« March 2005 | Main | May 2005 »
April 29, 2005
E-zines Effective Ad Vehicles
Not that this is news, but still: "Five-year-old DailyCandy and a growing stable of other free e-zines -- essentially newsletters delivered by e-mail -- that hype everything from fashion to food are becoming influential marketing vehicles for advertisers and retailers who want to connect with brand-conscious consumers," notes today's Wall St. Journal (sub required). "The word-of-mouth buzz e-zines generate, and their ability to quickly connect readers with products, is increasingly prompting marketers to seek them out over more traditional advertising vehicles. And for unknown businesses like Magpie Rings that are mentioned in e-zines' editorial copy, the plug can have as much or more pull as a page in fashion magazines such as Lucky or Vogue."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 28, 2005
Events: Reboot and "Cultures of eBay"
I'm slobbering over two events that I probably can't attend. Please go for me and report back.
The first is Reboot, which is slated for June 7 to 10. (Its search for "practical visionaries" is endearing.) While I would crawl over moderately sharp glass to hang with Doc Searls and Robert Scoble in the flesh once more, I can't spend money I don't have. Not even to meet and/or hear from interesting tech folks who are speaking in a city that's practically in the neighborhood. It's painful that I haven't been able to convince an editor to subsidize a cheap trip to Copenhagen to cover this tech conference, which is run by a guy named Thomas Madsen-Mygdal. He appears to have modern Scandinavian values, and I mean that in a good way. How do I know? Well, Reboot has been around for awhile but wasn't held last year because Madsen-Mygdal was on paternity leave after the birth of his first child. (The very thought makes my feminist heart beat a little faster in joy.)
Not that I have a clue what Reboot actually is. "After more than 10 years of old ways of creation, old values, and old models for communicating and organizing ourselves, new ways are emerging. That is what reboot7 is about." Hmm, only 10 years? I was sure the planet was a tiny bit more elderly than that. In any case, Reboot's "heroes are the mavericks who live the new ways and thereby lead and validate their possibilities—The Sharing Way, The Creation Way, The Web Way, The History Way and The Natural Way." So it's a little confusing to this girl, sign me up for a sponsor, I don't want to miss it.
As a Material Girl (yes, I know there are many of us), I don't want to miss "Cultures of eBay" either, an intellectual slamdance slated for August 24 and 25 at the University of Essex in Britain. "The overall aim of this conference is to bring together academics and practitioner groups from both business and the voluntary sector, to explore and ‘make sense’ of the cultural, social and economic aspects of eBay, the Internet auction site, and consider its social and business implications." Yes, yes, yes but will there be a boot sale?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
Media Meltdown Approaching?
The Newspaper Association of American held its annual conference in San Francisco this year. Susan Mernit has a roundup of good links about it and a funny comment about the conference coverage that ran in the The San Francisco Chronicle: "When the Craigslist guys are quoted as citizen journalism experts, you know it's past the tipping point." Hard to argue with that.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Success of Drug Ads Elates Marketers, May Depress Others. Need a Paxil?
"Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today." That doctors are human is evident in this story from the Washington Post.
"The researchers sent actors with hidden tape recorders into general physicians' offices in three cities between May 2003 and May 2004. ...Half the actors simulated patients suffering from depression, describing lengthy periods of sadness, low energy, poor appetite and sleep, and early-morning awakening. The others described having suffered a career upheaval and having fatigue, stress and difficulty sleeping, symptoms that did not warrant medication. More than half of those without simulated depression who mentioned Paxil got a prescription, underscoring how willing doctors are to go along with patients' requests."
Amanda Gardner, writing for HealthDay News, quotes the concerns of Matthew F. Hollon, a physician who wrote an editorial about the study. " 'The system, as it stands now, is also biased against those with the least resources. ...Those at highest risk may be those that don't have health insurance,' Hollon said. 'If New Zealand passes a ban on [such advertising] this year, the U.S. will have the distinction of being the only advanced industrialized country that allows [it], does not limit pharmaceutical price increases and does not have any national policy guaranteeing health care. My patients, many without adequate insurance, pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and when you look at the money spent on [this advertising], you wonder if it's really worth it.' "
Clearly it's worth it to the companies that advertise and the companies that sell advertising. I expect that pharmaceutical and/or advertising industry executives will make sober, serious, responsible-sounding statements in response to the study, then go back to their offices, lock the doors and start dancing in glee. This study, in which actors claim they saw TV ads about Paxil, is one big sloppy kiss to mainstream advertising, which has been beaten up badly by its digital rivals. Sure the actors were being paid to utter the words Paxil and TV and ad but we know that real people do that too. The study proves that if you inundate American consumers with enough drugs ads on TV, print and elsewhere to get them to request a brand-name drug that doctors, God bless 'em, will cough up (so to speak) a prescription on the spot. That's the entire point of these pharmaceutical marketing programs, of course, but how often does Madison Avenue get independent confirmation that their wares are so effective?
