YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO PLAY WITH FIRE

I've spent a good chunk of four days out of the last two weeks helping the Chowan-Edenton Optimist Club sell Christmas Trees to raise money for less fortunate kids in our county.  It's a good cause, with some good, old-fashioned male bonding mixed in, and even a chance to dabble in manual labor (what was it Jimmy Buffet sang?..."any manual labor I've done was purely by mistake.").  And cold weather (at least by eastern North Carolina standards) arrived, too.  Fortunately, we've got an old, metal, 55-gallon drum with some vents drilled in it that we use to keep a fire going at the Christmas tree stand.  Keeps the body warm on those cold Carolina nights.

(My son Josh stoking the Optimist Club Fire)

Of course, standing around the Christmas tree stand, watching grown men in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's stoke the fire, throw things in the fire, round up brush and branches for the fire, talk about the fire, stare at the fire, and reminisce about playing with fire as kids left me with one unmistakable observation.  The primal male fascination with flame is not something we outgrow!

Oh, we find safer ways to meddle with the blaze.  We come up with better excuses.  We quit trying to come up with new ways to napalm GI Joe or firebomb our Tonka Trucks.  We begin burning brush, or building bonfires, or burning trash, or firing up the grill.  Sometimes farmers get to burn off entire fields (the lucky devils!).  And Firemen...man!

When I was a kid my parents, teachers, and old man Tom Goodman, the full-time fireman who lived across Broad Street from my childhood home, all told me repeatedly and emphatically, "Don't play with fire".  And, of course, I never listened.  David Dail and I almost blew ourselves up with gasoline one afternoon in my backyard.  Andy Whitson and I had my father's stack of firewood smoking and smoldering in the shed behind my house - took several buckets of water to douse that one.  We singed eyebrows, torched toys, started small grass fires, nearly blew off digits with illegal fireworks (imported north from South Carolina, where everything apparently is legal).  

On the occasions grown-ups stumbled across our arson-driven shenanigans they'd give us a good dressing down.  Little did I know they were probably just trying to get us to go inside so they could finish the job for us.  Kids, don't play with fire.  Leave that to us grown-ups! 

TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN

'Don't know why this just popped into my head, but I'll share.  While I, as a brand new PD, was pitching an idea my GM had at a previous radio job (not my most recent radio job, btw), one of those ideas I felt obligated to pitch even though personally I thought it was, uh, weak...my Promotion Director stopped me in my tracks and asked if this was one of the boss' ideas.  I 'fessed up that it was, only to have him say, "That figures.  You'll find he has a lot of ideas.  And they're all bad!"   

MY ALL-TIME CHRISTMAS LIST GREATEST HITS

Hey, we've seen compilations of everything else over the last twenty-five years.  Why not a look at my all-time favorite childhood Christmas gifts-presents from Santa, family and friends?  In no particular order, here goes ten contenders from the ghost of Christmas past:

Hoppity-Hop

 (Snuck out of bed early, then woke my parents up hopping around the house on this thing!  'Didn't stop riding for most of the year, until I hopped it over a nail that took it's life.)

Hot Wheels Mongoose & Snake

(all the Hot Wheels stuff was killer in the 70's, but the original Mongoose & Snake combo was the ultimate.  I was a Mongoose man.)

Los Angeles Rams Football Uniforms

(Yeah, mine was old enough to be blue and white, not blue and gold.  With me, Roman Gabriel & Deacon Jones playing for'em the Rams won a lot of Super Bowls in my backyard in those days.)

Tonka Trucks

 (Real metal Tonka Trucks - big and tough and bad, complete with sharp edges!  We moved a lot of dirt around the yard.  Plus fresh cut grass did double duty as hay for the farm we were operating.)

Mousetrap

(Not too many board games would make this list, even though I like games.  But anyone who knows me well knows I have a lifelong love affair with Rube Goldberg devices.  This game is a big reason why.)

Tinker Toys 

(I was definitely a builder as a kid.  I liked putting things together.  This is a classic kids toy that I loved, and I kept asking for more and more sets, just to put them all together and build huge, monsterous things.)

