Collegiate fragrances? Please not the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A small fragrances company recently started selling perfume and cologne inspired by Pennsylvania State University’s blue and white colors and its campus vegetation.
Masik Collegiate Fragrances says the perfume for Penn State smells of vanilla, lilac, rose and white patchouli. The cologne smells of blue cypress and cracked pepper.
Masik is selling 3.4-ounce bottles of the fragrance for $60. The Harrisburg, Pa., company also sells cologne and perfume that it says captures the smell of the University of North Carolina. And it plans to offer scents for six other universities next year.
That got me thinking about the smells of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I earned my undergraduate degree. After attending an Illini men’s basketball game today at the United Center in Chicago with three other U of I graduates, I asked them what they thought our alma mater’s scent should be.
“South Farms,” they all replied. My thoughts exactly.
Living in the dorms on the south end of campus I can still remember the smell of manure in the air from the nearby South Farms. Covering 1,000 acres in southern Champaign and Urbana, Illinois, the South Farms are where the university conducts agricultural research. That research involves livestock production, crop production, weed science and soil fertility.
That’s great for agricultural science, but not so great for an official University of Illinois scent.
The notion of an official campus scent is pretty bogus. The real smells of a college campus, even the good ones, wouldn’t make a good perfume or cologne. I loved the smell of Papa Del’s Pizza in Champaign, but I wouldn’t want to splash it on my face. Same for the smell of beer wafting from the Illini Inn.
Masik, founded in 2007, says it formulates different “signature scents” for each university. The fragrances are licensed products. A percentage of sales will go to each university’s scholarship and athletic fund.
Masik has a list of distinctive characteristics that it uses “as inspiration” for each university’s scent. They include school colors, mascot spirit, traditions and history, landmarks and architectural style, campus trees and flowers, mission statements, college town charter, and themes in the alma mater and fight songs.
Based on those factors, I’d say U of I’s fragrance would smell like Orange Crush soda, sweaty unwashed Indian chief and cow pies.
Wear it with pride.

Take a break from online shopping; check out humorous marketing campaigns

Online shopping isn’t the only activity sapping worker productivity this holiday season. Clever marketers are luring Internet users into time-sucking interactive advertising campaigns.
J.C. Penney launched a Web site called “The Doghouse,” ostensibly designed to help prevent men from upsetting their wives or girlfriends and being sent to the proverbial doghouse. It offers men such tips as: “Speak less, listen better,” “Apologize without caveats,” “Express your feelings” and “Stop checking out other women in restaurants.”
Best of all, there’s a funny 4-minute 40-second video portraying the doghouse as prison-like purgatory and showing the men stuck there and why.
The true purpose of the Web site is to promote J.C. Penney’s jewelry department, but it’s handled with subtlety. Check it out here.
Less nuanced is OfficeMax’s hit campaign “ElfYourself,” which is back for its third straight year of spreading holiday cheer. The “ElfYourself” Web site enables users to create free personalized holiday e-cards by uploading photos and transforming themselves and others into dancing elves.
The office equipment retailer teamed with JibJab Media, best known for its animated political parodies such as “This Land,” on the project.
Over six weeks during the 2007 holiday season, “ElfYourself” received more than 193 million site visits.
And finally Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning is back with another promotion that lets people send personalized video messages from Manning to their family and friends.
Sponsored by MasterCard, the site lets users choose from a list of phrases that they want Manning to tell their friend or family member to cheer them up. As the Web site says, “When giving advice to a friend, it’s important to remember – it’ll mean more coming from Peyton.” Check out "Suite Talk With Peyton Manning."

‘Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show’ warms my heart

Forget “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Hands down the best Christmas special for my money is the annual “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”
The “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” doesn’t teach morals, but it hints at a few immorals. It’s a holiday show for red-blooded American men.
It teaches us about foreign countries and cultures. (Where is the eastern European country that hot model is from? Why are there so many gorgeous women from Brazil?)
In fact, the show is a virtual United Nations of beautiful women. There are ladies from Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, the Czech Republic, the Cayman Islands and Namibia. I say put these ladies in charge of the U.N. and we’d have world peace. And quick.
But seriously, I like the music, the production values, the spectacle and those angel wings. Love those wings.
The 2008 “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” aired Dec. 3 on CBS. An encore presentation is scheduled for Dec. 17 on the CW. Or watch it online here. But not at work.
Victoria’s Secret, a unit of Limited Brands, also has set up a pretty neat interactive Web site about the show and the performers.

For more photos from the show, check out: Idontlikeyouinthatway.com and thesuperficial.com.