I don't think this study examined the background of the physicians to see if there was any relationship between those who gave out prescriptions inappropriately and the company that makes Paxil. It's no secret that pharmaceutical companies lavish a great deal of time, attention and money on marketing to doctors. Presumably drug companies do it because it works. Maybe the rest of us will discover just how well it works in a future study.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2005
Why Shopping Magazines Suck
Material girl Stephanie Zacharek sounds off in Salon about the dismal state of shopping magazines (reg. or day pass required). "With all this thoughtful, interesting design around us, how much hand-holding do we -- or should we -- really need when it comes to deciding what we like and don't like? Domino assumes we need a lot: Feeling a sudden hankering for a chartreuse vase? Domino gives you two whole pages of them, lined up in a row. You might scrutinize them for 30 seconds, and lust after one in particular for about three seconds, but before you know it, you've turned the page and you're onto the next obsession. That might be wallpaper, or a selection of hooks and bowls to help you arrange your jewelry on a dresser, or a panoply of cool TV sets. Domino manages to increase our anxieties about having too many options even as, supposedly, it attempts to ease them."
Goodness, a publication that preys on the anxieties of its readers? How novel. (I'll probably like Domino anyway. I'm a sucker for shelter mags.) The classic American women's magazines often have good service pieces and useful, sometimes heartwarming stories but they also treat their readers like nitwits. Or if not nitwits, the kind of people y-o-u m-u-s-t s-p-e-a-k t-o s-l-o-w-l-y. So if the shopping magazines do the same, they're merely taking part in a long, if not honorable, tradition. This morning the mail person slipped Easy Shopping Magazine through my mail slot. It's produced by Bonnier Responsmedier. To a hardened American consumer, this sad publication is an outdated and pathetic form of direct mail. Outside of a masthead page with an editor's note, it's no magazine at all, just a stapled, 86-page collection of random advertisements. Buy books! Join a music club and get cheap CDs! Subscribe to three issues of a real magazine and get cheap crap as a premium! Get a low-rate loan! Or buy address labels, lots of them! As far as I can tell, Easy Shopping Magazine doesn't consider its readers nitwits; it doesn't consider them at all.
In other Swedish publishing news, the two afternoon tabloids (Aftonbladet and Expressen) are competing to scare the bejesus out of their readers. Today's Aftonbladet cover story on kids and the Internet includes this headline gem: Your child is hunted by 4000 men ("Ditt barn jagas - av 4000 män"). Even if you don't read these papers, their coverage is inescapable thanks to the enormous ads with sleezy, reader-snagging headlines that seem to get posted twice a day at every kiosk, tobacco and candy store in the country. If there's a shortage of grisly crimes (which get imported from Britain or Germany, if necessary, for coverage), the papers are happy to warn loudly about normal aches and pains that turn out to be the symptoms of hidden, deadly illnesses. Last week Aftonbladet had this on the cover: Burned Out? You Could Have Dementia ("Utbränt? Du Kan Vara Dement"). Covering health issues is the kind of thing American women's magazines generally do well and without hysterics. Hysterics must be key to tabloid sales here because they never stop. My nine-year-old finds these papers utterly compelling so I have to drag her away from the display after a few minutes. The routine goes like this:
Me: Why do these papers make things so scary?
Kid: Because they want people to buy the papers.
Me: Why?
Kid: Because that's how they make money.
Me: Can you trust everything you read in newspapers?
Kid: No.
Me. Exactly right. Time to go home.
Kid: I just need to finish reading about these two teenagers who killed the girl's mom and then kidnapped her little sister.
Me: Murder is sad when it happens but it happens rarely. We don't know anyone who has been murdered. The paper just wants to scare us. We're leaving NOW.
Bet my kid moves to New York to work for the National Enquirer or the Daily News the minute school's over.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:31 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 25, 2005
Earth-Friendly Goodies
Just dropped off two big bags of clothes at the local Salvation Army and it feels great. But I'd be a bad Buddhist; there's so much to lust after and I do, every day in every way. I have little talent for buying big new stuff (only because I don't have the cash to finance a home-decorating spree that would include a black Noguchi table, a brace of Hans Wegner Wishbone chairs and perhaps a Josef Frank cabinet or two). I'm much better at making do with what I have or scavenging from second-hand places. I tell myself that's not so bad. In a small way, second-hand shopping is good for the planet.
