Branding, Loyalty, Cheerwine And My Mom

Been drinking quite a bit of Cheerwine lately. And we've been working on a little oddball project for 'em. So I've been thinking about its whole brand personality thing.

First of all, I just plain like it. It goes really good with hot dogs (and crinkle-cut french fries) and I drank a ton of it as a kid, riding my bike up to the 7-11 to buy Planet Of The Apes gum cards.

Next, it's a cool little regional brand you can feel good about, a fairly hip alternative to the big mammoth things like Coke and Pepsi. According to our research, that's the way a lotta people think about it. Some folks seem to wear their taste for Cheerwine as a badge of honor. I like that.

Me, I have a personal relationship with Cheerwine, a weird experience we share.

When my Mom was going through her cancer treatment, I used to drive to Winston-Salem every Monday to sit with her while she got her chemotherapy. Little visits I wouldn't trade anything for.

On my way back to Raleigh, about an hour-and-a-half drive, I'd stop at a certain convenience store in Greensboro to fill up, use the bathroom and snag a Cheerwine in a real glass bottle (as seen in the photo I stole from Jenny). It became a ritual of sorts, part of this whole process with my Mom. I knew these visits were gonna come to an end -- a heavy thought -- and a nice cold Cheerwine helped that last leg of the trip go a little bit better.

Mom's gone. But I can't pass that store without stopping for a Cheerwine.

And a few of those bottles, I hung onto 'em, and they still sit in the window of my office. Empties that'll never be recycled.

Career Highlight: Working With Richard B. Schull

Richard B. Schull is one of the greatest character actors or the 70s. Easy. He's in an incredible string of great films. THE ANDERSON TAPES. KLUTE. COCKFIGHTER. HEARTS OF THE WEST. SPLASH. And my second-favorite movie of all time (and a perfect example of a loopy 70s comedy), SLITHER (1973).

In 1999, I was working on a radio campaign for a neighborhood here in Raleigh called Falls River. We were going with an old-time radio show kinda vibe and had the budget to hire the kind of talent you need to pull off such a thing. I got a few voice demo CDs from some New York places and got to casting.

Making my way through the demos, I came across the name Richard B. Schull. I thought NO WAY, and encouraged by my good friend and CD Tomas Gardner, made a call and signed him on. No other male voices were ever considered. I made a quick pass through the three scripts, tweaking them a tiny bit to make sure they'd fit him. The other voices were then selected for how well they might play off Mr. Schull.

The entire cast was perfect. Real pros. My only direction was to get them to speed things up a bit so my lengthy script would fit within the 60 seconds.

Mr. Schull was really nice and let me be Johnny Fanboy and tell him how much I love SLITHER. I didn't go to New York. Instead, we did an ISDN patch with Soundtrax here in Raleigh, so we communicated through some sorta digital thing — otherwise I woulda had my photo taken with him.

The resulting spots were terrific. They're still a highlight of my radio reel.

Sadly, Mr. Schull passed away a few months later. It was such a huge honor to work with him.

(This photo comes from SLITHER, by the way. Sorry I don't have a way to upload the spots and link them to this post. Oh, and thanks to my wife, I have a 16mm print of SLITHER.)

Writer's Block Party

Writer's Block Party

First one: August 19
Meeting on the third Tuesday of every month at 6:30 pm
Location: The Raleigh Times, Downtown Raleigh
Hosted by Toby Roan

About this group:
Come share a few words about, well, words. We'll hoist a glass as we discuss writing in general, in-depth, in theory, or in relation to some project you're working on.

Feel free to bring something you're proud of, stuck on or stuck with.

Writers and non-writers are welcome.

Thanks, freaks.

I was talking with some other copywriters the other day (along with some kids who want to be copywriters), and we got to rapping about who or what taught us to write ads (aside from other ads). Mostly, for me, it was a handful of really talented people who were kind enough, and patient enough, to show me how to do some stuff. And I will forever be in debt to 'em.

But there were a couple books, real favorites of mine, that taught me a lot about writing. Or maybe what I mean is that they were the kind of writing I wanted to do -- even though I was cranking out ads instead of Real Writing -- and I stole from them mercilessly.

First up, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS: A SAVAGE JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN DREAM by Hunter S. Thompson. My best friend James and I discovered HST in high school. I've since read this thing at least 20 times. It was the first "non-fiction" book I'd ever read that felt like a novel, or that didn't feel like the reports I was writing for class.

Later, I really dug how Thompson used the rhythm of his words. Just read the first page out loud and you'll see what I mean. The library in downtown Doylestown, PA, had a first-edition hardback of FEAR AND LOATHING that I covetted as a 17-year-old. Wonder if it's still there?

Next is Ed Sander's mighty THE FAMILY: THE STORY OF CHARLES MANSON'S DUNE BUGGY ATTACK BATTALION. When I was a kid -- fifth grade, Cary, NC -- my Dad had a copy and I used to just stare at the crazy pattern of Baja Bugs on the front. It really grabbed me. Good thing I didn't try to read it back then. I wasn't quite ready for Sanders' investigation into "group-grope" and "creepy-crawl."

What this one taught me was that you can inject wit and humor into some pretty nasty stuff if you know what you're doing. Ed will construct a pretty heavy, straight, informative paragraph, then cap it off with some sort of sarcastic remark. And I loved the fact that he'd make up words and phrases to suit his purposes -- the above-mentioned "group-grope" is a good example -- and you'd know exactly what he was talking about. Frank Zappa was a master of this, too.

(It's also cool that while Ed was writing THE FAMILY, Iggy Pop and The Stooges were staying in the same Hollywood hotel while they recorded their best album, FUN HOUSE. Musta made for some fun times around the pool.)

Anyway, where artists find their inspiration has always been fascinating to me. And I'm awful proud that a couple of my chief influences fly the tattered flag of Freakdom.

And no, I don't tell clients their brochure or website was inspired by books on dope depravity and Charles Manson.

Wiped out.

This campaign lost out to another campaign. But I preferred this one.

The art direction by David Watts might be what does it for me. From the color palette to the balance of the various pieces within the layout to the way the product shots are incorporated without looking cheesy — this stuff is Tube City (and there's no greater compliment than that).

When you work with really talented people, which I am blessed with the opportunity to do every day, things you helped create become much more than what you saw in your head.

To the stock photo places we got the images from: I'm sorry.

Gas, Tires & Chicken Bones

Part Three in the Angela Miller Pro Bono Poster Trilogy.

Here's the deal. Back in 2004, NASCAR took away Rockingham's race and gave it Las Vegas or someplace, making a ghost town of this monster racetrack (and the town that's its namesake). A few years down the road, Angela's cousin, Andy Hillenburg, buys the track and brings ARCA racing to town. The inaugural race was held in May. It was great to see racing back at The Rock.

Angela and I wanted to help out in any way we could. The result: this poster (and ads just like it). A big fat thanks goes to Richard Paschal who helped out with some high performance photo retouching.

What a hog!

AIGA Raleigh set up the "re|THINK Our Environment in the Carolinas" poster exhibition. There were 121 posters submitted by area designers and 20 were chosen to be printed. Angela Miller and I put one together and made the cut.

The roll-out reception shindig was part of Raleigh's First Friday Gallery Walk back in April. It was a pretty neat deal to see my work hung up like it was a real piece of art (like the Sisteen Chapel or maybe one of those refrigerator doors that Ed "Big Daddy" Roth airbrushed Rat Fink on), with people looking at it and holding those little plastic wine glasses.