Baskin-Robbins retires five flavors

Get thee to a Baskin-Robbins quickly if you want to stock up on one of their five soon-to-be-retired flavors. To clear the way for new concoctions, they’re sending French Vanilla, Caramel Praline Cheesecake, Campfire S’mores, Apple Pie a La Mode and Superfudge Truffle into the “Deep Freeze.”  If you want to see what other flavors have been retired over the  years, go here.

By the way, the Baskin-Robbins website is an entertaining place to spend some time. It has a light-hearted tone, fun content to read, and gives you an uplifting experience. For a 65 year old company, it’s constantly refreshing and renewing…either through new flavors or fun promotions.  

The top selling ice cream flavors at Baskin-Robbins are really pretty pedestrian…Vanilla, Chocolate, Mint Chocolate Chip, Pralines ‘n Cream, and Chocolate Chip. I have to say that I am not an ice-cream risk taker. I may take advantage of a free taste of the flavor-of-the-month, but invariably end up with my old friend Vanilla.

If You are Going to Serve Food, Learn to Cook

I spent part of this week at IFT, which is the show for food technology. Many of the companies that were there had ingredients to promote, and did so with sampling. A fine strategy if you want to prove your ingredient doesn’t affect the taste of foods, but one caution—learn to cook and bake. A good half of the samples weren’t tasty and some were borderline inedible. As one marketer pointed out, they don’t sample their ingredients because their company isn’t in the cooking business. Smart.

Too bad the company that put out the really bad buffalo chicken nuggets didn’t bother eating them. Would have saved me and a lot of passersby the trouble of throwing these out.

Why you need an American Agency

For any number of products, the US is one of the top markets in the world, hence the desire from companies all over the globe to sell into the US. From herbal teas to the most obscure B-to-B widgets imaginable, you can’t escape good foreign advertising.

It’s good foreign advertising because it works well—I am assuming—in the country of origin. But here, not only does it fall flat, the attempts at Americanization range from dumb to laughable to insulting. That’s not to say the American companies haven’t committed their own international faux pas. Ad books are littered with the legendary stories of “Coke adds life”, “Fly Leather”, the Chevy Nova and “It Takes a Tough Man to Raise a Tender Chicken” (actually, it’s a tough village). It’s probably safe to assume that most American companies have learned their lesson by now and at least hire a localization firm, if not another agency.

But the international hits keep coming. Lately, I have seen trade ads for German companies who spell America and other words with a “k”, English copy written by non-native speakers that doesn’t read well in English and my new favorite, above. I think it’s a weight-loss tea. You can’t see it, but their slogan is “Just Drink It”.

Putting Sustainability Marketing Back in the Mix

“Green is not hot any more. Its importance has cooled off.” This was a pronouncement I heard yesterday at a marketing summit. And I couldn’t disagree more. Marketing sustainability is a trend that is growing in several key industries including real estate, energy and retail. And, not surprisingly, higher education. Continue reading

Old Spice’s Rapid Response Video Campaign

An old brand is leading the way in using new media…Old Spice extended their TV commercial campaign with an innovative tactic. Fans used social networks to ask questions of the actor in the TV ads. And Old Spice rapidly responded to 186 of these questions via short videos. Each video was produced in just minutes, and reportedly resulted in YouTube traffic that exceeded 34 million views in less than a week. Check out the story on NPR.

Slow Goodbye to PCs

Are PCs really on the verge of extinction? I do have to concur that the desktop PC at our house is a lonely appliance. With several laptops and wireless Internet access, plus a smart phone in every hand, our family only uses the PC when efficient and rich capabilities are needed. But that represents only about 5% of our home computing time.

According to this article on CNNMoney.com, consumers prefer multi-function, mobile, connected appliances; but the author stops short of predicting the end of PCs. I agree. I will only give up my PC when I can be just as productive with something else. Personally, I’m holding out for a smart tablet that has a built-in but detachable smart phone, featuring a digital camera to rival an Olympus E-3, plus a holographic, full-sized keyboard enhanced with voice recognition and image-to-text converter. Until then, I’m probably sticking with my dust-catching, space hogging PC.