Lincoln Logs

(Along the same lines as Tinker Toys, but I actually liked these even more.  Something about the rustic look of them.  I wish I still had some Lincoln Logs.)

Stereo Tuner/Record Player/8-Track Player & Recorder

(How cool?  Making my own pirated eight-tracks!  I got this and a pair of headphones one year.  I think Santa knew I'd be blasting music in the wee hours, hence the headphones.)

Bicycle with a Banana Seat

(Nothing could be hipper than a sleek, blue bike with a banana seat.  I ruled Broad Street on this thing!)

G.I. Joe

(The ultimate tough guy.  GI Joe was indestructible...okay, actually, it eventually turned out that gasoline and a match could do a pretty good number on him...but even then, he went out valiently.  Go get'em soldier!)

AND FOR A BONUS, TWO OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE STOCKING STUFFER TOYS - THE SLINKY (None of these cheesy plastic slinkys.  Only metal for me, thank-you very much) AND SILLY PUTTY (Merely the coolest, most versatile substance in all the universe)

  

 

 

 

 

 

PORK CHOPS AT PRINCESS PAMELA'S

I grew up in the rural south and have carried a deep-seated affection for southern culture with me all my days.  Finding my life unfolding in Connecticut, I took some solace in exploring the soul food joints of New York City - afterall, soul food and southern food are largely one and the same.

My best friend at the time, the best man at my wedding and a guy who, unfortunately, I've let time and miles come between, having lost touch with him years ago, - anyway, my best friend at the time was a Columbian-born, Florida-raised guy named Charley, who'd also lived down in Nashville before relocating to Manhattan.  Like me, he had a passion for southern cooking and soul food, and he did a nice job of scouting out various places for us to eat.

One summer night we're on the prowl, in the city, looking for dinner and craving some down-home cooking.  Charley tells me he wants me to try Princess Pamela's.  Time had taught me that Charley was a capable frontman in the ongoing Soul Food sojurns, so I was easily convinced.  Off to Greenwich Village we headed.

We're walking down this nondescript block in the village, passing pedestrians, yellow cabs, the occasional street person, when we come across this unmarked doorway on some grey building.  Charley raps on the door, waits a few second, and it opens about three inches to reveal a chain lock still in place, and a youthful, pretty, dark-skinned girl peering out at us asking "what'd you want?".  "We want to eat", Charley says.  The door closes for a second, then opens wide, the chain lock finally unsecured.  Wordlessly, the young lady lets us in, and leads us to a table, then retreats behind an open counter into the kitchen.  

We find ourselves sitting, back to the counter that seperates us from the kitchen, at a small table with a white linen tablecloth spread on it, plus a paper napkin and silverware, and nothing else.  It's one of about seven tables crowded into a rectangular dining room about the size of an automatic car wash.   Plus, in the front, to the left of the doorway, sits an upright bass, a drum set and a piano, wedged together in an incredibly small amount of space, the property of a jazz trio that plays every Sunday...a jazz trio who must double as contortionist to work in the confines Princess Pamela's presents them with.

There's a yuppie couple at the table in front of us, talking and talking about their travels, their exploits, their general cleverness and grooviness.  At the table to our left sits a large, (I'm sure well over 300 pounds) middle-aged black lady with a southern accent and a sassy voice, counting money and holding court, engaging Charley and me, the yuppie couple, and the young lady who let us in in a conversation whether we wanted in or not.  This, I realized, was the immortal Princess Pamela!     

There were no menus at Princess Pamela's.  Every night they prepared a soul food dinner and you either ate it or you didn't.  Yuppie girl found that out the hard way.  That young lady who let us in...she did all the heavy lifting.  She not only served as doorman, but she was the cook, the waitress and the bus boy, all in one.  She meanders over to the yuppie table to announce what's for dinner..."Tonight at Princess Pamela's we're serving fried pork chops, macaroni and cheese, collard greens..." when yuppie girl interrupts to blurt out, "Oh, that won't do.  I don't eat meat.". Our African-Americna superwoman responds without missing a beat "well, you better carry your a-- somewhere else then."  Startled, the yuppie retreats.  And, yes, that night, she did eat meat.  I know, I kept an eye on her to see.  She was diggin' that pork chop!  

