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It's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.
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Omaha native Jim Connor was mobbed Monday at the college football championship game, but not for scoring a touchdown.EFFECTIVE immediately, the City of Omaha has changed its name to the City of Ahamo. We're hoping no one will notice that Ahamo is this "Omaha" place Larry Culpepper says he hails from.
He was cheered, applauded and even pawed. Not for making plays but for whom he plays — the latest icon in national TV commercials, concessionaire “Larry Culpepper.”
“I couldn’t walk through a public place without people stopping me, taking pictures and grabbing me,” Connor said Tuesday. “For some reason, this campaign really caught on. People love Larry Culpepper.”
In football-season commercials, the comedic character has hawked soft drinks for Dr Pepper. AdWeek magazine estimated the company has invested at least $35 million as an official “championship partner” in the College Football Playoff. And Larry is the TV spokesman, a guy with a deep love of college football, shouting “Ice-cold Dr Peppa HEAH!” and telling people that he invented the four-team college football playoff.
Two of the commercials appeared late in Monday night’s ESPN telecast, a game viewed by a cable-TV record of about 33.4 million people.
In Omaha, relatives, friends and former Creighton Prep classmates have delighted in Connor’s many TV commercials and other acting roles over the years. But his Larry Culpepper gig might top them all.
“Larry is similar to the guy we knew in high school,” said clothier John Ryan, a fellow member of Prep’s class of 1978. “Jim was a character, but he was also a tremendous debater and he was good in theater.”
“Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”
-- Nikko Jenkins
Vulnerable Rep. Lee Terry received an emphatic endorsement Wednesday, but the Nebraska Republican is not likely to tout this show of support on the campaign trail any time soon.STILL UNCLEAR is whether the court will consider the pitch for Terry by Jenkins -- who likes to kill people, has a face that looks like the inside of an ancient Egyptian tomb and is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in the Nebraska corrections system -- as evidence that his mental condition has declined drastically since his murder conviction earlier this year.
KMTV in Omaha, Neb., reported that at a hearing to examine his competency, convicted murderer Nikko Jenkins shouted, “Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”
The irony of Jenkins’ statement is that the National Republican Campaign Committee released an ad last week attempting to link Jenkins to the Democratic nominee, state Sen. Brad Ashford.
Jenkins killed four people after he was released from jail early, and the NRCC attempted to tie Ashford’s support of the so-called “good time law” to the murders. “Brad Ashford supported the good time law and still defends it, allowing criminals like Nikko Jenkins to be released early,” the ad’s narrator said.
Terry’s fellow Republicans are the majority in the officially nonpartisan Legislature and have been for a long time. Gov. Dave Heineman, who has held office for nearly 10 years, is a Republican. If the good-time law needed changing, why didn’t they act sooner? At best, this is a bipartisan failure.WELL freakin' duh!
"In 1988," Mr. Atwater said, "fighting Dukakis, I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.' I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not." Reputation as 'Ugly Campaigner'THE PROSPECT of death made Lee Atwater a better man. In facing death, he found grace.
Since being stricken last year, the 39-year-old Mr. Atwater has apologized on several occasions for many of the campaign tactics he once employed and for which he was criticized. But rarely has he spoken in such detail or with such candor as in the interview for the first-person Life article.
"In part because of our successful manipulation of his campaign themes, George Bush won handily," Mr. Atwater said. He conceded that throughout his political career "a reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me."
"While I didn't invent negative politics," he said, "I am one of its most ardent practitioners."
When the Republican National Committee meets in Washington on Jan. 25, it will ratify Mr. Bush's choice of Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter to become the new party chairman. Mr. Atwater will receive the title of general chairman.
The Life article is accompanied by photographs that show Mr. Atwater today, his face swollen by steroids and framed by dark, curly hair. They are a stark contrast to earlier pictures of him, lean, grinning and jogging with Mr. Bush. 'I Was Scared'
In the article, Mr. Atwater also talked about the moment last March 5 when he was speaking at a fund-raising breakfast for Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas.
"I felt my left foot start to shake uncontrollably," he said. "In seconds the twitch had moved into my leg and up the left side of my body. I was scared. I stopped speaking, grabbed at my side with one hand and clutched the podium with the other."
Mr. Atwater was rushed to the hospital and within days doctors determined that he was suffering from a tumor on the right side of his brain. His battle with cancer has continued unabated since that diagnosis.
Mr. Atwater also described the change in his relationship with Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman.
"After the election, when I would run into Ron Brown, I would say hello and then pass him off to one of my aides," he said. "I actually thought that talking to him would make me appear vulnerable.
"Since my illness, Ron has been enormously kind -- he sent a baby present to Sally T.," Mr. Atwater's third child, who was born only weeks after he was stricken. "He writes and calls regularly -- and I have learned a lesson: Politics and human relationships are separate. I may disagree with Ron Brown's message, but I can love him as a man."
Ceaseless winds define the Great Plains, so much so that many people barely take note — apparently — of wind advisories from the National Weather Service. As a result, the wind advisory soon in many areas will go the way of the sod hut, becoming a relic of a bygone era.