Plenty of companies are eager to market new stuff as a boon to the environment as well. I'm not necessarily convinced but here's one example: "At least 65 percent of the handle of the Preserve razor is made out of Stoneyfield Farm yogurt cups. To recycle, the handle can be easily separated from the blade, which isn't yet recyclable. (Mr. Hudson insists they are working on it.) The handles can be pitched into a recycling bin or mailed back to Recycline in a company envelope," noted Mark Clayton in the Christian Science Monitor in a tribute to last week's Earth Day. Clayton mentions several great gadgets, including the Juice Bag, "a large bag with a flexible solar panel sewn to the back" that let's you charge a phone, laptop and iPod, say, if you walk to work as one enthusiastic owner does. (The appearance of this gal in the article suggests a successful marketing effort. Which is fine with me, given the topic. But the bag's not for sale yet, according to the company web site, so how the hell did she get her paws on a bag? Is she an Edward Bernays-style plant, a relative of the owner, a beta-tester? That's the kind of information readers should have.)
For parents, something called KidBean.com is thrilled, utterly thrilled to announce the debut of new Organic Hemp Children's Sneakers, as they Insist On Describing Them. According to the release (note to company or agency: enough with the gushy adjectives already): "These amazing children's shoes are 100% vegetarian (vegan) and are: cruelty-free, sweatshop-free, leather-free, and are quite simply the most sustainable children"s shoes you can buy! They are made with only environmentally-sound materials, including organic hemp uppers and soles made from reclaimed used tires."
If the shoes can make the kid wearing them nag-free, I promise to buy a dozen pairs. But what about the grownups? I need new sneakers. Where's my vegan, environmentally sound and affordable option?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2005
Special Closets for Special Stuff
Hollis Gillespie, who is apparently known nationally but is entirely new to me, writes about the appealing contents of one special closet:
"For months now, Grant has been buying women's clothes, which by itself isn't anything new, but these women's clothes don't fit him. 'Bitch,' he said to me over the phone yesterday, 'I just found the goddamnest, most gorgeous cocktail suit in '50s bubblegum blue ...'
" 'Bubblegum blue?' I asked.
" 'Believe me,' he said, 'when you see this blue suit, you will want to chew it. It's that fabulous.'
"I saw it, and he's right, it's that fabulous. 'But it doesn't fit you,' I pointed out.
" 'Whoreslutbitch,' he said, exasperated, 'I know that, do you not see me putting it into the special closet?'
"That's right, Grant has a special closet. He's been keeping all the women's clothes that don't fit him in an entirely different closet from his own, one way down the hall. In addition to the cocktail suit, he has a tangerine swing coat, some sweater sets, two A-line shifts, a white patent-leather belt and panty hose.
"I used to live in the Telephone Factory as well, in an apartment with the same floor plan just two doors down from where Grant lives now, and I also used that closet for crap I was clinging to for odd reasons. Some of it didn't even belong to me, like the chipped plaster panther that my sister had unwisely given me for safe keeping 11 years ago. Evidently my mother had bought it for her in Tijuana, world central for crap-ass plaster products. Why my sister thought it would be safer with me is a mystery, as it was chip free when she handed it over. I also had a kitchen clock that once belonged to my grandmother. Besides a hand-knitted pin-cushion, that clock is the only heirloom I have."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2005
Hotel Hanger Thief Explains Business Model
eHotelier.com offers snippets from the 2002 trial of a British man charged with stealing 40,000 hotel hangers--for clients. Excerpt below but the rest is well worth reading.
Counsel: And people come to you, do they, asking you to make special wardrobes so that they can use stolen clothes hangers?
Accused: It isn't so much the fact that they are stolen that makes them attractive. You have to remember that many top businessmen spend more of their time in hotels than in their own home. They become used to hotel life. They think of hotels as home. Therefore they become used to hotel hangers and think of them as normal, and on the rare occasions when they spend some time at home they can't stand these fiddly things with hooks which you and I may think of as normal but which the business traveller thinks of as loose-fitting and badly designed. So they come to me and get me to make a hotel-style wardrobe.
Counsel: Are you seriously suggesting that there are people who prefer hotel life to home life?
Accused: Certainly. A lot of businessmen would never go home if they had the chance. So when they get home they like to recreate the hotel experience in their own house. Many of my clients have their own mini-bars in their bedrooms. They have TV sets at the end of the bed on a raised shelf, often with an adult sex channel on it. All their bathroom products come in wrappers and are thrown away each day. I have even known people in their own home put out "Do Not Disturb" notices on the door of their own bedroom.
Counsel: Stolen, presumably, from some hapless hotel.
Accused: Never call a hotel hapless. They know what they are doing. No hotel loses money willingly. They may have things taken from them, but the stuff that guests leave behind is just as valuable.
Counsel: Are you serious when you say that clients of yours drink from their own minibars in their own bedrooms in their own homes?
Accused: Certainly. And just as in a hotel, they grumble about the price and size of the bottles, and the absence of ice.
Counsel: So why don't they get a proper fridge in their bedroom?
