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Friday, September 20, 2002
without a doubt, the now infamous milk debate has become the most popular topic of conversation in the short (yet wonderous) history of whatevs.org. there have been eloquent responses to the question i posed from nationally recognized FOWs like JP McKrengels and Seantizz and there have been emails flogging me for generating such mundane conversational topics (from first-time FOW J-Gray, who bemoans that lunchtime conversations with JP and Seantizz have been dominated by this topic). But now, from the outer regions of Washtenaw County, comes a "semi-definitive" take on the sitch from long-time FOW Caro (aka C Rizz). please enjoy, have a safe and happy weekend, and see you at The Prime Ministers gig at the Lager House tomorrow night... -----Original Message----- Unca G- In the throes of Friday afternoon doldrums, I hopped on whatevs to see what's happenin east of i-275 - and I saw the great milk 'debate' so I thought I'd throw in my two cents - since I happen to know a thing or two about this... As you may recall, in the spring of 99 I went to Vegas Baby! to attend the Borders GM conference and manage the "talent." (and stay at the only non-gambling hotel in the city - cheap bastards!) One such "talent" was Jeff Manning, who was the Director of California Dairy Farmer's Association - or something like that - who was directly involved in the "got milk?" campaign and then he wrote a book about it. (remember, I think I even gave you a lame "got milk?" hat after the event?). (EDITOR'S NOTE - I DON'T RECALL RECEIVING SUCH HAT, AND EVEN IF I DID, I CERTAINLY NEVER WORE IT PUBLICLY OR PRIVATELY) Anyway, the reason that milk has no national brands is because it is a commodity, like grains, eggs or meat, and is produced regionally and it's market value is based purely on supply and demand. Same reason why there is no big national beef brand or eggs... but there are campaigns thought up by interest groups for the little guys to keep them in business - such as: 'the incredible edible egg' -- 'beef - it's what's for dinner' -- 'pork - the other white meat' -- 'aaah, the power of cheese.' - or even 'cotton, the fabric of our lives.' In milk's case, the campaign was launched because demand for milk had been on the decline since the 80s. Milk had been replaced by soda, juice boxes and bottled water. It was no longer "cool" to drink milk and the dairy farmers were suffering. I hope that helps. Though it probably doesn't give you the faith to spend a couple hundred million of someone's money to start up a big national kick-ass brand. (EDITOR'S NOTE: I STILL THINK THIS IS A GREAT IDEA. MILK NOT ONLY DESERVES A NATIONAL BRAND, IT NEEDS A NATIONAL BRAND. COMMODITY SHAMODDITY. WHAT ABOUT HOT DOGS? THOSE ARE A COMMODITY AND FUCKIN' ECKRICH AND BALL PARK FRANKS BATTLE TO THE DEATH ON A DAILY BASIS!!! YOU WANNA TALK COMMODITY? LET'S TALK NERF! WHAT IS IT? SOME KINDA STYROFOAMISH SUBSTANCE THAT WAS MADE INCREDIBLY POPULAR THANKS TO WHAT? BRANDING! SHMERIOUSLY, WHO GOES TO THE LOCAL TOY STORE AND BUYS THOSE FREAKIN' GENERIC "STAY-PUFT" FOOTBALLS OR WHATEVS? ANSWER: NO ONE! DOES ANYONE REALLY NEED NERF? NO! DOES EVERYONE NEED MILK? ASK THE FREAKIN' BABIES WHO NEED IT TO SURVIVE! THEY'LL TELL YOU, "HELL YES, NOT ONLY DO WE LOVE MILK AND SUCKIN' ON TATTS, BUT WE NEED THAT SHIZZ TO SURVIZZ! DUH!" MILK, THE LAST GREAT UNTAPPED BRAND. IT'S LIKE MANIFEST DESTINY, ONLY THIS TIME, IT INVOLVES PRINT ADS AND TRP'S AND RDB'S AND RELATIONSHIP PERSONAS (WELL, SCRATCH THAT LAST ONE), NOT BLACK GOLD (AKA "TEXAS TEA") OR SOME LAME ASS PATCH OF LAND OUTSIDE SALT LAKE SHITTY. WHO'S WITH ME!?!? MILK - IT'S WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER AND POST-COITAL BLISS!) posted by uncle grambo |
From: Peabs Wednesday evenings have gone downhill. You have to admit it. Certainly, in 1997, when we were all confused, J Crew-clad youths, we gazed upon the sight that which is Katie Holmes on "Dawson's Worst". Slowly, we moved to the NBC shows...you had your "West Wing"s, your "Ed"s. But once Ted McGinley (of "Married...With Children" fame) joined WW, and Ed's Dr. friend was caught smoking crack with Willie T, it had been difficult to find a way to pass the time, without resorting to shooting up scag or eating ice cream sundaes with your vibrator. Howevs... Now we have "Sugar Hiccup". Does it get any better than dark lighting, even darker music, and white girls all ovs? Not to mention: there's alcohol. And Coldplay B-sides. And the new Richard Ashcroft single. It's like being on the set of a porno flick, fucking every beeyatch there, and walking away disease-free. Translation: BEST. So I challenge you, Uncle Grambo, and any other loyal FOW, or british music fan in general, to join me, Peabs, the founder and creator of the Peabody Generation/Dynasty, in ventures to RO for beers, breadsticks and brit-rock. I'm so good looking. posted by uncle grambo |
