Falling In Love, Again - 07/05

In the course of preparing a story about the Design Guys that you will find inside, creative director Steve Sikora inadvertently set just the right tone for our 42nd annual special report on print design. Sikora, whose firm was asked by a major mill to help develop a new premium paper, said of the project, “One of our objectives was to get graphic designers to fall back in love again with paper. Paper and ink are our only working materials. But we tend to think past the materials and treat paper only as a substrate upon which to apply images. This is particularly true of young designers coming out of school, who are so overwhelmed with technology that the simple basics of ink on paper is sometimes lost to them. Despite pronouncements during the 1990s to the contrary, we have certainly not stopped using paper. We use it more than ever. Let’s be selective about it. As the end products of design become increasingly ethereal and ephemeral, paper and print has a reassuring physicality to it. Warmth, texture, weight, even a fragrance. We want designers to embrace it and learn to love it all over again.”


Steroids, Strikes and Sports Brands

Once in a long while, arrogance and stupidity get their just reward. Proving the point, a new consumer survey finds that clothing labels and logos of major league sports teams are becoming less important in purchasing decisions. According to the fourth annual Brand Keys Fashion Index survey, which asks consumers how important various brand labels and logos are to them, “favorite sports team” — the perennial leader among men and women in all age segments — showed a substantial decline in influence. Leading the decline are Major League Baseball and the National League Hockey, both of which fell out of the Top 10 brand loyalty list for the first time. Comments Brand Keys head Robert Passikoff, “If you disappoint your consumers, you’re bound to see disappointing returns... The MLB steroid scandal did a lot of damage to that brand, and the NHL is on strike and did not even show up. You can’t disappoint your fans much more than that!” Passikoff adds that “loyalty strength as low as we’re seeing for baseball and hockey will decrease both television viewership and purchases of league-licensed products. Some of this can be offset by marketing, but only if marketers address the right fan loyalty values in the right way.” Shockingly, Major League Baseball even fell below the National Basketball Association — the poster child for dysfunctional sports leagues — in the rankings.

What else would he drive?

Speaking of the power of brand consistency and loyalty, did you hear that George Molchan recently passed away at the age of 82? For 36 years, Mr. Molchan was the Oscar Meyer mascot, traveling from town to town in the 27-foot Weinermobile, of course, and appearing at events, parades and supermarket openings. A former bookkeeper, and by all accounts a wonderful person, he won the “Little Oscar” role after another diminutive friend, Meinhardt Rababe, a munchkin in “The Wizard of Oz,” persuaded Mr. Molchan to audition. At the graveside in Merrillville, Indiana, 50 mourners sang a chorus of the Oscar Meyer jingle. (Admit it, you know all the words to it by heart, and not just the Wiener jingle but the Bologna song as well.) They then blew short farewell blasts on a hot dog-shaped whistle while the Weinermobile sat nearby under a leafy tree. Nice touch.