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See the whole matrix at Brandchannel

A while back I wrote at brandchannel about the kid who is being sued by The North Face for creating a spoof brand called The South Butt. Public Radio’s Marketplace show got around to covering the story and got a quote from the kid’s lawyer, Albert Watkins. It is the gold medal winner of awesome legal statements:

“This is about consumer choice, this is about a consuming public that’s smart enough to know the difference between a face and butt and not believe that somehow when they pick up a butt they’ve bought a face.”

Congratulations couselor,  you are a great American.

One of the key characteristics of 3D, as used in Avatar, is “limited depth of field.” Essentially, this means that the figure onscreen in 3D pops out at the audience while the background appears out of focus. An attempt to focus on the background causes what some call “Avatar h3dache.”

For product placements though, the loss of a clear background means the elimination of countless placement opportunities for a wide range of brands. Cars logos, soda names, box graphics and any number of other brand identifiers will appear to be just a swirl of blurry color. Any attempt to distinguish them will be pointless. What good is a product placement that cannot be seen?

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And there is another potential concern worth noting in the post-Tiger Woods/Charlie Sheen/Gilbert Arenas spokesman era. Where Cronkite posed a low risk for scandal, Freeman, despite his septuagenarian status, might be different. It’s well documented that the actor struggled with alcohol problems many years ago and quit drinking after “waking up face-down on the floor in the hallway in my New York apartment.” And Freeman’s recent car accident in which his female passenger was severely injured, prompted rumors that he had been drunk at the wheel. Might CBS be risking someday running a story about how it is dropping its spokesman because “he no longer fits with the network’s brand of integrity?”

Earlier: Morgan Freeman is new voice of CBS

Taco Bell has a new Drive-Thru Diet campaign running at the same time as the brand’s “Fourthmeal” campaign. Discuss.

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I have Brandchanel all to myself today to run a special edition of the magazine’s Black Friday Live! coverage. Check it out. Posts should be along the lines of the below:

So you’re one of the strongest brands ever in the history of ever. How do you take an event that is already heavily branded (”Black Friday”) and co-opt and transform it to fit the needs of your own brand? If you’re George Lucas, it’s just another day:

“Dark Side Days at Star Wars Shop”

Get it!!??

Reated: The Droid, one of this holiday season’s hottest, most brand-loyalty creating products, actually, no joke, had to get trademark clearence from Lucas for use of the “Droid” name. And by “get” we mean “pay for.”

All branding professionals are just pedestrians in Lucas’ world.

Not your speed? Well, I can’t please everyone. Check it out anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving. For anyone interested I will be “liveblogging” Black Friday over at Brandchannel.

Andy Rooney is rolling over in his grave,

Also, to aid digestion, read this hilarious email correspondence:

From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 11.07am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

You just crossed the line. You have no idea about the potential this project has. The technology allows users to network peer to peer, add contacts, share information and is potentially worth many millions of dollars and your short sightedness just cost you any chance of being involved.

From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 1.36pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

Dear Simon,

So you have invented Twitter. Congratulations. This is where that time machine would definitely have come in quite handy.

It is good like rhubarb pie.

Gavin: I just realized I did an interview with brandchannel and didn’t really mention branding. One thing about “brand building.” I never want to hear those two words again. I always hated the idea of someone building a brand. It sounds so affected. Like marketing companies and “Cool Hunters” sending CDs and shit to “tastemakers.” People can smell that bullshit from a mile away. Just be yourself. Pinky and I are old and Canadian and not very attractive but we are the faces of the company because that’s who we are. Anything else would be a lie. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people marketing works. It doesn’t. People only buy what their friends tell them they should buy because that’s the only thing left they can trust.

I spoke with Vice and Street Boners and TV Carnage founder Gavin McInnes for branding industry trade magazine Brandchannel. It was about building brands . It went about as well as expected. READ IT

Walker says this leaves ammunition brands to differentiate on “advertising, packaging and other image-enhancing strategies.”  He does describe how ammo-maker ATK’s brands such as Black Cloud offer shell design technologies, but then seemingly dismisses it: “Still, technology by itself is not a marketing strategy.” Sure, not technically, but it offers the strongest marketing hook a commodity brand has. Instead, Walker seems stuck on how “image,” even offering a handy color-coded graphic stating “Ads on Hunting Shows + Fancy Packaging + Webisodes + Celebrity Endorsements = A New Ammo Brand.”

But Walker fully tips his hand when he sums up the act of ammo buying as “an afterthought purchase” largely devoid of meaningful branding cues. Here, he couldn’t be more wrong.

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The retirement of the Fighting Sioux brand will leave only about 400,000 similar Native American nicknames and logos in America, including, most prominently, the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians—as well as consumer goods incorporating Indian themes such as Indian motorcycles, Land O’Lakes dairy, and Leinenkugel’s Brewing Co.

READ IT at Brandchannel.

For a look at some of the “sound logic” behind keeping the logo, go here: “

“I’m really wondering what’s wrong with these people.  Civil rights when the tribe is refusing a vote.  And you don’t have an identity until they change their logo?  To think if I just sat around all confused because I didn’t have an identity because of the Vikings.”