White House to Sell Vegetables to Local Grocers

When it was reported that the White House was cancelling the “spring tour” season, our intrepid reporter wanted to look into other savings the President and his family were prepared to make in light of the sequester.

First of all, its important to know that the Easter Egg Roll will proceed as in years past.  The one minor change this year is that children are being asked to bring their own eggs.  The White House estimates that this will save the country 18 cents per person attending the egg roll, a White House tradition since 1878.  The number of people expected this year, selected by an online lottery system, is 35,000.  Total savings is estimated to be $6,300.

The White House will also begin selling vegetables from its garden to local grocers.   The White House chef told reporters that they are currently giving 1/3 of the vegetables to organizations that serve people in need.  Now, instead of having vegetables from the garden, the Obama family will take up a diet of kimchee and rice so that the remaining two thirds can be sold at a premium to area grocery stores.    

In order to distinguish them from other vegetables, the White House vegetables will be branded “The White House.  America’s House.”   Currently a contest is underway for developing a logo for the vegetables from the White House garden.  The winner will be able to bypass the lottery and come to the Easter Egg Roll.  What’s more, an egg will be supplied for rolling purposes.  Other entrants will receive the pleasure of knowing that someone at the White House may have seen their design. 

America looks forward to other savings being made by the White House — doing its part for the sequester — and everyone in these United States of America is being encouraged to make their own savings as a contribution to the nation’s staggering debt.  The money you save can be donated to the America’s newest 501C3, The Super Sequester Pac, organized to raise funds to offset the cuts of $85 billion.   Corporations can donate as persons, but expectations in this area are low.

I Had That Idea Forty Years Ago

mine had a white cord, but close

When I came to Hawai`i 40 years ago, my goal was to be a copywriter at an ad agency.  Besides the fact that I was an East Coast Haole (in the 70′s, not cool), I had never written a word of copy.  I had written poetry for my school journals, articles and columns for the school newspaper, but not a line of copy.

Nevertheless, I presented myself at several local agencies as a copywriter.  One of the people I interviewed with was Phil Woods, who I would run into fifteen years later when Starr McCombs Koch merged with Seigle Rolfs and Woods.  Somewhere along the way, someone suggested I ought to write some copy for some imaginary products so people could actually read my writing.

So:  I “invented” — at least in a 2D sense — the electric fork.  I called it the Enrico Prestini Electric Fork, in a riff on the name of my friend Dr. Henry Preston who was at the time in medical school here.  I carefully attached an extension cord to my sterling silver fork, and created some fancy settings at my mother-in-law’s elegant table.  This particular shot was for the “Executive Electric Fork.”

Another version of the fork, and the one I am complaining about herein, was the Dieter’s Electric Fork.  It worked by rejecting every third bite.

The Enrico Prestini Electric Fork did get me an interview with someone I won’t mention, but whose initials are Pat Patterson.  He invited me out to lunch to celebrate and it was not long before I caught on that I hadn’t really gotten the job.  Shortly thereafter I got a job as a secretary — thanks to my expertise as a typist, acquired in 8th grade summer camp — at Sheraton’s advertising department.  My boss, Tom Radar, actually called Smith College to see if I had really gotten a B.A. in English there, not that my college degree was required for the job.

Recently, I heard about Hapilabs new product, a dieter’s fork.  Theirs works a bit differently than mine, but the result is the same.  From their website:

Eating too fast leads to poor digestion and poor weight control. 

The HAPIfork is an electronic fork that helps you monitor and track your eating habits. It also alerts you with the help of indicator lights when you are eating too fast.

Every time you bring food from your plate to your mouth with your fork, this action is called: a “fork serving“. The HAPIfork also measures:

* How long it took to eat your meal.
* The amount of “fork servings” taken per minute.
* Intervals between “fork servings”.

This information is then uploaded via USB to your Online Dashboard to track your progress. The HAPIfork also comes with the HAPILABS app plus a coaching program to help improve your eating behavior.

I heard on the news that the Hapifork goes berserk when you have taken 75 bites, the number Hapilabs says it takes to eat a decent meal.  (one that is not too fat, not too slow…).  Too bad I was ahead of technology.  I wonder how many people will buy Hapiforks?

Here are the product specs: (especially interesting is the patent on Capicitive detection)

Specs

• Length : 7.87 inches // 200 mm
• Width : 1 inch // 24.5 mm
• Height : 2/3 inches // 15.70 mm
• Weight : 0.14 pound // 65 gr

Electronic Key

• Micro USB connector
• Batterie Lithium Polymere + 3.7 V
• Microchip Cortex M3 ST Micro electronic
• Capacitive detection
• Return to user : 1 vibrator + 2 leds
• 2 component plastic shells

Handle Fork

• Fits both electronically and mechanically
  with the electronic key

Patents : The technology is covered by four patents

1. Measure of the hand to mouth
2. Capacitive detection
3. Specific mechanical cooperation in between electronic and fork
4. Special cooperation between apps and data platform

Definition

HAPIfork is a connected fork which looks for a healthy eating behavior.

• Eat at the right time
• Eat at the right pace : not too fast
• Share with your coach : download his feedback alarm.
• Share with the community

Moo Goo Gai Pan & Scorpions at Trader Vic’s

Make me a scorpion, and don’t forget the gardenia!

In the mid-1960s, when I was young and very much in love, my boyfriend and I would board the train in Greenwich and head to New York, disembark at Grand Central and walk the many blocks to the Plaza Hotel.  There, at the home of Eloise, was Trader Vic’s, tucked away, dark and pretty romantic.  Total Polynesia — at least in my mind at the time.  Bamboo and grass, special booths with puffer fish lighting.

