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60′s design in Canada
0February 28, 2005 by Colin
The Canadian Museum of Civilization has just launched a retrospective of Canadian Design in the 1960′s. Featured are such Canuck icons as Northern Telecom’s Contempra phone, the Thermos jug, and the Ball B-Q.
I have some quibble with the presentation of the new exhibition on the museum’s website: it takes three clicks to actually get to a picture of 60′s design from the museum’s splash page, and five to get to more than one picture.
Compare that to the National Gallery’s exhibition on 60′s art, which is featured on the first page of content.
The CBC’s website has plenty of clips dealing with 60′s cluture, including this one on a revolutonary new product for increasingly busy housewives: ready-to-eat turkey roll.
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Packaging is the key to CPG: what about Pharma?
0February 28, 2005 by Colin
Pharmaceutical Executive recounts how a packaging decision by a marketing team had unexpected side-effects on a pill under development:
Decisions made in one functional area, such as marketing, can significantly affect others. So open decision making is critical, particularly during late stage development. In one instance, the marketing team for one drug manufacturer’s COX-2 inhibitor decided to change the tablet’s size close to launch. The team made the decision from a branding perspective.
The idea was to make the name printed on the tablet more visible for target customers. To modify the size, excipients were added. These additional components affected the medication’s absorption rate and altered its pharmacokinetic properties. Although the impact was realized before registration, the decision put timelines at risk.
Open communication between the marketing and clinical teams could have prevented unnecessary delays in the drug’s registration or launch.
WHEW! Thank god the two teams finally got their act together and mitigated the impact. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to delay registration or launch! It’s not like there are other problems with COX-2 inhibitors to deal with.
Of course, marketing executives would have a far easier time if pharma companies slowed their merger mania: their unwieldy amalgamated names could score 688 points in Scrabble.
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Quite literally, your kitchen is on the slow boat to China
0February 25, 2005 by Colin
Recently, Dame Ellen MacArthur finished a quick circumnavigation of the globe, sponsored by the home improvement giant B&Q. A friend assures me the following letter ran in the Times of London recently:
“Dear B&Q, congratulations on getting your boat round the world in 71 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes.
Can you please explain why the kitchen set that I ordered from my local B&Q 96 days ago still hasn’t managed the 13 mile trip from the store to my house?”
MacArthur’s return to old blighty is well-timed: B&Q has been getting grief after a recent downturn in sales, and there’s nothing better to distract questioning analysts than a look at an expensive boat.
And don’t think B&Q hasn’t been trumpeting their association with the sailor at every opportunity – to nearly absurd levels. Here’s some marketing hyperbole, as cited by The Friday Project:
‘B&Q’s own brand power tools from the Performance Power range were used to build the B&Q trimaran. This has proven that the tools have been challenged to extreme limits and demonstrates to our customers that if they can help protect the B&Q trimaran against the dramas of the high seas, they can be trusted to improve the comfort of their homes!’
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Oscar, castor oil and your laptop
0February 24, 2005 by Colin
Oh, I see you there. Putting the finishing touches on that fact sheet – the one shining up the benefits of the latest semi-automated industrial drum welding machine. It might be boring, but those 3.75 billable hours will cover the gas bill. And we’ve all heard from Jack, the new outside sales guy, how well that stuff plays with the procurement folks on the road.
“This may suck,” you say, “but my future is sitting right there in that courier bag – 900,000 delicious little bytes of twisting plot and dramatic flourish.”
There’s an ibook hiding in there, the keys worn bare by hours of concentrated writing in company lunch rooms, airport waiting lounges and Starbucks. In the side pocket, a 512 meg usb stick on a keychain.
That little stick is your last shred of hope for a truly intellectual career – the draft script you’ve been working on since you finished that Learning Annex creative writing course in 1998.
