Signalwriter

Candle Hats and Christmases: Season’s Greetings from Signalwrite Marketing.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:49:00 +0000

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrandt looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of

Spain

.
“Come in,” he would say, “I was just painting myself,”
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

This Billy Collins poem appeared in the mid-1990s. Always a great favorite or mine, its message is pointedly related to the holiday wishes from Signalwrite this year.

Its warm-hearted sense of humor, about one of the world’s great artists who was himself known for a sense of self-amusement, is just right for wishing my clients and colleagues, family and friends a wonderful Christmas season and an outstanding 2012.

Signalwrite Marketing’s professional and personal life have been filled with laughter and you have all played a part in it. The number of adventures, conversations, meetings, programs, and visits during which laughter broke out is uncountable…but pretty large.

“Laughing like a birthday cake” has made my professional life wonderful. Merry Christmas to everyone. May you keep it in your hearts all year long. Happy New Year too, when all good things will come to you and bad ones never appear.

Next Christmas, let’s plan on getting together and wearing candle hats. For now, the very best of the holiday season.

Goya: “Self-portrait in the studio” (c. 1790-1795). Oil on canvas, 42 x 28 cm. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Madrid,

Spain

). See No 20 here. Minor photo: Stellan Skarsgård from Warner Bros film “Goya’s Ghosts.”

See Christmas Ads. Buy Christmas Ornaments. May the Force Be with You.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:48:00 +0000

Doing some mild holiday shopping, I note that the Hallmark Star Wars Christmas Ornament Collection for 2011 includes a Darth Vader in Lego version. The mind boggles, for $39.95 especially. Checking online, there’s a more…festive… R2 set: the black and bronze bodied R2-Q5 and red-trimmed R2-A3 from the original trilogy of films, first offered at the 2011 New York Comic Con – the pair’s available for $119.95 via the web.

LA-based writer Kristie Bertucci has a post on the GadgetReview blog wherein she reveals her top 16 Star Wars Christmas ornaments. From 1997 to the present, here they are to liven up your 2011 Yuletide trees. (Not ours, sorry: I was never quite this much of a fanboy.) According to Hallmark itself, though:

Since 1996, both Hallmark and Star Wars collectors anxiously await the release of the new Star Wars Hallmark ornaments. Always some of the most anticipated ornaments released annually…

The company’s advertising continues to be as heart-grabbing as ever – see one spot running now on YouTube. Evocative stuff given our troops are finally coming home, home from Iraq. My favorite isn’t on Bertucci’s list. Hallmark had a rather early 1998 Boba Fett ornament – see upper left. In the words of Stan Hope, “For bounty hunting the Xmas bounty…” Now $25-$40 on eBay.

That was then, this is now: the 8.5” Boba Fett with Carbonite Christmas Statue from Kurt S Adler. C’mon: the gift-wrapped Han Solo carbonite panel. The thermal detonator with the red bow. The candy cane!

Just six shopping days left. Seriously, how does this not say the Spirit of Christmas to you?

Old-Time Charm at Christmas? Leave Out Radios, Telephones and Billboards.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:46:00 +0000

Some of you may have noticed that Signalwrite Marketing sent out old-time, small-town Christmas scenes this year. There were several different cards with paintings by a Wisconsin artist, Mary Singleton. Her artworks are “filled with details and vivid colors of everyday life in simpler times and friendly old fashioned places.” Yet at the same time, her website admits:

Mary Singleton's paintings bring us into an idealistic vision of the world...how it could be…

These visions are popular today. Many of us remember growing up in just such idyllic towns and villages. (Me? No – I’m a city boy. Barbara Nytes-Baron was born and raised in New Prague, MN; she enjoyed Christmases much like this one…but with newer-model cars.)

In the painting there are no billboards and no telephone wires: the “good old days.” Still, Singleton envisioned this scene somewhere around 1925 or 1926, judging by the cars and trucks on her Main Street.

By 1925 there were millions of radio receivers in American homes, according to one source. The modern world had already arrived – just not washed into small-town

America

yet.

By 1925, radio programs had already become inextricably connected to major American companies; the first radio ad appearing in 1922 costs $100 for ten minutes of air time. By ‘23, brands like Eveready Batteries were sponsoring radio variety shows.

America

, in its first giant step down the road to the future, became a consumer society even though you can’t see it here in Singleton’s “After Choir Practice.” Mid-1920s, Americans spent $430 million on radio products which was real money in 1925.

Telephones? The beginning of social interconnection? No sign of them in this little town. But in 1925, the telephone was already 50 years old. There were 12 million phones in American homes and business – one-and-a-half million of these were the new-fangled dial models. (The “First Internet,” the telegraph, was even more embedded in the

How about billboards? One of the best known billboard companies, Foster, began in 1898. Lamar in 1908. In the case of this wistful wintry town, though, it’s more likely drivers would have seen the outdoor boards on the highways outside of it. Burma-Shave’s famous outdoor campaign started in…1925.

You can’t escape the people who send you collections of “the way it used to be” photos and gags on the Internet these days. Yet embedded in the nostalgia of Singleton’s paintings is today’s

America

, waiting to spread itself nationwide…even in the forms of advertising and social media.

Charles Kettering, inventor of the electric starter for automobiles, said, “You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.” Whatever’s next after YouTube corporate videos and company Facebook pages and interactive billboards, I say bring it.

Maker’s Mark® – the Bourbon in the Red (Trade) Dress – Still Defending the Wax.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:32:00 +0000

Trade dress – a product or product package’s non-functional physical details and design identifies the product's source and sets it apart from others’ products.

I love trade dress. For many companies and their products, it’s a crucial component of their successful marketing and key to maintaining a competitive position. Think McDonald’s Golden Arches. Think “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hands” – the candy’s trademark double-M shape began in 1941. Think Yellow Freight, whose ubiquitous trucks are painted Swamp Holy Orange.* In previous Signalwriter posts about trade dress, such as here, I haven’t much changed my position over the years.

One seven-year-long trade dress war ended in 2010, so everyone thought. Maker’s Mark won an order in 2010 awarding it exclusive rights to the dripping wax seal. Maker’s Mark gained an injunction prohibiting any other company from using a similar seal and look. US District Judge John G Heyburn II said that the bourbon maker held a valid trademark. End of story? Nope.

This past Thursday, the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday stepped into the long-running argument over whether Maker’s Mark owner, Beam Inc, can keep the trademark on the wax seal and enforce that injunction stopping any other liquor company from using a similar top.

It’s clear that a lot of people – even many marketers – don’t completely understand the value of trade dress. When Dennis Yang reported in April, 2010, that Judge Heyburn ruled the dripping red wax seal can only be used by Maker’s Mark bourbon, I was fascinated by some of the comments appended to his post.

ElijahBlue: “How many great ideas are abandoned, bursts of inspiration are extinguished because of these abusive (and stupid) copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits?”

Jedidiah: “This sort of BS makes me want to go to my favorite purveyor of strong drink and buy some of this Maker’s Mark crap (never bought it before actually) just so I can have the pleasure of smashing the bottle in protest.”

ABC gum: “Maybe others think wax is a big deal ... I cannot envision why.”

Another forum commenter, Stephen, tells why. Identifying himself as a Maker’s Mark Ambassador, he properly noted:

It’s the basis for their brand’s recognition, like Tiffany blue. A representation of the wax in that particular shade of red adorns all the things they put out, whether it be note cards or golf balls, so that when you see the red wax you think MM. While it’s hardly a novel idea to seal a bottle with wax, the tequila company is clearly trying to glom onto Maker’s Mark’s high-end symbol for their own game, a symbol the bourbon has developed over 50 years.