Accused: Because then it wouldn't be like a hotel.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Room Design
The National Wood Flooring Association now has a design-a-room feature that lets you compare the look of cherry flooring, say, to walnut in your kitchen, bedroom, living room or entry. You can change the wall color and make the grain horizontal or vertical but to a veteran visitor of Kiki's Condo, this tool falls short. There's no bamboo flooring, for example, there are no fun additional ways to use the flooring and there's no way to change the floor plans. Helpful? Maybe a little. Dull? Ubetcha. (Bob Villa's !@#$%&* site has a slew of design tools but doesn't support the Mac so I can't try it from home. Dorks.) Floor Facts has a list of links to virtual room designers and I'm guessing that many of them don't support the Mac but hey, why appeal to all potential customers, especially ones who, rightly or wrongly, like to think of themselves as creative?
Kiki's Condo, with its Dream Room Designer, isn't helpful but is fun for wannabe interior decorators who don't mind developing carpel tunnel syndrome. And it supports Macs and Safari. Guess mass marketers like Kraft Foods understand the value of casting a wide net at least sometimes. The site is sponsored by Post Cereals (owned by Kraft) and contains advertising but nothing outrageous. This so-called game, a fav of my daughter's, offers a selection of floor plans and styles of furnishings (don't miss the space age transparent floor element. Zoom in and click to see an alien) that you can place, move, delete and replace. There's no untidy paperwork, broken electronics or outgrown clothing to clutter up the joint. Sure, I should be cleaning up my actual apartment but rearranging the furniture in a virtual condo is much more appealing.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hide Your Clutter
"Did you know you can store...65 CD's, 15 Videos, 22 Books, 3 pillows, 1 Blanket and 10 Action heros...inside a Home Reserve sofa?" Yup, cause I saw the press release. Who doesn't love more storage? But that's not always the issue, as Nancy Weaver Teichert shows in the Sacramento Bee (reg. required). "Inside are towering piles of stuff that fill the rooms, line every hallway and block doorways. Leaning against the walls are unopened portable grills, rolls of Christmas gift wrap, and empty boxes and bags. The only place for a visitor to sit is on a folding chair that the 83-year-old homeowner places 4 feet inside the home's entryway. She stands chatting with her elbow resting on a nearby pile."
The elderly hoarder probably just needs a storage shed, doncha think? She says as much to the reporter. I know that's malarkey and you know that's malarkey but according to the Betty Mills Company, the storage shed is the perfect solution for too much stuff. Really. "The Betty Mills Co. is providing places for wives to pile their husbands' tools, for husbands to stash their wives' Christmas decorations and for parents to store their children's old toys. Recognized as a leader in providing cleaning supplies and storage solutions, The Betty Mills Co. is also a leading online retailer of outdoor sheds and storage facilities that are the perfect solution to help families get organized and satisfy their clutter-tackling urges," notes a press release from last month. " 'Some people might think they can't afford to buy a nice shed at the moment, but I say *How can you afford not to?* ' said David Schulhof, vice president of marketing for The Betty Mills Co. 'To encourage people to get organized, we have put all of our sheds on Betty Mills Double Markdown(TM), so the prices can't be beat. Besides, if you look at what it costs to keep things lying around in your house, it is much more affordable to put it away in a shed.' " There's an actual calculation of the costs of clutter (based on your mortgage) for masochists.
Of course, there's one small problem with this logic. You're not actually tackling a clutter problem by tossing it into a sofa, shed or storage facility. Hiding stuff does not make you organized. If it did, I'd be the organization queen. It's a perfectly reasonable survival strategy and beats dying in a fire because all the exits are blocked by piles of stuff. Just don't call it a solution because soon that storage shed will be filled--and the house too. That's how hoarding works.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 20, 2005
True Willy Wonka Flavors
My daughter and I have watched the video version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory many times (Roald Dahl may have hated it, but not us). A favorite scene is when the annoying Violet Beauregarde snatches a piece of prototype gum from Willy Wonka that contains the flavors of a three-course meal. As she chews, Violet exclaims over the delicious soup and main-course flavors. But when she gets to dessert, blueberry pie, the child turns purple, swells up like an enormous blueberry and has to be taken to the de-juicing room. (Click here to see models of key events crafted by young fans.)
So now it turns out that gum that tastes like a three-course meal may be possible, if these claims are true. "Imagine eating a confection that, as you bite into it, first tastes of strawberries, then lemon, then blackberry in sequence. Well, the concept of sequential flavouring is a reality with the latest controlled-release technology," notes Food Manufacture in an item about TasteTech Ltd. in the products section of its June 2004 issue (discovered in PDF format via a commercial database courtesy of my local library, bless its soul).