The Little Bucket Boys, a Christmas classic

My wife was putting our 5-year-old son to bed last night when the conversation turned to the Christmas song “The Little Drummer Boy.”
“If he’s so poor, how can he afford a drum?” little Christopher asked.
“I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t really a drum, but a bucket,” my wife replied.
“Oh, like the Bucket Boys,” Christopher responded.
They both had a good laugh over that one.
The Bucket Boys are a talented group of young men who drum on 5-gallon plastic pickle buckets to entertain the crowds at Chicago Bulls games. They’ve been performing for the Bulls since 2002.
A representative of the Bulls’ front office discovered the teens playing for tips on a sidewalk in the city’s Magnificent Mile shopping district. Amazed by their energy, synchronization and percussive skills, he signed them up to play during home games.
The Bucket Boys were an instant hit and have since made appearances in a KFC television ad, a spot with Hank Williams Jr. on his “Are You Ready For Some Football?!” intro to ABC’s Monday Night Football, and a shared halftime performance bill for the 2004 NBA All-Star Game with OutKast, Christina Aguilera and Beyonce.
I’ve always thought the notion of a little boy banging on his drum as a gift for the baby Jesus was a little silly. The song’s heart is in the right place, but come on, does anyone really think some rat-a-tat-tat noise is what a newborn and his parents are looking for? Please.
Now can you imagine the Bucket Boys raising the volume at the manger scene? Yeah, the three wise men might be into that. But Mary and Joseph, not so much.

("Little Drummer Boy" artwork by Publications International Ltd.)

McDonald’s Happy Meal toy drives me nuts

The other night while driving my mini-van, I had a sassy black woman in the back seat making comments whenever I turned a corner or made a stop.
I couldn’t see her, but she kept saying, “Let’s go,” “I know that’s right” and “Alrighty, boys.”
Turns out it was a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy.
Specifically it was a plastic figure of Gloria the Hippo from the DreamWorks animated film “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.” When switched on, it’s a motion-activated talking toy. Shake it and it cycles through three lines of dialogue from the movie spoken by actress Jada Pinkett Smith.
Gloria the Hippo is one of eight motion-activated talking toys tied to the movie that McDonald’s is giving away with Happy Meals from Nov. 7 through Dec. 4.
McDonald’s has given away talking Happy Meal toys before, but usually you have to press a button or move a character’s arm or head to make it talk. The insidious thing about the Gloria the Hippo toy is that it’s rounded thanks to the character’s pear-shaped body. And that makes it perfect for rolling around on the floor of a car and talking on its own.
I finally located the toy under one of the seats. For my own sanity, I had “to move it, move it.”

U.S. losing its ability to innovate on tech hardware

U.S. consumer electronics and computer companies have profited from outsourcing manufacturing to low-cost producers in Asia. But the gains are temporary and U.S. companies have become less competitive in the long run, according to a new book by Richard Elkus, a Silicon Valley insider.
The book, “Winner Take All: How Competitiveness Shapes The Fate Of Nations,” chronicles the decisions that led U.S. firms to abandon the manufacturing of TVs and other electronics devices.
Elkus introduced the first consumer video cassette recorder to the public in 1970 as an executive with Ampex. But the company didn’t have the money to produce the VCR itself so it looked for partners.
The CEO of Ampex opted not to partner with Magnavox or Motorola, in part because he didn’t want a potential competitor on U.S. soil. Instead, he partnered with Toshiba, Elkus recounts in the book.
Japan rode the VCR to world dominance in television, displays, image processing and nearly all consumer electronics, he says.
In an article in Investor’s Business Daily, I take a look at whether we’re starting to see Asian firms, namely in Japan, Taiwan and China, take command of design and product innovation in addition to manufacturing.

Drinking games go pro with Beer Pong

Beyond the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, there are tons of pro sports vying for a public following.
Some are legitimate sports like soccer and lacrosse, which require athletic skill and physical conditioning. But others are iffy. These “fringe sports” include professional video game playing, competitive eating and now “beer pong.”
And I thought the movie “Beerfest” was a comedy. Turns out it was practically a documentary.
The college drinking game Beirut has been turned into a sport with cash prizes.
I recently got a press release from a PR firm representing BPong.com, identified as the creator and sponsor of the World Series of Beer Pong and the “official governing body of the popular drinking sport Beer Pong.” You read that right – drinking "sport." The late Foster Brooks would have made a great play-by-play man.
The object of beer pong is to toss ping-pong balls across a table and into one of several cups of beer on the other end. When a ball lands in a cup, the defending team has to drink all the beer in that cup. The first team to eliminate the other team’s cups wins.
Beer pong is usually played with two two-person teams, one on each end of a table. Each side has six to 10 cups of beer arranged in a triangle.
The World Series of Beer Pong is the largest beer pong tournament in the world. The fourth annual World Series of Beer Pong is scheduled for Jan. 1-5 at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Last year’s tournament had 600 participants competing for a $50,000 grand prize.
To help players prepare for the big event, BPong.com sells official beer pong tables, cups and balls, all emblazoned with the group’s sporty logo. And don’t forget to stock up on Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, an official sponsor of the World Series of Beer Pong. Classy.