We always had the same thing:  moo goo gai pan, white rice, euphrates crackers and a couple of scorpions with gardenia floating in them.  It was heaven.  I lived for those euphrates crackers and the take-you-away-from-here atmosphere at Trader Vic’s.  The meal was around $30 in 1966.  New York’s drinking age was 18, and I had a fake ID card.

My mother was horrified that we did this — at least she claimed to be, because $30 was so much for a single meal in 1966.  An online calculator says 1966′s $30 would be $169.00 today.  For lunch, mind you.  That is pretty expensive for a couple of teenagers who were pretty ignorant about the world around them.   So I guess my mother wasn’t pretending to be horrified.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard Trader Vic’s at the Plaza was closed.  I went to the Waikiki Trader Vic’s up-in-a-tree at the International Marketplace.  It was no Trader Vic’s at the Plaza.  Years later, I asked my brother to make a reservation at Trader Vic’s in San Francisco.

Really?  Completely different menu?  Brightly lit and minimum polynesia?  Dinner with my brother, his kids, my best friend, my wonderful husband, and my brother’s in-laws.  No, it was not Trader Vic’s.  It was something masquerading as Trader Vic’s.  I should remember to listen to Tom Wolfe.

Gotta Get My Gun

There are reports that 250,000 people have signed up for the NRA since the President made his announcement about changes in the gun laws.  And lots of people are buying guns.  In a class recently where my son was getting his hunter’s license, one of the participants there raised his hand and said “I only want a gun.”  So I am wondering if these people are buying assault weapons before they are banned, or clips with more than 10 rounds?

More than 900 people have been killed by guns in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook massacre.  Having a gun in the house makes it more likely that someone will be killed by a family member, by an accident or by their own hand.  It does not make people safer.  The statistics support this.

So I decided I had to get a gun.  One that is melted down into jewelry.  In Newark, where my favorite Mayor Cory Booker (he of the rushing-into-a-house-on-fire-to-save-someone) held a gun buy back program.  Jewelry designer Jessica  Mindich approached the Mayor with with the idea of melting down the guns and bullet casings and making them into jewelry.  Signing off “Jewlery for a Cause”, Ms. Mindich gives a portion of her proceeds to the city of Newark.  Recently she handed Mayor Booker a check for $20,000.

On the website where you can buy the bracelets, calibercollection.com, it says:

The Caliber Collection is made up of metal from 250 guns and bullet casings seized by the Newark Police Department. The result is a series of pieces that embody the gun’s transformation from a destructive weapon to a powerful symbol of renewal. A portion of the proceeds from each sale is used to fund future Gun Buyback Amnesty programs in Newark. It is our hope that this will be a model that we can roll out in other cities across the nation.

The site is done in black and white and cleverly uses language associated with guns.  The theme of the site is “A shot of style, jewelry’s secret weapon.”   The name “caliber” was chosen because of guns, and because how the caliber of a city is raised without them.

My bracelet arrived in an envelope that said “evidence.”  The bracelet was tagged with the kind of tag you see on guns from buy-back sales.   The serial number and the city’s name Newark are on the bracelet and I will wear it proudly and with prayer that our country gets the message that guns make great jewelry.

Branding and The Boy Scouts of America

 I gave this speech to the Aloha  Council of the Boy Scouts of America late in the last century.  I am adamantly opposed to their exclusion of gays in their organization, but I am posting this because it is an excellent overview of the discipline of branding.

Aloha and good morning.  Derek Fortin asked me to speak on the idea of Marketing and the Boy Scouts of America image.  I want to change that a bit, and talk to you about Marketing and the Boy Scouts of America Brand Identity.  Image is a word that is often construed to mean something superficial — even phony.  But a brand, or brand identity, is something far more profound.   Brands are not products or the logos or the images that represent them.  Brands are the relationship that a person has with a product.  Boy Scouts of America is a very powerful brand, that has a very strong connectionwith its customers.  The relationship which the Boy Scouts of America customers have with the “product” that is Boy Scouts is based on belief in values, loyalty and one of the strongest principles of branding — a continuity of experience

Today, I want to talk to you about three things.  I want to talk to you about what a brand is and how important a strong brand can be to a product or an organization’s future. I want to talk to you about the brand that is Boy Scouts of America.  And I want to talk to you about what it means for you who are here today — the keepers of the Boy Scouts of America brand — to champion that brand effectively so that it can survive in the 21st Century.

First, I want to spend a bit of time explaining the idea of brand identity, and why brand building is important to the Boy Scouts of America.

We can all name the world’s well known brands — Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Marlboro.  The value of the Coca Cola name, for instance, is estimated at more than $33 billion.    That value does not lie in the taste of Coca Cola, but in the promise that it makes to its customers.  When Coca Cola did its research on New Coke — the overwhelming taste preference was for the sweeter version of the soft drink.  But the company had failed to take into account the value of its brand, and how inextricably that brand was linked with what is now known as Classic Coke.  A brand is not something that can be seen, touched, tasted, defined or measured.  Intangible and abstract, it exists solely as an idea in the mind of the customer.  And yet, it is often a product’s most precious asset.

How many of you know that Marlboro used to be a cigarette for women?  At that time—prior to 1954 — Marlboro was called a luxury cigarette.  With a non-filtered tip that kept tobacco off a women’s lips it was hardly a rousing success.  It had one fourth of one percent of the tobacco market which —as any of us know — hardly spells success.  When Marlboro changed its image to target men, it developed a brand that was strong, masculine and rugged.  It co-opted cowboys forever.  The company added a filter, but didn’t change much else: except the brand identity. Continue reading »