"A variety and mixture of flavourings can be applied using the CR technology," explains the British company. "The method works by microencapsulating the individual flavourings within an invisible and taste-free microfilm of vegetable oil. This microfilm can then be controlled to release whenever the manufacturer desires, either during processing, cooking or eating. Due to this control, flavourings that would normally become 'lost' during the baking process actually remain intact. The technology also goes one step further. With TasteTech's sequential™ flavouring, flavourings can be programmed to be released one after the other. So a scone can taste of strawberry one minute followed by cream the next."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2005
Swedish Luxe
Thanks to Lagerlings for the photos above and below. The real estate firm is handling the sale of a condo in this building, a condo that appears to be the most expensive on the market in Stockholm. This place has six rooms, five terraces and an indoor pool (that it includes a sauna goes without saying). The exterior gives little clue to the sleek minimalist mansion within. I prefer modern to minimal but the bath tower below makes me swoon. If you must torment yourself with thoughts of the unattainable, click on "Hem Till Salu" (yup, homes for sale). Then click on "Läs mer" to the right of the first photo. Finally, click on the "Fler Bilder" button on the lower right for more pics. The cost? A mere 35 million SEK, equivalent to just over 3.8 million Euros and just under 5 million bucks.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wacky Norwegians
At least he asked first. According to a Norwegian newspaper's English-language site, "a court in the southern Norwegian town of Kristiansand has sentenced a man to six years in protective custody after he expressed interest in eating a 13-year-old girl. The man, age 26, was charged with asking the 13-year-old whether he first could have sex with her and then kill her and eat her."
Our friendly neighbors to the West apparently have their hands full. When they're not chasing down wannabe cannibals, they're chasing down stolen weapons the country's defense department can't seem to protect. And don't get me started about the few troublemakers who travel to Sweden for cheap booze and the innocent swans that suffer as a result. Luckily Norwegians, like Canadians, usually make fine neighbors and excellent friends. Too bad a cup of coffee is so damn expensive there but hey, nobody's perfect.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2005
Decorator Porn
My favorite lamp is Danish. I see it frquently in Swedish shelter mags but rarely in real life. So it was amusing to walk into the offices of Absolute New York last week and see something like twelve of them illuminating the cubicle farm below. Later I spotted more walking past a small retailer in mid-Manhattan. Maybe I'll drag my husband there this summer as part of my oh-so-subtle style re-education camp. Zome day, zat lamp vill be mine! (Nope, I dunno why I'm writing like that either.)
I'm fighting off jet lag with decorator porn or as much of it as I can, er, swallow. I picked up Dwell for the ride home. Last week it won a National Magazine Award, which is great both because I like it and because the West Coast publishing scene needs all the support it can get. I also lugged many books home, including a paperback that shows 1000 beds (which I've decided is actually 67 beds with tiny modifications visible only to Italian designers, but if that doesn't float your boat you can go for the 1000 chairs model and I wish I had) and a hardback on twentieth-century furniture classics. Browsing the latter volume fills me with a sense of satisfaction, at least until I lift my eyes from the page.
"How many residential renovations get to revisit cold-war hostilities?" Interior Design has the scoop on one of them. "Before Messana O'Rorke Architects could add a 500- square-foot kitchen to a house in Short Hills, New Jersey, the firm had to remove a 1950's fallout shelter from the site, since codes prohibited construction on top of the concrete bunker." But wait, there are more horrors to come! "That wasn't the only best-forgotten period that the architects had to deal with. Clad in white stucco and roofed with cedar shingles, the house had the high gables and leaded windows of a gingerbread cottage directly out of the Brothers Grimm. Not to mention that the kitchen was dark and small, with cracked terra-cotta floor tile and a sadly antiquated range dating back to the age of Elvis." Oh those poor, poor owners. Luckily, heroic architects and, presumably, the kind of cash appropriate to a small monarchy rescued them from the tasteless domestic existence suffered by far too many. Me, for example. That's why I need that lamp, among 40 or 50 other equally tasty items.
Speaking of tasty items, an AP story (in the box) claims that people in the Netherlands celebrate the national holiday of Queen Beatrix's birthday, on April 30, by cleaning out their closets and holding sidewalk sales. How that constitutes some kind of tribute to the queen is unclear to me. The only obvious part is how my pack-rat's imagination takes the dry fact of sidewalk sales featuring outdated CDs and old sweaters and transforms the notion into the image of an irresistable bazaar stocked with luscious rare treasures available one day only and the likes of which I'll never ever set eyes on. One silly little article and my desire to acquire is nearly cranked into overdrive. Which reminds me, there's a Salvation Army store near my office that I've never visited. Catch you later.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 14, 2005
Deadly Closets
I've had a lovely time in Brooklyn and Manhattan except for feeling exhausted and twitchy and vaguely haunted that I'm wasting time unless I chase after some kind of goal every single second. Is that a New York feeling? If so, I should lose it in about 30 hours. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be climbing back on a SAS plane (hmm, flying, such a calming experience) and heading back to Stockholm. In the meantime, please check your closets carefully, baseball bat in hand. It seems that teenage girls aren't the only ones who stash men in closets.