When clients say they want to be the Mercedes-Benz of their particular industry or – right now – look like Apple, it’s touchy to remind them that many of these highly identifiable companies have spent many years and millions of dollars establishing their trade dress. (Maker’s Mark spends about $22 million annually to market its bourbon whereas would-be infringer Cuervo has spent only about $500,000 of its overall branding budget on the Reserva tequila it was going to “wax.”)

Tamara Miller, an intellectual property lawyer at Leydig, Voit and Mayer, encapsulated the massive value of trade dress in a single paragraph:

When my little boy sees a red box with a girl on it, he knows the “Sun-Maid” raisins he likes are inside. My husband knows that any black, dome-topped grill is a “Weber,” and that the goldfish-shaped crackers in our pantry come from Pepperidge Farm. In order to find my “Cheerios” at the store, I look for the yellow box with the big red heart on it. Without a doubt, my family relies on trade dress to recognize our favorite products, and so do countless consumers every day.

Red wax seal equals Maker’s Mark. This is the business of marketing. Cuervo and brand owner Diageo should spend their time and money on their own creative trade dress. Not stealing someone else’s.

*Yellow has changed its brand to YRC – I understand what economics drove this transformation but regret the passing of a super trade dress. Bottom photo credit: © Shannon Graham.

At Farmers® University, We All Know Prof Burke. Don’t We? Then Who’s Prof Allen?

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:43:00 +0000

An RPA press release announced last March that Farmers Insurance was going to launch five new TV spots and eight new print ads to build on the successful University of Farmers campaign. John Ingersoll, Farmers Group VP-Advertising was quoted:

We've found that consumers are remembering the University of Farmers campaign and it is bringing the brand to life for them. Consumer response to the icon, Professor Nathaniel Burke, has been very strong. They like him from his other film and TV roles but also feel his character is a good fit for the brand.

Prof Burke is the classroom character developed for Farmers by its ad agency, RPA. He’s portrayed in commercials, print and website by J K Simmons – you've seen him in “Burn After Reading,” “I Love You Man,” “The Mexican” and “Spider-Man.” A terrific character actor, he carries the role even in the print ads photographed by Nadav Kander.

That’s Burke. So who’s this Professor Miles Allen I spotted in the print ad you see, second above, in yesterday’s Black Enterprise magazine? The African American version?

Of course. It’s the first execution from multi-cultural agency Muse Communications which launched new ads for Farmers Insurance. Chairman/CEO Jo Muse noted in a press announcement:

The brand campaign continues the University of Farmers theme while targeting an African American audience. The commercials introduce the newest faculty member, Professor Allen, played by actor Orlando Jones.

I can’t think of better casting, since Jones is also an accomplished actor although it took me a while to match him up with a recognizable face. The entire African American story in re Farmers is all over the Web…but in bits and pieces.

So here’s additional thanks to the outstanding photographer involved with the Muse version of the UF campaign, Matthew Jordan Smith. He keeps a blog. His details about the assignment, about Jones and the photoshoot are right here.

The story’s fun reading, rare even in our biz where everybody talks about everything, because most of us like nuts and bolts, the how-to. (Possibly that’s more of a creative’s thing versus a marketer’s.) Press releases inform. Participants’ blogs and posts really give a story like this texture.

Maybe because it caught me by surprise, the Prof Allen “Home Insurance Quiz” ad also caught my attention, even though it builds on the existing RPA/Prof Burke campaign. There are new perspectives to it – like the chalkboard maze’s visual reference, perhaps, to the challenges African Americans face in buying a home in the first place due to redlining or subprime loans.

A couple of additional thoughts occur. First, by casting Jones in the African American print campaign, Farmers and Muse are clearly setting the stage for Jones-as-Allen in TV commercials.

Second, when you look at the RPA website, let me know if you find the Farmers Insurance campaigns under “Our Work” because I can’t. Kind of a shame, that.

It looks like the Allen print campaign’ll be running in Essence, Ebony, Jet and Black Enterprise. An online banner campaign will be geographically targeted in key markets in addition to running on top Web sites such as BlackPlanet.com, BlackEnterprise.com and BET.com.

So third, why isn’t Farmers Insurance running these ads in their general rotation? That way, the rest of America could meet Prof Allen.

FYI: Ads © Farmers Group, Inc. I’m sure all rights are reserved. And many thanks to photographers Kander and Smith for their print-shooting. The polished apple on Allen’s desk is my fave touch.

A Meme of Your Own: Ban Corporate Tentacles? Octopi Wall Street, etc.?

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:50:00 +0000

Octoponder this: just how many people want a piece of the “Occupy Wall Street” brand? Would-be leaders for a movement that continues to say it has no leaders. Political pundits of a particular slant. Anti-consumerists and other would-be ideologues. And the turnabout T-shirt merchants.

The Occupy movement has become a world-recognized meme – “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.) I’m thinking you can hardly throw a stone without hitting some marketer who claims to have invented or branded the whole idea; or who’d like to. According to the The New York Times this past week:

Kalle Lasn, the longtime editor of the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, did not invent the anger that has been feeding the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the

United States

. But he did brand it.

He’s just one. AdAge Mediaworks ran a great set of social media-related charts about Occupy in October. And FirstPost.com blogger Scott Gibson more recently wrote:

As the activists behind OWS began their anti-capitalist demonstrations over a month ago, no one could’ve predicted that they would be fighting for the right to their own name and stop people from cashing in on their movement.

So many people want to grab hold of the “change-the-balance-of-economic-power-in-America meme,” it’s a very powerful drive to ownership. I don’t think that Occupy is ready for prime time, though. Trends and memes are tidal, sweeping into and through and out of our culture at an increasingly faster pace. Sustaining this pace is hard in the face of competing news and events, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the upcoming Christmas holiday, the next Kim Kardashian wedding, the next Rose Bowl – you name it.

While we’re all waiting for some definitively sticky Occupy brand, feel free to use mine, above. Or create your own. It’s a free country, innit?

Thinking Truffle Advertising in 2012? I Bet 248 Million Turkeys You Won’t See Any.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:05:00 +0000

Having just finished off more turkey-and-dressing leftovers, a look ahead to the hot food trends of 2012 is worth a post. Trendy foods that catch on may result in beyond-local marketing and advertising a year or two later.

Hmmm: how about the opinion of Loni Kay Stark from the West Coast? In ”The Hottest Food Trends for 2012,” she’s pointing to gourmet French fries and savory flavors; those’d be vegetable and bacon and lobster. Grilled cheese sandwiches are the new burgers. Hand-pulled noodles and vegetable desserts. Breakfast favorites re-purposed – consider savory-grilled waffle with artisanal cheese. And red hot chili peppers.

Writing for Forbes, Andrew Bender is betting on mead and charcuterie (artisan-cured meats); botanical ice pops and, yes, truffles. (I am not giving him any credit for Brussels Sprouts which ”have made it to the delicious list.” I think not!)

What’s attractive about these look-ahead, often-locavore kinds of food and drink, is that some will be taken up by major food producers or retailers and you’ll see ad campaigns to support them. Kraft Cracker Barrel’s already begun to push ”aged” cheeses into the big, broad middle market. Botanical ice pops are strictly local now – how long before one of the bigs picks up the idea for a ”healthy” treat line? Chaucer’s Mead from California is already available at 70-plus locations of Total Wine and More. Keep your eyes peeled for trendy food adverts in 2012.

On the other hand, I saw hardly any turkey ads around Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s because this time of year turkeys are...everywhere. If there’s any new trend in turkey, it’s the many fresh, even unusual ways the bird can be prepared for Thanksgiving.

