VerveCast

If you’re a huge sports fan (read: attractive, male athlete fan) like myself, you’ve probably heard about the new Braun/Rodgers restaurant set to open in Brookfield in June. The original name for the restaurant was launched as 8*twelve, a play on their two numbers. However, it was announced yesterday the name has changed to 8-twelve.

According to Fox 6, the asterisk was removed and replaced with a dash in an effort to avoid any negativity that might be associated with something that looks like an asterisk, given Braun’s hectic off-season.

Umm, eek! Although I personally find the asterisk situation pretty hilarious, I likely wouldn’t if I was associated with the brand. I’m not sure what would have been worse, leaving the asterisk in to be potentially noticed by not that many people, or taking it out and having the media broadcast why the name had changed. The main takeaway here is to make sure you have all your ducks in a row before publicly launching your new brand.

(Side note: this story totally brought to mind my brother-in-law, whom we call “Asterisk” when playing board games, given his inclination to win using questionable tactics.)

I love this illustration for the food packaging of Middagsfrid.

Even if you’re more into graphic design than packaging design, check out thedieline.com for more inspiration.

Timothy Westbrook working in The Pfister's studio.

Perhaps you’ll recall a post of mine from a few months back about the search for the next Pfister Hotel Artist in Residence. Well, the lucky artist was selected and has now been set up in the hotel for about a month.

Timothy Westbrook is a talented, young fiber artist from upstate New York who made the big move to pursue the Pfister’s residency. If you have not met him, you should make your way to The Pfister and check out his work, which is primarily crafted from recycled materials such as cassette tape (and even The Pfister’s retired bedsheets!).

Here’s a great feature segment from CBS 58 on Timothy and the artist-in-residence program.

Digital creative agency Holler decided to push the boundaries and moved their entire web site to a Pinterest account.

So are these guys on the bleeding edge, or just looking for some publicity for a stunt?

This is only slightly interesting to me because it’s just another case of using a tool for unintended purposes. If you’ve ever used a butter knife as a screwdriver you know what I mean. Since the early days of the World Wide Web, I’ve seen people use web sites for things the developers never imagined. It’s just how things work. When the first blogging tools came out (which were specifically for creating a series of chronologically ordered posts) people found ways of creating entire (traditional) web sites out of them. It’s been done.

As for getting rid of your site and moving it all to Pinterest, others have done similar things… killing off their sites and moving to Facebook, or Myspace, or whatever came before. I see it as a “flavor of the day” thing, and not a long-term solution. Putting your trust that a new service (you have no control over) will be around in 5 or 10 years seems a bit risky, and I know digital creative agencies are all about “taking risks” but I also know that providing clients with solid, time-tested advice is a good strategy.

[Hat tip to Mana for finding this one.]

April wrote a post about her new favorite kind of Cheerios, and asked about putting a new spin on existing brands… but the curmudgeon in me wants to start my reply with “Well, when I was a kid…”

So I will.

(First, a disclaimer: I’m old. When I say “When I was a kid” I’m referring to the 1970s.)

So, when I was a kid, there was one kind of Oreo. There were not Oreo cookies filled with peanut butter, or orange creme for Halloween, or green stuff for St. Patrick’s Day, or dipped in fudge, or available in miniature sizes, or as an ice cream sandwich… We just ate plain old Oreo cookies and we survived. And it was good.

Oh sure, Oreo Double Stuf(f) came out in 1975, but it was one variation on the original, just with more… stuff.

But somewhere along the line, every product started to have all sorts of variations. Take the Ritz cracker. There was the plain old Ritz, and then Ritz Bits, and Rizt with cheese, and Ritz Sticks, and Ritz peanut butter and jelly. (Really!?)

Is it just the snack food industry that does this? If someone asks you for chips, do they want “regular” or cool ranch, or salt & vinegar, or jalapeño, or some other crazy flavor.

As of this post, I can view 47 different Oreo “products” available.

But is this all just the process of “extending the brand”? Are companies doing this sort of thing just to get more shelf space? To appeal to wider and more peculiar tastes? For publicity?

Oreo just had a birthday, and here at the office we had some sort of “Birthday Cake” Oreos and they were terrible. Well, I thought they were terrible, but as I said, I’m old. Maybe a kid would love them. (Especially a kid who loves cookies dipped in frosting and then rolled in sugar.)

Anyway, enjoy whatever weird flavored product you have in the name of extending a brand. :)