Chip Martin

Verna Finley Puppets

chip — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:30:00 GMT

A ~~Dummy's~~ Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Mannequin American

The Lady Behind "Verna" Puppets

I've met my "maker" a couple of times. His name is Alan Semok (above). Alan is recognized as a premiere figure maker. (He'd have to be ... he created me.)

Several of Dale's other suitcase posse members are not "true" Mannequin Americans because they're what are referred to in the trade as "soft puppets." But Dale's soft characters are still pretty special because most of them were designed and created by the famous Verna Finley.

The photo above was taken many years ago at the Grand Floridian at Disney World. It was an event for Jeff Dunham. On the left is Dale and on the right is our dear friend, Verna Finley. (I have no idea who is in the middle.)

Verna is considered by most to be the "Grande Dame" of soft puppets. Although Verna retired from puppet making several years ago, her creations live on and are highly sought after by both professionals and collectors. If you own a "Verna" you are fortunate indeed. And if you ever had the opportunity to actually meet Verna, you are doubly fortunate. She's a sophisticated world traveler and at the same time as funny and down to earth as you can imagine. We cherish the memories of our visits to her home when she lived in Florida.

Over the years Verna designed more than 15 puppets for Dale ... mostly for special corporate presentations. One of those puppets resides in Vent Haven Museum. Another, his Verna-created bag lady, has over 100,000 views on YouTube. Jeff Dunham's original "Peanut" is a Verna creation. Mary Ann Taylor now makes Jeff's "Peanut replacements," and she has made backup duplicates of Dale's Verna's as well. (Unlike Mannequin Americans, soft puppets wear out.)

Anyway, I noticed that I get a lot of hits on my blog by people looking for information about Verna, so I thought I'd include this little snippet about one of our favorite people.

You Can Help Me

Blogged.com lists over 4,600 marketing-related blogs. This blog currently ranks number 240 on Blogged.com, putting it in the top 5% of all marketing blogs. While that's pretty darn good for a Mannequin American, you could help improve things.

We're only able to count people who follow the blog via a resource like http://www.blogged.com/, or those who sign up to automatically receive the blog every Tuesday and Friday by email or RSS Feed. If you're not an "official follower" you're not counted and to some extent, this is a numbers driven application of my time.

Here are your options. Go to http://bmpr.com/chip_martin/ and sign up to get the blog by RSS Feed or email; or go to Blogged.com and sign up to follow the blog. (That just means you can go there and read the blog whenever you want to without having it sent to you. I follow 17 blogs on blogged.com. It helps me organize my blog reading time with fewer clicks.) If you go to Blogged.com just type "Chip Martin's Blog" in the search tool.

The other thing you can do is to forward my blog to a friend or co-worker and ask them to sign up too. And keep sending me tidbits that I can use in my posts! I really appreciate it.

Thanks.

True or Not True?
"Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a ‘wake'."

Doggy Day Care

This print ad for a daytime dog care company in Stockholm includes the tag line, "What's your dog up to when it's home alone?" In the full-sized ad it would be easy for you to see that the ad suggests your dog is watching doggy porn.

Being the astute marketing Mannequin American that I am, I found something less obvious but still offending about this ad ... the dog is using an old Macintosh which could not possibly be attached to the internet. And look at the phone? If they're going to go to all of the trouble to create an ad, couldn't they at least get the details right?

Keep Things Simple

chip — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:30:00 GMT

A ~~Dummy's~~ Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Mannequin American

Big Words Don't Impress Me ... or Anyone Else

Candor, character and caring are being sucked out of corporate communications. Plain, simple, common sense language is becoming a collector's item. Expect to see samples of it for sale on ebay.

Even normal healthy people who can carry on brilliant conversations with their friends, relatives, pets and plants become idiots when asked to give presentations or script messages to co-workers. They immediately pull out phrases like "customized solutions" and "synergistic alliances" so their meaningful points have no chance of getting through.

I've figured out why otherwise decent people need to torture their colleagues, customers and me. It's pride ... the worst of the seven deadly sins.

Their attempts at communication suck because their goal is to impress and not to inform. They want the rest of us to feel slightly inferior so they concoct lofty sounding concepts that can't be expressed in something as mundane as simple English. That's why they use fifty cent words to make five cent points and say things like, "Initiate project action plan," versus "Get started."

They're also afraid. Liability and responsibility have them scared so they avoid commitment by adding endless phrases which are hard to interpret.

"We have metamorphosed from an asset-based pipeline and power-generating company to a marketing and logistics company whose biggest assets are its well-established business approach and innovative people." Huh?

That's an excerpt from an Enron letter to shareholders. The language is evasive; the way it's meant to be. There are no promises or commitments. In fact, it says nothing. I got a headache before I finished reading it.

In contrast, consider wedding vows. "I do." Two short words. Nowhere to hide. No qualifying clauses to relieve individual accountability. Just "I" promise to "do." Even a dummy quickly grasps the essence of that ... which is why I'm still single.

"Bull" has an aroma that people recognize. They don't like it. They don't read it and they don't listen to it. It doesn't change anyone's mind. And it certainly doesn't summon respect.

Invest in straight talk. It pays dividends. And it's easier to say without moving your lips ... which is why the guy behind me inadvertently became a "straight talker."

Amelia Earhart Chain-Smoked Her Way Across the North Atlantic

From copy-ranter: In honor of the movie Amelia, here's an example of a nice sponsorship coup for Lucky Strike commemorating the 1928 "Friendship" flight on which Earhart was merely a passenger. Four years later she became the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic.

Testimonial quote from the ad: "They were smoked continuously from Trepassey to Wales. I think nothing else helped lessen the strain for all of us."

Of course in those days even Santa smoked and promoted his favorite cigarettes.