Trend-wise, though, it’s a no-brainer: the number of turkeys expected by be raised in the US this year is 248 million. Hard to beat that with your hand-pulled noodles.

Ads themselves have been sparse. There was the Carl’s Jr, ”Turkeyburger” commercial – starring Miss Turkey! That was back in the Spring. Plus plenty of ”Go Vegan” messages this time of year…not really the same. Nope. Aside from grocery store supplements, most Thanksgiving turkey messages come from the cuisine and homemakers’ magazines.

In the midst of our holiday-induced turkey torpor, it doesn’t hurt to see what’s going to be hot, food-wise, in the coming year...at least in ”parts of the United States and Canada where cooking is treated quite seriously,” to follow an argument by novelist Neal Stephenson. He contrasts this with a ”midwestern/middle American phenomenon” of which traditional Thanksgiving is a part.

One thought more: trend-setting friends and colleagues, writing on Facebook the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year, unfailing mentioned...turkey as the key item of their feasts. Not tofu-turkey. Not gourmet boar meat or wild Alaska Chinook salmon. Turkey.

It goes so well with beer.

Baron Turkeys! A Powerful Thanksgiving Idea Whose Time Has Come.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Here’s a great big Happy Thanksgiving wish to all of you…and specially to Jim and Ann Baron of Thatched House Farm, Dutton, Warrington, Cheshire. Which is not around here but 4,705 miles across the sea…as the turkey flies, so to speak.

They produce Baron Turkeys, the kind of thing one discovers surfing the web, searching for this year’s Thanksgiving blog topic. I hope that the Barons of Cheshire don’t mind a modest invasion of their privacy. I think it’s in a good cause.

First, let me point out that the

mainly doesn’t appear to do Thanksgiving.

Turkeys

are a Christmas item over there. Baron Turkeys “…specialise in supplying turkey growers to be reared on for Christmas.” That is (as I understand it), the Barons don’t actually sell you oven-ready turkeys, but ones that you can raise yourself to full-fledged…uh…turkeyness and then take care to prepare it – yourself, again – for your feast.

I found Baron Turkeys on the off-chance, Internet-wise. Theirs is a functional website with just four pages; straight enough. Oh – and just two photos of the poults – the young domestic turkeys they offer for raising. The human touch is provided by a single paragraph on the HOME page:

Our business was founded in the '60s by Ted Baron, an experienced poultry farmer and continues in the family today being run by Jim and Ann Baron. The main delivery driver Peter has worked here for 26 years.

I wish I had discovered these Barons earlier, so that I could invite them to join us here in Texas for our family Thanksgiving. The finishing touch: I could have had some Baron Liberator Doppelbock shipped down here from Seattle.

Perhaps if I let them know about this post, though, they’ll send a few snaps over for an American (me) who shares a name if not an actual as-it-were family relationship. Now Barbara Nytes-Baron and I hope the

Barons will have a great Holiday season. As well as the American Barons, Slaviks, Murphys, Eisenbergs, Bonds, Sabels, Musils, Hoffmans, Nyteses, Kaplans and Yonkas; our friends and colleagues near and far. Starting today.

NOTE OF FOOT: I’m trusting that the roadview photo of Thatched House Farm, from Geolocation.ws, is correct. Wouldn’t I feel like Mr

Turkey

my own self if I’d got it wrong?

It’s Catalog Season and e-Commerce Has Slowed It Down Not At All.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:40:00 +0000

They come from everywhere, addressed to Barbara Nytes-Baron, as well as B Nytes Barton, Ms Barbara Baron and virtually every other combination you can make with nine different letters. We used to laugh about it – now it’s hardly worth a glance. Yet 20,000 American catalog companies form an industry whose economic value is north of $270 billion (the last estimate’s from 2006) and includes both catalog and online sales.

That’s right, catalogs…the multi-page books-of-dreams that fill mailboxes at home and at work every year, all year…and especially in time for the holidays. Ink-on-paper catalogs that in theory should not exist in today’s remarkable e-economy.

Yet over and over again, starting with Montgomery Ward in 1872 and then Sears, Roebuck in 1888, they are marketing mechanisms and sales tools that have been adjusted and perfected for more than 100 years in

America

. (I grew up waiting for and spending hours poring through the toy and then the tool sections of the Sears Christmas Catalog. Every year.)

Perhaps in your crowded day as a creator of marketing programs for natural gas or machine tools, or commercials for the trendiest beer, you don’t give them a much of a thought. But if you are a direct marketer or a catalog marketer, I bet you’ve seen mail-order catalogs as the wellsprings of business-to-consumer sales and even dramatically useful adjuncts for B2B marketing for decades.

Catalog marketers’ profitability generally averages five percent of sales – like much of retail, it’s a high-volume but low-margin business. And its heavy petting relationship with the US Postal Service is widely known: catalogs contribute nearly 10% of USPS volume

Catalogs can inform, can open up entire vistas of highly focused products like specialized modeling tools and machines or gun parts; they even entertain 3,000 feet in the air – I wrote about the SkyMall Shopping catalog here several weeks ago.

Even before the Worldwide Web and e-commerce, catalogs offered remarkable advantages: 24/7/365 availability, great portability, high frequency of sharing, warehouse-direct-to-end-user, reduction of gasoline usage. And now, thanks to the Internet, almost instant gratification. Catalog advantages fit Internet marketers (and vice versa) to a T: today, most catalogers have substantial web presence and gain 20% to 50% of their orders from the Internet. After all, mail-delivered catalogs drive web traffic. Isn’t that what web marketers of all stripes tell us to aim for?

This post was stimulated by today’s arrival of a Victoria Trading Company Holiday Catalog, which is at the same time terribly frustrating and endlessly fascinating.

I’m no great fan of the Victorian era which, despite its marvels, only charms if you were well-off. Queen Victoria ruled

England

and the Dominions from May 24, 1819 to January 22, 1901. Life for many people in many of those years was, to use a phrase out of context, “nasty, brutish and short.” It’s the period which contained the Crimean War, the Great Cholera Outbreak of 1854, the American Civil War…you get the idea.

At the same time, it’s also the period in which the West recognized both the force of empire-building and the Industrial Revolution. Great designers delivered wonders of design and painting and plastic arts – mostly (but not always) a little frou-frou for me. And do NOT get me started on Jane Austen who overlapped the beginning of the Victorian Era and who appears to have been poisoned. With arsenic. Good.

The huge sweep of Victorian history gives the Victorian Trading Company plenty of romping room and I do confess some partiality to Steam Punk. Their catalogs offer up everything from paper products to Arts & Crafts leaded glass lamp reproductions to peppermint pigs.

Prefer to shop the MoMa Store catalog (for something completely different)? The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, has its holiday catalog coming out soon. And there’s always Cabela’s. You can enjoy many choices – and lots of marketing and advertising savvy – with 20,000 catalog companies and more mailing full-time.

Merry holiday shopping season ahead – don’t forget to do your part. And note that this post’s facts and figures come from the Catalog Industry Fact Sheet courtesy of the American Catalog Mailers Association, for which I am indebted. The ACMA website offers mucho useful thinking if you feel like looking into one more fascinating facet of American marketing practice.

Paul Baron’s First Letter to His Son, 1945: A Veterans Day Post.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:42:00 +0000

In April, 1945, S/Sgt Paul Hirsch Baron deployed to the Marianas with the 501st Bomb Group, US Army Air Force. I have eight letters he wrote back to his wife Sarah and new son Richard. He wrote one of these specifically to me. It’s dated May 11, ’45 – I was 29 days old:

My Dear Son Rick – Forgive me for not answering your letters – but as Mommy has explained to you I’m pretty busy. Now don’t misunderstand – I’m not winning this war by a long shot, Rick – but maybe what little I’m contributing is helping.

