wheels going 'round

Do you ever think about trucks?

I do. But that's likely because I live in Arkansas. Highway arteries of America in fully oxygenated swing.

Flatbed trucks stacked with hay bales.

Trucks loaded high with chickens in cages. Only takes one trip riding behind one with feathers flying into your windshield to realize one trip is one trip too many.

Pickup trucks, come one, come all. No truck too big, no truck too small. Doors optional. Capacity unlimited.

You say you want to leave that truck on the side of the road? Go right ahead, sir.

You also want to leave your friend in the median with one truck and pick him up with another a few hours later? Unorthodox, but I like your style.

And, of course, the Walmart trucks. Ubiquitous. See spark run. See spark swerve. See spark honk.

So I've been thinking a lot about trucks.

I summer in Maine.

I summer in Maine.

Well, at least this summer I do, and I’m darn happy about it especially now that the sun has started to shine. It's a place where fresh air and good seafood and a bunch of other cliches come easy. As for my time here, it's not a WASP-y "I summer in Maine" so much as it's a refuge from DC and its swampy June-August abyss. I'll be heading back in about a month but for now, I revel in the Pine Tree State.

While here, life has thankfully slowed down for a few months and I've had some time to hear myself think. I spent this past year in business school and I finally feel as though I am beginning to make sense of life as an MBA student. I went back to school to learn more about business, naturally, but to hone in on marketing specifically and to transition from a nonprofit-focused career to one based in the private sector but with an interest in corporate responsibility and philanthropy, preventive health/living well, public-private partnerships, and a few other things I'll save for later.

Brands are everywhere, some ubiquitous and others fiercely regional, and I enjoy looking at them under the academic microscope, as an amateur analyst and in my daily consumer life. Sometimes I think of a brand as the center of a bullseye with concentric circles rippling out, because one brand will often trigger notions of others. When you think of "Maine", for example, it's not a corporate or nonprofit brand but most certainly qualifies as a brand in that it conjures words and images in your mind, offers a promise and delivers a fairly consistent product to each consumer that experiences its product or services. Tangibles like lobster, pine trees, salt water and snow pop up, but so do emotions, qualities or phrases --

rugged

nostalgic

classic

'the way life should be'

salty

big tides

all-American

natural

I'd even imagine other brands (L.L. Bean, for sure, and perhaps Stonewall Kitchen, Shipyard, Geary's, Ray LaMontagne, Stephen King) pop into your head and with those names, all of the connotations that accompany them, creating that outward ripple of attributes.

I love to watch brands grow and am always trying to understand why some fly and others fail.

What are your favorite brands? And why?

Google Hearts Brand Management

Did you know that Google maintains a CPG blog?

http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/

I did not, but now I do. It's not the most robust thing they've ever done, but I'd say it's further testament to the fact that they are e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.

curiosity killed the cat

The other day, a friend told me that I ask more questions than anyone she's ever met. I suppose, then, then it's all the more appropriate that this blog is all about being curious. I may end up dead like the cat, but at least I'll know that I kicked the bucket in valiant pursuit of knowledge. There's just SO MUCH out there to soak up, it overwhelms me. Ivory tower intellectual I am not, but I love to read and I love to meet people who are so much smarter than I'll ever be and don't want to pop me one when I make them talk to me about life.

My latest learning includes random facts about the Graham family, of Washington Post fame. More specifically, I am reading a bio of Katharine Graham--what a firecracker. I can only hope to be so fiesty and firey through the end of my days.

Things I Have Learned, Part I. I think this whole exercise is going to be my written interpretation of found art-- that is, useless information and/or everything totally not pertinent to anything directly that I come across in my travels, strewn throughout as it may be, and artfully assembled in one location to be examined, contemplated, harumphed with one eyebrow raised, and then muttered about as total crap someone just wasted brain cells on as the world carried on with the next item on its to do list. Eh, at least I didn't suck $20 out of you with delusions of a museum-quality display.

And, because DC is already part of this post and well, why not drag politics into the ring -- www.redblueproject.org -- check out the commercials.

still more curious

A bit of lag time between this and the first post has passed, largely because I have been trying to figure out why I've decided to virtually spraypaint all over Al Gore's brilliant creation, the Internet.

After more than a little time went by, I realized that it doesn't really matter, so here I am on the easebackin.

the inaugural...

I think that the best way to start this blog off is by connecting it to some writing that I actually do find relevant and that also makes me think about the way life should be, among other things. That, and my respect for the Midwest managed to increase after discovering Garrison Keillor, which I'll be the first to say is more than a little difficult to do: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/deskofgk/2005/old_scout/.

I guess as long as I haven't come up with my idea for the Next Great American Novel, then I have to be content discovering other people who either have or who have managed to produce something in words that I find worthwhile. Or maybe I'll just go the Keillor route and start up an old-time Yankee version of what he's done with his radio show. I think it could be quite the production, in a good old-fashioned sort of way. Fireside Chat, the remix.