Net Cotton Content / On Life and Marketing, Creativity and Ethics

Keep your pants on.

I've been thinking a lot about pants.

I just saw a young woman shivering in the grocery store. It's pretty cold in there, presumably because the food must be kept fresh.

But she was shivering and seemed to not understand why. (She wore a face that said, "Why am I so cold inside this store.") I could have told her why: Her pants were falling down.

But I did not tell her why. Because, if I had told her why, I would have been judged:

1. A fashion idiot. Pants are supposed to be falling down. Everyone knows that.
2. A criminal. A jury of my peers would send me to the Big House for such harassment.

Please pull up your pants.
At the risk of encroaching on your right to sag, I invite you to keep your drawers up around your waist.

I know, I know: it's cool to have your pants falling down. But it's also stupid. If you have to keep pulling up your pants, you might pause to wonder, "Is there something more important on which I might concentrate?"

May I introduce you to the belt? It's the greatest invention since the belt loop.

Cool is cool. Cool and stupid is, really, just stupid.

Perhaps, it's all in how you put them on.
Check out this video. Ryan tells me that it was made by a company that does not even work for Levi Strauss.

They just made the video — and now it's been enjoyed nearly 3.5 million times on YouTube.

Wish I'd thought to make this:

Come to Our Town tomorrow night (Monday)

In 10 weeks, the three-day run of Our Town will close. (This is no time to be nostalgic.)

From now until then, however, we have a rush of activity for volunteers of every stripe and talent.

Tomorrow night, Monday, April 21, at the Available Light [theatre] space in Gahanna, we will have the Big (Fun) Volunteer Meeting for organizing everything. You are invited!

You have mentioned to me that you are interested in helping. (Maybe I was reading your mind?) Please come! Perhaps I'll see you there?

For all the information, here's the time and place.

If you need further persuading, I dare you to watch the following diversion...

Stop the Bullets

Oh, my goodness.

Thanks to Dave for sending me this video.

The brilliant typography at the end says, "Stop the bullets. Kill the gun." (If you ever think that typography is simple, watch this video. It's simple, yes. But that doesn't make me – or you – a typographer.)

And it's signed, "CHOICE: Peace on the street."

The Mousetrap

Careful. This is a mousetrap.

And I can see that I am one of the mice.

Here is The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. It's a 20-minute, fast-paced video that explains how we turn the environment into stuff — and then how we get rid of the stuff. And some of the hidden – "externalized" – cost of it all.

I admire the simple design of this presentation and think the overall message is valid. Still, I faced some obstacles while watching it:

It's presented in a friendly voice, but it's disturbing. It works like satire, trapping the viewer.

It might offend your politics. For me, that happened when Annie asks, "Isn't the government supposed to take care of us?" I'm all for being taken care of, but even I don't think that's the government's promise. (But let's not ignore Annie's entire message because of a few individual words. When I feel insulted, I remember how Robert Frost defined being educated.)

It might arouse your healthy skepticism. That's good.

If you are like me, it will certainly catch you in the mousetrap.

Thanks to our teacher and neighbor, Inbar Kerper-Saranovitz, for bringing this story to my attention.

This Guy Blows

Clearly this fellow is trouble. And he certainly seems troubled.

Perhaps he's just misunderstood?

Can we look at him in a different way?

Can we harness his potential?

This is great advertising.
Or not. How do we know if this is great advertising? It's great entertainment if you really enjoyed it.

But it's great advertising if you exhibit the intended behavior — if you join the movement — if you get involved.

What Can You Do?
How about seeing what the Ohio Department of Development is doing to advance alternative energy?

They have great information here, including some cool wind maps. (You think it blows where you are? These maps will blow your mind.)

Then you could check out the Green Energy Ohio folks (who have events you can attend) and the Ohio Wind Working Group.

And, of course, you can forward this page from Net Cotton Content to your friends. You might blow some wind beneath another's sails.

A view of students today

This video from Kansas State University has been seen more than one million times on YouTube. Have you seen it?

My 11-year-old son showed it to me.

It might cause us all to pause and reconsider how we teach and learn. And how we market to prospective college students.

