TNCW Gone Commercial

In 1961, the Leo Burnett Agency in Chicago developed the Charlie the Tuna campaign that made tuna the food of the masses and helped to bring tuna noodle casserole to every home in America. I once took a typing test for a a job at Leo Burnett, hoping to get a lackey job that would pay for a year's worth of college. I failed the test because I couldn't figure out how to type up a table on the stupid typewriter (pre-computer days), and I ended up working for a title agency in the basement of city hall.

Anyway, the campaign for canned tuna took off, and Charlie the Tuna became as much a part of my childhood psyche as Andy Griffith, Get Smart, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. The poor tuna was forever coming up with ways to attract Star-Kist so he could become the next big fish, as if he didn't realize he'd be gutted and filleted if he were caught. He wanted to prove how much taste he had as an artist or a connoisseur of something or other. It was always some other sea creature that would save his life by saying, "But Charlie, Star-Kist doesn't want tunas with good taste. Star-Kist wants tunas that tastes good."

Sometimes when I see a really stupid ad campaign or a product that is destined to fail, I wonder about the marketing team that sat around the conference table and all thought up the losing idea. When it comes to Charlie the Tuna, I wonder about the team that sat around in 1961 and came up with a sarcastic fish that wanted to be caught and was willing to make a fool of himself to do it. Whoever they were, they were brilliant.

Happy Birthday...

to me! Update: Since you have asked, I only got one actual packaged gift, a beautiful hand-made bracelet from a friend, but both girls were home for the weekend, and we had dinner at the lake and a relaxing weekend. Thanks to all of you for your lovely wishes!

My Sitemeter is All Bloated and Not Quite Itself

I'm tempted to let it sit on the couch with its feet curled up under a blanket, a hot cup of coffee in hand, a block of cherry almond bark Chocolove within reach, and An Affair to Remember spinning in the DVD player. I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot. A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha ! Hoo-rah ! I've been discovered by the webworld , o...

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...

Scout Moves

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