4-6-07mill

Greetings!

As creators of company and product names, along with taglines and slogans, the Pepper team is always interested in learning the stories regarding "the classic" brands. It's a sense of history, curiosity and reverence.

This month I would like to share a few that I recently ran across. For instance, most people have heard of why a Frisbeee is called a Frisbee. In the 1870s, William Russell Frisbie opened a bakery called the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His lightweight pie tins were embossed with the family name. In the mid-1940s, students at Yale University tossed the empty pie tins as a game.

And maybe a few that you didn’t know about...

A picture of an Indian chief was on the first bottles of Coppertone, accompanied by the slogan "Don't be a Paleface." Little Miss Coppertone replaced him in 1953—a politically correct move that was over 50 years ahead of the Chief Illiniwek controversy.

Harley Procter (Procter & Gamble), considering a long list of new names for his white soap, was inspired one Sunday morning in church when the pastor read Psalm 45: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." OK, so that is not the coolest story, but I can't help but sympathize with how it probably made the marketing guys real happy that they made up a long list of names!

In 1921 Henry Ford wanted to find a use for the growing piles of wood scraps from the production of his Model Ts. Ford learned of a process for turning the wood scraps into charcoal briquets, and one of his relatives, E.G. Kingsford, helped select the site for Ford's charcoal plant. The company town which sprang up around the site was named in Kingsford's honor, and later, Ford Charcoal was renamed the Kingsford Product Company in 1950. I need a rich relative.

Miller beer was named after the company founder Frederick Miller. In 1903, when Miller's son, Carl, sought a new name for the light-colored pilsner, his wife's uncle, Ernst Miller, chanced upon a building down in New Orleans called High Life Cigars. The Miller Brewing Company paid $25,000 for the factory and the right to use the name. Good thing it wasn't home to the Low Life Flop House.

Inventor Hugh Moore's paper cup factory was located next door to the Dixie Doll Company in the same downtown loft building. The word Dixie printed on the company's door reminded Moore of the story he had heard as a boy about "dixies," the ten dollar bank notes printed with the French word dix ("ten") in big letters across the face of the bill by a New Orleans bank renowned for its strong currency in the early 1800s. The "dixies," Moore decided, had the qualities he wanted people to associate with his paper cups, and with permission from his neighbor, he used the name for his cups. Good thing they weren't five dollar notes—five in french is "cinq"!

I know it's a risk in sharing these stories with all of you. They make it sound so easy. What I didn't share are all the knucklehead moves made by the companies that crashed and burned. If you want to do a naming study, and don't have a great building next door that you can borrow from, please don't hesitate to call the pros.

Tim Padgett
tim@peppergroup.com

“When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.”

—Leo Burnett

“Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness.”

—Leo Burnett

Let’s face it. The Internet has officially taken over the world, and these days, you can’t turn on your TV, empty your mailbox or drive down the street without getting asked to check out somebody’s “great, brand new, amazing, and totally unique” website.

So how do you cut past all the clutter and convince your target that your website is truly worth visiting? With spicy marketing of course!

Recently, Schirmer Engineering, a leader in the fire and life safety engineering industry, officially completed a two-year overhaul of their website, www.SchirmerEng.com, and came to Pepper Group looking for a creative way to drive traffic to their newly revamped site.

After a little brainstorming, and a whole lot of planning, we were ready to go!

Schirmer mailed oversized postcards to over 8,200 clients, prospects, employees and affiliates announcing the launch of their new website—but this was no average postcard! Utilizing variable printing, each mailer personally addressed its recipient by name, and invited them to visit their own custom web page, which had been pre-programmed right into the new Schirmer website. Not only would visitors have the opportunity to explore the new site, and sign up for Schirmer’s up-and-coming e-newsletter, but they could also use a detachable decoder found on their mailer to unscramble an image and reveal whether they were the instant winner of a brand new iPod!

Overall, this website announcement piece was extremely successful. The personalized web pages, decoder and contest definitely peaked interest with our target, driving 1,427 people (17.4% of mailer recipients) to visit their own unique web page. While there, a notable 822 of those web visitors (over 57%) also signed up for the Schirmer e-newsletter.

Congratulations to Schirmer on a fantastic new website, and a very successful launch.

Mindbender: End of an Era, or a New Beginning?

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Bake Sale next week, Garage Sale the week after and don't miss our Car Wash.

Anna's Deal: Globetrotting

Konnichiwa, readers! (Or in other words, Hello!)

As you may have guessed, I recently had the amazing opportunity to visit Japan. I spent last week attending an entrepreneurial conference in Tokyo, the de facto capital of the country. The cherry blossoms were in full aromatic bloom, flourishing in dramatic contrast to the maze of concrete buildings that served as their backdrop. But, then, Tokyo seemed to be a city of contrasts.

Take, for instance, the couple that likely just finished the traditional (and healthy) breakfast of fish and miso soup and set out for their morning jog…each with a lit cigarette dangling between their lips. Or our keynote speaker, an incredibly successful Japanese entrepreneur, professional and composed in representing his company as he delivered a speech on venture capital. By the end of the night, an incredibly successful party animal, unreserved and boisterous in representing his country in a drinking contest as he delivered a hearty toast atop a dining room chair, “Kampai!” But, perhaps the contrast that struck me most of all was the mystery surrounding the torafugu, or Tiger Blowfish. How could something so paralyzing to the human body be so delectable at the same time?

This is the question I pondered while dining at Torafugutei, a restaurant specializing in the culinary preparation of the dangerous fish. While in Tokyo, we had the privilege of being hosted by one of Japan’s most prominent restaurateurs, Daichi Sakamoto, owner of Tokyo Ichiban Foods Co., Ltd., a Japan based company principally engaged in the operation of these specialty restaurants. Diachi, or “D” as he liked to be called, was generous enough to invite us into one of his restaurants for an elaborate lunch (and countless bottles of sake.) For me, the highlight of this excursion was the preparation and tasting of the aforementioned torafugu.

Torafugu is the most prestigious (costing $50-$140 a fish) edible species of blowfish—and the most fatal. The fish houses lethal amounts of venom in its internal organs and it takes just milligrams of the toxin to bring you to your death. Consequently, only specially licensed chefs can prepare and sell fugu to the public. Our chef, who has been doing this for at least 15 years, was an expert (thank goodness). In less than 2 minutes, he beheaded, gutted, cleaned and portioned a live torafugu. The meat of the fish was so fresh, that as he rinsed it off and set it aside, its nerves were still twitching.

You’d think that witnessing this execution would be enough to deter me from trying the dish. That, and the knowledge that a number of people die from blowfish consumption each year. Fugu poison paralyzes the muscles while you remain completely conscious, eventually dying from asphyxiation. But, this opportunity was too rare to pass up. And I’m glad I didn’t. Despite its ferocious reputation, our dish of torafugu sushi was anything but. Delicately sliced and beautifully arranged as a crane—a symbol of good fortune in Japan—the meat was mild and the flavor delightful. Washed down with blowfish fin sake (yes, there was an actual fin in the glass), it easily topped my list of favorite meals.

So, next time you’re in this city of contrasts, wondering how the constant activity of traffic rushing past giant video screens of flashing lights can still support the concept of Zen, or how 500 year old bonsai trees fare in the new world of Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot, stop by one of D’s restaurants and ask for the torafugu. I guarantee this delicious culinary contrast of poison and pleasure is definitely worth, at least, a try.

Itadaki-masu! (Bon Appetite!)

Next Stop: South Africa

Anna Jung
anna@peppergroup.com