Sure, picking up the 512 meg stick might have been an unbridled act of optimism – but every great work needs to be protected. Some may rely on the waterproof binding of a Moleskine notebook, but you prefer the semi-hard aluminum and tinted lucite of an American-branded, Chinese-sourced memory stick. On an oxidized carabiner.
You’re in luck. Rick Paulas has your number, and is now offering advice on “how to write an Academy Award-winning screenplay“:
“There was a period when the Academy voter pool was believed to be comprised exclusicely of octogenarian cyborgs running on a castor oil/liquefied granola bar fuel blend. This was the 1980s, when Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and Driving Miss Daisy received top honors. More recent intelligence suggests that this is wrong � they’re predominately septuagenarian.”
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Scum-sucking spokesperson
1February 23, 2005 by Colin
So. The client refuses to go on national TV. It doesn’t matter, you think. You’ve read the briefing books. You’ve had the pre-interview with the client and the producer. You’re a public relations pro – why not you? Might be a good chance to wear that new Hermes tie!
It’s just you, another guest, and the host. Do you have the cojones to work your way out of this mess?
SCARBOROUGH: Penny, did you call — is it true that you called these people in the pre-interview scum-sucking bottom-feeders?
NANCE: Hey, I might have said that, but I meant it in the nicest way possible.
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The young publicist – and his outrageous fashion sense
0February 22, 2005 by Colin
Hey, are you a PR parent? Maybe an Uncle Flack or an Auntie Publicist? Have you ever re-gifted schwag for your nephew, niece or cousin?
This is the book for you. The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, by Lesla Newman.
In addition to having a wonderfully cheery and positive disposition, little Roger may be a little … Patty?
“Newman need not mention the G-word, but when little Roger stops a woman on the street to say, “What a fabulous purse, it’s simply divine!” we all know exactly where he’s coming from. (That’s right, kid: When Mom shouts, “Go straight — straight to class,” just stick to being fabulous instead, and everything will be just fine.)” (EastBayExpress)
Of course, if you’re a complete nut, you might not like this book.
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Lake Tahoe: Not as exclusive as you’d think
2February 22, 2005 by Colin
Lake Tahoe’s hip. They’re with it. Watersports. Skiing. Resorts. Spas. They’ve even got one of them new-fangled websites:
Now – what is there to do at night?
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H.S.T. R.I.P
2February 21, 2005 by Colin
When it comes to Hunter S. Thompson, I’ve always preferred the Bill Murray Where the Buffalo Roam to the Johnny Depp Fear and Loathing.
And, strangely, I’ve always liked Hell’s Angels the best.
There’s a great, and representative, selection of faxes between H.S.T and Walter Isaacson of Time here.
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The “Go-to Guy” for Six Flags Over Lincoln
0February 18, 2005 by Colin
The Washington Post tells us about some historians getting their knickers in a knot about the new gimmicks at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum – including 1860 tv campaign ads.
The whole thing is enough to make John Y. Simon‘s skin crawl.
Simon … teaches history at Southern Illinois University… Ever since he read about the life-size figures of Lincoln and his contemporaries that BRC will be installing in dioramas throughout the museum, he’s been the go-to guy for outraged sound bites.
… “Six Flags Over Lincoln,” he calls the whole enterprise, and “the modern equivalent of the old wax museum,” not to mention “Las Vegas East.” Children already see plenty of Disneyfied things, Simon believes, and are more likely to be moved “by the authentic, by grandeur, by spectacle.” …
I don’t know about that. One exhibit in particular has been designed in Holavision�, and I’m sure there will be dozens of preschoolers expecting an appearance by Dora the Explorer.
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Can you spell disestablishmentarianism?
0February 17, 2005 by Colin
Today, the Times provides some welcome instruction on how to be an intellectual.
Two hints:
Intellectuals ought only to live in cities. If you must live in the country, try to ensure that it is in some form of converted church or lighthouse. Geography matters. Intellectuals ought to live in North London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Durham or Devon. In South London, Oxford, Glasgow, Newcastle or Cornwall, you are merely a smartarse.