Clever Visual for FedEx

Copy in the lower corner simply says, "Proud sponsor of Canada's national pastime." I would have loved to be in the meeting when the person said, "Hey, I have an idea. Let's wrap a package to look like a hockey rink." Simply brilliant.

Visual of Another Sort

From Great Ads: This print ad for Veet Bikini Kit is disturbing and funny at the same time. It's sort of clever how they use the hair of the two ladies in the background. But at the same time ... I really didn't need to have the suggested picture implanted in my head.

Metal Forms, Inc. 100th Anniversary

chip — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:30:00 GMT

A ~~Dummy's~~ Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Mannequin American

Metal Forms, Inc. Celebrates 100^th Anniversary

I don't care who you are, you have to be impressed by a company that's able to celebrate being in business 100 years. So needless to say, there were a lot of impressed people at Metal Forms, Inc.'s recent 100^th anniversary celebration in Milwaukee, WI ... and not just because I was there.

The event featured tours of the company's facilities, gifts (which included an impressive book about the company's history) and a party with roasted pig, libations and yours truly ... with what's his name?

After pointing out specific attributes of key Metal Forms personnel ... which, based on the laughter, must have been pretty accurate), I turned my attention to the president and owner of the company, Tom Miller (pictured on the right, below).

I asked Tom questions about the Metal Form's history (because that was in the script), and I asked some specific questions about his role in the success of Metal Forms (not in the script). Tom was a great sport and our exchange was a lot of fun. It was indeed an honor to be part of the event. Congratulations again to Metal Forms, to its employees and especially to the Millers for reaching such a notable milestone.

Comical Pixar Lamp Parody

From College Humor: Click here to see the Pixar lamp facing criminal charges for squashing the "I" to death in this amusing parody of the animation company's well-known intro video. Very funny. Really ... it's funny.

Funny Nando's Burgers Commercial

This commercial for Nando's Burgers is a little old, but it's a lot funny. I wanted to post it earlier, but Dale used his repressive censoring authority to reject it. But he's on vacation this week ... so laugh and enjoy.

Proof That Marketing Saves Lives

There was a flood in Mumbai and a billboard came to the rescue. TheChive has a gallery of photos telling the story of an AIRCEL billboard that literally saved lives. The billboard consisted of a fully-inflated life raft and included the copy "In case of emergency, cut rope."

Then it started raining ... a lot. Advertising to the rescue.

Fresh Step Ads

I'm not a cat person ... they tend to want to use me as a scratching post. But I do like the new Fresh Step ads (below) that show distressed cats with the cutline, "Cats everywhere are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes."

FCC's New Rules May Force "Jared's" Early Retirement

The long-awaited FTC guidelines concerning the "use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising" are out, and getting lots of buzz for their first-ever rules for bloggers, including mandatory disclosure of paid reviews. The same set of rules may also have destroyed some well know icons like Subways' Jared.

Specifically covered in the new rules is the use of social media, such as Twitter, by celebrities to endorse products. That's now a no-no unless the commercial relationship is disclosed. So, too, are celebrity mentions of products in other media, such as talk shows.

But the real game-changer may be the crackdown on the use of "Results not typical" disclaimers in advertising, a loophole that's enabled decades of preposterous claims such as, "I lost 50 pounds in a week!" and "I made $100,000 in my first month!"

Here's how the FTC summarizes the change: "In contrast to the 1980 version of the guides-which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as 'Results not typical'-the revised guides no longer contain this safe harbor."

While this could represent a much-deserved kick to the crotch of late-night snake-oil salesmen, it also seems to be bad news for mainstream brands like Subway, whose success stories (like Jared) center on rare cases of extreme willpower.

We'll have to wait to see how this all sorts out and if the FCC will actually enforce any of the new changes.

Company Party Suggestion

chip — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:30:00 GMT

A ~~Dummy's~~ Puppet's Ramblings - from Chip Martin, Mannequin American

Note: This week Dale and Leslie are somewhere in the Caribbean aboard the Freedom of the Seas along with 3,600 of their closest friends. So I will not be encumbered by Dale's sometime's over-cautiously censorship of my blog material. So here we go ...

If You Thought That Was Expensive ...

From AdAge: Chief creative officers at large U.S. ad agencies, on average, billed $964 an hour to clients in 2008, while top account and media executives billed an average of $533 and $478 an hour, respectively.

According to those figures chief creative officers bill clients about $2 million a year. Excuse me while I go throw up.

Why Weren't these Invented in Milwaukee?

Wired recently included an item about the Hopworksfiets bike. The Hopworksfiets party bike was built in Portland, Oregon, by bike builders Metrofiets. All you really need to know in order to fall in love with this bike is that it carries two beer kegs along with a pair of taps to serve the suds. It also includes an amp and speaker attachment, and a rack configured to carry a stack of pizza boxes. I wanted one until I saw ...

The PedalPub of Minneapolis may have the Hopworksfiets bike beat.

According to the Web site, the PedalPub is available for team building, company parties, parades, tailgating and more. I want a seat, a ride and a glass!!!

Your Company Party Challenge

Solution: Contact me at chip.martin@bmpr.com for available dates and prices, or call Dale at (262) 789-1565.

Reverse Ventriloquist Commercial

I wouldn't be doing my Mannequin American brothers and sisters justice if I didn't include this 15 second clip of Captain Morgan's reverse ventriloquist commercial.

When the Wind Blows, Lingerie Sales Rise

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows around the outdoor billboard (above) for a New Zealand lingerie store.

The billboard features an actual skirt that rises in the air to reveal whatever it is that lingerie stores sell. The clever gimmick is just one of many unique advertisements featured on Ads Of The World.