Month: October 2011

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Not again!

Okay, who’s the wiseguy who sneaked this one through?




Yes, it’s a doozy. Have I not said before that (a) you shouldn’t use weight-related terminology when marketing to women; and (b) you should check Urban Dictionary before settling on a product name or trademark, particularly when your colleagues are snickering as you proudly announce the new Chubby Stick? (Did they even look at the product?)

I once again turn to Arrested Development for validation of my discomfort with this name, and shall let the words of Tobias Funke illustrate the magnitude of this naming decision.



I’d say they blew it.

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Drinking with my ladybrain IV

This one’s pretty shameless. I can only imagine the tired marketing conversation that birthed “Little Black Dress” as a wine brand targeted to women.  Fact is, though, the wine’s not bad. Varietally correct, decent fruit, good with food. You can even see here that we managed to consume about half of the bottle:




But for the life of me, I cannot fathom what would prompt the marketers of a product targeted to women to put a wire hanger on the label. Mommie Dearest is the least of it – the wire hanger is, more poignantly, a potent symbol of illegal abortion, and the pain and indignity women suffered before Roe v. Wade. 

I’m all for pinot noir and little black dresses. I’m also for remembering that a woman’s right to reproductive freedom shouldn’t be taken for granted. I just don’t think that those are two great tastes that taste great together.

In honor of that right, I’ve just contributed to Planned Parenthood. Because I want to keep those wire hangers as history and a bad memory.

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Drinking with my ladybrain, part 3

My toy poodle hasn’t been featured recently in these pixels (hey, I can’t really say “in these pages,” now, can I?) but she’s always either on my mind or at my feet. I recently let my daughters take a stab assisting me with Ladybrain shopping at Incredible Wine & Spirits, one of our wine shopping mainstays. In loving tribute to our Reggie, they quickly zeroed in on this one:




While in most circumstances I’ll say “French? Poodle? Wine? What could be bad?” I’ll make an exception here, and say merely that if “I love the label” is your main criterion for purchase (and you love poodles too), this may be your wine. If you like good wine, however, this may not be your wine. It has less acid than I expect to see in a California Sauvignon Blanc, and its fruit fades quickly. I’ve drunk worse, though, and could see this being serviceable on a hot summer afternoon.

However, the back label gives me serious concern. A poem, “by” the wine’s apparent mascot, Sark, (Sark?), contains this stanza:

Get Petted, Sleep Alot.

Did the wavy or dotted lines under “alot” in your word processing program not tip you off? My dog, thank you very much, can spell. In English and French, bien sur.





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Either way, you win

We are training our trademark specialists young. My 15 (and a half!) year-old spotted this cleverly-named Oreo variety at Target today: 




Although I could not be enticed to purchase the cookies, I appreciate both my daughter’s eagle eye and Nabisco’s excellent name for this variation on the Oreo theme.