Hot Cross Buns.

A couple of days ago, I was in a grocery store and ran across hot cross buns in the bakery section.

I don't recall seeing them before. The children's nursey rhyme flooded back to me. 

Then I wondered, what is the tradition behind them?

Some say they were part of pagan spring festivals and later given the cross by monks wanting to give Christian meaning to the the tradition. Other accounts speak of an English widow, whose son went off to sea and she vowed to bake him a bun every Good Friday. When he didn't return, she continued to bake a hot cross bun for him each year and hung it in the bakery window in good faith that he would some day return to her. The tradition remained after her passing.

In many historically Christian countries, hot cross buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, with the cross standing as a symbol of the crucifixion.

That explains their late March/early April appearance.

Happy Easter!

Shock Value.

Using a shocking statistic or an incongruent image is nothing new in marketing. 

But, unlike the boy who cried wolf, shock must be done sparingly and with finesse.

The print and TV ads, which appear to be about texting and perfume are really about preventing cervical cancer.  They acknowledge their tactic at the outset:  "Maybe it's unfair to get your attention this way, but nothing is fair about cervical cancer." 

This is how it's done effectively:  http://www.helppreventcervicalcancer.com/.

Flaunting Tradition?

Maker's Mark has a long and distinctive history of effective advertising in print mediums ranging from magazine ads to billboards.

The bourbon has solidly hewed to its tradition as a gentlemen's sip.

So what to make of their prominent new billboards with two words:  Friend Us.

Does it weaken the overall brand image?  Is it eye-catching for all the wrong reasons? Can Maker's Mark reach a younger audience this way?

What do you think?

Getting it Wrong.

Pairing spokepeople with causes is tricky business. Ditto celebrites doubling as award show hosts.

Case in point: Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) as emcee of the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards.

In advertisments, he comes across not just as an inappropriate choice but slightly creepy (really? a middle-aged man grinding his groin at the camera?).

It's worth remembering that there are lots of ways messaging can go awry.

And worth remembering that a professional with an outside perspective can avert that.

Welcome, Popsicle Weather!

Happy Spring!

A Cool Cat's Writing Tips.

Remember Jack Kerouac, Beat novelist, poet and iconoclast?

He set down 30 tips for writing. Some may reinvent your writing; others may simply confound you.

I especally like #2, 18 and 29.

1.Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2.Submissive to everything, open, listening
3.Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4.Be in love with yr life
5.Something that you feel will find its own form
6.Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7.Blow as deep as you want to blow
8.Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9.The unspeakable visions of the individual
10.No time for poetry but exactly what is
11.Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12.In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13.Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14.Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15.Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16.The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17.Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18.Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19.Accept loss forever
20.Believe in the holy contour of life
21.Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22.Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23.Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24.No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25.Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26.Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27.In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28.Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29.You're a Genius all the time
30.Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Russet Beauty. And an Almond-Shaped Face.

Judith Newman, writing in the April issue of O magazine, interviews Norris Church Mailer about the publication of her book A Ticket to the Circus.

Mailer was blessed with a "russet beauty," according to Newman. Presumbably, this was one of the charms that attracted her husband, Norman Mailer, philanderer and novelist.

It's also a marvelous way to describe a redhead.

I was also struck by Newman's description of the male Mailer in the accompanying photograph as having "an expression of lordly possession."

Just last night, my sweetie called me beautiful.

How? I asked.

"Your almond-shaped face," he replied.

For years, I just thought my face was narrow.

His assessment was a new and welcome perspective. It changed my outlook. And it earned him some brownie points.

These are reminders that right words delight, conveying details that are spot-on and memorable.