The Hub: Exchange of Ideas.

22 COVER STORY
Citius Altius Fortius
Rick Burton promotes peace, love and the Olympic Games as marketer-in-chief of the U.S. Olympic Committee. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

We last spoke with Rick Burton more than seven years ago. At the time, we were publishing our interviews on Reveries.com, and Rick was director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Rick was extremely concerned, back then, about the future of professional sports in America. “What’s driving me is my passion for an American way of life,” Rick said. “I’m worried that we may be losing parts of it.”

After citing a litany of issues, from rising ticket prices to the popularity of videogames to the decline of youth sports leagues, he challenged the big leagues to find new and innovative ways to connect with sports fans or risk losing their relevance. ...

8 ROUNDTABLE
Lost & Found
As retailers find their own brand identities, will manufacturers lose theirs? A discussion featuring Mike Salzberg of Campbell Soup, Daren Sorenson of Coca-Cola, Ken Fenyo of Kroger, Nick Vlahos of Clorox and Ken Barnett of MARS Advertising.

38 RETAILS TRATEGY
Winning at Retail
A conversation with Tracy VanBibber, senior vice-president of sales of The Dial Corporation

Download The Hub Magazine, July/August 2008

PDF format, 3.75MB, 44Pages.

COOL NEWS
Brand identity ideas from Apple, Clorox and the Empire State Building.
RESEARCH RE PORT
Green Fatigue | How important are “green” or “organic” claims to purchasing decisions? Which “green” or “organic” brands do you trust the most? An executive summary of a Reveries.com survey.
COMMENTARY
Dead or Alive? | Rumors of category management’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. By Michael Shinall.
WHITE PAPER
08.08.08 | The four fronts of the upcoming Olympic brand battle.
By Zoran Svetlicic and Frank H. Vial.
WHITE PAPER
Near-Sited Spectacles | Magnify mega-events through a micro lens.
By Rodney Mason.
CASE S TUDY
Return of the Flemoids | How ChexQuest turned brand involvement into emotional commitment. By Dori Molitor.
WHITE PAPER
Harley Knows Best | Digital signage networks offer a new kind of creative canvas. By Stuart Armstrong.
WHITE PAPER
Insights into Identity | All great brand identities are now retailer-specific.
By Al Wittemen.
COOL BOOKS
A roundup of current releases of interest: Pixar Touch, Inventing Niagara and The Fruit Hunters.

Visit The Hub Magazine Official Website

SEVEN WORDS:

No, not those seven words.

The seven words I’m talking about are just fine with the FCC but maybe deserve a little more scrutiny from the FDA.

We all know these words: green, organic, freerange, all-natural, low-cholesterol, biodegradable, and pure.

These are seven words we should never use to describe our brands. Although pure really shouldn’t be on the list. It’s such a noble-sounding word. King Arthur was pure. Dudley Do-Right was pure.

But our brands are not pure. They may be pure chemicals. They may be pure sugar (but probably not). More likely, they are pure nonsense.

The reason we should not use these seven words (and the list is certainly longer) isn’t just that it’s misleading, or even dishonest. It’s that nobody believes us (see page 14).

It’s as if we could just take the good old days of bolder and brighter and replace those words with greener and leaner and everything would be as it was before.

It’s as though we could just hand a few empty words to our fellow shoppers and everything will be okay again in our world.

George Carlin once said that words were just tools to conceal the truth. In fact, he used words to expose what he saw as the truth. George Carlin was a comedian and a gosh-darn funny one.

But what’s so funny about truthful words in branding?

All the best,
Tim Manners, Editor-in-Chief

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