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Fallapalooza was a huge smash and we had a full house of clients and colleagues. Guests dined on everything from mini crab cakes to mini cheesecakes. Specialty cocktails included Fall Down Drunk, Leaf Blower, and October SKYY. Here are some of the party photos. More (with captions) in the official Fallapalooza Photo Album.
Five celebrity chefs armed with kitchen knives and the miracle product we named Glad Simply Cooking Microwave Steaming Bags, are battling for the title of "Steamiest Chef. " Just roll over your favorite bobble-headed chef to "learn their steamy secrets, get their steamy recipe, and then vote for your favorite." Right now, Sam Talbot from Top Chef, is leading the pack but someone else could smoke him out. If only all the things that we named were this interactive. What's next, a Spoon Me spooning contest? Actually, it's already in the works!
Our Spoon Me frozen yogurt client, has opened its doors in Salt Lake City, replacing the cheeky "Spooning Soon" sign out front with hysterical signs on the front door declaring "No Shirt. No Shoes. No Spoon" and "No Spooning on Sundays." The Spoon Me t-shirts are flying off the shelves and owner Ryan Combe is mobbed by teenage girls whenever he wears one in public. (He says he'll retire in 2 years from the merchandise profits alone.) As the first "green store" in Utah (!!!!), they are ultra eco-friendly. Other smart ideas: replacing the tip jar in favor of a
donation jar for local charities, discounts to customers who ride public
transportation to the store, and a 20-dollar
bonus each month to any employee who reads a book. (But not The Book of Mormon.) Spoon Me is already a media darling - here's a video clip from ABC news:
10/5/07 - New Utah yogurt shop puts environment first
Alexandra is back from a month in China. Here are some of the photos... there's more in the official album.
While we are usually annoyed by the obnoxious product placement on our
favorite TV show, Top Chef, we freaked out (in a good way) when our new
Glad
Simply Cooking Microwave Steaming Bags took center stage. These super space age bags are perfect for
steaming veggies -- just fill, zap and
serve.
No waiting for water to boil, no messy pots and pans to clean. And according to the Man from Glad in this painfully cheesy video demo, you can even use them make
"tasty omelets and
fluffy desserts."
We're continually amazed that
people trademark names that are spelled differently
than they sound. In today's word-of-mouth world, what you hear is
what you
type in your browser, so it's imperative that your name is easy and
intuitive to spell. Case in point: Takkle.com, a high school sports
website.
When Jeff says, "Yo Steve, check out
Takkle.com," Steve hears "tackle" and when he
types it in his browser, he lands at Bass Pro, a fishing tackle website. So Takkle loses a customer and Steve thinks Jeff is a
dork. During a panel discussion at the
recent MashUp teen marketing conference, Alexandra asked Takkle CEO David Birnbaum if, in hindsight, he would have chosen a name that was easier to spell. He said he would stick with Takkle. Proving Alexandra's point, RockYou.com founder Lance Tokuda jumped in and said
that
RockYou loses
thousands of
customers a day who type in "rocku." We wonder how often the Takkle guy has to say "that's Takkle with two
K's," when he isn't sporting a Takkle
baseball cap that he can point to.
We were
asked to create a tagline for a new investing service called Portfolia, which doesn't exactly stand out in a sea of Wall Street websites. So
we convinced them to let us rename the company. This easy-to-use site lets you check out the
actual portfolios, watchlists and real-time
trades
of top
investors and your family and friends. Plus you can see how you stack up against
others, which is fun unless you suck in the market. And you can do it all safely, securely and anonymously. For free. It's
cake. And that's what we named it - Cake. If you're an investor, check out the
alpha version of this "social investing revolution."
We have a lot of food on our plates right now
including
naming healthy snacks for kids and two new Star-kist products which we
have
to keep under wraps for now. Sorry,
Charlie. About 60% of our current naming gigs are
for
products that don't make you fat or drunk - like software, schools, and
sportswear. We're doing name explorations for
sound pioneer THX,
Knowledge Learning Corporation, a luxury goods retailer, and lots of
Web 2.0 start-ups. We'll let you know when we can let the monkey out of the bag.