Let me tell you about it.

In Germany we would be known as Hitler’s Labor Battalions – you know as well as I what they were; and you know as well as I the difference there is that indefinable Something, which you’ll learn about at some future date…that knows the true meaning of the words “Right” and “Wrong.” And eventually justifies its meanings.

But enough of that. Golly, son, I surely would like to see you and you take good care of Mommy till I get back. You know, son, between you and me, I kinda like the idea of you coming to live with us. Your Dad, Paul.

Germany had surrendered unconditionally on Monday, May 7, 1945 at Reims in northeastern

France

, four days before this letter was written. Victory in Europe (VE) Day was celebrated on May 8. I don’t know how much of the awful story of the Third Reich was yet known to Daddy on Guam, on the far side of the world. The Empire of

Japan

– the Axis power Daddy was fighting directly in the Pacific – surrendered September 2, 1945.

Veterans Day is when I recall that my father served, along with Emmanuel Katz and Sam Slavik. Tom Ritter. Phil Slavik. Norman Sabel and Sherman Sabel. Joel Hirsch Goldberg. Thomas Biddulph, Richard Dailey, Richard Fox, Bill Gay and Richard Sutter. David Starr. Frank B Foulk. Chris Hrabe. AJ Smith and Paul Hoven. John Naumann. James Hairgrove. Irving Kaplan. Columbus D Reeves and Jimmy Reeves.

Herman L Eisenberg. Harold Borenstein. Phillip Becker. George A Schuler, Jr., Alan Vera. Nathanael Charles Yonka, Jr. Hoi Nguyen and Ellis Alexander. The names from the Gunroom (you know who you are): Paul Johnson, KCMO, and “Charlezzzzz” Muñoz. Charles Rose and Bill Krull. Gary Bearden. Bernard Mazursky. Clarence Everett Latham and Irene Helen Phillippe. Meyer Horwitz. And me – USN, ’68-’72.

Every year this list grows longer – please feel free to add names of your own, so we will always remember.

Boston Delight #4: Harpoon Beer Makes “Local” Look Great, Wherever You’re From.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:28:00 +0000

Howdy from Boston. Harpoon Brewery may not be a beer leviathan yet but it’s already part of a whale of a tale. Despite the fact that locally brewed beer – craft beer – is trendy like crazy today, Boston has already had at least one great beer era with great brands now faded into a vague past. In the early 1900s, with a total of 31 breweries, Boston had the highest number of breweries per capita in the US. Twenty-four of them were located so close together (within a mile-and-a-half circle) that the fragrant aroma of slowly cooking grains, smoke from wood and coal, and horse sweat from the delivery wagons defined the neighborhood by smell alone.

Vienna Old Time Lager. Rockland Ale. Burkhardt’s Old Stock Porter and India Pale Ale, Elbana Irish Ale – all these brands and more suffered death by Volstead Act. They’re called “Boston’s Lost Breweries.”

What once was lost is now found: the new craft beers that have burgeoned across America. Today, when you think Boston beers, you’re probably imagining the makers of the many varieties of the Sam Adams brand. But I have to confess: I planned pretty carefully to visit the Harpoon Brewery, 306 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA. That this beer-ventureland is near the original, 94-year-old “No-Name” Restaurant on Fish Pier is icing on the crab cake (or a full growler of Harpoon Chocolate Stout, take your pick).

Before I go further, then, learning about Harpoon and unfiltered-label UFO beers and how they go to market started with Chris Derr, Harpoon’s Area Sales Manager for Texas and Louisiana. He introduced me to the Harpoon IPA in Houston last year; he made certain the visit to Harpoon in Boston had more planning to it than a glass or two in the tasting room. The Visitor Center (brilliant) is managed by Aaron Bishop and most of the tasting spiel was courtesy of Cassandra Tice – great time. Then Tice introduced me to Amanda Fakhreddine, who’s Harpoon’s Online Content Manager – between the two of them, they then toured me and Barbara Nytes-Baron through an exceptional brewery. Thank you right now to everyone there on Northern Avenue.

The brand, with Harpoon IPA and UFO Hefeweizen* beers leading the way, has become increasingly popular and increasingly available through a combination of social media marketing and distribution. (Classic advertising is rarely involved in locavore beer marketing because it’s wasteful of precious capital to target urban or even regional craft-drinking populations.)

Distribution is most important as the beers achieve new retail venues. Tom Pirko, president of food-and-beverage consultancy Bevmark was just quoted in a Convenience Store Decisions article proposing that craft beers give C-store owners (a huge market usually dominated by the national brewers) a chance to build a new profit center: “They are the future. There will be more of them, and they will be better. As time goes by, prices will modify so that they are a little bit more affordable. You’ll have great variety, with the category of beer once again becoming exciting. These are all good things.” I suspect Chris Derr was assigned here in Texas and Louisiana to grow the market for Harpoon products through more focused distribution efforts.

Whereas the role of online marketing – Amanda Fakhreddine’s assignment – is being even more strongly developed because Harpoon, like Great Divide (Denver) and St Arnold (Houston) and SweetWater (Atlanta), among others, recognize an absolute need to build and maintain community ties. Which means more tours, more events, more charitable participation, more Facebook and Twitter time on the local level.

Local. Local. Was it Rainier Beer that used to say it’s all about “the beer here?” So Boston’s Harpoon has successfully refocused on participating in and with its communities. Just like in the days of the now-lost German lager breweries, you create your products for what the neighbors want; and create a market for your neighbors. What more can I say than “Try these beers?”

*Of these, the Raspberry Hefeweizen is fresh and tasty - RLB.

Boston Delight #3 (c1870): Union Oyster House is First Guerrilla Marketing Target.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:38:00 +0000

Howdy from Boston. Somewhere back five or six years ago I heard from colleagues at Ware Anthony Rust in the UK that they were introducing a revolutionary new robotic vacuum cleaner called the “Trilobite.” My specific recollection is about a guerrilla marketing event in which pairs of young women in pubs throughout England get into a mock argument about the Trilobite and end up demonstrating it – in the bar, in front of all the patrons. This was far enough back that this kind of marketing tactic was new to me. I thought, that’s damned clever. And a great example of a new 21^st Century social sales technique. This was before I realized this idea had been used before.

I just didn’t understand just how much before until today when I was lunching in the Union Oyster House here in Boston. It turns out that the mass-produced toothpick was first used in America at this same Union Oyster House. (There’s a sign on the restaurant wall that proclaims it.)

Charles Forster of Maine had first imported these toothpicks from South America. And in fact, Foster is credited with the development of the world’s first toothpick-manufacturing machine, around 1869. It’s more than simply a point of interest that Foster was not an inventor. He was an entrepreneur with an idea and some real live marketing smarts. But he couldn’t get his new toothpicks into retail outlets because people were too used to carving their own out of whatever was convenient.

So to promote his new business he hired Harvard boys (Harvard boys!) to dine at the Union Oyster House and ask for toothpicks. This they relentlessly did until the restaurant owner sensed there was something he was missing – and started ordering supplies of the new-fangled toothpicks from Forster. It began a social phenomenon that was adopted by both men and women.

Today, Forster’s mass-produced toothpick is held up as a model of the remarkable American “can do anything” spirit. In fact, it’s Forster’s home state of Maine that is the country’s biggest toothpick producer; about 90% of the country's toothpicks are made in this state.

