I missed Scott Alexander's phone call this afternoon. His voice on the message was somber and monotone. "Big Al," he cracked. "The legend is gone. Scott Muni is dead."
Growing up in a small Connecticut suburb of New York City I spent hours and hours listening to Scott Muni on WNEW-FM. The low rumble and deep timbre of his voice flowed through my headphones as I learned and listened about the Rolling STones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead and many more rock legends of the 70's and 80's.
You might call Scott the founding father of alternative radio. There's no question that WNEW-FM was responsible for creating a new format, a new genre of radio with Scott Muni its leader and icon. It was Scott who moved many of us from the top-40 bubble gum jingle of AM radio to the underground. The ethereal and mystic sounds of FM.
My adolescent affinity and passion for music never faded. I can still hear Scott's's voice today. I later worked as a DJ in Hartford, Connecticut and Syracuse, New York. His cadence, casualness and immense knowledge of music influenced me and fueled my desire to learn about music and to fulfill my dream of being an FM DJ.
It's sad that the days of DJs like Scott seem to be past us. Now we're pumped generic and homogenized payola pop courtesy of ClearChannel. Or, numb to the sterile corporate rock we turn to Internet Radio or satellite services like XM or Sirius.
I do have hope. And maybe we'll see Scott's influence rise in these alternatives to broadcast radio.
I'll miss you Scott. But your voice is in my ears forever.
I was chatting with a friend the other day and we were both lamenting how the traditional news media seems only to be capable of covering three stories simultaneously. And if you look at the past two weeks you can easily spot one of those stories.
The hurricane(s). Good god. Have you ever seen more coverage weather? Doubt it. The media loves a good weather story. It will preempt any and all news. And we saw that last week.
So, what else dominated the headlines last week? Oh, former president Clinton's bypass surgery. For media's sake! This is a basic surgery that is done in virtually every hospital every day of the year. It's nothing. It's practically out patient these days. But boy we have to bring in experts, chat about the old goat's diet and fast-food palate. Give me a break.
Oh. Yeah. Then we've got the campaign. Forged documents, slow boats to Viet Nam and some long lost military records. More experts. More chatter on TV, talk radio and the rags. What was perhaps the most alarming story of last week? The school massacre in Baslan. I think it got about 60 seconds tag in between experts discussing Clinton's surgery. Forget Uganda, Indonesia's elections or another flood story in Panama. Hell, we even have new virus-carrying mosquitoes in California. Thank god we haven't yet endured more Michael Jackson, Laci Peterson or worse. But perhaps I spoke too soon.
I did it. Made a promise to myself many moons ago that I'd tighten up my Spanish proficiency. After all, it's likely that more than 50% of the Southern California population speak Spanish. I can get by. But I really want to dig in and become fluent. Conversational.
Did what? I signed up for a "Speed Spanish" class at a local community college. At $59 not a bad investment. It takes place once a week for five weeks. Each class is three hours. Not sure if 15 hours will get me where I want to be. But I'm doing it.
Where do i want to be? Well, truthfully I'm taking this class not only to fulfill my own promise, but also for what may turn out to be an extended journey through South America sometime next year. Stay tuned. My TravelBlog always gets interesting.
Oh, yeah. Travel. I've scheduled a quick trip to Portugal with my good friend Tim. You may remember reading of our antics last fall when we roamed the amber and umber hills of Tuscany in search of the great grape. This time I think we'll be looking for Port. Perhaps Sherry. We'll see.
I'm thankful the heat has cooled here in Southern California. September 15th. For most an uneventful day. Unless you're required to sign tax returns for a corporation. Yes. The 15th is the last possible deadline for filing a corporate tax return.
So a casual meeting with my accountant, glide my pen across some government forms and a club sandwich and lemonade while overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Not a bad midday activity.
Until I decided to leave the parking lot.
Seems an elderly lady backing out of a handicapped parking space was a bit engrossed in conversation with her younger friend -- who looks healthy at 80 years old. Though the damage to her spanking new Mercedes was a bit upsetting.
"Well, if your car is ok I won't have to tell my son," she tells me excitedly as she runs her hand over my bumper. "I don't see anything wrong here," she explains while squinting. I advise her to put on her glasses.
A scrape and a scratch. She's shaking a bit. Nervous about insurance. Her son. And who knows what else. I advise her on how to get her car fixed sensibly and ask for her phone number.
