antinomian.com

Surfed into the awkwardly named “Origin of Brands Blog” today off a random del.icio.us link and thought I’d share the silliness I found there. So the post I entered the site on was called “Walmart Gets Drunk” about the retail behemoth adding hard liquor to it’s product lineup. I was mildly interested in this story, since it does seem like kind of a hypocritical move on the part of the notoriously puritanical corporation, but I guess money is money and the scions of the Walton fortune can probably afford to buy some for-serious drugs (rehab included!) with the money they make peddling Smirnoff to Oklahoman drunks.

But anyway, that’s all besides the point. I noticed a few things while reading the Walmart story; One was the huge headshot of the author (Laura Ries!) grinning at me from the sidebar, and the other was the title of her previous post: “No more ugly logo, thanks LogoWorks!” I clicked on the link and sure enough, it was a big old puff-piece about noted rip-off artists LogoWorks, and the “ugly logo contest” that they recently sponsored. Apparently, our friend Laura was asked to be a judge in this event, and she proceeds to jizz all over the “great work” that LogoWorks is doing, before finishing it off with (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Of course, I’m a branding expert, so I know a good logo when I see one!”

So bearing in mind that a lot of people are good and pissed off about the copyright “borrowing” that LogoWorks has engaged in, what happened next was inevitable. The comments that follow this entry are hilarious, calling bullshit on LogoWorks, Ms. Ries’ academic background (Northwestern… Whoo!!), and including my personal favorite:

Laura,

I noticed in your about page that Business 2.0 “issued trading cards with [your] picture and statistics on them.”

If you don’t mind, I would like to have one and would be willing to offer a Rafael Palmeiro in trade.

Reading her bio page we learn that Laura’s career rocketed ahead after her graduation from NU’s School of Speech in 1993, when she secured a prestigious partnership with marketing guru Al Ries. Yep… her dad. Argh, the whole thing just makes me want to go read gapingvoid for awhile to get the taste of nepotism and half-baked ideas out of my mouth! =P

[UPDATE] Reading this entry, it occurs to me that it may have come off a little bitchy. Oh well. I suppose it’s just that reading this woman’s site, I can sort of tell that she’s not really my kind of person, so the comment-flames, gave me a laugh (hence the title of my post). Here’s one more example: In her recent Alpha Mom post, she says:

Sometimes you read about a new brand and it just hits you. Wow! That is me, I want to be part of that, I am that…if there is one thing that I have learned from being an Alpha Mom is that things change constantly, one day my little boy is totally defined by his love for Thomas the Train and the next week it is on to the next new brand in a life that will be filled with many brand identities.

Iew.. Iew… Iew!! (Oh, and here’s the story that she identified so strongly with. It’s about “The Martha Stewart of parenting.” Again… Iew.)

[UPDATE 2] Well, it looks like she pulled the logoworks article because of too many “nasty” comments. From the comments to the Walmart post: “And by the way when did blogging become so ugly, nasty, mean and personal?” =)