers, though, we ought to keep a sharp eye on what happens because this film is exactly the kind of product where the “people” will vote with their pocketbooks on whether it’s good or bad…and pretty quick, too.

Thanks to MaryJane Mudd for sharing her post-initiating review and note that the gnome photo is by Wikinoby from Wikimedia Commons.

CIA 21st Century Re-Brand Avoids Controversy, Uses No Black Helicopters.

To see an article about “rebranding” the Central Intelligence Agency – right out there in front of God and everybody – I admit it’s a shocker. America’s first formal civilian secret intelligence service is now otherwise. The CIA has a Facebook page. The CIA has a YouTube channel.

It’s discussed in yesterday’s article by Sheila Shayon who wrote, “…the CIA is keeping up with the times, and presenting a new image to the public with a digital facelift – a prerequisite for any brand presence in the 21st century…”

Discussed but not revealed: the CIA itself exposed its new brand initiatives in a press release.

I could show you examples of the CIA’s videos; or the recruitment ad campaign that the agency’s has been running for the past couple of years. (They’re creatively pedestrian but hey, it’s a clandestine government organization.)

It is hardly a Wikileaks coup, though: you can see all of these for yourself on the agency website’s “View Our Advertising” page. Families welcomed; kids, have a great time with your very own US intelligence apparat…hosted by a friendly black Labrador named Bradley.

The dissonance of the thing is galling, though these community-embracing efforts aren’t actually so new. One would like a bit more of an edge, though, for a government outfit that’s routinely accused of black helicopters and blacker operations.

That’s why I was thrilled to find a 1998 article written by a former CIA officer who declares, “…the Agency is just no good at what it's supposed to be doing.” This is 13 years ago, mind you...ancient history as far as Facebook initiates are concerned. Yet it makes interesting reading and it has finely pointed illustrations by Ross MacDonald (see one above). He’s one of America’s great illustrators, as well as a writer of children’s books and a maker of movie props.

Signalwriter is as much public entertainment as brand insight. This post gives you the critical data you need to [a] review MacDonald’s 1998 illustrations which the CIA ought to have used in its rebranding effort; [b] read Atlantic Monthly’s “ancient history” article as a go-around-come-around piece.

And [c] examine the CIA’s brand activities with a view toward picking up some pointers for your own practice.

NOTE: Illustration by Ross MacDonald, copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly, February 1998. “Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?” Volume 281, N. 2, pages 45-61.