Category Archives: mad scribblings

I want a jingle

Chock Full O\' Nuts

Confession time, I miss the age of jingles. Sure they still linger around on radio and turn up on the odd low-budget commercial, but there was a time when jingles ruled the Earth. You younger readers might not remember “Chock Full O’ Nuts is the heavenly coffee…” but certainly you know “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz….” or the Oscar Meyer Weiner song, or the nigh-operatic “My bologna has a first name….” I’m not that old, am I? Well nonetheless, I want a jingle. Something snappy and memorable, something to look back on with nostalgia in my dotage. And why don’t more marketers have jingles? You know something like “You get more lather from Ogilvy & Mather.” Well you get the idea.

So resolved, Equation Arts needs a jingle, something with the nerdy folkiness of a Jonathan Coulton with a touch of the art school quirkiness and humor of a James Kochalka.

So I started here:

Sales were weak, were we forgotten?

Our brand was sad and just seemed tired,

The story felt bland and uninspired,

Brand Therapy is what we desired.

This where the good part starts:

Along came Equation Arts!

Logic and creativity, not insults.

Whole Brand Thinking, made our brand a cult!

Naah, too long. Then I thought maybe Oscar Meyer was on to something with that spelling thing:

“E” “Q” “U” “A” “T” “I” “O” “N,”

“A” “R” “T” “S,” your brand’s best friend!

Snappy, but doesn’t really say much, so I got a little abstract:

Left Brain, Right Brain — both are real.

You can’t just think, you also have to feel.

Short, and got the essence, but where’s the company name? So for the time being I’ve settled on:

If you want to win your customers’ hearts,

Get Brand Therapy from Equation Arts.

Anyone got a melody for me?

Also posted in Branding Thoughts | Comments closed

If you vote with soda do you call that a straw poll?

Who says branding can’t be fun… and political?  Take a lesson from Jones Soda, the oft-feted purveyors of oddball limited edition flavors and arty labels, the folks that make news every Thanksgiving with the arresting annual appearance of turkey and gravy soda. Yup, them. Well the Joneses may have outdone themselves now, and managed to rewrite the rules of political pollstering in the process. Check out http://www.campaigncola.com/ for “Capitol Hillary Cola” “Pure McCain Cola” and, of course, the Obama-inspired “Yes We Can Cola”. Cast your vote, and call your dentist. Friends, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Also posted in Branding Thoughts, commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Be a beacon

Be a beacon - lighthouse

When you are out on the water on a stormy night looking for the shore there is nothing quite so reassuring as seeing a bright, shiny beacon pointing the way to a safe harbor.

Well I hate to say it, but we are in some stormy times in our economy and with the price of gas continuing to rise I would hazard to say the roughest waters are still to come.

At times like these, when your customers are worried about how to stay afloat, your brand needs to be a beacon. A lighthouse beacon makes a promise – come this way and you’ll get to where you want to go. Its bright light is simple, direct and fulfills a valuable service by making a promise that needs no explanation.

If your brand isn’t a beacon your business may get lost in the fog.

Also posted in Branding Thoughts | Tagged | Comments closed

Atlanta should skip Web 2.0

I love Atlanta. I’ve been here for almost 12 years and I think it is a great city. We’ve got millions of people,  great neighborhoods, great restaurants,  a major airport, lots of free wi-fi, plenty of diverse businesses, a healthy laptop per capita ratio in any coffee shop you should happen to wander into, but somehow I think that Atlanta is not living up to its potential as a great center for web innovation.   And I don’t think I am alone in this opinion.

I’m not saying there is no innovation here, but I think as a city we are a little behind the times.  I offer as example the reluctant adoption of Web 2.0 in Atlanta.  Web 2.0 as both  a term and a practice seems to have only grudgingly been accepted in the Atlanta business world.   Sure, there is a growing pool of adopters leading the charge at events like SoCon07 and 08, AWE, and Barcamp, but to call them early adopters would only be accurate in a geographically limited definition.  They’re early for Georgia, but not for the world.  I’d like to see that change.

I think Atlanta should skip Web 2.0.  Not skip as in miss, but skip as in skip ahead.  Instead of playing perpetual catch-up with innovation centers like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and NY, we should leap-frog those places and boldly invest in our time, money, thoughts and effort in redefining the context of the Internet.  The web has become the plumbing of our lives. Business is changing, marketing is changing, socializing is changing, lines are blurring, but we drag our feet and take incremental steps toward ideas that come to us from the west coast.

There are people in this town who would like to see Atlanta at the center of the discourse – a legitimate force in shaping our collective destinies through technology and its catalytic effect on human interaction.  And there is no reason why we can’t be, but we won’t get there by being a follower.  We need to figure out what Web 4.0 is, or 5.0, or maybe dare to embrace a term that isn’t Web x.x anything, but something new, something ambitious, something risky.  We might look silly, but we also may find a point of view, a value, a context that re-centers the discourse.

Let’s start talking.

Also posted in Barcamp Atlanta, commentary, context, social media | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Don’t build a better mousetrap

The Better Mousetrap by David Cohen

Sometimes the good stuff leaps out at you during a random phone call. Tonight it was from my good friend David Bailey, a source of many gems, but this one I particularly liked. So, with his permission:

If your customer has a mouse, don’t build the better mousetrap. Just trap that mouse.

Don’t just focus on what you can do. Focus on solving your customer’s problem.

Also posted in Branding Thoughts, commentary | Tagged , , | Comments closed
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    Caitlín Mowbray"I adore your doodles... I swear looking at those bunnies lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind and makes me smarter. Who needs meditation when there are bunnies?"
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