can you believe this? this joker and his 15 year old son lept out of the stands at Comiskey Park during last night's ballgame and attacked the Royals first base coach. this is up there with the Monica Seles stabbing incident in the pantheon of Worst Moves By Sports Fans. all of the Chicago FOWs should be sickened and disgraced by the actions of these pathetic losers. posted by uncle grambo |Thursday, September 19, 2002 reader retort there is nothing more satisfying than receiving a well-thought out response to something that i have posted on whatevs.org. usually, any response is enough to make me smile and think that it's okay to risk getting fired for spending my days posting to this site. but responses like this one below from long-time buddy (and first-time FOW responder) Seantizz are what make it all worthwhile. notice how he put some real thought and research into his response, and how he deftly wove in names of already prominent FOWs (like The Gorilla). props out to `Tizz (aka Luigi), may your Bumpers get Bizzy and your Jenbo treat ya rizzight. Subject: RE: Milk Brands Long time reader, first time responder. Not sure why I picked this topic to respond to, but it probably has something to do with not knowing anything about music, other than what friends and co-workers introduce me to. Ok, so we can chalk this up to being bored at work. Anywhoo, I think Grambo's onto something here. Originally, my thought for why milk has no national brand is because there could not be a difference in taste between brands. There is a slim difference in taste between Coke and Pepsi and they market it that way (however, The Gorilla will tell you that statistically no one can taste the difference between the two). But my logic was quickly shot down by the bottled water people. I'm not sure what JP McKrengels means when he says he believes "that Milk is run by the National Dairy Council." I know there is an affiliation, but I wouldn't think they could or would be allowed to control the market. After a little research, I found The National Dairy Council (www.nationaldairycouncil.org) is actually "the nutrition marketing arm of Dairy Management Inc. ™ ". Diary Management Inc. is also responsible for the Real "brand." However, its not a brand as much as it is a certification (by Dairy Management Inc., see www.realseal.com). Dairy Management Inc. is also the parent of "Ahh, the power of cheese" (www.ilovecheese.com) and my personal favorite, www.butterisbest.com. So the answer is no, milk is not run by the National Dairy Council, but I'm sure the dairy farmers appreciate the ads just as Kraft appreciates the cheese ads. (Who knows, Kraft may even make contributions to Dairy Mgmt, perhaps disguised as a membership, to subsidize the National Dairy Council ads). I think the reason there is no national milk brand is because consumers don't really give a shit. A marketer's job is to make them give a shit, give them a reason to care. Everyone's favorite heifer, Elsie from Borden, still exists, but can't seem to make it happen (www.buybordenmilk.com). Not knowing much about milk, it sounds difficult. Its all the same, just like water. I can't taste the difference between Evian's mineral water and Aquafina's purified through "reverse osmosis" ater. I know there is a push for organic milk by tree huggers around the world (www.realmilk.com), but I'm not sure there's a big enough market for it. Maybe people are afraid that organic means its not clean or safe. Perhaps there's an underground market for mad cow milk that just gets you all f'd up. I'm thinking Mad White Russians. we can bottle it up and sell like all the malt bevies that are flooding the market. I digress.(EDITOR'S NOTE: I WAS THINKING OF THE SAME THING, BUT THEN I REMEMBERED THAT STANLEY KUBRICK AND ANTHONY BURGESS ALREADY PREDICTED THAT IN THE KORDOVA MILK BAR SEQUENCE OF "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE". HOWEVER, IT'S STILL A TIGS IDEA) So let's look at a Borden case study and use it as an example of what not to do, maybe we can come up with something. What will we call it? What's our slogan? ("Better miz for your biz" ??). Perhaps Immerse can write and perform a jingle. posted by uncle grambo |the first product of the peabody generation i am NOT making this up. this is NOT photoshop at its finest. check it out, SoBe has released a new type of gum called Liz Blizz (!!!) obvs!
