Top of Mind Thursday Memo Archive

Top of Mind Thursday – August 11, 2022: The Best Laid Plans

On Tuesday, I flew across the country to attend the wedding of a close family friend. Leverage2Market Logo

But yesterday, I started feeling unwell. By today, I had a full-fledged fever to go with body achiness. I’ve tested negative for COVID twice, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t COVID–we just don’t know yet.

Here’s the thing: I’ve stayed ultra-cautious for 2.5 years. It’s not clear where I could have picked this up. I stay masked whenever I’m out among people, and I was masked through the flight and in the airports on either end. Still, my seatmate on the flight wasn’t masked. The flight attendants weren’t masked. The chiropractor I saw on the weekend wasn’t masked either.

With four shots of vaccine, if this is COVID, it should be mild. But it’s still not going to be a lot of fun. The current variant does not seem to be susceptible to the vaccines, and it’s highly contagious. At the same time, today, the CDC lifted many of its recommendations for isolating with COVID.

Why? Because the public is tired of the virus. We’re tired of having to adjust our lives for this virus. We’re tired of not being able to control where we can go, who we can see, what we can do, etc. We don’t want to listen to the medical providers or government agencies because we don’t like what they’re telling us.

But just because we’re done with the virus doesn’t mean the virus is done with us. And deciding something’s no longer important or relevant doesn’t mean it goes away.

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Top of Mind Thursday – August 4, 2022: Hitting it Out of the Park

This week, the sports world lost a giant–someone who never played a professional sport, but hadLeverage2Market Logo an outsized influence on the game of baseball.

Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, who announced Dodgers games for 67 seasons, passed away at the age of 94. Scully had the longest tenure as a broadcaster with a single team in the history of professional sports and may have been the greatest baseball broadcaster of all time.

Scully began his broadcast career covering college football–and was dedicated to remaining impartial, even as other announcers would blatantly promote the home team. His Dodgers run started on radio in Brooklyn and carried through the 2016 season in Los Angeles. During that time, he called both regular season and playoff games, and appeared on ABC, CBC, and NBC–as well as on the Dodgers own network.

Living near the Polo Grounds in New York, Scully grew up a NY Giants fan. Fittingly, his final career broadcast was a Dodgers-Giants game in October 2016 in San Francisco, where his commentary was simulcast by both teams.

His final message:

You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know in my heart that I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me, and I’ll miss our time together more than I can say. But you know what? There will be a new day and eventually a new year. And when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, rest assured, once again it will be “time for Dodger baseball.” So this is Vin Scully wishing you a very pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.

Rest in peace, Vin Scully.


Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.

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linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com

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Top of Mind Thursday – July 28, 2022: It’s Not Easy Being Green

This week, Coca-Cola announced that next week they’re replacing the green plastic packaging used forLeverage2Market Logo Sprite for the last 61 years with clear bottles.

Evidently, clear plastic bottles are more likely to be recycled into new bottles with less waste, so this is an environmentally-driven change. At the same time, Coke is brightening up the lime green label and plastic cap (which will stay green for now).

This raises the question of why clear liquids seem to be packaged in green bottles.

Many wines, including cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and merlot, have traditionally been packaged in green bottles–because the color limits exposure to light, which can oxide the wine. Beer began to be packaged in green bottles during WWII, when brown bottles were in short demand–though it’s now known the green color can expose the brew to UV light that can cause the liquid inside to smell bad.

Coke’s original patented bottle was green, because the original formula included minerals that gave the bottle a green hue. Returnable glass Coke bottles were discontinued in 2012, in favor of disposable/recyclable containers.

Sprite has built a brand identity around greenness–including the old commercials that talked about lymon (a combination of lemon and lime). Will consumers still reach for that bottle of Sprite now that’s it’s in a clear bottle? Will they grab bottled water instead? Or will they consider that clear Sprite bottles are actually more green than the green ones were?

Clearly, it’s not easy being green in 2022.


Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.

Marketing Above the Noise.

Download a FREE chapter now.

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linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com

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Top of Mind Thursday – July 21, 2022: A Rose By Any Other Name

If Pennsylvania had a state condiment, there’s no doubt it would be Heinz Ketchup. Leverage2Market Logo

Pennsylvanians are fanatic about their ketchup (which must be Heinz–anything else is simply catsup). Heinz has been headquartered near Pittsburgh, PA for more than 16o years, and nothing says Heinz like those two tall ketchup bottles on display at Heinz Field (home of the Pittsburgh Steelers).

But a financial services firm called Acrisure outbid Heinz for the naming rights, meaning this will now be called Acrisure Stadium. In Los Angeles, what for 22 years was the Staples Center is now Crypto.com Arena. Then there’s Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, formerly the Key Arena.

Aci–what? Crypto-who? Climate–huh? These names, don’t roll off the tongue.

Those of us in the Bay Area remember what we knew and loved/hated as Candlestick had a short afterlife as 3Com Park–until it was torn down and 3Com itself disappeared. Then there’s the home of the San Francisco Giants, which since 2000 has been called Pac Bell Park, SBC Park, AT&T Park, and now Oracle Park.

The question is whether the little-known companies who paid hundreds of millions of dollars for naming rights will ever see a return on their investment. The difference between the Heinz/Staples/Oracle/Chases of the world and the Acrisure/Crypto/Climate Pledge/3Coms is that the former were household names to start. The latter bet an awful lot of money on their ability to move brand loyalty from a well-loved brand to something no one’s ever heard of before.

Maybe they’ll be successful. Or maybe in a few years, they’ll find themselves in quite a pickle, wondering if they should have spent their marketing dollars elsewhere.

 

 


Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.

Marketing Above the Noise.

Download a FREE chapter now.

What are people saying?

Buy now.

 


Let us help your business rise to the top.

linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com

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