Our food arrives.  Soul Food joints generally believe in quality and quantity, and Princess Pamela's was no exception.  The meal came on these large oval-shaped dishes, actually over-flowing the dishes.  A couple nice, fat chops, a nice mound of homemade macaroni and cheese, a healthy serving of greens, some green beans, a tossed salad right on the plate, some corn and a big chuk of hot cornbread.  It was fantastic!

So fantastic that I didn't even mind the self-absorbed yuppie couple yammering on and on.  Charley and I were much more interested in what Princess Pamela had to say - she was quick-witted, sarcastic, observant and funnier than most stand-up comedians dream about.  But it was hard to miss our couple's boast of their world travels on a dime.  Something about freight airliners getting some kind of tax break for carrying passengers and freight.  Supposedly some of them have one seat on board for a passenger.  They'll sell you a ticket for next to nothing and you can see the world for cheap.  Princess Pamela kept asking how they could afford to travel so much and they just kept smuggly repeating that story - because they were smarter than any of us, you see?  

Anyway, we're eating, jabber-jawing with the Princess, watching that young lady that ran the kitchen hussle, and keeping an eye on the pork chops disappearing from our yuppie-vegetarian friend's plate, having a good ol' time and ruling the universe, when the couple finishes, says thanks to the Princess, gets up and, once that young lady in the kitchen comes and unlatches the door, head out into the Greenwich Village night.

On her way back from the front door to the kitchen, Superwoman stops to bus the departed yuppies' table.  She's gathering plates, silverware and glasses in one hand when she pauses, gets a slightly disgusted look on her face, scoops some money off the table and heads back to the kitchen.  On her way she stops at Princess Pamela's table, where the mystery of the evening is about to be solved.

Without saying a word, the young lady holds out her right hand and the tip contained within. Princess Pamela takes one look at her outstretched palm and says knowingly, like a grandmother who's just caught a kid reaching into the cookie jar,  "Uh-huh, now I see how they can afford all them trips to Europe." 

 

A RELUCTANT LESSON ON BRANDING FROM SPARKY ANDERSON

I love baseball.  Not just baseball games, but everything about the sport (except the designated hitter, but that's for another blog).  I love its history, its characters, the freshly cut and well-manicured fields, peanuts and popcorn, the crack of the bat, the uniforms, the very fiber of the game.  So while I was never a fan of the Reds or the Tigers I was sad to see the legendary old manager, Sparky Anderson, leave us this week.

I was watching ESPN pay homage to Sparky this morning.  As they recounted his career they talked about how, in his fifties, he asked sportswriters to begin referring to him by his real name, George Anderson.  He believed no man in his fifties wanted to be called "Sparky".  Of course, the writers, fans and public at large didn't honor this plea.  He was, is, and will always be Sparky Anderson.

That got me to thinking about nicknames, and I realized nicknames, in essence, teach us a lot about branding.  Now, let's start by returning to the original Ries & Trout definition of the marketing term they coined, branding.  It's not just getting your name out there.  (If you've got marketing people on payroll who think getting your name out there is branding, fire them!  They're incompetant.)  Branding is taking ownership of a word (or concept or attribute) in your customers mind.  Coca-Cola isn't a brand because we see their logo everywhere.  Coca-Cola is a brand (a great brand) because they own the entire cola category.  Play word association all day long.  You say cola, most people will say "Coke" (a nickname, by the way, like "Sparky")  Hamburgers...McDonalds.  Beer...Budweiser.  Brands!   

Now, not every brand can take ownership of a whole category.  But every brand stands for some graspable thing.  The uncola?...Seven-Up.  Having it (your burger) your way?...Burger King.  That's the key to a brand.  If you don't own a word in the customers mind, you aren't a brand.  But that's not the point of this blog, either.

