With Kingons...

Burger King takes King creepiness to a new level. yeech. The website stuff they have up is even more disgusting than the commercials ... so I am definitely not the target audience.

Memorial Day Thinking ...

“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”– R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980

This confident assertion was made in 1980 by the late R. Buckminster Fuller–inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist. As early as 1959, Newsweek reported that Fuller predicted the conquest of poverty by the year 2000.

In 1977, almost twenty years later, the National Academy of Sciences confirmed Fuller’s prediction. Their World Food and Nutrition Study, prepared by 1,500 scientists, concluded, “If there is the political will in this country and abroad... it should be possible to overcome the worst aspects of widespread hunger and malnutrition within one generation.”

So What Is Wrong With US?

Downy Gets It!

When does a towel become a tango?

When does a t-shirt become a pacifier?

When does a sweater become a sanctuary?

(The ads are meant to relay the campaign's core messaging: "When you put a capful of Downy in your laundry, you're putting in a capful of feeling," said Grey executive creative director Rob Baiocco -- and they do, says The Brand Strategy Group)

Garvey + Gramann

A Marketing Strategy Firm

What's The Fuss About Liberty House?

This morning's Advertiser had a column about Liberty House. Lee Cataluna must be mad at Macy's or she is running out of things to say. She recalled that all of Hawaii measured their lives by Liberty House sales like The Zooper Sale.

Not me. Here's what I recall: a company that kept Hawaii locked in previous decades by bringing in clothes that were so style-less that people who could afford it went to the mainland to shop. A company that spent years blocking other department stores from Ala Moana Center due to an exclusivity clause in it's lease. A company that tried to convince us that they really cared about Hawaii because they had black and white pictures going up the side of the escalators at their Kailua store.

Liberty House was a big "Hawaii" brand that didn't keep its promise. That's why it is gone.

SeeWhy NOT

SeeWhy's Abandonment tracker is not a way you can find a lost friend or relative, but a way you can bug a customer who has surfed your site and gone away without buying anything. I guess they have to go to the check out and give their email but I am not sure.

Think of it. You couldn't afford that fancy dress, or didn't want it, but you will hear about it again when Abandonment Tracker tracks you down and gives you another "opportunity."

Wonder how the world will take to being tracked down for failing to buy. Are they working on an onearth version where people chase you out of the store?

learn all about it at seewhy.com

Pfizer Offers Free Drugs

Pharmeceutical giant Pfizer announced today that it will give free drugs to people who have lost their jobs and are uninsured. This is a very smart move on their part, especially as the nation's focus turns to healthcare and health care issues. It's generous, but it is also very good business.

Among Pfizer's products are blockbuster drugs Celebrex, Zithromax, Xanax, Zoloft and Lipitor. And Viagra.

For some reason this announcement has not made the cable broadcast news, but it is up on the web and in various webzines. Good for Pfizer. It speaks well in an industry that is always accused of being greedy. Let's hope other drug makers follow suit.

Next Best to Designated Driver

Heineken's new campaign: "Let a stranger drive you home" is a great way for an alcoholic beverage to promote itself responsibly.

Mother's Against Drunk Driving's designated driver campaign has taken a backseat to their (failed, and useless, in my opinion) effort to stop underage drinking, so there hasn't been a voice out there making it cool to be a designated driver.

Heineken's campaign is the next best thing ... they make the cab ride home look way more fun than driving your own car, and certainly safer. See it at You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jqZTJk30qg

The twist on letting a stranger drive you home --- something you normally wouldn't do -- is consistent with the hip brand Heineken has built for itself.

P.S. Check out the "e"s in Heineken -- designed (no joke)/tilted specifically to look like they are smiling/laughing.

Leveraging The Brand

Aflac -- the unlikely workplace insurance brand represented by a duck, has quacked its way to success by sticking to its original premise, and its original promise.

It's newest campaign "Get the Aflacts." leverages the brand name yet again -- in a campaign launched last month to explain the facts about Aflac. Calling itself "insurance for living," Aflac's Aflacts points out that it is money "to use as you see fit." This Aflact has been ably demonstrated by the television commercials the company has run for the past couple of years.

Aflac's themeline is "We've Got You Under Our Wing," is reinforced by one of the most important Aflacts: "Aflac belongs to you, not your company."

Finally, Aflac keeps it light and friendly with Aflact number 10: "We've got a Spokesduck."

Muscle Beach Brand

Based on the number of people out there with personal trainers, you'd think you would see more muscles around -- but that isn't what it's about these days.

We were reminded of this when we had dinner with Mits Kawashima -- a 92 year old former body builder and hanai ("adopted") father of Arnold Schwarnegger. Mits and his wife Dot apparently gave AS the kick in the butt he needed "to make something out of himself" and Arnold has repaid Mits with a life time of rides on private jets and confabs with VIPs. Mits was even an usher at Arnold & Maria's wedding.

We know this because our host and hostess invited Mits to bring his albums to dinner, and we spent hours looking at 30 year old pics of Mits & Oprah, Mits & Jackie, young Kennedys, and more.

Our client and friend Mike Sapp was one of the original muscle beach boys with Arnold, and trained with him for Conan. The picture above is from Mike's website, though it easily could have been found in Mits' albums.

Have to say, those were the days --

Do You call it Your Craig's List Car?

As one of the talking heads on CNN pointed out, she bought a bicycle on Craig's List, had a perfectly good experience, and does not call it her "Craig's List bicycle."

It is no doubt hurting Craig's List's brand to have the alleged Craig's List Killer always been referred to as the Craig's List Killer. Craig's List did help catch the accused, and that was a good thing -- but they should move quickly to remove the Erotic section of their site instead of defending it as "free speech."

Then, they can take their time and figure out another way into that "very important audience" but in the meantime, their reluctance to modify their site NOW is affecting perception of the brand and it's cool backstory.

More Than One Good Idea

Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED (technology, entertainment & design) conference is on to another new project. The website address is : http://www.192021.org/

His idea is to look at the 19 world cities which will have 20 million population by 2021 and to develop the methodology of comparatively understanding planet earth for people.

Two of these 19 cities are in the U.S.: Los Angeles and New York city -- most are in the East and FarEast. Most of them are seaports (and therefore will be most affected by a rise in sea level due to global warming).

Wurman is a genius at simplifying complex and important stuff.

Toffler Where Are You?

He was right: the medium is the message; Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock more than 30 years ago: the messages haven't changed but the mediums have.

Target-appropriate media are more and more important. This Sunday's NYTimes featured "The Birds and the Bees" text line, launched in North Carolina on February 1. The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign directed its MySpace ads and fliers at North Carolinians ages 14 - 19 --- "sex ed on their turf" --

The article's subhead says "health officials use teenagers' favorite technologies to fight disease and unwanted pregnancies."

Brand Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin honored by NRA with special Alaska-themed assault rifle

(Purple added to prose by yours truly)

This is an actual headline from the New York Daily News ... a white rifle with the big dipper on it, and a small plaque with a picture of a Moose honoring the Republican Veep Candidate herself.

This is from the Daily Kos (ironic rant from leading political blog):
"Realizing that the piddling .22-caliber ammo used in the military M4 was hardly the stuff of which Maverickitude is made, the Alaskan Hunter packs a .50-caliber punch - the same caliber as the highly lethal Barrett M107 rifles used by U.S. military snipers in the mountains of Afghanistan and, one presumes, equally useful whether sighting off the rolling fantail of a Navy destroyer, or from a wolf-pursuing helicopter.

Putin's head has been warned."