I’m just as glad to be reminded that there’s little that’s new under the sun in terms of marketing and advertising – except maybe Facebook and YouTube. Forster would have found a way to make these work for him too.

Boston Delight #2: Now Visiting the Home of the Bean and the Cod – and Staples.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:58:00 +0000

Howdy from Boston. Spending too much time in one part of the country sometime makes me forget great brands in other parts of the country – it’s more true now as Signalwrite Marketing than when I was the creative director of a nationally oriented B2B agency. Arriving in Boston, though, it is hard to ignore Staples.

Staples is the world's largest office products company and the mid-1980s were a key growth era. I remember its more-or-less original slogan, “Yeah, we've got that.”

This slogan was retired in 2003 when Staples hired Martin|Williams in Minneapolis to create a new brand. The old slogan was replaced with “That was easy.” Expanding on that theme, 2005 ads featured a large red push-button marked “easy.” In 2006, Staples' new ad agency, McCann Erickson (creative), and MediaCom (media-buying) won a gold Effie for the effectiveness of their "Easy Button" campaign, which has sold 1.5 million prop Easy buttons.

It’s a brand strategy – reduced in the best possible sense to three words and a visual – that lives long and prospers. In fact, as recently as last week Peter Cohan was blogging on InvestorPlace.com that Staples is a considerably better investment than poor-performing Office Depot.

The Easy Button is one of the great distillations of a wonderful brand solution. Glad I’m in Beantown to be able to blog about it.

Boston Delight #1: In-Flight Entertainment Now Includes SkyMall Shopping.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Howdy from Boston. First, let me confess that I didn’t know. I didn’t remember this afternoon that if there is a need, no matter how bizarre or obscure, some inventor will fill it. Answer the call of the weird. Create an instant family heirloom. See, a rare page-through of the SkyMall Shopping magazine revealed the Hanukkah Tree Topper unto me:

Here's the perfect way for interfaith families to celebrate both holidays. The menorahment design of the Hanukkah Tree Topper makes a great gift for Hanukkah or Christmas traditions. Available in Silver metallic-coated, textured plastic, with a steel coil for easy, sturdy mounting.

Product development must have been exciting. The fact it’s patented almost made me order it on the spot (right in the middle of Delta Flight #2100 and the unseasonable Northeast snowstorm we were flying in.) The neologistic “menorament” is a good touch too.

Back in 2005, privately held SkyMall was said to be reaching 650 million air passengers every year, with print catalogs on 14 US airlines. It was then America's largest in-flight shopping magazine. It has only gotten bigger. Apparently, its success is due to items like this one…and a lot of undoubted hard work perfecting an excellent “online store.”

In the end Barbara and I couldn’t agree with the snipe across the ad: A must-have for interfaith marriages! We’ve managed without one for 30+ years, with the blessing. We nominated it as a portent of our Fall Boston adventure, though – “Unique, spiritual, beautiful…” according to one product reviewer on the SkyMall Shopping website. Everyone else on Row 15 wondered why we were laughing.

See the kind of marketing stuff you miss by not flying to Boston? Happy Halloween to you and happy Trip-to-Beantown to us. More to come…

I Heard the News Today Oh Boy: Graham Rust Died in Prague; World a Sadder Place.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Graham Rust, founder of the Czech advertising agency Rust, was a great teacher. I discovered this the first time we met. Lesson Number 1 was: Beer in Czech is pivo. Lesson Number 2: Dark in Czech is cerny. Then we just put ‘em together and we were all set to conquer Prague: Cerny pivo.

Sometime just after the fall of the Soviet Union (remember the Soviet Union?), Graham made his agency a member of Dialogue International. So in September of 1994, Barbara and I traveled to Prague for the first-ever Dialogue International managers’ meeting in a former Iron Curtain country. Graham and Jo Rust were our hosts then and on the visits that followed.

We ate a lot, learned how to say three more words in Czech and met wonderfully talented people. The best part of the trip was spending time with Graham and Jo; and staying friends with them for almost 20 years. Buried in a closet somewhere there are photographs of those early meetings. Not digitized. Trust me, though, Graham and I looked younger then. One of us had more hair.

My notes indicate that most of the old Dialogue gang came to Prague that year: Frits Slootweg and Charles de la Rochefoucauld, Jaakko Alanko, Timo Kivi, Gianfranco Vallana (yes, even then). It now seems amazing just how many have maintained their involvement with Dialogue. The managers tabled a next meeting scheduled for Marrakesh in favor of Paris for political reasons that sounds disturbingly contemporary.

Although a Short British Person, he had the heart of an NBA center and the smart of an ad giant. Graham’s death is sad. His life is way more fun. We had a lot of laughs and many great professional moments. Today, my sympathies and those of Barbara and Rachel go out to all the Rusts.

Graham once referred to me as a “Distinguished Friend” of Dialogue International. More important, I am thankful that Graham was a distinguished friend of mine.

Great New Logo for Portland Art Museum, Just Don’t You Be Parking Here.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:26:00 +0000

I’ve been reading about the Portland Art Museum’s new brand on OregonLive.com and think it a pretty fine job of logo development. I am hardly likely to get out to the Northwest Coast to see for myself, so I’m glad to learn what’s happening out there design-wise.

The new logo was created with Portland design firm Ziba, the same people who designed the Bamboo digital slate for Wacom – that’s another story.

In the article, a couple of sentences concerning the Museum’s research caught my eye:

The public saw the museum as stable and authoritative but not bold or accessible to those who want a museum to challenge conventions. Many also believed the museum did not do enough to connect them to a world increasingly defined by international relationships.

The new logo meets the “bold” and the “international” requirements. So, sayeth D K Row, writing in The Oregonian, the museum’s been deploying its new logo through press and advertising materials, signs and banners since mid-September. And it is far, far more contemporary than the Museum’s older logo. Which you can hurry and see on the Museum website because its website was not the first thing that got changed.

Along with the praise, I note that the contemporary and even trendy new brand might perhaps have been reflected immediately upon introduction on the website…first among many other important tasks. Also, that there is a strong sense of “parking” to this brand look – just Google parking logos and see how many fat P letter forms you find.

Really, I have to say it’s the PAM color choice that got me – don’t find that one on a parking lot sign much. Take a closer look by reading the OregonLive.com article and hurry to eyeball the old brand on the Museum’s website. I bet you anything they’ll be switching that out fast.

A NatGas Ad from Life Magazine – the Issue with Jane Fonda on the Cover…

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:55:00 +0000

Along with noticing the cover photo of Jane Fonda, titled “Busy Rebel,” on the April 23, 1971 issue of Life Rachel unearthed in her old bedroom closet, I found this American Gas Association print ad.

What interests me is that you rarely see an organization like this tabbed as a consistent brand advertiser. Yet the AGA has stayed true to its product, promoting natural gas to this day as “Clean. Efficient. Safe. Energy.” The headline and visual of this ad is just one element of a very long-running advocacy and marketing program.

(It’s in good company, even though some other ads in the issue represent brands that are gone with the wind: American Motors, TWA, Pan Am. There are plenty of stayers. In Life’s four-decade-old pages are advertisements for long-timers Chevrolet, Volvo, Gilbey’s Gin, Jarman Shoes and Kretschmer Wheat Germ among many others.)

The natural gas advertising program has worked well over the years, I think, building recognition and acceptance of natgas as a responsible fuel among consumers particularly. As part of the API ad program, for example, a current energy efficiency ad is here.