Damage so slight. She's 81. I'll live with the scrape. And the old ladies can enjoy the rest of their day.
I just hope they'll look the next time they back out of a parking space.
It's Tuesday night. At home I sit alone. A simple chicken dinner with vegetables and a dinner salad. The dilemma floors me when I open the door to my wine cellar. Wine cellar. Hah. I like that word. It's a temperature controlled unit (one of two in my home) that keeps the delectable fermented bottles of grape at the precise temperature. Heat hurts. Cool is good. For wine, that is.
I feel guilty if I open a good or great bottle of wine for just me. Selfish. Good and great wine are meant for sharing. I pull out shelf after shelf of wine bottles. Some red. Others white. Even a pink -- or two. "Too good.... Nah, saving that for so and so... too good." What the hell. I've got nearly 200 bottles of wine here and not one I can drink alone? Just me, the bottle and my simple dinner?
Then I spot the Arrowood. At $60 a bottle it's not what I'd call a Tuesday night wine. If I remember it correctly it's stellar. the 1997 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Got 97 points or something like that -- for those who care. But the insanity of my warped rationale doesn't really hit me -- yet. Oh, I can open that bottle. I know I have at least three more in my "true" cellar -- off site where I can't be tempted by the seeds of desire. I'll just open that. At least I can taste how it's doing -- how it's aging. Alas, my Tuesday night wine decision dilemma solved.
But I need something to make my dinner. A quick jaunt to the local grocer and zoom back again.
With olive oil in hand I bolt toward's the registers. Then I slam on my brakes as if a bicycle just pulled out in front of me. Screeeeeeech. Well I'll be. Yes. It is a bicycle. A red bicycle. Rather Red Bicyclette -- a new wine imported from France. Cases of Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet stacked 3 or 4 high. The price? Only $7.99 (the website is not up yet though a cute animation and registration form promises to let us all know when the site is live)
Truth is, this IS French wine. But I can't be fooled like many who will stop in wonder and gaze at the rather hip, contemporary label. Somewhat muted yet primary yellow with accents of blue and red, I grabbed the Syrah, released the brakes and idled toward the registers once again.
So why did I opt for a $7 bottle of French village wine instead of fulfilling my whim and tantalizing my palate on a great Sonoma $60 cabernet? This is no ordinary French wine. And that's not to say it's extraordinary either. This wine has a unique pedigree. A very well known pedigree in the states. Some might find offense with the word "pedigree" urging words like trailer trash, wrong side of the tracks or even worse. But I won't go there.
This French wine is made by, or for Gallo.
You know the company. Famed for its Thunderbird, Night Train and Hearty Burgundy. The Modesto giant who fought with Jess Jackson of Kendall Jackson over the use of a grape leaf as a brand icon when it introduced Turning Leaf several years ago and in the process practically pushed Jackson's wines off the grocery shelves. Yes. E & J Gallo, is behind this bold new brand launch.
My expectations were well managed. I had prior knowledge of Gallo's wacky drift into French wine. Wacky because who'd think an American icon (good or bad) would enter into a venture and market French wine at a time when American sentiment to France is at an all time low. Forget the Statue of Liberty. Let's talk the liquid of love, life and seduction. Wine.
But Gallo went there.
The wine 2003 Red Bicyclette Syrah Vin de Pays D'OC has pleasant aromas of strawberry, spice, floral notes and white pepper. On the palate its mild acidity and spicy flavors meld with bright fruit up front. But then the flavors fade and disappear. Not a complex wine. And not extraordinary. Not bad. And at $7.99, not $60. 87 points.
But what stopped me at the store was the story of the brand's development. Gallo is a clever and shrewd marketer. Adhering to the P&G model of buy mine or mine, there are a number of brands on the shelves that most consumers have no clue belong to Gallo. Brands like Turning Leaf, Frei BRothers, MacMurry Ranch and more. Many of these wines are very good. I'm not sure if this is Gallo's first partnership or marketing venture involving French wine, but the story is fascinating.
Writing in the Modesto Bee, Tim Moran explored the making of a brand the E&J Gallo way:
[...] the idea for a French wine came from Gallo Co-President Joseph Gallo, said the company s vice president of marketing, Gerry Glasgow. Joe came into my office one day and asked, Where do we go next? What do you think of France? Glasgow said.