"Jeffrey Freeman's body was discovered Monday in a bathroom of his home on Incline Drive in the Mountain View neighborhood of south Nashville, killed, police allege, by a man who was romantically involved with Martha and secretly living in a 2-foot by 8-foot bedroom closet for a month," according to Tennessean.com. "According to police, Martha Freeman told them that her husband followed the sounds of Rocha-Perez's snoring to the closet about 10 p.m. Sunday. Jeffrey Freeman demanded that his wife make the man leave by the time he returned from a walk. When Freeman returned, Rocha-Perez forced him into a bathroom at gunpoint, the woman told police."
The married couple were private investigators; the woman was reportedly bi-polar and the article quotes liberally from her e-mail. Like an accident on the freeway, this awful case is both horrifying and irresistible.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2005
Advertising to Health-Conscious Drinkers
Just three things today and nothing tomorrow because I’ll be busy fluttering my eyelashes at an editor, then whispering sweet pitches into his ear. (Given my luck, I'll probably get spinach stuck between my teeth during lunch so he'll be too distracted to actually register all my fabulous ideas. Guess I'll pack the floss.)
"Natural products development manufacturer, HealthVending LLC (www.healthvending.us) came to Mediabids.com for help reaching a diverse audience of health conscious drinkers to promote their new product NOTOX, a natural hangover remedy." And here I thought the phrase "health-conscious drinkers" and "hangover" were mutually exclusive. In any case, Mediabids claims it helped HealthVending save 81 percent on magazine ads. No word on the NOTOX development budget. God save the poor saps who tested the remedy.
As Constantine von Hoffman points out in Collateral Damage, his ever-entertaining CMO blog, it was a really dumb move for GM to yank its ads out of the LA Times. The corporate tantrum managed to make the offending columnist, Dan Neil, so irresistable that folks like me, who never read auto articles, felt utterly compelled to go read it. You should too.
In other news, Massive Inc. announced yesterday the end of a beta test of its videogame ad network, a PR move that capitalizes on Matt Richtel’s piece on the topic in yesterday’s NYT. There’s something about virtual billboards in videogames that puts me to sleep. Yes, there are more interesting ways to market stuff inside videogames and maybe Matt even covers them but I didn’t finish the piece because of a fit of yawning. It’s the topic, not the writing, I swear.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 11, 2005
How to Travel: A Three-Part Tutorial
Part I: Stockholm to Newark on SAS
Unzip the turquoise Gulf Air flight kit a friend gave you and pull out yellow foam ear plugs and turquoise ear phones. Stuff the foam plugs as deeply into your ears as possible. Put on the ear phones and plug them into the arm rest. Find the Classical Light channel and adjust it to full volume. Put on your turquoise eye mask to block terror-producing glimpses of airplane parts that move during flight.
As the plane prepares to take off, run through your repertoire of calming slogans:
Airplanes sound like this during takeoff.
Everything is normal.
It’s not fun if you can’t feel it.
Remember to exhale and inhale and exhale again before passing out. When a loud ping indicates that seat belts are no longer required, keep your belt on but relax for the next several hours. Panic at seven hours into the eight-and-a-half-hour flight when the plane descends abruptly. Return internal organs to their proper positions as pilot explains that unexpected 150-knot winds caused the dip. Refuse to join Swedish passengers in mild chuckles of relief. As pilot prepares to land, tighten seatbelt to create 25-inch hips and brace feet against floor. Crank up music again in hopes of drowning out sounds of inevitable crash landing. After wheels hit ground, unclench jaw, open eyes, embrace rush of gratitude for yet another miraculous escape from near-certain death.
Part 2: Newark to Salt Lake City on Delta
Frantically try to locate soothing classical music. Settle for Beatles channel. Curse Delta for inexplicable dead air during most taxing part of takeoff. Bitterly regret decision to leave newly purchased copy of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life in Brooklyn and wonder if the breathing exercise supposedly contained in the book actually quells anxiety as advertised. Begin emergency calming action by visualizing a rushing river. Silently chant "yellow raft on blue water" over and over and over. When Beatles channel restarts, start breathing again. Rue the banality of your fear. Bemoan your lack of originality. Exhausted, give up berating yourself and relax until angst-ridden landing.
Part 3: Salt Lake City to Grand Junction on Sky West
Wonder how twenty passengers can fit into an airplane the size of a bath toy. Feel dismay deepen at realization there is no music system to ease nerve-wracking ascent. Stuff ears with foam, cover ears with hands, close eyes, then do best Bill Gates impression by moaning slightly and rocking from side to side. Marvel that foam-and-hand combination blocks out much of the engine roar but none of the loud, annoying chatter by a woman who speaks nonstop for the entire 45-minute flight to a man you think is her husband but turns out to be a saintly stranger named Richard.
Have your fears about small planes confirmed as toy vehicle lurches or staggers or stutters or whatever the hell it is that balsa-and-rubber-band concoctions do after they’re wound up and spun off. Miss your husband and daughter very much and wonder what kind of memorial service they will give you. Regret inability to document pithy last words. Recall recent trip to water park and imagine daughter on lap. In your mind’s eye, the two of you rush down a water slide, squealing. The image makes you laugh. The plane shudders and your smile flickers briefly but does not disappear. "It’s no fun if you can’t feel it," you tell yourself. And, for a moment, you believe it.
