The Idea Blog

It’s just a matter of time.

One of the best and one of the worst things about the digital/internet/transparent age is that secrets can’t remain so, not for very long.

Eliiot Spitzer Roger Clemens Miley Cyrus Milli Vanilli. Hillary’s Bosnia trip Jeremiah Wright McCain’s wife’s private airplane.

Do I need to go on?

Now there’s news that Dove’s “real women” campaign wasn’t so “real.” (I do assume, however, that they were all women.)

I read about it on BW’s David Kiley’s blog, Brand New Day. He closed this way: “I’m curious to know what Dove and [agency] Ogilvy have to say about it. I’ll let you know when I hear back.”

Then on May 9 there was this update on the blog.

The source is a story in The New Yorker. And as a reminder, here’s the viral video Dove (a Unilever company) used to kick off the campaign a couple of years ago.

This news from Virginia Heffernan in the NY Times…

The O.E.D. - that’s the Oxford English Dictionary, sir - is no longer printed in either its 13+ volume or its two volume micro edition.

I quit the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1974 in order to re-join and make the “compact” version my free selection. I loved having all that word history around, pulling out the magnifying glass in the little drawer of the boxed edition and impressing anyone (especially the girls) within eye-shot with my studiousness.

“The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it. As of now, Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.”

I still have copy of the OED, but I find I use the magnifying glass as often for other things these days. ‘Tis a shame, yes it is.

Perfect question for SNL.

John Paul Newport, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal online, says the drive is the primal progenitor of the game, and we mortal golfers just can’t escape it’s allure and majesty. “There’s nothing in golf — and very little in life generally — as deeply thrilling as knocking the bejeebers out of a golf ball and watching it soar away, gravity-free, as things normally soar only in dreams.”

It’s why the driver - not the putter, not even those new hybrids - is the big money cash cow for golf equipment companies, and it’s likely why the golf equipment business is soft right about now: we may have reached the nadir of this generation’s driver innovations. It’s why John Daly, in spite of our better judgment, continues to intrigue. It’s why many of us love short par 4’s and reachable-in-two par 5’s.

“North Carolina has lost more than 26,000 jobs in furniture manufacturing since 2000. In the 1980s, about half the furniture sold in the U.S. was made in this state; employment shriveled 41% from 1990 to 2006.”

Thus begins one of the best pieces of reporting ever printed in Business North Carolina. For years I’ve complained to friends, associates and colleagues that there is a dearth of business journalism available in the Carolinas, and I’ve pointed to this particular magazine as an abject failure. But Amanda Parry’s “Would Work” in the May 2008 issue.

The story is about the Bob Timberlake Collection, licensed by Lexington Home Brands. There was a time when Lexington’s domestic factories made the collection, but Lexington closed its last U.S. plant in December 2005, “moving the last of its case-good manufacturing to China.”

In unique twist, Timberlake himself became the decider for where the furniture bearing his name would be produced. “He licenses rights to produce the collections to Lexington Home Brands.” And in March of 2006, “a group of investors - including Timberlake’s sone - bought Plant 2 [in Linwood, NC, an old Lexington facility], signed a contract to make The World of Bob Timberlake…”

The story is thorough, glowing, yet realistic about the chances of this happening very much or very often. It’s especially interesting to me because of our own client’s - Stanley Furniture’s - commitment to keep as many of its facilities producing furniture in North Carolina and Virginia.

Read Amanda Parry’s article. (It’s not online yet, but should be in a couple of weeks.) You’ll come away with a broader perspective about offshoring.

Tags: Timberlake, furniture, offshoring

After posting the Ford pick-up photo, I came across this from Allan Sloan’s “The Deal” column in the current (May 12, 2008) Fortune:

“Had the Bush administration and Congress exhibited the wisdom and courage to slap a big honking gasoline tax on drivers after 9/11 - or even in 2006, when the President made his “addiction to oil” speech - it would have been a better energy policy than the cornographic panacea they’ve given us. We could have reduced consumption, cut oil imports, kept low-income drivers whole by rebating their gas taxes with income tax breaks, and used the rest of the proceeds for deficit reduction or something else useful. Food would be cheaper. So would fuel, because demand would be lower and we’d probably have fewer financial speculators, who some experts think are responsible for $25 worth of oil’s march from $64 a barrel a year ago to $119 as Fortune goes to press.

“So in avoiding a gas tax, we have not avoided higher prices. We’ve also done something that should horrify anyone who cares about this country: transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth to oil-producing countries, many of which don’t exactly share our society’s values of tolerance and freedom. (Can you say Russia? Or Saudi Arabia?)

“Even with gas at $3.50 a gallon, I’d be more than willing to pay a much higher gas tax than I do now because it would knock down demand, cost less in the long run, and demonstrate that the U.S. is willing to do painful things in the present to ensure our future prosperity. Turning biological waste like wood chips into fuel makes a lot of sense. But devoting vast acreage of America’s breadbasket to fuel - about a third of the U.S. corn crop is dedicated to ethanol - is a really terrible idea, as we’re now seeing. Supposedly miraculous and painless cures have a nasty tendency to backfire. Both in scary movies and in the even scarier real world.”

By the way, don’t you just love “cornographic panacea”…?

Pulled into the parking lot at my friendly blood lab this morning and felt my mid-sized car might be sucked into the vortex of this behemoth. Sometimes I think I’m living in a monster truck game.

Golf Digest’s nefarious travel editor and blogger rants like John Hawkins about the airlines’ losing a valuable piece of luggage. Click here to feel his pain.

“My colleague and another angry golfer (and frustrated traveler), John Hawkins, called me the other day. He flies Delta as often as I fly American. He told me he was divorcing Delta and wanted to know how I liked American. I offered him American and all of my miles for Delta and all of his miles.”

Obama’s comments on Meet the Press today regarding Clinton’s and McCain’s recommended suspension of the federal excise tax on gasoline. Where’s Tom Friedman when you really need him?

Last week, High Point University hosted Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger as part of their cultural enrichment series. He is one of the most famous graduates of Notre Dame as he was immortalized in the film Rudy. His experience of overcoming incredible odds to reach his dream of playing football for the Fighting Irish is one of the greatest inspirational stories in sports. I think kids can really benefit from such powerful stories - not just in athletics but as life lessons too, so I had my son Ethan, 10, join me. After he got over the fact that the real Rudy doesn’t look like the actor Sean Astin, he really enjoyed it. We were fortunate enough to meet him and get his autograph. It was a great presentation. My thanks to Chris Dudley and High Point University for hosting this event for the whole Triad community.