Glasgow and five other Gallo marketing executives hopped on a plane, and spent 10 days in France. It was a week after the Iraq war had been declared, and others in the company questioned their sanity, Glasgow said. Consumer reactions to France are ambivalent, Glasgow said. They view France as the birthplace of wine, and remember the French paradox pointing to the health benefits of wine.
But they also think of arrogance, rudeness and conceit, said Iain Douglas, Gallo vice president of marketing particularly in the cities of France. The French even feel that about Paris, he said. The consumer images of the French countryside are different warmth and inviting small villages[...]
Gallo could have simply purchased bulk French wine, throw a fancy label on it and use its marketing clout to gain prime distribution. But they took an approach that would ideally give the brand longevity. It's about the product... That is, balancing the brand's image with the juice in the bottle.
[...] a brand image means little without a quality product, however, and Gallo approaches the development of wines with a sophistication few others in the industry can match. Borrowing techniques from the fragrance and food industries, Gallo uses a panel of trained sensory evaluators to create a map of the characteristics of a wine varietal.
The panel will taste hundreds of chardonnays from around the world, for instance, to identify perhaps 35 or 40 distinct styles of that varietal. Each wine style is then mapped for different characteristics acidity, oak, body, palate, finish. Every possible description to pass on to the winemaker, Douglas said.
Then consumers are brought in from around the country to taste five wines a night, and rate them on a scale of one to nine, with nine being the highest possible score, Glasgow said. We end up with consumer likability scores, Glasgow said, across many demographics age, income, level of wine sophistication. Those scores are combined with the sensory panel information to make a three-dimensional map of how the various styles match up with consumer preferences[...]
Some of my wine brethren may find this rather unsettling. But let's face it, we all have our preferences for the way things taste or feel on our body -- brand preference or not. Take toilet paper. Ah. The glamor. But similar tests and methodology are used to develop a fine, soft and soothing tissue that will -- okay. I won't go there. Soft drinks, cars, menus even at high end restaurants. All are subject to such testing to a certain degree.
But most fascinating to me is how Gallo named the product.
[...] The Gallo executives traveled, observed and took in the ambiance of the southern France countryside. They took 5,000 pictures, which were brought back to the Modesto winery and pinned up in a room, Glasgow said. The pictures were studied for images or symbols that would represent the French countryside for consumers. Red bicycles seemed to recur in the pictures, Glasgow said but red bikes sounded American, so it became Red Bicyclette. French, but easily translatable. Baguettes, a fellow in a beret and a little dog were added a brand image was born [...]
It's Tuesday night and I'm on my second glass of Red Bicyclette. it's not great. It's not $60. And it's not bed.
I'm sure you'll find it at your grocer or liquor store. Pick up a bottle and check it out. I think it's an ambitious endeavor and I think Gallo will succeed -- despite the odds: a strong Euro, jaded opinions of France and the proliferation of $2 wines like Two-Buck Chuck and others.
My uncle Doug passed away last week. He was 72 years old and had been struggling with heart disease for many years. He died in his home in Connecticut I understand peacefully.
My dad's brother, I hadn't talked to or seen Doug in nearly two years. Of course, this makes me sad. I now wish I had one last conversation with him. But who knows? When is a conversation your last? Make everyone count. And when face-to-face, end that conversation with a hug. Who knows if it will be your last. Every second counts.
My fondest memories of Doug were when i was a child growing up in a NYC suburb. Doug with his round red face and warm and steely blue eyes always seemed to be up to something. He'd be plotting some sort of practical joke or warm up with a story that'd put a grin on this kids face.
And he did those things that make an Uncle. Like convincing my mom to let me miss a day of school to spend a day fishing -- with my Uncle Doug. Like piling us noisy but eager kids into his car and taking us to baseball games. And more.
Every summer, Doug would take my brother and I to baseball games. A spirited fan of The New York Mets he'd favor trips to Flushing Meadows but occasionally we'd make to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
An annual event and perhaps his favorite was Old Timer's Day at Shea Stadium. Doug would get passes to the Diamond Club -- an exclusive bar & grill just below the loge box seats. And after legends like Whitey Ford, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, Casey Stengal, Sandy Koufax, Roger Maris, and many more would finish playing a short inning, Doug would whisk us up to the Diamond Club with notebooks in hand and plant us outside the elevator that brought these sports heroes to the Diamond Club from the clubhouse locker rooms.
Barely 10 years old I only knew of these stars from old baseball cards and reading the record books. As the elevator door would open and men dressed in suits or casual clothes would enter the room he's whisper to us, "that's Roger Maris". We'd rush up to the hall of famer and in nervous voices and gleaming smiles ask for an autograph.