Optional Travel Accessories
*Six genial laughing gals, middle-aged New Jersey residents and members of Outdoor Singles on their way to a Hawaiian cruise.
*A thirteen-month-old baby with tiny, perfect teeth and a solemn way of shaking her head in agreement with anything you say.
*Two tiny blue flowers your dad plucks from his front yard and hands you in the car on the way to the airport. Once there, he gives you a big hug goodbye. Your dad is nearly 75 and still handsome. His white hair is straight and hangs past his shoulders. His head is obscured by the Sheraton baseball cap you gave him the first day in Grand Junction. He's worn it nonstop ever since. "Come again," your dad says, and grins. "Next time, bring lots of money."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 08, 2005
Muscle Cars and Denny's
My dad goes for coffee about three times a day at the local Denny's. That's down from five times when he was younger. Thursday morning he postponed his usual 4:30-ish pilgrimage to 6:30 so I could come along on the first run of the day. This Denny's is a coffeeshop version of Cheers, where everybody knows everybody and even the strangers passing though seem chatty. We sat at the counter next to Keith, a Grand Junction native who's run a lawn-care service for some twenty years. Dad and Keith told me all about Keith's shiny orange 1972 Duster, the muscle car he bought and lovingly restored over many years. "It's a memory car," he told me about the Mary Lou II, a tribute to the first car he owned, a Duster called Mary Lou. "It was my girlfriend," he said, then explained how it was actually better than a woman because it kept him warm in the winter, sang to him, and took him places. As long as he took care of Mary Lou, she took care of him. But he had sell her to buy a truck for work.
Two weeks later he deeply regretted the move but by then the new owner had taken Mary Lou to Denver and wrecked her. Keith's hankering for Mary Lou didn't lessen so he eventually found a replacement in Tennessee. An expensive replacement, what with the $6000 paint job and all the body work. Work he couldn't afford for a long time because he was married and raising a family by then. "A lot of cancer had to be cut out," he said, which I take to mean rust. He keeps the car stored during the Colorado winter but takes it out the rest of the year. "I took curves at 100 miles per hour and the car always stayed on the road," he said about the original. "You know how MGs look too small? But for an MG owner, once they get inside, they just fit." For Keith, the Duster just fits.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2005
Just Three Things
"While I'm writing the book I do not back-track to read and mess with what I've written, edit or rewrite the new material as it lands on the page, change my mind about the story, hate myself, hate the work, avoid the work, wait for the planets to align correctly before I write, let my inner rabid bitch off her leash, wonder how what I write will affect the reader, worry about the state of my soul, chakrahs or ego, or otherwise railroad myself." Paperback Writer is a kick-ass novelist who is funny and prickly and alarmingly productive. I haven't read any of her novels but stay riveted to her blog for quirky lists of ten and excellent advice for wannabe novelists. She had no patience for whiners or hothouse flowers and takes a resolutely practical approach to her craft.
Bloggers Without Borders sounds like the punch line to a joke but maybe that's because I don't know anything about them. Just doesn't have the moral gravitas of, say, Doctors Without Borders. Maybe it's just me. (Thanks to Phil's Space for the link.)
Speaking of blogging, why are PR bloggers so obsessed about blogging about blogging? Tom Murphy tackles the issue over at NatterJack PR and better him than me but the short answer? Laziness, a state I practically define.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 06, 2005
In God We Trust
I love traveling in the U.S. As an American woman, I am chatty. Swedes have many virtues but chatting with strangers is not one of them. New York is an oasis of friendliness and I fell into conversation with strangers there like a thirsty woman diving into a pool. Here in Grand Junction I notice another cultural difference. I had forgotten how insistent Americans are about our faith and patriotism. Across from the library is a church with a huge “God Bless America” banner. I see “Proud to be American” signs and similar stuff all over town. This kind of thing doesn’t come up in Sweden unless you’re a member of one of those skinhead groups. Swedes love their country but there’s no need to declare it. So after nearly three years in Europe all this red-white-and-blue stuff looks weirdly defensive and adolescent instead of normal.