Does your college or university understand how the students feel and what their expectations are?

So why do you love your BlackBerry?

The current campaign for BlackBerry is very smart.

Consider the challenge just one year ago. The early adopters had embraced the technology, but they're not sympathetic folks. They are the descendents of Homo Yuppus, the alpha-tycoons perceived as those who willfully, continually choose career over all else. By being so publicly distracted with their handheld technology, they are accused of (and confess to) addiction to their "CrackBerrys." My friend Rich saw me holding my Treo and said, "Is that your binky?"

Ouch. What are marketers to do when their flagship, superior technology, still in the introductory phase of the life cycle, is insultingly likened by both critics and users to the most destructive, most addictive street drug?

Brown's Job

What is your favorite advertisement?

I fell in love with "Brown's Job" the first time I read it. I have read it 100 times during my career to renew my inspiration for advertising. I have taught it to students of advertising to inspire them. It makes a great retirement gift. I have sent it to anyone who asks, "What is your favorite print advertisement?"

If you take the time to read it -- and forgive the out-of-date treatment of gender -- you might think what I do when I read it: "Oh, I wish I'd written this advertisement." This beautiful piece of writing works -- as an advertisement for an advertising agency -- because that's what it is: a beautiful piece of writing. As such, it demonstrates a core talent of the agency. But it's more than verbal craftsmanship, because it describes the colleagues we've most admired, or even the colleague you yourself can be when you are focused, sincere and thoughtful -- when you are really thinking about the business at hand, rather than the thousand distractions that tempt you.

You can click on the picture to see it, but to read it, continue below, where I've re-typed for easier viewing.

But first, the back story, as described in a favorite book, Julian Watkins' 1959 classic, 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958 explains that this wasn't even written by an advertising copywriter:

Brown's job, by the late F.R. Feland, former treasurer of BBDO, is one of those pieces of advertising copy that is legend up and down the industry. It floors me every time I read it — and it must a good many others, too, because requests still come into BBDO for copies or permission to reprint.

Mr. Feland wrote the text in 1920 for the BBDO house organ, "The Wedge"...and it was used later as a full page advertisement in the New York Times. In both uses, it created tremendous interest, receiving much editorial praise as an outstanding piece of agency propaganda. "Just why," Mr. Feland once commented, "is a little hard to understand, inasmuch as, beyond our signature, it makes no reference to agency operation."

Here's Brown's Job...

Eating our sled dogs

So much advertising is made with a single-minded, self-serving brutality. The advertiser cares only for sales -- at any cost. Is there a social cost that makes some advertising unworthy?

In Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, a favorite book, Annie Dillard describes -- among many other topics -- the assaults on the North Pole by early explorers. She writes on how the British adventurers entertained themselves aboard their ships, with song and dance at banquets with silverware bearing their family crests. When their ships became stuck in the ice, they hopped out and dragged their crested silverware northward -- never to be heard from again. The Norwegians follow. When their ships became stuck in the ice, they climbed out with sled dogs and mushed northward. Along the way, they fed the dogs to the dogs, they ate their sled dogs, they passed the frozen bones of the British (and the crested silverware), and they claimed the North Pole.

What does Dillard teach with these tales?

The Kid In Upper 4

Several years ago, I wrote and taught a course at CCAD on the history of advertising. The course was designed to teach history, not from the usual political perspective, but from a consumer behavior perspective: how can we understand history from the changing lives of consumers in America.

This class introduced me to this wonderful advertisement for the New Haven Rail Road. "The Kid In Upper 4" is featured in a favorite book, Julian Watkins' 1959 classic, 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958. This advertisement, written by Nelson C. Metcalf, Jr., addressed the railroad's need to explain (and win consumer acceptance) for reduced service due to the war economy. Civilian passengers were complaining, so they needed an attitude adjustment....

...because, as the advertisement suggests, it isn't right for our lives to go on as if there is nothing happening halfway around the world when our young people are in harm's way.

Each year I taught this course, I read this advertisement aloud to the students. It always made me cry.

This makes essential reading, especially now, when we are so aware of so many young people who are in harm's way.

Read on for the text of the advertisement...