These days though, industry ad emphasis has shifted to American job creation in a big way; and to lining natgas up with renewable energy. Tim Sullivan has tied natural gas to renewables and said on the Great Energy Challenge blog that “Natural gas and renewable energy are domestic energy resources in abundant supply throughout the

. They are a secure domestic supply of energy.” So there’s both “natural” and “energy security” in the mix right now.

All good stuff, right? Natural gas wins. Well, no – it’s hard to escape the current demonization of natural gas extraction among certain public and environmental stakeholder groups. As in leave our Marcellus shale alone. This is one more demonstration of “dueling advocacies.” Without a national energy policy, we all end up losers in the 40-year struggle symbolized by this clean-air ad.

BTW: As far as Fonda’s brand is concerned, it has undergone a whole lot of change over four decades. The Life story about her comes 14 months before she shows up in Hanoi, hanging out with the North Vietnamese and sitting on one of the NVA’s antiaircraft guns. Anyone remember that? Talk about demonization.

A World of Moving Parts (Many): Why Dellschau Feels So Relevant to an Ad Guy.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:51:00 +0000

Until I visited the Menil Collection to see the Walter de Maria exhibition, I had never heard of folk artist Charles A A Dellschau.

Pieces by Prussian-born Dellschau, a saddler and butcher who lived in Houston in the late 1800s and early 1900s are part of another exhibit at the Menil. Dellschau’s paintings and collages of fantastical machines, collected in handcrafted notebooks, were originally salvaged from a dump, and then from a Houston junk shop.

If you have an ounce of curiosity about the modern world, if you are involved with its many moving parts, then you need to see these pieces – not least because his fabulous (in the original sense of the word) drawings are dated 1911. A whole century. Dellschau envisioned a future as very few other people did. But really, those of us who grew up on Jules Verne and Tom Swift recognize these visions.

It’s like that Avery Brooks TV commercial for IBM e-Business software back at the turn of this century – “I was promised flying cars.” Dellschau looks to be one of the original promisers.

For a marketing man who believes that advertising is life and everything else is just details, Dellschau captured the way of life that today we believe is so unbelievably complex. Alright, I skanked that phrase from a t-shirt. Nevertheless we live in a world of many moving parts, from political events to health care to raising kids to going to the moon (although we don’t seem to be headed there any more).

So we come to advertising and marketing. Even in 1911, there were more ways to reach consumers than most of us realize: billboards and transit signage, newspapers, magazines and books with advertising in them, traveling sales people and very well-established catalogues (Sears and Roebuck, "Book of Bargains,” 1894).

Admittedly, getting sales messages to “captains of industry” was tougher than retail. Business-to-business marketing, including branding, had to wait until Fortune was founded in 1930. People were busy.

Just like today. Looking at the Dellschau pieces…“visionary, folk and eclectic”… shows me at least that he was responding to and addressing the business of life. He was taking in and repurposing cultural memes for communications purposes.

You ought to see these works up close – Dellschau’s a hell of an art director.

NOTE: The Dellschau work here, “Turning Up a Giant Airplane,” is from a private art dealer, Stephen Romano. I use it today because it’s as visual as a photo of these pieces can be. Thanks in advance to Romano. And the same to the Menil Collection always with a special mention to Michelle White, associate curator.

Pea-Finding Maximizers Improve Your Odds: SEO Tricks You Can Use Right Now.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:55:00 +0000

One problem I face creating a new website is in the buzzy realm of SEO – Search Engine Optimization, right? Maybe I am branding the company. Maybe I’m crafting content for a new or revised site. In all cases, it is now a challenge – and good client service – to get the new site’s page ranking higher on Google and other search engines.

How to find and use the right search terms in copy, if you’re a marketer or copywriter? How to build them into your website, if you’re an in-house graphic designer or a outsource coder?

These days we pay more attention because the Internet’s a shell game. The complexity and competition of the worldwide web are the shells; your website’s optimized efficiency is the pea. Discover the pea and you win more…eyeballs. But the pea is elusive. You need more than guesswork. You need pea-finding maximizers.

I always try to find and use a set of current practices when creating a site. (“Current” is important because the game changes all the time.)

That’s just what I’ve done over the past few days. I completed a website’s content with the extra help of 11 simple but effective tricks. I learned – or re-learned – them at a Search Engine Optimization lunch seminar last week. The good people* at CITOC brought Toronto-based Stuart Crawford, President and Chief Marketing Officer at Ulistic, to lead the instruction.

Here’re my current pea-finding maximizers.

1. Start with a tight-and-right marketing plan. Every great website is based on one. Getting it nailed is harder than it looks. And it’s also where you evaluate key words and search terms.

I sharpen this by building in brand-related words, too – important when the client’s marcomms will help push customers and prospects to the new site: not just “oilfield sand screens,” for example, but “open hole expandable sand screens.”

2. Use text and lots of it. (or Department of Music to a Copywriter’s Ears). Google searches text. The more of it there is on a website, the greater the opportunity for search programs to spot your key words.

3. Optimize for where you do business. Adjust your website(s) to relate to prospects locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. All of these if you do business globally.

Searches that are effective in Hong Kong or Heidelberg may not work as well in Houston and vice versa – key phrases may be completely different from region to region. Example: “combat boots” in the

, “military boots” in the

4. Search engines work even better with “current events.” The fresher the news the better off your website is, search engine-wise. Frequency of fresh news is also a strong attractor. Which leads to…

5. Easy updating is crucial. However you can do it, you need to be able to change up news, events and other elements on your site quickly and easily. Whether you’re the one, or you have an outside resource do it, it has to be fast and simple. Make it so.

Okay – keep a clock on your IT department, your outside vendor or freelancer. The sooner the news release is posted, the sooner search engines can get to work. No, I don’t mean it has to be done this New York minute; “timely” is the right measurement here.

6. Enjoy more wham! from your website title tag. If you can transmit a key word or key term in the website title, do it. Putting “Jones and Company” is way less effective than “Cheap Diamond Rings ׀ Jones and Company.”

Or look at Signalwrite.com where the upper left title tag starts with “Richard Laurence Baron.” Then comes “Signalwrite” followed by “Marketing Copywriter Houston.” My brand is built on my three-part name. I want people to search for – and find – me. Thank you to Brian Bearden and Zephyr Salvo for constructing it this way.

7. Put a Convert Button on every page. Do not lose the chance to call-to-action right where your readers may be stopping.

8. Use PR releases for backlink to your site. More frequent publicity releases, even for in-company celebrations, can boost visits to your website…remember to put hotlinks into your PR every time.

9. Then get OPWs to link to yours. That’s Other People’s Websites. Your partners, vendors, customers – either from some social media site(s) or their own websites…this will drive traffic to yours also. Don’t forget to return the favor.

10. Take massive advantage of Google Places. B2B or Retail, especially Retail – put up a separate Google Places listing for each store, office and facility. Don’t forget to check current address details.

11. Test and measure, test and measure. Keep using Google Analytics and other options to see how your newly effectorized website is doing. SEO needs some care and feeding, you just want to know what, where and when.

These are nowhere near all the SEO rules, tips and tricks. And unless your life is spent online, that means another kind of shell game for you to confront. How do you pick the right SEO person or firm to help you with this?

Maybe “test and measure” applies here, too. C’mon, can I get some opinions on this from real social media experts?

*Nota Bene (which means “note well”): Signalwrite-sized thanks with loud tropical shirts on to Citoc’s BJ Farmer and his team for timely and tasty learning; to Ulistic’s Crawford, taking advantage of Houston weather before snow-flying time comes to eastern Canada; and Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) who shows that finding the pea has been much harder than it looks for centuries. From Wikimedia Commons.

National Punctuation Day Needs More Than Ad Errors. Try Victor Borge.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:27:00 +0000

There’s a movement dedicated to helping us punctuate precisely . On the National Punctuation Day® website, discover a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks…and the ever mysterious ellipsis.”

Entire books are devoted to the subject – the best known probably Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Great websites cover the wince-making world of mispunctuation. And there are photos of screwed-up signs, billboards, ads and packaging by the dozens.

E.g., I’m particularly grateful for today’s Signalwriter post visual first posted by Sarah Long, English-language writer at GBG Copywriting in Gothenburg,

Sweden

. Particularly – because it’s one of several portraying a mistake in the old Stella Artois “Perfection has its price” ad campaign. And because client Cameron Wallace of Helix ESG loves Stella.

This post’s for you, Cameron. But I also wanted to draw attention to the “Holiday Happiness” page of Bar Business – the editors present 10 or 12 ideas for bars and pubs to use for letting their customers have some fun and make more money for the month ahead. Featured in the August issue there’s a Virgin Mary Day (promoting non-alcoholic cocktails on 9/8) for example, and a National Punch Day (9/20, great for specially priced but enormous portions of alcoholic punch).

For 9/24, National Punctuation Day, the magazine suggests:

On this day you can have your bar staff annunciate the punctuation marks required by their conversational sentences. If they pause they say comma. If they shout they say exclamation point. And when they ask a customer, “what can I get you,” they say question mark. Get ready for a weird day.

I’ll say exclamation point. Do you think bartenders and wait staffers get paid enough for this question mark. In any case comma it apostrophe s a great reminder of a different phonetic punctuation sketch invented by pianist hyphen comedian Victor Borge period So to celebrate comma watch this routine on YouTube period

Remember it apostrophe s National Punctuation Day long hyphen proofread your stuff period

Happy Trails, Hapless Hotmail – I Can Change More Easily than You.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:06:00 +0000

David Hansen posted a card from someecards.com that is aimed at Facebook users but will serve for me to talk (briefly) about Hotmail.

I am appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me.

When I returned to the computer yesterday afternoon, I discovered that my Hotmail account had been seriously corrupted. After more than a decade with Hotmail, the MSN service got hacked. I have no access at all to MSN Live or Hotmail.

Not only no access - but a new account I created to try fixing the problem was also immediately blocked. I can't "post a problem" to Windows Live forums because they require a sign-in; the passwords don't work. I spent almost two hours on the telephone with technical service people.

The toll-free number for MSN billing support, by the way, is 866-672-4551; even though it wasn’t his job, “Ed” helped out as much as he could. In the end, his assistance didn’t get me back into the account(s). He passed me on to MSN Product Technical Support at 866-234-6020; here, both “Joey” and “Ashwin” tried their best, I guess.

By 10.30PM, it had become a circular joke. To get anywhere, I had to log in. Every new password the tech-sup guys gave me sent me to a screen that told me my “access was blocked” and led me to try starting again. Basically, they threw up their hands at the end of the Skype conversations.

Many Microsoft and Hotmail online support forums address the blocked access issue…same problem as mine. Some resolved it. Some (according to my reading) never did. After Hotmailing for a decade and more, it's past time to move on. Hey, it was – mostly – FREE!

I can change. I’m working on that right now with a little help from a lot of colleagues and clients. Gmail is the choice here; and it’s been getting great reviews like here for years:

Gmail, our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award winner, includes excellent spam protection, phishing warnings and virus scanning; ultimate organization, conversation view, POP3 access and 8 GB of inbox storage that continues to grow every day.

In fact, you can find me on Google+ and Gmail both. Now that Google+ is “open to the public,” it’s probably the solution for me. I choose to embrace the transition. I close by paraphrasing the great Evelyn Waugh, “Change is the only evidence of life online.”

M D Anderson Rebranding Program’s Great Story – Behind the AMA Firewall.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Am I committing a faux pas? Or delivering a service?

I ask because Mary M Flory wrote a fine, descriptive article in the just-arrived issue of Marketing Health Services. Titled, “Painting the Town Red,” it’s about the M D Anderson Cancer Center rebrand. And for the moment, it’s for American Marketing Association members only – stashed behind the MarketingPower.com firewall.

This copyrighted article features the institution’s Associate Vice President of Marketing Alicia Jansen – that’s her in the publication’s photograph – and details how the institution’s stakeholder team pulled off its “comprehensive brand overhaul.”

(On a smacking-my-forehead note, I missed the chance to scoop Flory because Jansen presented the story, in person, at our AMAHouston Healthcare SIG event in June. And I did NOT blog about it.)

I am not going to reprise the article, nor take away from the hard work of brand reviewing and rebranding conducted by the MD Anderson Cancer Center team. But I think it’s worth bringing some element out from behind the firewall – the five challenges that MD Anderson had to identify before the brand could be “fixed.” Directly quoting from the Flory piece, they were:

1. Brand interpretation: MD Anderson did not have an understanding of how its brand promise was being perceived across its many stakeholders.

2. Brand asset performance: MD Anderson’s previous logo and other brand assets did not differentiate the organization nor communicate its mission as strongly. In addition, the assets were dated, fading into the current communications environment.

3. Brand voice: With the volume of communications being disseminated from the organization, MD Anderson noticed a dilution of the brand. This dilution was due, in part, to the lack of a unified design and messaging system.

4. Brand growth: Due to growth in the past 10 years and the mission to be a global leader in cancer care, several national and global relationships were established and a brand architecture and management system had not been implemented to unite or tie the strategy together.

5. Brand management: MD Anderson used a cross-functional approach to communicating its brand and did not have a strategy to manage its current approach, much less future growth.

It’s classic “Find the problems” stuff. (Gotta find ‘em before you can fix ‘em.) Well…your institution or company may be facing the need to build a stronger brand voice. So you next steps are: join the American Marketing Association, get behind its firewall and read the article. It’s a fine first guide to rebranding.

Me? I’m grateful to AMAHouston and Jansen for the chance to have heard all the newest parts of the story first-hand. (I did blog about the MD Anderson ad campaign here 18 months back.) Even more, thanks to Flory, Managing Editor of Magazines for the American Marketing Association, for the telling-in-print.

When Your City Rebrands (like Ames, IA), Don't Take Umbrage. Take Advantage.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:11:00 +0000

I wouldn't have paid attention to the Ames Patch post by Jessica Miller if I hadn't stopped in this Iowa college city on Monday for supper . (Sure enough, we pulled into a parking spot opposite Olde Main Brewing Company to see Michelle Bachmann for President 2012 campaign posters in the storefront windows.)

It turns out that the City of Ames hired Des Moines's PUSH Branding & Design to revamp the existing multi-green-colored logo. The experienced agency appears to have executed its usual job of creating a completely new look and approach for the city of 60,000....that's the red version on the left.

The City Council has asked the citizens for their opinions in a posting to the Ames municipal website, where you can see other versions of the new brand, as well as a proposed theme line: Heartland's Leading Edge.

These variations present Ames's biggest challenge – change. Asking citizens to comment, well, I realize it's right out of the “Big Book of City Council Things To Do.” But perhaps they shouldn't have.

Example: one commenter to Miller's blog post notes:

It's the old “If it ain't broke don't fix it!” The current logo has more impact, straight forward, bold, and fully understandable. Why spend thousands of whose money?? [sic] on something abstract that only a few understand. I used to design logos for local small businesses and never charged a dime. The same designers may be found here in Ames that would just take pride and not laugh all the way to the bank. Also, not appreciative of the costs involved in changing letter heads and other signage. What a waste for Ames.