I am typing this on a PC with a blinky, annoying monitor in the fabulous main library. What makes it fabulous, in part, is the hours: 9 AM to 9 PM Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 5 PM Friday and Saturday and 1 PM to 5 PM on Sundays (September through May). Those are better hours than in Stockholm and certainly better hours than in Salinas, where city budget problems may shutter all three libraries in town. A variety of literary luminaries are trying to keep the libraries open, including Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of "The Dirty Girls Social Club." According to the NY Times (in a piece written by the lovely Carolyn Marshall), the author’s father "learned English at the public library in Albuquerque. 'We didn't come from money,' she said. 'Words were our only capital.' "
My mother, Robbie Branscum, was also an author but before that she was a single mom struggling to raise a daughter on welfare and using books from the public library to improve her seventh-grade education. For me, public libraries were a sanctuary from poverty and loneliness from an early age. It’s clear that this Grand Junction library plays a similar role for many homeless here and certain that the libraries in Salinas do the same. Poverty sucks; shutting libraries doesn’t just make it worse, it actually compromises the future for those like me and like my mom.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
April 05, 2005
Diane Arbus, Parkinson's and Weird People
My dad says he has Parkinson's because he parks so much. It's a good joke if you know my dad, who has eight or nine vehicles on his property here in Grand Junction, Colorado, and has had, he tells me, up to fourteen. In my junior high days he collected Corvairs and acquired eleven or so before the lust wore off. He's horsetraded, tweaked and sold hundreds of cars and trucks in his time and as much as his wife would like him to be finished with this obsession he is not and won't be until his heart stops as completely as the Ranchero he has out back.
I popped into the Diane Arbus exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum just before I left New York. It was packed and easy to listen to other people's conversation. Such as:
"I will decide, it's not up to you," said one woman into a forbidden cell phone that she used nonetheless. And
"She became her art." And
"How did you get in places to take these weird photos?" But many of the people in these photos did not seem weird, just dated from being fixed forever in the 1960s. One of my favorite photos shows the 1938 Debutante of the year at home in Boston. It is 1965 and the elegant, now old woman is in a satin dressing gown and white fur bed jacket lying against the pillows in her bed. A cigarette is in her right hand, she looks straight at the camera and you know that her live, while prosperous, is not the life she somehow expected it to be during that glittering year of gowns and guys and parties. My other favorite shows a Mexican dwarf in his hotel room. He's wearing a mustache and a hat. There's a bottle of booze on a shelf immediately to the right of his shoulder, and he looks more serene and easy in his sking than anyone I've ever seen.
Back in Brooklyn, while walking my friends' elderly dog around the block, I passed a young woman, a dwarf, and her family. The average-size dad took baby from mom and walked into the apartment while mom struggled to get the heavy stoller with groceries up three steps. You got it? he asked. I got it, she replied.
Seeing her made me realize why the comment about "weird photos" at the museum upset me a bit. The subjects in Diane Arbus' photos may seem odd or weird but they are not odder or weirder than we are. It's more comfortable, of course, to pretend they are. But most of us carry around plenty of irregularities. They're just as real and warped if not always as visible.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 04, 2005
Sheraton, PR and National Napping Day
How do you promote swanky new beds in a hotel chain? Guess there's a reason PR stunts endure to this day. Thank you Sam Ewen, head of Interference Inc., for the invite to nap, which I took advantage of yesterday. But the big nap action happens today on National Napping Day. What, you haven't heard?
"The problem with napping at work is that you lose your job or your reputation," the Napping Company's Bill Anthony told me yesterday. Bill and his wife, Camille, were the official napping experts at the event in New York and are the VP and president, respectively, of the company, which promotes napping to sleep-deprived Americans in part through National Napping Day on the Monday after Daylight Savings Time takes effect. This year it's actually promoting National Workplace Napping Day but perhaps that wasn't as snappy sounding on the press release. The Napping Co. is a fun sideline to the couple's more serious day jobs as professor at Boston University (him) and CFO (her). I met them at a storefront on Fifth Avenue in New York where a temporary nap hotel has been established to promote the rollout of (let me just take a deep breath here) the "Four Points by Sheraton Four Comfort Bed." (Feel free to drop by today and today only for your 20 minutes of shut-eye and a tee shirt between 6 AM and 6 PM at 545 Fifth Avenue.)
Will this be an effective stunt? Dunno, I have no way to measure. But Bill mentioned that the Medialink folks had been taping there all morning so presumably any local newscasters who adore quirky, human-interest, and totally free of charge video releases (which would be what, all of them?) will probably be thrilled to air something about this not-exactly-official holiday (and the Sheraton connection) later today.
It was more than cruel hat I was forced to edure the seductive comfort of Sheraton's bed, however briefly, after the ugly, uncomfortable experience at Formule1 because after all, which hotel is more likely a part of my future? The two hotels have at least one thing in common, though. Sheraton's owner, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, also wants your dreams to come true but in this case insist that your dreams involve the Four Comfort Bed.
Apparently the huge, boxy new sleep aid is only the most recent volly in the bed wars. (The press release I'm quoted isn't yet posted on the corporate web site.) "Just as the Westin Heavenly Bed served as a wake-up call to the upper and upscale hotel segment in 1999, the Four Points by Sheraton Four Comfort Bed" (say that five times fast, I dare you) "is the first of its kind to roll out in the moderately price hotel arena" blah blah $13 million yadda yadda summer 2005. Nuff said.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack