This week was a big cartoon milestone for me. My email subscriber list for Brand Camp surged past 3,000. Really exciting. When I started Brand Camp, I just emailed it to the 30-odd Associate Marketing Managers in my class at General Mills, and the list has just grown on it’s own since then.
This cartoon was inspired by the perfectionist zeal marketers have for aspects of our brand that most consumers never notice, particularly minor packaging details. I once spent much of an afternoon at a photoshoot of black raspberries for our packaging debating whether or not to photoshop out the little hairs on the raspberries. I never knew that raspberries were so hairy, but they really are (particularly enlarged on a flatscreen monitor). Anyway, this turned into a fairly heated debate in the studio (purists versus aesthetists) and we eventually photoshopped them out. But, I sure felt silly telling my wife how I spent my day, and she reminded me that consumers would never know one way or another.
It got me thinking what a dream it would be if people really noticed and appreciated all of the crazy lengths we go.