You see, you can't get to that point without a memorable name.  Lawyers always advise companies to use made-up, meaningless names.  They're particularly fond of initials.  EMC, B&Q, 3M, ALZA, ATI, DEC, JAL.  How the heck are you going to brand that?  How's anyone going to remember it.  Lawyers also hate it when you allow your company name to become synonymous with the product category. They think it's bad that people say "Coke" when they mean Cola and refer to every photocopy as a "Zerox".  This goes to show that all those years of law school don't help you understand marketing and branding at all. 

Generic, forgettable names are an albatross around any company's neck.  Sure, some have overcome it (AT&T, GMC) but why handicap yourself? Meanwhile, becoming synonymous with the product line (while it may have some potential for copyright issues) is priceless!  It's the ultimate extension of successful branding!

Which brings me to George Lee Anderson, late manager of the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers.  George Lee Anderson had not one, not two, but three very forgettable, very typical names. It's the kind of name about which we say, years after somone's heyday, "hey, that guy who managed the Reds in the seventies...I can't remember his name, but that guy was a good manager."   But Sparky Anderson!  What a great name!  

It's unique, (especially when hung on a man in his fifties!), it's catchy, it's memorable, and now it's synonymous forever more with the skipper of Cincinnati's Big Red Machine (another brand!)

The reality is, every good nickname is the beginning of a personal brand.  I rarely forget a person's nickname.  I mean a real nickname, the kind that gets hung on someone (usually against their will) and really becomes what people call them.  Of course, if you have a unique name in the first place, the nickname isn't needed for the effect.  Growing up in a small, rural southern town in the 1970's where everyone's first name was Tom or Bob or John and every last name was Smith or White or Jones, I will never forget a kid a few years younger than me named Giacamo.  Or a guy several years older than me who was named Jegade.  Brands!

Now the point of this isn't for you to go out and get yourself a nickname (you generally can't, anyway.  They're always hung on you).  The point is, in business or your personal life, the combination of a memorable name and something meaningful to hang it on is priceless.  And that, my friend, is how you get yourself (or your company) branded!

A FORD MAN NO MORE, BUT THAT'S NO CAUSE FOR CHEVY TO CELEBRATE

I grew up a die hard Ford man. My father sold Fords, and playing around in the showroom and on the car lot, plus the unparalleled cool of the Mustang, was enough to hook me for life. And, of course, as a Ford man, I hated Chevrolets. The enemy, period!

A funny thing has occurred, though. When I look into my yard we have two vehicles parked there. A Dodge Grand Caravan and, gasp, a Chevy truck. How's that happen? Easy. Ford lost me. And, if you're a Chevy man or a Dodge fan, don't get excited. Neither GM or Chrysler did one thing to gain me, and if I'd have been a die hard loyalist to one of them, they'd have lost me, too.

And it wasn't all the crappy cars all the American automakers put on the road in the 70's and 80's. I was entrenched in the buy American thing enough to overlook that (illogical as that was. If we were going to be loyal enough to them to buy their cars, shouldn't they be loyal enough to us to make decent cars?). No, it was the systematic destruction each of these automakers (and their rivals in Japan and Europe) did to their brands. After all, it's brands that we're loyal to. And that loyalty doesn't require logic. But it does require brand management, something automakers, along with many other businesses, have gotten away from.


First the car companies destroyed their own "stepping stone" brand model. See, this is how they drew it up years ago. I was supposed to buy a Ford or two, then step up to a Mercury, and aspire to one day be a Lincoln man. Made sense. The GM chain was supposed to go Chevy to Pontiac to Buick to Oldsmobile to Cadillac. But instead of keeping their lines specific, assigning the appropriate cars to the appropriate brands they started competing with each other. Chevy wanted to keep their customers, and build cars to compete with the other GM brands. Pontiac and Chevy competed with muscle cars. Chevy build sedans, just like Buick and Olds. Ford and Mercury went head to head, and, in the 70's, the sporty Ford Thunderbird inexplicably morphed into a Lincoln wanna-be for a few years.