As I type this I wonder what ever happened to all those legendary autographs.
The funny thing about patiently waiting for the elevator to open and see the next wave of Old Timer's empty into the room is that me and my brother would've never recognized them without prodding from Doug. And over the years the number of kids that gathered by the elevator grew. We'd all swarm around these legends like moths around a light. Running up to the players waving pencils and paper. All looking for a chance to get one to scribble their name on a pad. And with each autograph we were determined to get another.
So Doug prodded us one time while hanging in the Diamond Club. With a dozen or so kids hanging by the elevator my brother Bob and I ran up to Doug with our pens and paper, "Doug would can we have your autograph?" soon all the other kids were swarming around Doug sticking pens into his face. He'd sign a few autographs then retreat into the bar at the Diamond Club. One of the younger boys asked me. "Who was that?" I looked at him with a huge smile on my face. "That's Doug Karl." The boy would say, "really?"
My smile still beaming and trying not to chuckle I'd say, "Yeah. He's my uncle."
Doug ate it up. Like my father and my other uncles, he liked to laugh, tell jokes and had a huge sense of humor and as noted a flair for practical jokes. As a young boy trying to my own Christmas shopping for my family and my uncle Doug I was always confused and lost when it came to buying him a gift. And it must have come from a recommendations from my mom or dad but one year I bought him a gift pack of "Old Spice" after shave. Maybe it was the schooner symbol on the bottle or because I had seen my dad use the stuff but that was it. Christmas for Doug: Old Spice.
Over the years, perhaps subconsciously or without knowing I'd buy him Old Spice regularly. He opened my gifts and always smiled and thanked me and his round face would get red and he'd move on to the next gift.
Many years later as I moved from the cute kid into a teenager I'll never forget one Christmas when Doug showed up and we went through the ceremonial gift exchange. As I peeled the wrapping paper from the Doug's gift to me I noticed the schooner peeking out from the paper. An "Old Spice" gift set. Puzzled, I smiled and thanked him when he broke his silence and said, "I figured you must like it because you've given it to me all these years." We both laughed. I got the message. I was sure he had a stack of these gifts sets sitting in his closet somewhere. I never new.
I'm going to miss Doug. But I'll never forget his antics, his sharing and his smile.
If you have tried to visit this site in the past few days you might have imagined something terrible happened to The Digital Tavern.
Did it go up in smoke? Hacked by teetotalers? Kidnapped by terrorists? Or abandoned by a wayfaring troubadour more interested in curing his wanderlust than feeding words into the internet zone.
I'm happy to say the tavern is here. Has been here along. And will always be here. But read on. You'll get perhaps a bit too much information. But at least you can live vicariously the fun I've had over the last three days.
As many of you know I create The Digital Tavern on weblog software and hosting provided by Radio Userland. The desktop application is Radio and the hosting is located at weblogs.com. But because the Radio Userland blogging service doesn't support personalized blogs (the real location of this blog is http://radio.weblogs.com/0108247 for example). I know many of you rely on your address book or caller ID for phone numbers so I can't expect you to remember the "true" address of this weblog.
For this reason, I've registered the domain "digitaltavern" with Register.com and have secured a simple no frills $1/month hosting arrangement with Hostica. So Hostica has been forwarding or pointing the digitaltavern.com address to the "true" address at weblogs.com. And this has been working beautifully for more than two years since the doors of the Digital Tavern were opened.
To be sure, Register.com is the Neiman Marcus of domain registering (called a registrar). And they charge the maximum that can be charged at this point: $35/year. Now Hostica also acts as an agent for registering domains and will register or renew a domain for a mere $9. Quite a difference.
So having lost a domain that I owned due to my own negligence when I was riding the bamboo rafts of the Li Jiang River. The domain expired and someone snapped it up. And I'm battling with the opportunist who did this to negotiate a fair return of a domain I've owned since 1994. That's another story, but it's important to understand for my motivation for securing this domain (digitaltavern) and others.
So I went about the process of transferring the digitaltavern domain to Hostica. One year of domain registering fees at Register.com would give me nearly 4 years at Hostica. Brilliant I thought. Move the domain over to Hostica and secure it for 8 or 9 years so that when I'm negotiating the Karakorum Highway in near the Pakistan and China border in 2006 I won't lose my domain -- again.
