Advertising Is Good For You

Saint Bernardine of Siena is the patron saint of advertising, God bless him

For us Catholics, today is the feast day of Saint Bernardine of Siena, the patron saint ofadvertising.

I have no idea whose job it is to match up saints and subjects, but according to the Patron Saints Index, Saint Bernardine's preaching skills "were so great, and the conversions so numerous, that he has become associated with all areas of speaking, advertising, public relations, etc."

I find it kind of amazing that the Roman Catholic Church thinks enough of advertising to assign a saint to the practice.

Happy 30th Birthday, Spam Email

According to Wired, as of 1 May 1978, Spam was no longer just a suspicious lunch meat. On that day, the first spam message was written -- although it wasn't sent until two days later via email to 400 unsuspecting poor bastards people. That particular spam was a promotional message sent by Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Don't you wish you had Gary's email address so you could send him a spam message of your own?

Image: Liesel Elliott

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Image: djwudi
Source:  Neon Lite Loves Disco 

Paintings from junk mail

The advertising creative behind the blog Yonder Ponder has fulfilled his New Year's resolution to turn into art his collection of fake credit cards.  You know, the fake ones that came in direct mail solicitations?

I love this idea and may try it myself. If the result isn't total crap, I'll post it.

Direct Mail Trivia

In the parlance of credit card junk mail, the fake credit cards that come in the mail are referred to simply as fauxs.

Star Trek Trivia

The last credit card painting looks as though it was inspired by the black ooze monster that killed the original head of security on Star Trek Next Generation. (You can only imagine how embarrassed I am to be able to make this connection.)

LOL cat remembers old coffee commercial

It's been about 20 years since Folger's ran the coffee commercials where the announcer said something to the effect of, "We've secretly replaced the restaurant's regular coffee with Folger's." Yet, the joke lives on.

To watch one of those Folger's TV spots, click here.

Source: I Can Has Cheezburger

The first toy advertised on TV

Source: Neatorama

It's all Gary Thuerk's fault

There's an in-depth article on spam in this week's issue of The New Yorker. The article's opening chronicles the birth of spam:

In the spring of 1978, an energetic  marketing man named Gary Thuerk wanted to let people in the technology world know that his company, the Digital Equipment Corporation, was about to introduce a powerful new computer system. DEC operated out of an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, and was well known on the East Coast, but Thuerk hoped to reach the technological community in California as well. He decided that the best way to do it was through the network of government and university computers then known as the Arpanet. Only a few thousand people used it regularly, but their names were conveniently printed in a single directory. After selecting six hundred West Coast addresses, Thuerk realized that he would never have time to call each one of them, or even to send out hundreds of individual messages. Then another idea occurred to him: what if he simply used the network to dispatch a single e-mail to all of them? “We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DEC System-20 family,’’ the message read. As historic lines go, it didn’t have quite the ring of “One small step for a man,” yet Gary Thuerk’s impact cannot be disputed. When he pushed the send button, he became the father of spam.

For the complete article, go to The New Yorker.

Four things your probably didn't know about Twinkies

1. Banana creme was the original Twinkie filling. It was replaced by vanilla creme in the 1940s due to a banana shortage.

2. Twinkies were first introduced in 1930 by James A. Dewar, a Hostess bakery manager in Chicago.

3. Residents of Memphis eat the most Twinkie per capita of any U.S. city. Little Rock, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Oklahoma City round out the top five Twinkie cities.

4. Over half a billion Twinkies are sold each year.

By the way, banana creme Twinkies are being reintroduced.

Source: Junk Food News

Consumers save over $3.75 billion each year by redeeming more than 4.8 billion coupons.

What's the second-most-read section of the Sunday paper?

Image: ladyphoenix_1999

Source: Money Mailer

Inventor of Cap 'n Crunch has passed away

According to Slashfood, Pamela Low was the inventor of Cap 'n Crunch cereal:

The recipe actually came from a treat that Low's grandmother made when she was a kid. It was rice covered in a brown sugar and butter sauce, and Low and her siblings would eat it on Sundays. After she graduated from the University of NH with a degree in microbiology, she went to work as a flavorist with Arthur D. Little, and when they needed a new cereal, she used her recipe for the rice/sauce mix. She also worked on the flavors for Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars."

Ms. Low was 79 when she died of a lung ailment last Friday.