General Foods maintained a large testing kennel in Kankakee, Illinois. It was close to their dog food manufacturing plant. During the 70s when I worked on their dog food advertising, they had a very successful dog food business. GF sold dry food: Gaines Meal and Gravy Train both dry; semi-moist foods: Gaines-Burgers (in several flavours),… Read More »
You can be successful, and still fail. All it takes is a change in market conditions. We were rewarded for excellent work with P&G on Ariel and Camay in Venezuela by receiving the assignment for the launch of Pampers. There was virtually no competition except old fashioned cloth diapers. How could we miss? Pampers had… Read More »
We lived for three to four years in Caracas. We spent most of our time in the city, at work or driving to the nearby Caribbean beaches. This blog has many stories about our work life in the country. But what about the countryside? For work we did shoot commercials outside the city; but we… Read More »
In this season of awards – no wait! … awards always seem to be in season. Doesn’t having so many awards for so many different things dilute the value of any award? We are just getting through Nobel Season. Soon it will be time for Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Emmies, Grammies, Junos, ESPys and on… Read More »
The first year I was at school in Philadelphia, in the 1970s, a friend in my dorm told me that he had a motorcycle that he had left in North Carolina. He was going to ship it up to Philadelphia but it was expensive to ship it. I had only recently come to the East… Read More »
Every place, person and thing has a name, mostly applied locally and then eventually agreed upon by everyone else. When the US thought of appropriating and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, it was trying to change a centuries old agreed upon name. It didn’t work. It got me thinking about how we call places and… Read More »
After many cocktail parties, I realized that most consumers see advertising and criticize it as if they knew what went in to creating it. They never think about the process, only the end result. When we look at an iceberg, we remark on its beauty without realizing that nine tenths of it are below water.… Read More »
One example that randomness can bring order is the theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting keys at random on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. The odds of this happening are obviously infinitely small. There have… Read More »
I have worked in both the US and Canada one thing I have found curious is that the markets have approached Diversity and Inclusion in two different ways. First the US: When I worked there twenty five years ago, there were quotas for “minorities” to appear in commercials. Clients required these quotas to be met… Read More »
Ratings seriously are off for NFL games this year and there are lots of theories why. The tumultuous US election is one reason being offered. That was a wilder reality show than the average NFL game. And people love the spontaneity of those reality shows. But could that be the only reason? One of the reasons… Read More »