Yes, I’m writing about Twitter again. (Or as I call it now, Xitter, pronounced Shitter. Thank you, James Fallows.) This time I’m poking my s’more fork into the dumpster fire that is that company’s new tagline, introduced abruptly and ill-advisedly last weekend. Read all about the inane “Blaze your glory!” [sic].
My previous Twitter-now-X story is here.
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An obituary for Ivan Menezes, CEO of global spirits corporation Diageo, jogged my memory about something I’d written many years ago about Johnnie Walker, the Scotch whisky brand that Menezes helped revive with the enduring effective “Keep Walking” campaign.
I revisited that campaign—still going strong 24 years after its launch—in my latest story for Medium, “The Man Who Kept Johnnie Walker Walking.” That’s a friend link, so you’ll bypass the paywall; if you’d like to read everything I’ve published on Medium—70 stories so far—as well as all the other Medium stories, here’s a referral link. (I’ll get a percentage of your membership fee—thanks!)
Blog bonus: Here’s a bit of Johnnie Walker history that didn’t make it into my story.
Continue reading "New writing on Medium: How Johnnie Walker kept walking" »
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A link of my own to kick things off: I wrote for the Strong Language blog about a product name I was surprised (to put it mildly) to encounter in a family-owned, family-friendly grocery store in Berkeley, California.
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I also continue to publish about once a week on Medium, a platform that actually pays me! This week’s story is about Pepsi’s new logo—and the logo that preceded it, back in 2008 (friend link), which the branding agency sold with a totally bonkers presentation. If you’re not a Medium member, use this referral link to join. Yes, there’s a fee, but you’ll gain access to lots of other good writers, too. And maybe you’ll want to start publishing there yourself, and you’ll be glad you made this tiny investment.
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For more than a century, the New York Times’s nameplate included a period. Then, one day in 1961, it was gone. “Dropping the period caused much consternation and soul-searching at the Times, until finally the production manager came up with the calculation that eliminating the period would save some $600 a year in ink!” (Steven Heller for Print Magazine)
The final full stop?
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Yes, I’ve been MIA this week, but I have an excuse, or at least a story: I’ve been working on a piece for Medium about the new “We ❤️ NYC” campaign, unveiled on March 20.
Read it here: The [Heart] of the Matter.
That’s a friend link that will bypass the paywall; if you’d like to join Medium (so many benefits!), please use this referral link.
And here’s a blog bonus: I spotted this variation on “We ❤️ X” in a San Francisco Muni bus earlier this week.
We ❤️ Muni Operators, with a QR code inside the ❤️
Could this be the most productive snowclone in history?
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Thanks to T. Kent Jones, James I. Bowie, and Erin O’Connor for inspiration and data.
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Is it ever smart to choose a negative tagline? Some brands say “Positively yes!” Discover which ones, and how they went negative, in my latest story for Medium: “The Sneaky Power of a Negative Tagline.” Don’t forget to clap!
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For the first time in its 135-year history, the giant diamond company De Beers has a “global ambassador.” And for the first tine in 75 years, it has a new tagline. Bye-bye, “A Diamond Is Forever,” hello “Where It Begins.”
Lupita Nyong’o in a full-page ad in Town and Country, February 2023
I take a look at the history of De Beers advertising in my latest story for Medium, “All That Glitters: Diamonds and the Cultivation of Desire” (friend link).
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Blog bonuses:
I first wrote about diamond advertising way back in 2008.
For an excellent overview of the worldwide diamond trade, I recommend The Heartless Stone by Tom Zoellner (2006), which remains relevant today. Thanks to Mike Pope for recommending it to me many years ago.
De Beers was founded in 1888 by the British capitalist and imperialist Cecil Rhodes, but unlike Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), Rhodes University, and the Rhodes Scholarship, the company isn’t named for him. Instead, it takes its name from two Dutch brothers named De Beer on whose South African farm diamonds were discovered. Rhodes, who had moved to South Africa in 1870. got his start in the diamond business by renting water to miners.
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The other morning, as I was spreading Vegemite on my toast like scores* of my fellow Americans, I took a closer look at the label and made a happy discovery: This year marks the centennial (or centenary**) of Vegemite yeast extract, as much an Australian national symbol as koalas and kangaroos. It’s a milestone that will be cheered by many of us and strenuously ignored by others.
“Proudly made in Australia since 1923”
To call Vegemite—a thick black paste made from brewer’s yeast—controversial is to put it mildly, and “mild” is a word you can never use with Vegemite. I happen to love the stuff, because I love anything that combines salty and umami flavors, but here in North America I find myself in a lonely minority. And it’s not just North Americans: Vegemite is one of three foods that represent Australia in the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö, Sweden. (The others are wichetty grubs, which are insects; and musk sticks, which are a kind of perfume-y candy and are unassociated with the current owner of Twitter and other businesses.)
My photo of a jar of Vegemite at the pop-up Disgusting Food Museum in Los Angeles, January 2019. The last sentence on the card reads: “In 2011, President Obama angered Australians by saying that he found vegemite [sic] to be ‘horrible.” When Australian prime minister Julia Gillard described the product, Obama said, “So, it's like a quasi-vegetable by-product paste that you smear on your toast for breakfast – sounds good, doesn’t it?” Yes, Mr. Obama, it sounds good. And it’s good for you, too.
A little background to whet your appetite:
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Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us! I don’t have the traditional aluminum pole, and this year I’m sparing you my Airing of Grievances. (But you can air your own grievance on FestivusWeb.) As for the other primary tradition, I discovered this year that there’s a Feats of Strength cocktail, which sounds kind of like a hot toddy. Did you know that English toddy comes from Hindi tari, which means “palm sap”?
“Festivus-infused” maple syrup from family-owned, Vermont-based Runamok. You can buy it at REI.
Read my previous Festivus posts.
And here’s a year-end link roundup:
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While I’m traveling I’m re-upping a few posts from the archives. This one, about the Chinese retailer Shein, was originally published on October 6, 2021. Shein is still in the news!
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Here’s a statistic that surprised even me, a follower of fashion and retail trends: The most downloaded shopping app in the U.S. in May 2021 was not Amazon. It was Shein, an online-only retailer of cheap fast fashion for women and men (plus beauty products, plus home products) founded in 2008 in Nanjing, China, by Chris Xu, a search-engine-optimization specialist with no previous experience in fashion or retail.
Today, Shein (often styled as SHEIN) is a “quindecacorn”*—its gross merchandise volume is worth US$15 billion—and it’s forecast to surpass $20 billion in volume by the end of 2021. The word “juggernaut” comes up frequently in coverage of the company, which has achieved its numbers by targeting the mostly female tween, teen, and early-20s members of Generation Z who can’t resist buying tops and dresses for as little as $5 (and posting about their “hauls” on social media) and who eagerly anticipate Shein’s monthly roster of designer collaborations.
A still from a Shein “haul video” posted in December 2020 by Instagrammer Fabienne Pelaud, who struggles with the pronunciation of “Shein.”
A couple more stats from “Taking Stock With Teens,” a recent survey by the investment company Piper Sandler:
But I am not here to discuss Shein’s business model, which conflates shopping with social media to produce something called “social commerce.”** Nor will I get into the questionable ethics and environmental impact of fast fashion in general.
No, I’m here to talk about the Shein name.
Continue reading "From the archives: Name in the news: Shein" »
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