I do not quote “Jo” in full to be patronizing. Having reviewed a couple of dozen city-rebrand stories over the past several years, though, I suggest that these posted comments encompass most of the complaints I've seen in other civic branding challenges – nothing wrong with the existing logo; new logo costs “thousands” of taxpayers' money; design too abstract/obscure/doesn't fit the civic persona; why go out of town for a design firm...and so on.

Yet whether the new brand proposed by PUSH is awful or awesome, look back a couple of paragraphs for that magic word, “change.” Properly, the City Council of Ames has decided that the 15-year-old green logo (on the right) is...dated. It is broken. It's the Council's job to fix that problem – without even reading the city charter, I am as certain as the Straw Poll it's charged with promoting economic and cultural growth. A new brand of any flavor ought to push in that direction.

It's also the City Council's job to spend money. Not foolishly, not wastefully...but productively. Generally, we pay taxes so that our governments can get on with the job of providing for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...by spending that tax revenue on a wide variety of projects and services.

It's a recurring fallacy that governments should not spend our money...or refuse to make decisions that cause change. Transforming the Ames logo mark to RED from GREEN is, I suspect, a really big one.

I leave aside the observation that someone might design logos for businesses and never charge a dime. Any good worker is worthy of his hire. Without knowing the parameters of the RFP, maybe PUSH Design could fulfill the terms and Ames agencies could not. Or PUSH brought a level of branding experience to this project that local outfits couldn't match.

So take another look at the Des Moines design firm and decide for yourself if it has the chops for the Ames rebrand project.

Feel free to weigh in on the Ames City Council request for feedback by emailing sgwiasda@city.ames.ia.us – today's the last day the Council will accept your thoughts; or comment at the bottom of the Miller blog post.

I'll say this: the proposed Heartland's Leading Edge line (leave out the article, please) makes good sense when I read how much research and development, agricultural and otherwise, goes on around this 60,000-people city. And as with every brand change, the more you promote it, advertise it and take advantage of it, the better off you'll be.

First, though – go with it!

How Rachel and Alison Help Make Up for Missing International Pickle Week.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Keeping an advertising blog while traveling is highlighted by happenstance. Today's post is powered by the appearance of a jar of Gedney State Fair Baby Baby Dills in our rooms here in New Prague. I had forgotten that Minnesota is so much of a “pickle state.” Wisconsin gets cranberries; the Land of 10,000 Lakes gets kosher dills.

Among many other varieties and circumstances. You can eat your way through the State Fair on pickles as Baking Junkie blogger Aimee demonstrates, “...a Pickle Dog. A pickle spear wrapped in cream cheese and pastrami. Absolutely fabulous and just like eating a giant pickle roll-up (another typically midwestern appetizer)”

International Pickle Week was last May, according to Minnesota Monthly writer Marie Flanagan, who also offered the classic Deep Fried Pickle Recipe...from Gedney. Which is why it's a pleasure to note that constant exploration and food purchasing by Rachel Baron and Alison Bond is such a great payoff for a marketing blogger like Signalwriter.

Not only didn't I remember the pretty darn famous Gedney Pickle Company from up here, but I didn't know that the...pickle giant...had been marketing a perfect peck of pickle products for this part of the world: its “State Fair” line-up.

Briefly, the first Gedney pickle factory opened in Minneapolis in 1881. A hundred or so years later, as a Minnesota State Fair sponsor, the company began packing and marketing top-prize-winning pickle recipes from ribbon winners there in 1991 with the Kosher Dills of Genevieve Spano and the Bread & Butter Pickles from Nita Schemmel. (The present jar of Baby Baby Dills is a prize-winner from Kathy Earnest, Lindstrom, MN.) And the locally famous jingle, “Get me a Gedney, it's the Minnesota pickle,” created by freelancer Sandy Buckholtz, grabbed hold up here.

Gedney has grown far beyond selling pickles from the back of horse-drawn wagons – it expanded by buying brands like Cain's to capture New England; and produces pickles for both Del Monte and Target's Archer Farms brand lines. Most important: Gedney's State Fair line maintains a resolute local focus, the “pickles here” of grocery marketing and promotion. For a company like this, thinking local continues to pay off, whether local equals Massachusetts or Minnesota.

Travel broadens one's view of advertising and promotion, alongside regional foods and events. Good to pick up a little fresh knowledge (and some pickles) while on the road. We'll be trying out these at the Slavik family reunion. Maybe I can tell you how Kathy's recipe has turned out.

PS: You betcha – that's Kathy right there on the label.

Wichita Ale Tales: The Brewer Polishes Old Snortin' Norton.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Laurence Baron) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:56:00 +0000

In Wichita, Kansas, Dan Norton is the Head Brewer at River City Brewing Company. We've been stopping here every time Barbara and I drive to Minnesota...for years. This time, though, Maria (our server) offered something different: Old Snortin' Norton, a beer created by the brewer to celebrate his 1,000^th beer. It is...fine. Said the same in an email to Norton; asked for details. And you know, sometimes you just can't beat other people's stories. Here's at least three – from the brewer's mouth.

Thank you for the nice comments on my 1,000^th batch. A lot of times for commemorative brews, I’ll brew something very big, add some crazy ingredients, age it in some kind of barrel with tons of dry hops, push the limits a little.

I have been researching my family history quite a bit this year, and I thought for my 1,000^th batch that I’d keep it simple with a straightforward style, but a style that is “all there” when it comes to flavor. My grandpa Bob taught me how to homebrew when I was 18 and stumbled upon his batch of Pale Ale that he brewed in the basement fridge.

Grandpa Bob was a strong-willed, some say stubborn guy that loved his family and grandkids very much! He was an engineer for the Grand Trunk Railroad in Battle Creek, Michigan, and was known at every bar that was on his route home from work, as Old Snortin’ Norton, or sometimes “Snort” for short. He was also on the USS Reid in Pearl Harbor, and when you look at records online of who was on that ship, it lists the crew with a column for nicknames. Sure enough, it says Snortin’ Norton next to my grandpa!

I never got to sit at a brewery with Old Snortin’ since he passed when I was 20, so I wanted to honor him with this beer, and every glass I drink of it, I raise it up for my grandpa!

Since we all hail from England, I decided on an English Old Ale. My version is on the dark end of the spectrum for this style, but within range. The 7.7% alcohol Is also towards the top range, but that’s what I wanted. I used Maris Otter as my base malt for this beer, which adds a little more grainy-biscuit flavor and a little more body than our standard 2-row Pale Malt. Some Caramel 80, a mid-range Caramel malt adds a little toasted toffee-like flavor, Chocolate Malt and Black Malt add to the complexity by adding their dark color and sweet roast flavor.

But hold it to the light and the deep amber color of the Caramel malt will shine a nice garnet color. East Kent Goldings, and Fuggle Hops add their spicy English Hop character, then I fermented with a English yeast strain, which adds that signature flavor. All in all, I think it turned out really good. It will age nicely, so I am stowing two kegs away for a rainy day, possibly for our 18^th Anniversary Party (which is a can’t-miss event!)

If you and your wife were to only have one day a year to stop into the brewery the first Saturday in March would be it! We pull out all the stops and release some really nice beers that day. Plus, they are all $2.50, you can't beat that!

Cheers to you and your exploration of good beer, Richard.

Companies, brands, products (such as RCBC's handmade beers) – they're all burnished by good stories. Big-time thanks, Dan Norton, for sharing these. The photo of the brew pub (top) is from the Wichita Library, thanks very much. In the smaller photo, the glass on the right contained the Old Snortin' Norton. Barbara's Emerald City Stout – same brewer – is on the left.