Next, the accountants took this last bad move a step further, and as a money saving move, demanded that the various "brands" (by now, a dubious use of the term) within the company essentially release the same cars with different names. Now every Ford had an easily recognizable Mercury counterpart, every Chevrolet a matching Pontiac.

Then, they abandoned the traditional brand dealership model. Instead of a Ford or Ford/Mercury/Lincoln dealer, I started seeing Fords available at the same dealership that sold Dodges and Pontiacs and, gasp, Chevrolets. So the guy who was selling me a car didn't have any particular loyalty to Ford. He'd be just as happy to have me in one of those tacky, over-styled Camaros. He might even be peddling Toyotas and Hondas. These things are starting to look a lot like commodities, huh?

Meanwhile, as the Japanese and European Automakers build assembly plants in America, the American automakers started building plants oversees. Now, all of these companies are publicly traded, sold internationally as stocks and bonds. I can own part of Toyota. People in Japan and Germany can own stock in Ford. And, to further confuse matters, the various companies started buying each other. So tell me, Mr. Buy American, just what is an American automobile?

Everything about the romance of the Ford brand got sucked out of it. Everything that lead to me a making an emotional commitment to Ford - it's gone! I decide what type of vehicle I need and I go find the best deal. I'm shopping based on price, period. Just like I buy oranges, flour, gasoline, sugar, etc. Commodities. Would I ever buy a Ford again? Certainly. I'm just as likely to buy a Ford as any other car on the market. I'm just not any more likely to buy one.

While the Ford Motor Company took the brunt of this blog, and automakers in general seem to be the subject, the lesson is for all business. We live in a day and age where strong, established brand loyalties are threatened on every front - by idiots with marketing majors who push brand extension (a greed-driven brand death sentence every time), by accountants slashing costs at all costs (and usually slashing the very things that make their brands special) and by management that just can't wrap their brain around the esoteric, emotional characteristics that don't show up in a PowerPoint presentation or a spread sheet, but make all the difference in a loyal customer's mind.

Brand loyalty is not, has not ever been, logical. But it is vital! It's the most valuable thing a product can own. And it's usually destroyed from within. Indeed, I'm a Ford man no more, but that's no cause for Chevy to celebrate.

WEDDING VOWS, NEW CAR SMELL & BAD ADVICE FROM YODA

First of all, I'm no marriage expert. In fact, I don't believe such a person exists. It's a tricky institution, with a lot of strange curves and oncoming traffic - no easy feat to navigate. And I'm far from the perfect husband - not very romantic, not overly observant...geez, I'm not even handy around the house.

But I am a huge believer in the institution of marriage. And, for all my faults, I'm a happily married man. going on nineteen years now. And I do have a few opinions (just opinions, not facts, relax) on why Michelle and I have been able to hold it together through thick or thin all these years.

First of all, I never counted on her to make me happy. She never saw me as her source of happiness. We love each other, we thoroughly enjoy each other's company, but nobody can make someone else happy. It's an unrealistic expectation to think that they can. Laying that on someone else is a doomsday sentence.

Secondly, I don't believe love has anything to do with emotion. I think it's a commitment. We not only said our marriage vows, we meant them. Have we come up short from time to time? Certainly. We're humans. But we are both committed to living our lives together in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer (in our case, pretty much for poorer), in good times and bad, until death do us part. Yeah, we vowed to death. Again, I don't believe love has anything to do with emotions, which means it isn't a feeling, which means it isn't fleeting, which means it doesn't pass, which means (I believe - strictly an opinion) it makes no sense to vow "as long as love shall last". To me, that's vowing to be committed as long as I remain committed, which would be meaningless (to me).

Thirdly, I like my wife, a lot. We don't do separate vacations. I don't do boys nights out. She doesn't do girls nights out. We let go of everything that was integral to our single lives. We have one married life - together. I'd rather be with her than anyone I know. It sounds like a cliche, but my wife is my best friend. I trust her implicitly, and I love being around her.