Sound like a good strategy? You betcha. But here's where it went all wrong. Upon transferring my domain to Hostica a new account for the Digital Tavern was created. This wouldn't be so bad if Hostica hadn't migrated its web servers to new machines and software about a year ago. As a no frills service (you get what you pay for at $1/month) the onus to move websites to the new system is on the customer. I never knew this. But the old Hostica servers still served up pages, but customers looking to leverage more features, easier to use control panel for domain and website management and more performance had to move their websites to the new servers. I never did.
Guess what happened? When the new Digital Tavern account was created it automatically set me up on the new Hostica servers (called Hsphere) and cancelled my existing account and space on the old servers. All of a sudden visitors trying to get to The Digital Tavern via the http://blog.digitaltavern.com were served a domain parking sign from Hostica. The DNS forwarding instructions for sending visitors to the "true" website were gone.
Meanwhile, the transfer of the domain created its own set of problems by disabling MX records so my digitaltavern.com mail couldn't be accessed by anything but a bad webmail interface through Hostica. By now I'm definitely going nuts and after a dozen emails back and forth with Chris and Frank at Hostica, nothing was resolved. Well, not exactly.
Chris tells me to create my own domain alias using the Hostica Hsphere system. He sends me an email that points me to a nice movie that walks through the process of creating the alias or domain pointer. Simple enough. But not really. Hostica's control panel for creating a domain alias does not accept directories only base URLs. This means I could point to radio.weblogs.com but I could not point to http://radio.weblogs.com/0108247 -- the bad character is a slash ( / ).
Another dozen emails and I still have no resolve. I'm told that due to the domain transfer DNS info could take 72 hours before domains are pointed in the right direction anywhere. Duh! These guys at support weren't getting the fact that the domain and subdomain for digitaltavern were going to the Hostica servers but instead of then pointing to my weblog they were defaulting on domain parking pages (a generic page saying something like coming soon).
Three days have passed. And many of you may have thought The Digital Tavern went up in smoke. Those of you accessing through the direct URL have kept up with the activity.
All of this has compounded problems I've been having with Radio's servers, BlogLet and retrieving my other long lost domain. Must be something in the water.
I'd like to recommend Hostica. But I can't. They made a ton of mistakes here. I realize this is a cheap service. But the original account that worked fine up to a few days ago should never have been automatically cancelled. Therein was the root of all these problems. I will be looking to move to a new hosting company (recommendations?) when I've made a decision on what blogging platform I'll migrate to next.
Certainly there are other ways to forward URLs. Domain Direct and 2Ya are both good services. But these would require another 72 hour waiting period. I as determined to get Hostica to get this to work.
As I write this post Hostica still hasn't pointed the domain or subdomain anywhere. Instead, I created a home page (index.html) that is creates a frameset that contains a link to the real URL -- the "true" Digital Tavern blog. I should've thought of this solution earlier. I knew something like this was possible. I just didn't know how.
Now I do.
So if you've missed any of my posts from late August click here and scroll through. I think you'll enjoy catching up.
Over the past few years I seem to have been deluged with more than my 'fair' share of notices of class action law suits. There was one against the music industry for fixing prices of CDs another against Magic Mountain for discrimination. But mostly the notices are the result of once high-flying securities. The string of suits has named Lucent, JDS Uniphase, Cisco and others.
Most of the time the notices detail a proposed settlement and offer the opportunity to participate in the class. So when I received my latest notice regarding a proposed settlement with WorldCom my jaw dropped at the proposed settlement amount of $2.65 billion. Good god!
Now I can't remember the amounts of others that have passed through my mailbox but this seems extraordinary. But I've got no time nor interest in reading the fat pamphlet the describes the action and the settlement for my measly pro-rata share of 500 or 1000 shares. And that's the problem with many of these settlements. If you decide to participate you've got to break out the archaeological equipment to dig through records for the last 5 years. And though I've had accounts with both online and traditional brokerages in the past, I will say at one point I tried to contact E*Trade for some legacy information that was no longer available online, the customer service representative informed me I'd have to pay to retrieve the old data. Why the data couldn't be accessed online is besides me. My bank will provide me with statements that are no longer available on line for free simply by asking.
Perhaps not so deep in my storage bin I could dig out the records of 1999-2001 to fully understand my securities history with WorldCom. And maybe I'll yield a return of $200-$400 on the time it takes me to dig out the statements, rifle through the statements and transaction confirmations and complete the silly class action forms. It's just not worth it.
