While the Bushies have blanketed the airwaves with one slick, fraudulant attack ad after another, the Kerry camp’s been toying with little-seen test-market commercials, looking for a single “theme” slogan that would rise above the clutter.

I say they should have lotsa themes, lotsa slogans, lotsa attack angles.

Last week, I berated the influence of product-style “branding” in US politics. But forget that beration for a moment and imagine some of the most successful brand campaigns of all time.

Small- and medium-time brands, with limited ad budgets, are the ones that benefit the most from single-message themes. The truly dominant brands use multi-faceted campaigns that illuminate the product’s image from different angles.

Budweiser has the eagle, the “B” crown, the horses, the cartoon “Bud Man” (who never appears on TV, only in bar merchandise), the serious commercials, the jokey commercials, and a panalopy of slogans, some used simultaneously. The effect is to position Bud as a brand too large, too magnificent, to be summed up by just one phrase or just one symbol.

So should a Presidency, and a Presidential campaign.

The messes created and/or compounded by right-wing peurilety are too many, and too varied, for their solutions to fall under one memorable rubric. We’ve gotta figure at least a semi-graceful exit out of Iraq, get working folk working again, reverse the consolidation of wealth and power, fix health care, put out fewer greenhouse gases, wean ourselves off of petroleum addiction, rebuild communities, promote tolerance, break up a media monopoly or two, stare down the radio demagogues, etc. etc. etc.

How can you stick all that in one pithy mouthful? I say don’t even try. Instead, have different sub-themes, about all the things Kerry promises (or oughta promise) to do.

As for an overarching meta-theme, Kerry’s recent ads already have one: “Together, we can build a stronger America.”

It’s longish, but it’s stuffed w/meanings.

The very first word implies a sharp change-O-course from the divisive, hyper-competitive social ethos of the past decade or two.

Imagine: Instead of early economist Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of competition, society grows via folk working hand-in-hand. Legislation gets enacted on the basis of what might work best for the most people, not what might attract the most campaign contributions. People in high office seek consensus, not domination.

Could it happen? I insist it could, not just that it should.

Kerry & co. should also so insist.

…a “new” celebrity category—the non-singing, non-dancing, music video model. I guess the NYT finally got cable, some two decades too late.

THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of authentic corporate and governmental logo designs are available in hi-res EPS format at The Best Brands of the World. Remember: You’re only supposed to actually use these symbols in an authorized manner. So if you go around pasting these into anti-corporate zines and such, don’t say I said you could.

(via Steve Mandich):

“Hey Clark -Steve here. Longtime reader, first time emailer.

So I’m flipping through the channels late Saturday night and at 1 a.m. this super-low budget, ‘Wayne’s World’-looking call-in show comes on channel 11 with two dudes talking about Rainier Beer. So I watch for a few minutes and then they flash this URL on the screen:

http://www.rememberrainier.com/

So I dial it up and it’s just a corporate website touting Rainier in Gen-X language with Seattle-based overtones – obviously the show is just an infomercial masquerading as a public-access quality show.

Rainier left Seattle for Olympia a few years ago, and then left Olympia for California not too long after that. So, for over a year now, ‘Rainier Beer’ is only brewed in Irwindale, CA (an LA suburb), and is just a subsidiary label of Miller or Stroh’s or some shit. [Ed. Note: It’s Pabst.] ‘Mountain Fresh’ my ass.

Just thought you’d be interested.”

Actually, I am interested. Pabst’s collection of brand names and wholesale contracts is currently up for sale. I’d love to see, or even help, some local consortium buy the Rainier and Oly brands, contract their production out to an underutilized microbrew facility in Wash. state, and thus bring our local heritage brews back home. Any takers?

All seven of the new KEXP street posters are at this site for your hi-res downloading pleasure.

YOU KNOW cross-platform marketing synergies have gone too far when a Virginia outfit launches NASCAR Ballet!

ANOTHER RANDOM SET for Photo Phriday. Enjoy.

