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."