bootylicious
big sonic best evs it's worth mentioning that I just discovered what I'll be doing every Wednesday night for the forseeable future. but first, a little background... i don't think i'm speaking out of school when i say that FM radio sucks. FM radio has ALWAYS sucked, with the few possible exceptions of KROQ in the 1980s, 89X in the late `80s and early `90s (in the days prior to Stone Temple Pilots), and continuing stalwarts like Chicago's Q101 (101.1 FM), Santa Monica's KCRW (89.9 FM), Cincinnati's WOXY (971.FM), and East Lansing's Impact (89.1 FM). but since internet radio hasn't made its way into cars quite yet, it is next to impossible to drive around D-Town and find anything worthwhile on the radio, with the lone exception of Sunday nights on 96.3 FM. every sunday night for the past seven or so years, DJ Darren Revell has been hosting a show called Big Sonic Heaven, dedicated to playing singles that fit into Revell's self-described category of "ethereal dreampop." i'm talkin' bands that you NEVER hear on the radio (at least not in 2002), bands like The Cocteau Twins, Curve, Bjork, The Smiths, Esthero, et al. it consistently serves as the perfect coda to a long weekend of partying and gets your head straight for the long week to come. it's simply essential listening for anyone with any smidgen of musical taste. thankfully for residents of Southeastern Michigan, Revell and DJ Quig take this show on the road every Wednesday night to Royal Oak's Fifth Avenue in an evening they call "Sugar Hiccup". now it's not like this is a new program or anything, i've been aware of it for at least the last two years. but i've only recently been living in this area, and i've been unsuccessful in attempts to convince anyone to make the trek out to try this night out. fortunately for me, top-notch FOWs Peabs and Dr. Em Medicine Woman invited me to accompany them to "Sugar Hiccup" last night and it was off the heez. the room is dark and smoky, the music is really loud, the bass is cranked all the way up, the hotties are plentiful, and they play nothing but wall-to-wall classics. as an example, we heard ride's "vapour trails", coldplay's "the scientist", the verve's "slide away" and majesty crush's "#1 fan"...BACK TO BACK! basically, my point is this. i will be attending "Sugar Hiccup" every Wednesday night for the forseeable future. please feel free to join me for these promised evenings of Best Everness. you know how to get ahold of me. posted by uncle grambo |this morning's headlines
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
it seems as if my open question to the FOWs "WHY DOESN'T MILK HAVE ANY NATIONALLY FAMOUS BRANDS?" has prompted at least one of you to look into the sitch a little further. although he is currently sweeping the basement in the whatevs.org ff2k3 fantasy football league, GP-based FOW JP McKrengels is clearly talented as a writer/researcher, not to mention being a kickass Digital Content Manager. posted is an unedited reply to my story from earlier, although I still firmly believe that a National Milk Brand is a great untapped goldmine, just waiting to be squeezed out of the Udder of Unlimited Potential, pasteurized, and consumed by the masses... -----Original Message----- From: JP McKrengels Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 1:51 PM To: markdgraham@yahoo.com Subject: Got Brand Name? This is a very interesting point that you make. I believe that Milk is run by the National Dairy Council and that, as I'm sure that you know, is where the"Got Milk?" ad campaign came from. However, to your point about National Brand Identity, I think that RealŪ Milk is a National Brand but I could be wrong. It is on some milk containers and I know it's on a lot of cheese containers. Also, I think that many, if not all, milk brands are run on a regional farm basis and are supplied by distribution centers on a regional basis. I did a Google Search on Milk Brand Names and these are the only type of companies that I found. Everyone has a regional center that supplies the product to various bottlers or retail chains on a geographic basis. Perhaps this is the reason that Orange Juice is run by National Brands. With orange juice, you can't have regional distribution centers supplied by regional farmers because you can only grow oranges in certain areas of the country. Therefore, as the juice industry evolved, national brands emerged and became necessary because the farms and distributors were competing nationally. posted by uncle grambo |
check out this headline from mtv.com:
