The limitations of descriptive names

According to this ad, the OC Autoshow is “more than an auto show.”

1. Ad for an auto show at a bus stop. Thoughts?
2. Ad (and website) contain very little evidence that the show is anything more than an auto show
3. Obviously, contradiction between the name and the headline (X ≠ X+Y, where Y ≠ 0)

How many times have you

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What brands can learn from Kogi BBQ

A few months back I read a post by Ed Cotton about Mission Street Food called “What brands can learn from Mission Street Food.” Aside from making me really anxious to go eat there (which I haven’t yet), it made me think of Kogi BBQ (which I have tried), a Korean-Mexican fusion “restaurant” that hawks its tasty tacos out of a truck window in LA and Orange County.

I decided to write a companion post—partly because I really liked Ed’s post and partly to demonstrate (to myself, if no one else) that SoCal has its own foodie-friendly offerings. This post starts with stealing Ed’s format but at times descends into blatant plagiarism. Sorry Ed (sincerest form of flattery and all, right?).

Here’s how Kogi BBQ works.

As mentioned, Kogi BBQ sells food out of a truck window—actually multiple trucks, all in Southern California. But unlike your average taco truck, Kogi tweets (@kogibbq) to let potential customers know when and where they can find a truck in their area. The result, in the words of an LA Times article, is “a social-networking juggernaut, drawing 300 to 800 people each time it parks (often several times in an evening) and spawning a burgeoning cyber-hippie movement affectionately referred to as “Kogi kulture.”

So…what can brands learn from Kogi BBQ?

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Yet another chance at constrained creativity

When I was a kid I got bored a lot (and whined about it, I’m sure). Presumably to shut me up, my parents kept a box of “activities” for me—little creative projects for kids, torn out of magazines or jotted down on scraps of paper. I specifically remember being 4 or 5, sitting at the top of the stairs at our house in Dartmouth (UK, not MA), and yelling something like “Can I do an activity?!”

I hope this isn’t a window into my childhood that I’ll later regret publishing.

Anyway, I can’t remember what the activities were now, but I still have that insatiable urge to make things. Combined with a really short attention span, this urge sometimes draws me to useless little projects, so I’ve started creating a list when I hear such projects mentioned. In essence, I’m making my own box of activities. Can’t rely on Mom and Dad’s ideas forever, y’know.

So far I’ve mentioned two such activities on Semantic Argument:

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Volkswagen “Fun Theory” piano stairs

Thanks to Mom for pointing this one out:

Cool idea, but I was a bit disappointed they couldn’t get Tom Hanks to come recreate his famous rendition of “Heart & Soul” (sorry for the terrible video quality on that link).

See more of the campaign here.

An article on Mashable asks “isn’t [this] the definition of a perfect brand campaign?” because of the subtle placement of the VW logo and viral success of the videos. But should success be defined by

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Great name: nook

There’s an issue in advertising and identity design—maybe in all creative endeavors—commonly referred to as “not created here” syndrome. Well, there’s probably a better name for it than that, but that’s what I’m going with. Basically, it means creative people are less likely to approve of work done by somebody else. In fact, they’re more likely to say it stinks. I’m probably just as guilty as the next guy, and just to prove how snarky I can be, here’s something I’ve been itching to poke fun at:

Are there two Barnes & Nobles at the Irvine Spectrum Center? And, no less, they’re both to the right?

But anyways, speaking of Barnes & Nobles, I do like to try and give credit where credit is due.

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