Set the Wayback Machine (Again): “Celebrating 50 Space Travel Yrs.”

In new advertising for the Houston Museum of Natural Science, by Creative Director Kim Bloedorn, you can see the difference between satire (bad) and homage (really, really good):

When I was asked to create ads to run in the anniversary section of the Houston Chronicle Space Shuttle tribute, my immediate inspiration was retro-styled art. What better way to celebrate 50 years in space.

Our hometown paper’s made room for major efforts commemorating NASA, the last shuttle launch and the milestones of space flight. The museum’s strong connections with NASA via its education and planetarium programs spurred its participation in the special Chronicle section published today.

There are a lot of us whose awareness of “the final frontier” predated Sputnik. We grew up with Double Star (Robert Heinlein, 1956), “Forbidden Planet” (MGM, same year) and the omnipresent rocket engineer of the 20th Century (Wernher von Braun, 1912-1977). For hundreds of thousands of us, manned space exploration was a no-brainer; has been, in fact, a constant presence in our lives.

For some of us, it has fueled careers that have lasted through today – in media broadly, in PR and advertising specifically. From campaigns for companies like MBDA to ongoing enthusiasm for the imagery of old Soviet rocket programs in modern marketing illustration, there’s an undying meme that feels distinctly American but has spent half a century transcending borders.

Today here’s Bloedorn in full (funky) color, spacing me out with her finned rocket ships and scuffed planetary rings and the bucktoothed kid in the zip-up spaceship suit.

For her, it’s a…jubilee of memory: I hoped it would spark an emotional connection with those of us that remember the days when the space program began and celebrate the fun that can still be had from learning and exploring space right here at HMNS.

Culture infects advertising. Advertising infects culture. In case you don’t believe that the new HMNS ads aren’t channeling meme-makers like Kelly Freas, take a quick visual peek at one month in one year of fantasy and science fiction: January 1954. Better yet, drive by the Planet Ford dealership in Humble. Or the Flying Saucer shop on Crosstimbers: “Our Pies Are Out of This World!”

So are Bloedorn’s adverts.*

*I bet Bloedorn would like me to note, 2011 © HMNS. All rights reserved.

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.

Dumpling Dynasty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheban’s Artwork

The GoodNites® ad illustrator is Chris Sheban, who works out of Chicago. Check out his booklist on the HarperCollins website.

There’s even more fun: Charley Parker wrote a great post on the Lines and Colors blog, about Sheban’s homage to Vermeer (above): Just one reason he’s received both Gold and Silver medals from the Society of Illustrators.

If you love illustration, seeing fine work like “Jungle” in a print ad is a real pleasure – and an excellent change from stock photos.

Thanks to Alyson Valpone and JWT for sending along Sheban’s name. Illustration: All rights reserved.

GoodNites® “Jungle”

Kimberly-Clark’s ad agency, JWT, has fielded a new ad for the company’s GoodNites brand sleep pants. What makes this ad different from a decade or more of GoodNites advertising? Maybe it signals a change of conceptual direction for this particular product line. (This is the same JWT that created the funny “Geyser” spot for Huggies brand diapers.)

Tim Witheroe was one of several reviewers who commented on GoodNites campaigns over the years. In 2002, he wrote:

This ad catches our emotions instantly when we observe the young boy huddled against the wall. Ending with their catchy slogan (“Goodnites mean good mornings”) in bold type insures that readers will recall the product name if this problem affects their family. In addition, the picture of the product’s packaging is another memory aid that will be recalled if a parent is out shopping for products of this type.

The print ad he showed, like many others in a similar vein, featured a forlorn child. Print and broadcast executions had a powerful appeal to women (and they’ve been lampooned as well).

This new 2009 print ad lightens things up a lot. Maybe it’s designed to appeal to men since it features a young father reading a bedtime storybook (The Jungle) to his son. Speaking of lighter, there’s a new, equally positive tag line: “GoodNites lighten the night.TM”

The most fun of all, though, is an imaginative illustration that evokes the mood of the story. The Mesoamerican jungle night with its moonlit Mayan temple, the animals…it’s eye-catching. (I forgive the non-native elephant since it’s a kid’s book, right?) I don’t know who the illustrator is but will send a note up to JWT to see if a name can be credited. I wish Kimberley-Clark would migrate this to the Goodnites website.

Good advertising tells stories – to me, “Jungle” is a good ad.

Matchbook Advertising

We had been chatting about tiny posters – cinderellas – as advertising media (see below). Then (see below below) about Laura Smith, who’s channeling stamp artists from the era of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in the service of Mercedes and the Academy Awards.

Now I want you to recall the advertising power and art of the common paper matchbook – politically incorrect today to the nth degree. In fact, I’m doing you a service to remind you that matchbook advertising is “like having the impact of billboard advertising in the palm of your hand.”

I lifted this phrase direct from D D Bean & Sons Company website.

It’s www.matchbookadvertising.com and if you have any idea that you or your company can handle the oh-my-god pressure of matchbook marketing, you could start your journey with Peter Leach, the company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

This site is not only a display of this matchbook company’s production and distribution capabilities. It will remind you of what was once a very powerful medium: Now dead and buried, along with cigarette smokers.

The challenge of using matchbooks – the real thing, not the ones with toothpicks or little notepads – is that so many people associate them with cigarette-smoking. How many humans think about the evils of cigarettes every time they see a matchbook? Most of them here in the US. Leach, who’s been in the “match business” for 35 years, says that over the past six to seven years, it’s changed dramatically, and for the worse. The advent of the Master Settlement Agreement killed Big Tobacco’s interest in book matches, so matchbook advertising is a dribble compared to a decade ago.