Clutter your house with books (many decorators will sell them by the yard) and cultivate an eclectic speciality (Scottish jazz, Afrikaaner ska, 18th-century punk rock, etc) among your CD collection. This will help to obscure the fact that you don�t own any Beethoven.
I also have it on good authority that suede shoes with metal buckles and pink shirts also impart an air of eccentricity, therefore superiority.
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Fowler, football and fibs
0February 16, 2005 by Colin
Don’t you hate it when your client lies to you. A lot? Ronnie Fowler, the potential owner of the Minnesota Vikings, has apparently embellished his personal biography. So much so, in fact, that’s he’s halfway through his apprenticeship as a calligrapher.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Fowler’s Twin Cities public relations firm, Tunheim Partners, began issuing some clarifications to his biography,
which Fowler’s company, Spiral, Inc., supplied to the firm, said Leslie Kupchella, the Tunheim executive on the Fowler account. (Star Tribune, reg. req.)
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Photo-ops and smiley faces
0February 16, 2005 by Colin
“So this week at McGill, the ministers of foreign affairs, international trade and international development will show up to paint a smiley face on a departmental apparatus in chaos and a foreign policy on hold.” (Paul Wells)
Just stop, concentrate and visualize that. Wouldn’t three bobbing yellow heads make a far more interesting visual for the 10 o’clock news?
Maybe with some political aides holding message balloons over their heads?
Sure, it’s no Paul Simon memorial water tower, but …
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Vioxx, Cox-2 and crisis communication
0February 16, 2005 by Colin
Interested in the diverging communications strategies employed by Merck and Pfizer in the aftermath of public and regulatory criticism of their Cox-2 drugs? There’s a very good piece in this month’s Medical Marketing and Media.
“Merck and Pfizer bookend Big Pharma, polar opposites in personality and business strategy. They have been tested in recent months, and their responses provide a brilliant primer in crisis management � and a note of caution to competitors who have not put their crisis communications plans in order.”
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Newfangled technology – Apple style
0February 16, 2005 by Colin
First, a thought about the humble (and unbranded) typewriter from March 1905:
“It is a far cry from the monkish calligrapher, working in his cell in silence, to the brisk ‘click, click’ of the modern writing machine, which in a quarter of a century has revolutionized and reformed business. Its introduction marks an era of progress not inferior to that brought about by the telegraph and telephone.” (Scientific American, sub. req. )
Now, some quotes from Apple execs introducing the Apple Newton in 1993:
“We want to show how this technology, which still has a bit of Buck Rogers in it for most of us, will change the world.”
“This is not about shrinking a computer down,” Sculley said. “It’s about making things easier than the things I already think are easy, like the telephone.”
“The Macintosh was a revolution for the desktop. The Newton is a revolution for the pocket,” [said] Sculley.”
“When PDAs become a reality, we’ll be very well positioned,” Sculley asserted. “We’ll make money at every step of the value chain, and so will our third-party developers.”
Ouch. Sometimes it hurts to run ahead of the pack.
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And here I thought it was a nickname for telemarketers
0February 15, 2005 by Colin
NOW Magazine: “After Years Of Failure, Techies Working On Cyberdildonics Might Actually Be Making Some Inroads.”
Great. Just great. PPV porn and cyberdildonics. Looks like there’s a looming staff shortage at comic book stores and Radio Shack.
Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data, management, government and oddities … written in Canada!
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Blood Stains from the slaine Monks of Lindisfarne in the Viking attack of 793AD. Folios 191v and 192r of the Lindisfarne Gospels - written and illuminated by the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Eadfrith in 698AD.
Liber generationis Jesu Christi
“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria
Images: British Library
I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was “pocket sized” - Joel Jewitt, discussing the invention of the Palm Pilot
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130408043926-7298-early-employees-joel-jewitt-palm
Before I discovered the Internet
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