things i learned this morning
Tuesday, September 17, 2002 some writers just have an innate knack for being infinitely readable. a few that come to the top of my mind are david foster wallace, david shields, douglas coupland and dave eggers. as readers of whatevs.org may recall, eggers has a new book coming out called "you shall know our velocity", but you won't be seeing him on the Today Show, Oprah or mtv or doing any other kinds of traditional author publicity. fortunately for readers of his website, however, is a typically brilliant Q&A session he recently conducted via email with his fans. read and enjoy. posted by uncle grambo |
i kill my own Page Views when i say this, but this is going to be the only update posted on whatevs.org until this evening, at the earliest. i've been in meetings since 7:30am, and they go wall-to-wall until 5pm this afternoon. i won't even have time to return to the surface and breathe, which blows. but anyhooz, here's a few choice articles for your reading pleasure this morning. Monday, September 16, 2002
as current league leader of the whatevs.org ff2k3 fantasy football league, studly bass player for local rock act Immerse and Ad Whiz Extraordinaire, one might say The Gorilla is one FOW not to be messed with. he continues his stellar tradition of e-mailing me his well-written, humourous and thought provoking responses to my postings and, consequently, i continue posting them. this week's entry is in response to my thoughts about this year's nominees to the Rock `N Roll Hall Of Fame: --- The Gorilla wrote: all kindsa buzz
if you own a television and live in the United States, there is no doubt that you were parked on your couch last night at 9pm to watch the Soprano family's return. It's been a long 16 or so months since the last original episode aired, but it's been well worth the wait, and journo's from coast to coast have been weighing in with their thoughts on the premiere. on salon.com, TV columnist carina chococo spends some time dissecting the Sopranos state of the union, and Slate.com features an interesting email volley between some journalists, not only about the events of last night's episode, but about the Soprano family as a whole and their effect on the television landscape. in a completely unrelated note, i am going to try and get some time today to give Day 2 and Day 3 of my TIFF Recap some much needed editing work. i'm going to try and have both of these stories posted by tomorrow morning, I apologize for the delay. posted by uncle grambo | |
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Subject: i give snoop 2 weeks to live
so i spent the last 90 minutes in a meeting that was boring boring boring. as per usual, i made good use of this time by letting my brain wander until it found something interesting to think about, then i used the rest of the meeting thinking of ways to bring this thought to the loyal FOWs of the world. so here goes nuthin'...
WHY DOESN'T MILK HAVE ANY NATIONALLY FAMOUS BRANDS?
i challenge you to find a person that doesn't consume a brand name beverage over a generic beverage. this ethos has been all over the cola industry for years, so much so that Billy Joel once decried the "rock and roller cola wars" in "We Didn't Start The Fire". as the years have progressed, it has spread into coffee (Starbucks is the current champ), water (Aquafina, Dasani and Evian are battling it out), and juice (Minute Maid vs. Tropicana). why aren't corporate behemoths like Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. going after the milk marketplace, especially when the only established name out there is Borden, and I'm not even sure that company still exists. remember Elsie The Cow? best! but i haven't heard her moo since like `82...
think about it. why hasn't milk been branded by now? one would think that distribution of a product with a short expiration date might be the culprit, but that's not accurate. look at juices, those have expiration dates equally as short as dairy products. well maybe then it's just the fact that branding dairy products is impossible...wrong! obvs you've got giant stalwarts like Dannon (yogurt) and Kraft (cheese). well, maybe then, it's because that kids don't like to drink milk...NO WAY! kids frickin' love drinking milk. shit, i love drinking milk! everyone loves drinking milk! maybe it's because milk isn't a cool and hip product to advertise...ONCE AGAIN YOU COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE MORE WRONG! two words for ya jackass...
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hallelujah
