• by John Gaffney , July 3, 2002

OPR’s (other people’s riffs) for the Week:

Did Everyone Forget Animal House? In the August issue of Food and Wine magazine, readers were polled about various cuisine-oriented things. Among them was their “Favorite Movie Moment Involving Food.” The spaghetti scene in Lady and The Tramp (45%) was favored above the seduction scene in 9 1/2 Weeks (28%), the pie scene in American Pie (21%) and the brain scene in Hannibal (6%).

Now That Might Sell Some Magazines: Rosie O’Donnel assessed her recent coming out and its affect on magazine sales in an interview with Adweek. She said: "I think if I came out and said, 'Look, I got my nipples pierced and I'm joining a separatist movement and all men should rot in hell,' it might have come across a little different."

Was He Served An Absolut Vodka Ad With That Call? According to Reuters, a hiker stranded in an Andes mountains blizzard escaped death thanks to a timely call from a telemarketer. Leonardo Diaz, on a hike in late May, was stuck above 12,500 feet in the mountains when he tried calling out on his cell phone but found that his pre-paid minutes had run out. Diaz remained in the storm for 24 hours, slowly freezing to death, when his cell phone rang. It was a Bell South telemarketer calling to ask whether Diaz wanted to buy more pre-paid minutes.

This Will Apparently Be The Tagline For The Print Ad: The Vector Group announced that its reduced carcinogen cigarette, Omni, produced significantly fewer skin tumors in laboratory mice than the leading national brand in the Dermal Tumor Induction (or "Skin Painting") test, according to preliminary results.

Niche Marketing At Its Finest: TheFerretStore.com, a leading on-line pet supply retailer, was recognized as one of the country's top e-commerce Web sites at the 3rd Annual I.MERCHANT Awards, presented by Primedia’s Catalog Age magazine during a special luncheon at the Annual Catalog Conference in Chicago. The I.MERCHANT Awards honor catalog and e-commerce companies who produce outstanding e-commerce Web sites.

Have A Safe, Vigilant And Arrogant Holiday: As Americans prepare to celebrate the first Independence Day following September 11, 2001, a new survey from New York-based Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners reveals how little -- and how much citizens care about America’s image throughout the world. The online survey of 1000 Americans was conducted on behalf of Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners in May 2002 by Insight Express. The purpose was to uncover how Americans believe we are perceived by the world, and what relevance that perception has to our political, business and personal lives. Results included the finding that most Americans are as indifferent to world opinion now as they were before 9/11. When asked why they think there are negative attitudes toward America, the prevailing word they use is “arrogance.”

Internet Joke Of The Week: Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border. El Paso, Texas (24 June 2002)- Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense. "They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso.

Reader Comment Of The Week:Court TV marketing VP Evan Shapiro weighed in on Riffs about the spate of bad news about celebrity CEOs: “Companies whose brands have managed to survive and thrive are the ones who tie their brands closely to their products and less to the personalities running them. Consumers and shareholders are more likely to think of IMac, Windows, Great Retail and Laptops before they think of Jobs, Gates, Walton or Dell - despite the fact that those bosses are HUGE boardroom personalities. ….Vivendi and AOL - whose corporate brands have become EXTREMELY muddled, are tied more closely with the personalities who created the mess (Messier, Levin/Pittman/Turner/Parsons) than with the core business models that made them great brands in the first place. On a day when Vivendi's troubles should have taken up every single column inch of the business section, AOL and Parsons got hit with the same brush, even though there is no new news within their HQ and there is absolutely no evidence that they have any of the same accounting problems facing their brethren. Few people know what a Vivendi is - even though they saw Scorpion King and The Grinch. And while 34 million people use AOL, AOL/Time Warner is an unruly entity that demands a lot of 'splainin'……The day of the superstar CEO is over. Superbrands will be those who are able to articulate their business strategy clearly and tether their image to a reliable and simple product strategy that the common man (who now holds a significant % of the common stock) can digest over his morning corn flakes (Kellogg's - now there's a Brand!).”