Leach makes an important distinction. In the good old days, the business was “space advertising.” This is classic matchbook advertising where the advertiser (like Prince Albert cigars) buys the space; the manufacturer (like D D Bean & Sons) distributes the matchbooks. The resulting book of matches, likely with a tobacco ad on it, was given to you free when you bought a pack of cigarettes.

Those good days are gone forever. Leach calls everything else “private label.” The matchbooks with customized art are sold to the advertiser (a hotel, a bar or a restaurant), who then distributes them to its customers.

The thousand-legal-cut demise of smoking isn’t the only indignity suffered by matchbook advertisers. Technologically, the disposable lighter really took over the “light business” over the past 15 years. Today, nine out of every 10 “lights” are provided by butane lighters.

That’s a shame, because even after the trials and tribulations of the tobacco industry here in America, matchbooks are still surprisingly available…just not in the places you think you might find them or in the old, space-advertising formats.

Is it possible to find a company with any degree of PC sensitivity to use matchbook advertising? I think you have to determine if your client has a pretty sturdy sense of humor to take on this format.

For private labelers, good designers can help. First, there are still match companies like Bean and The Match Group that provide templates for graphic artists and art directors. Then, you want to refine your brand message both verbally and visually. Perhaps you noted the last couple of posts about outstanding illustrators working in the small spaces defined by, say, the matchbook.

There are also technical designers like Pasquale Chieffalo (here) and David Airey (here) who continue to experiment with the matchbook format. These outside-the-box applications might offer marketers and advertisers additional ways to use a strongly familiar medium in new, even surprising ways.

If your own creativity catches fire, drop me a line and I’ll pass it on to Leach, who’s looking for a few good ideas. Remember to close cover before striking.

Thanks and a tip of the Signalwriter cap to Peter Leach. The private-label 30-strike “Republic” sample courtesy of The Match Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cinderella Stories

When Laura Smith (see below) mentioned that her artistic influences did “poster art,” I misunderstood her – she pointed that out in a comment posted to the blog. In fact, an artist like A M Cassandre did a lot of these small pieces – the one to the left, dated 1928, measures 1.5 inches by 2.3 inches. If you look here, you’ll see a lot more.

I had to call a local stamp store to remind myself about what should have been a familiar term: Not poster stamps, but cinderellas – stamp-like labels that include charity stamps like Easter Seals as well as advertising material of all kinds.

This is where Smith’s understanding of a “poster stamp” comes from. It’s a miniature version of a poster designed to advertise an event or product and, according to one definition, the main characteristic of the true poster stamp is integrity of design.

Color schemes and layouts had to be carefully chosen because poster in such small sizes had to catch the eye quickly. Sometimes these worked, sometimes they didn’t. But since a number of older designers worked in this format, they’re outstanding source materials for contemporary illustrators – just like postage stamp designers.

Ta for the weekend!

Smith’s Art

Back when US postage stamps were boring, the countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact had much neater stuff. The Soviet Union, Communist Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria – they couldn’t produce a working refrigerator to save their lives. But they had TERRIFIC stamps.

The old-school artists of these countries combined 1960s “contemporary design” and art deco elements to produce damn outstanding philately…everything from Soviet space ships (factual and fictional) to folk heroes, holiday celebrations to sports figures.

Well, this post started because the American Marketing Association-Houston has been using several pieces of stock art by Laura Smith to advertise its upcoming Crystal Awards. I’m fond of Art Deco styling as well as good illustration. And I was curious about this particular “Laura Smith.”

As illustrators go, Smith is famous enough. She’s been written up and written about, with her growing up in, “a mid-century modern house in Manhattan Beach, CA (literally on the beach), where no one but her mother locked their doors.”

When she graduated from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, Smith moved to New York City to jump-start her career. After developing her style in New York for 12 years, she returned to California and set up shop in the Hollywood Hills, where she’s been ever since, producing dramatic or dynamic creations for advertisers, magazines and organizations from the American Public Works Association to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Given how many illustrators there are in the world – and from how many sources they draw inspiration – it’s awkward to single out just one, saying, “This is cool stuff.” There’s lots of that.

But after looking at Smith’s current work at www.laurasmithart.com, I realized, here’s an illustrator who had to have been looking over my shoulder when I was collecting Warsaw Pact stamps back in the ’60s.

She wrote me: There have been many artists that have influenced my work. I never tire of the French poster artist A M Cassandre. Otis Shepard always feels fresh to me (he was known for all the work he did for Wrigley’s). More recently I have been inspired by Mary Blair.

My earlier work was originally shaped by Ludwig Hohlwein. The pieces that you have singled out are probably a cross between Otis and Cassandre. And I believe that all the aforementioned artists with the exception of Mary Blair had work produced as poster stamps. I am not familiar with the postage stamps you refer to. Maybe we are talking about the same thing.

I think we are. The resemblance between her work and the postage stamps of Soviet-era Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary is remarkable. Examples? If Blogger cooperates, two Smith pieces are on top; then a Soviet Russian stamp and then a Polish stamp, circa 1965.

I testify to the similarities. With Smith’s work, I set Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine and return to the days when the War was Cold and a gallon of regular (leaded) cost 31¢.

Today scholars call this sort of thing “ephemera.” For me, it’s reminiscence. So thanks, Laura. Who says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?