The same thing goes for rebates. And I know there are many people who will go through the half-hour or so to take advantage of a $1 rebate and there are many who will spend an afternoon filling out a class action form and assembling the required documentation for a few hundred shares. But again, it's just not worth it to me.
And like rebates the attorneys and the defendants know all to well the ratio of those who will and who won't. Frankly, I think the brokerage houses should be required and paid to provide the documentation to the court and the trustee. And the cost for the service should come out of the fat fees the attorneys take home. After all, the majority of these suits are done on a contingency basis. It's just simply a higher 'class' and more respected form of ambulance chasing [~] where the only real winner is the law firm.
When it comes to image, identity, messaging or branding it's important to understand the essence of a company or product in order to identify and clarify its unique differentiators -- those attributes and characteristics that distinguish a company or product from its competition. As a marketing professional I have a unique process I take companies through to aid them in identifying such things and help them determine, commit and focus on a core message, supporting messages and a key concept that form the foundation of what that product or company is all about -- it's essence.
For me, I usually create some key documents such as a brand doctrine and a messaging matrix and others depending on the client. These documents then help marketing, creative and ad personnel stay on the same page. So with this "foundation" we can create communications that reinforce and ideally enhance the doctrine and messages. In its simplest form this might be a standards guide including logo, tagline, color palate and imagery. But more importantly this then extends to advertising, sales presentations, the company voice in public relations efforts, customer service, supplier/vendor communications and so on. Because a brand isn't just a logo or a color. It's the entire customer experience. It's the feeling. And all these tactical elements simply should evoke and communicate that feeling. The rest is up to the company personnel and the experience a customer has with the company's products.
All of this is a long way to build my case for the importance of owning a unique concept in the customers mind. And utilizing imagery and messages that are unique to the company or product. This is where the concept of stock photography can damage or dilute a company's image or brand.
Just as much a company needs a unique position and refined messages that differentiate itself from the competition, it needs unique communications and imagery. Using a stock photograph can be safe if an agreement with the stock agency includes an exclusivity clause. But most marketers won't go for this because the cost is not only based on usage and frequency but a premium is added for exclusivity. For this reason, many resort to cheap online royalty-free photography.
If you're cheap, don't understand the importance of building and reinforcing unique messages through synergistic use of marketing tools and careless then royalty free stock photography is ok for you. But if you understand the complex process for creating or reinforcing an image based on your brands real attributes, then you'll likely source unique and exclusive photography or illustration. If you take the top 500 brands worldwide, you'd rarely find any use of royalty-free photography in the top tiers of its communications.
But the internet has changed everything. Hasn't it? Inasmuch as electronic publishing has virtually changed the printing and typesetting industries forever, email has virtually eliminated the need to fax anything. When's the last time you used the fax machine.
The internet has also changed the world of stock photography. Stock agencies used to publish massive phone book sized books of glorious photography so art directors could slip pages either in looking for the image in their head or hoping to find an image that would give them an idea for their head. Today, stock houses publish cute magazines, postcards or booklets that drive traffic to their data and image rich online databases.
This has also reduced the number of photographers competing for the miniscule photo assignments. Even product photographers are finding it harder and harder to get business due to the ease of shooting digitally.
So when I was chatting with an art director I work I espoused that at least art directors couldn't be replaced by internet or digital technologies. But he reminded me of a mailer that I received just the other day. StockLayouts.
This isn't necessarily a new idea. I mean blogs from every major blogging platform offer "templates" and that's why so many blogs look the same. In fact, there are very few really well designed blogs that stand out as communicating a unique image that reinforces the content of the blog. Most look the same. And there are a number that are hideous. Which is why I believe good art directors will always prove their value.
So STockLayouts seems to be a project from one of the large stock photography houses and aims to make designing good looking print or online materials easy for those challenged in the artistic sense. So while this might reduce the amount of badly designed materials over the years, I worry that communications from companies in every industry will turn stale and homogenized.
If so, it will just make the companies, blogs, etc that leverage smart design will simply stand out even higher in the continually raising noise of marketing and communications.
My expectations were well managed. I had prior knowledge of Gallo's wacky drift into French wine. Wacky because who'd think an American icon (good or bad) would enter into a venture and market French wine at a time when American sentiment to France is at an all time low. Forget the Statue of Liberty. Let's talk the liquid of love, life and seduction. Wine.
