If you're not lame, don't act it

Flyover by Archrival from Nebraska Entrepreneur on Vimeo.

The tragedy of Nebraska is that people in some of the lamest places on earth think the Cornhusker state is lamer.

"Flyover country," they call us.

Our usual response is to act all insecure. Act like it's reasonable they'd think that. Like they're not stereotype-addled morons for being surprised that everything's up to date in . . . Omaha. And Lincoln.

Even Grand Island.

The guys at Archrival marketing in Lincoln have had about enough of that crap. In this video, they suggest a makeover.

ONE CAVEAT, though. The Archrival folks bring up the state's 2011 license plate as a marketing disaster, saying professional designers could have done better and saved the state the humiliation of a completely botched contest to pick the "winning" design.

What folks need to realize is that "professionals" can suck just as badly as anyone -- and cost a lot more. Also remember that, in designers, we're dealing with "creatives." You get what you get. Sometimes, it's Charlie Sheen.

Here, I present Exhibit A, part of the "design community's" protest over the suckage of the plate. I bring this up, because Clint! Runge and Charles Hull make it sound like the "design community" single-handedly saved us from bumper Armageddon. (I also bring this up because Runge puts an exclamation point behind his first name. Really?)

The "creatives" saved us from nothing. The "dull" old newspaper journalists at the Omaha World-Herald saved us from the abomination of stamped-tin desolation by reporting on the vote-rigging and demanding to see the state's data. The pols quickly got with the program.

Remember, it's all about excellence, not necessarily professionalism for professionalism's sake.

BUT ALL THAT is kind of beside the point, because the larger point of the presentation is dead on. In this world (and our postmodern economy), intellectual capital is destiny, perception is reality . . . and outsiders' perceptions of Nebraska fundamentally conflict with most Nebraskans' day-to-day reality.

If you want the world to beat a path to your door, don't be lame at marketing.