Effective Oct. 31, the weather service will cease issuing wind advisories for much of Nebraska and Kansas, said Mike Moritz, warning coordination meteorologist for the Hastings office.
The exceptions will be eastern Nebraska and the the Panhandle, where the advisories will continue to be issued. Cities that will continue receiving wind advisories include Lincoln, Omaha, Norfolk, Scottsbluff and Sidney.
A wind advisory is the lowest level of alert that the weather service issues, Moritz said
Because windy weather is so routine on the High Plains, weather service offices years ago ceased issuing the wind advisories for Colorado and Wyoming.
All of the Great Plains will continue to receive special warnings when dangerously high winds are forecast.
(snip)
Moritz said the decision was based on the results of a survey that the weather service conducted from late April through late July. Three-fourths of the respondents said they make no change in their daily lives when a wind advisory is issued. In contrast, most people take action when the more serious "high wind warning" is issued. Among those participating in the survey were local emergency managers.
"Most of the response was, ‘Bravo, thanks for doing this. We know it’s windy here,’ " he said.
Lorain Police say a homeless man was Life Flighted to the hospital after cutting off his penis.YOU KNOW WHAT? I'd love to hear a contemporary Don Draper's sponsor pitch to the Busch beer people with that one stuck in his mind. And close to his heart . . . which you know if you're a Mad Men aficionado.
Cops were called to the area of East 21st Street and Access Road Tuesday around noon after an unauthorized man was seen on CSX Railroad property.
Officers found the man with his hands and gym shorts covered in blood. He told officers that he had just cut his penis off. According to the police report, he said he tried to use an old rusty saw, but he used a broke bottle when the saw didn't work.
The man told police that "Busch (beer) made me do it."
"Gentlemen, I'll probably never see you again, so I have to tell you something.
"I didn't enjoy Busch beer on a sun-splashed sandy beach with a blonde on each arm. That's what every American man would like to think of whenever he pops the top on a cold Busch. Get it? (leer) No, the truth is, I grew up in a whorehouse in Pennsylvania, and I was raised by a stepmother who didn't want me.
"After I'd go through the pockets of johns while the whore were otherwise, shall we say 'entertaining' them, the girls would pay me off with a cold Busch beer. And I savored every golden drop of that cheap-ass beer because, gentlemen, your beer was the only thing that could kill enough of my brain cells -- dull enough of the psychic pain -- so I could somehow cope with growing up in a whorehouse with a stepmomma who couldn't care less if you lived or died, which, let me tell you, is kind of like cutting your own tallywhacker off with a busted beer bottle. Probably an old Miller High Life bottle.
"Frankly, if I had my way, I'd tell you not to advertise your beer at all. Because if Busch beer is good enough to kill the pain of growing up in a whorehouse . . . if it's good enough to anesthetize you while you cut off your own tallywhacker, it will sell itself with no help from Sterling Cooper and Partners.
"Gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'm going around the corner to get loaded."
The “Perls of Knowledge” spots have been tweeted and re-tweeted and re-re-tweeted. The ad campaign has gotten a mountain of free publicity, courtesy of media outlets from Sioux City to San Francisco and from Columbus, Ind., all the way to China.THE CHANCELLOR, as I said, is a funny guy. Dryly hilarious, even.
The jury is out on whether “Perls of Knowledge” will result in more students for UNL — Perlman, when he's not fighting zombies, has vowed to get UNL's current enrollment of 24,207 to a nice round 30,000 in the next four years.
But what seems clear is this: For $40,000, a tiny fraction of the university's marketing budget, UNL has gotten the kind of publicity that most wannabe Carly Raes — and most universities — would kill a whole zombie army for.
“It worked because of (Perlman's) really bitey sarcasm,” says Dan Kohler, UNL's senior assistant director for digital marketing and the aforementioned 27-year-old. “The tone actually speaks well to a younger generation ... and it's packaged in a way that takes a traditional brand and throws it into this very nontraditional environment.”
I figured I would pull back the curtain on “Perls of Knowledge” and learn that the chancellor was just a glorified prop in this digital marketing strategy, a willing and able participant in an experiment hatched and run by people younger than I am.
But the real story is stranger: Perlman himself came up with the general idea. He enlisted allies, including Amber Hunter, UNL's admissions director, and Kohler.
“He had been paying more attention to pop culture, spending more time with the admissions office — we're one of the youngest offices on campus — and asking a lot of questions,” Hunter says. “A lot of this comes from him just trying to understand how we could share something all over the country.”
They brought in Archrival, a Lincoln marketing firm that cultivates an edgy reputation.
Archrival employees and UNL's five-person digital marketing staff together wrote the video's scripts. And then Perlman took those scripts with him on a long, long flight to China. When he came home, he had rewritten every last one.
On taping day, Perlman nailed most of the scripts with one or two takes.
“He's a pretty funny guy,” admits Clint! Runge, Archrival's creative marketing director and a man with a “!” purposefully embedded in his first name.