WITH THE ARRIVAL of spring came the return, corporate galleries be damned, of the indie art walk in Occidental Park. Artists now have to buy a city license and sign a disclaimer attesting they’re selling their own stuff, but the freewheeling spirit of creation and discovery remains.

FOUND ON THE GROUND on East Pike Street: “We’re getting married tomorrow in Portland, whether you like it or not.”

THE QUINTON INSTRUMENTS building on Denny Way, formerly a warehouse for the old Frederick & Nelson department store, is coming down for one of Paul Allen’s megaprojects.

Quinton, now out in the far suburbs, makes, among other things, hi-tech treadmills. I trod on one at Providence Hospital last September. The diagnostician asked me to tell her when I was too pooped to keep running in place. Ten minutes later, after the machine’s difficulty level had been upped to six miles an hour at a fifteen percent uphill grade, I gave the word; which, of course, was “Jane, stop this crazy thing.”

ABOVE, the remains of Titlewave Books; which, as previously mentioned here, closed after nineteen years.

Below, the remains of Venus, the plus-size clothing boutique on Capitol Hill that insisted women of dimension are beautiful.

WITH MUCH LESS MEDIA HYPE this time around (thank God), Krispy Kreme opened its latest donut stand on First Avenue South last week, just in time to get the staff trained before nearby Safeco Field opens for the start of baseball season next week.

They promoted the new place by handing out boxes of the glazed circles downtown. The boxes include a full ingredient listing. Among the deliciously good things that go into those sweet Os: Vital wheat gluten, diammonium phosphate, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, ethoxylated mono-and-diglycerides, calcium propionate, fungal alpha amylase, pentosanase, protease, and carnuba wax.

KEXP’S PUTTING OUT POSTERS and postcards around town, aimed at helping the station’s core listeners feel proud of their indie-musical knowledge. This one, f’rinstance, is a cute joke if you know the two bands referenced by the visual clues. Since you all undoubtedly know them, I won’t have to tell the names here.

The fab release party for our novel The Myrtle of Venus occurs this Friday, April 2, 7-10 p.m., in the Rendezvous Jewel Box, 2320 2nd Ave. in Seattle. DJ Superjew will spin retro-lounge and Europop tuneage. Copies of the book WILL be available for purchase.

The following day, copies of the book will be available for purchase on this site and at a few select local retail outlets.

SOME RANDOM STREET IMAGES this Photo Phriday, starting with the lovely statue put up last year atop the former Speakeasy Cafe building (which is otherwise still hardly improved upon since it was gutted by fire nearly three years ago).

Symbols of empowerment or retro-kitsch?

…are just too important to ignore. One of these is the 50th birthday of Tater Tots! Since Ore-Ida’s now owned by Heinz, the little golden-brown cylinders of goodness oughta be served up at every Kerry campaign dinner.

The tobacco companies are trying to shut up their most effective critic– the “Truth” ad campaign, which just so happens to be funded by the tomacco companies.

The above is what a 76 gas-station sign, bowl-style, ought to look like.

The 76 emblem has been orange for nearly 80 years. It was orange when it was successively shaped as a shield, a vertical rectangle, a disc, a sphere, and finally a bowl. It was orange under the successive managements of Union Oil Co. of California, Unocal, Tosco, and Phillips 66.

This abomination is the new red 76 bowl, imposed after Conoco bought Phillips. Corporate powers-that-be apparently decreed that since the Conoco lozenge logo and the Phillips 66 shield logo are red, so should the 76 bowl.

The red bowl signage has been installed at the chain’s longtime outlet at Westlake and Mercer, and more recently at an ex-Chevron station on Broadway (across from an apartment building built on a former 76 station site). It will probably be phased in across the brand’s marketing territory over the next few months. There’s not much any of us can do about it, except register our complaints and fly our antenna balls at half-staff.

…disseminating faked pro-Bush TV news reports under the guise of “electronic press releases.” Why didn’t they just let Fox do it like they always do?