Fritinancy

New from me on Medium: Do we [heart] New York?

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.

 

Going negative

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!

Word of the week: Elevated

Suddenly, it seems, elevated is everywhere all at once.

A new tagline for De Beers

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.

Word of the week: Vegemite

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:

December linkfest

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:

From the archives: Name in the news: Shein

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:

• “52% of teens cite Amazon as their No. 1 favorite e-com site (down 200 bps Y/Y [basis points year over year] ; SHEIN took No. 2 spot (9% share, +400bps Y/Y”
• “Crocs, PacSun, Hey Dude, Zara, SHEIN, Gymshark are all fashion brands gaining share”

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.

Word of the week: Choice

Last week, in response to the leaked draft of a US Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the legal right to abortion, the Pro-Choice Caucus of the US House of Representatives distributed new messaging guidelines to House Democrats.

NEW: The Pro Choice Caucus has just sent out messaging materials to House Dems on Roe draft.

One of the recommendations: Don't use "choice." pic.twitter.com/nqVA8W1nWT

— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) May 12, 2022

Among the guidelines: Instead of choice (“harmful”), use decision (“helpful”).

Yes, this recommendation came from the Pro-Choice Caucus, not the Pro-Decision Caucus. But putting aside that mixed message, what’s the reason for the change?

One ad line to rule them all

Is there a bar or a club where tech copywriters huddle to collude on slogans and ad lines? The CopyCat Lounge, maybe? Because I keep seeing double with outdoor ads, and it can’t be a coincidence.

What we talk about when we talk about abortion

Because that’s what we’re talking about this week. Don’t worry, though: I’m going to stay in my lane. Mostly.

In case you’ve been tuning out the news, and who could blame you: On Monday, a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito for the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, confirmed what many of us have been gloomily anticipating for years: that the precedents established in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), long considered settled law, are about to be jettisoned. “The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion,” wrote Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward for Politico. 

Here’s what “allowing each state to decide” can mean: Twenty-three states already have laws that could be used to restrict legal access to abortion. Under a state law passed by the Texas legislature in September 2021, abortions are prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they’re pregnant. “The law empowers private citizens to sue anyone who ‘aids or abets’ a prohibited abortion,” the Texas Tribune reported in March 2022. “Those who sue could be awarded at least $10,000 if they win.”

Snitches get riches, in other words.

I believe abortion is health care. I support abortion access for anyone who needs it. But I’m not a lawyer or a legislator, so I’m using this platform to share some resources about my own specialty: language, messaging, and branding, all of which have played, and continue to play, outsize roles in the ongoing fight for safe and legal abortions.

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