You know that giddy feeling all of us thought was love in our teenage years, that feeling so many of us think is love even as we grow up. I got that feeling about almost ever girlfriend I ever had. 'Thought I was in love. I've come to realize what that feeling is, and it isn't love. It's new car smell. New girl, exciting change, everything's different, all giddy. New car smell. Until the first ding shows up on the driver's side door. No more new car smell. No more "love". It took me a long time to realize it's hard to find what you're looking for when you don't even know what to look for.

Not to mention how up and down anything based on emotions are. I always love Michelle. Even when I'm mad at her. Even when I'm mumbling under my breath about her, down in the basement, while she's upstairs, temporarily forgetting about her "super hearing" (I swear, she can hear me mumble about her from three states away). But that's how emotions are, and anything that inconsistent is nothing to base anything important on. Yoda was dead wrong on that one - Think, don't feel - that's what he should've told the Jedis. (Then again, Yoda ended up getting almost all the Jedi wiped out, so take his wisdom for what it's worth. Listening to Yoda will get you killed.)

I'm a much better husband than I was eighteen years ago. I've steadily improved. In fact, as I see it, I've reached the point of downright mediocrity. So I have a long way to go. Trust me, I'm not bragging about how perfect I am or have been. 'Far from it. But I've come along way. And I've got a best friend that I get to spend the rest of my life with while I work the rest of it out.

(The happy couple, & the lucky guy!)

WHAT KIND OF MEN WERE THESE?

I'm a bit of a Civil War buff, not a hardcore collector of memorabilia or a devoted historian, but clearly someone who finds the war, the events leading up to it, and how it impacted life in its day. So when we got the chance to live in Charlottesville, Virginia for a few years in the 1990's, I relished the proximity to so much Civil War history. I saw Bull Run, Appomattox Courthouse, etc. but one of the most lasting impressions came on a fall drive along Skyline Drive. I found myself looking down from the lofty overlooks at the rugged Shenandoah Valley, thinking how Stonewall Jackson lead a barefoot army through that terrain in the dead of winter! What kind of men were these, anyway?

This weekend, I spent two days on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, including visiting some old friends who happened to be staying in the charming beach village of Salvo, just past Rodanthe, the town once called Chicamacomico, where the old pre-Coast Guard U.S. Life Saving Station still sits. As I drove by the historic site I recalled an account North Carolina historian David Stick recorded of that very Life Saving Station's crew gathering around their breakfast table writing out their last will and testaments before heading out one foggy morning to respond to the cries of a ship not even visible beyond the breakers, on a day when conditions convinced the men they would not be returning alive. (Ultimately, they did make it back, and made it back with the ship's passengers). Again I ask, what kind of men were these?

These accounts aren't that unusual - the Charge of the Light Brigade, doomed as they were; Washington crossing the Delaware on a cold, Christmas morning; a group of colonist standing up to the almighty British Crown and signing their name to a bold declaration of Independence, assuming they were signing their death sentences. What kind of men, indeed?Which brings us to 2010 - a day when divide and conquer is rule of the day, no one seems to take responsibility for anything, choosing rather to cast blame, never dealing in honest dialogue and debate, preferring to spin their opposition's perspective into some kind of DC Comics-like twisted super-villain scheme. We've allowed ourselves to be reduced to name calling, immature brats, spitting and cursing across the aisle at "the other side" - black vs. white, rich vs. poor, north vs. south, left vs. right, boy vs. girl, and so it goes. All the while, we're all in the same boat. Regardless of who's right and who's wrong (and we're all wrong about plenty, no doubt) we're going to succeed or fail together. At this rate, our failure is assured. No one is taking the bull by the horns and doing the dirty work needed to fight through and survive.

What we need is that kind of men that marched barefoot across the snowy Shenandoah, that wrote out their wills and dragged the heavy surfboat miles across the sandy beach at Chicamacomico and into the surf to brave the breakers. Where do we find that kind of men? If we can't find them within our selves, we may be doomed.