Will Labeling Budweiser as ‘America’ Help Sales? One reads that for the next several months, Budweiser beer cans will be labeled not with Budweiser, but with America. See, Budweiser has a new name, and that name is America @ CNBC:
Marketing
City, Enforcement, Food, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, Marketing, Regulations, Restaurant
Vulnerability of a Restaurant Culture
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
View image | gettyimages.com Whitewater’s publicly-driven marketing may not have amounted to much, these last ten years, but there are few better advertisements for Whitewater than thriving restaurants and taverns. Good restaurants, doing well, are a sign of a successful community. Some of Whitewater’s newest restaurants also reflect a sensibility that’s significantly more contemporary than…
City, Culture, Local Government, Marketing, Politics
Marketing Whitewater Over the Last Decade
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
Yesterday, I mentioned that I would share observations from a longtime resident about marketing efforts on behalf of Whitewater. First the observations, then my remarks. ….Ten years ago I think all the rhetoric about a perfect Whitewater was meant to set the tone for those already living in and around the town. They wanted to…
Business, City, Government Spending, Health, Local Government, Marketing, Planning, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN
First Vendor Presentation of 1.21.14 to Whitewater’s Common Council
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Post 8 in a series. First Vendor Presentation of 1.21.14 to Whitewater Common Council from John Adams on Vimeo. In this post, I’ll look at the first vendor presentation on the digester proposal to Whitewater’s Common Council. (Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Government Spending, Marketing, WEDC
WEDC Slowly Crumbles
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
WEDC ‘CEO’ Reed Hall Looks Downcast. You Would, Too, If You’d Disgraced All Wisconsin Yet Again. AP Photo. On a Friday afternoon, there’s breaking news across Wisconsin. Having rejected free markets in capital, labor, and goods for cronyism and ineffectual manipulation of the economy, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation now slowly crumbles: Scott Walker calls…
City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Local Government, Marketing, Poverty, University, WEDC, Wisconsin
Wisconsin on Pace for Most Layoff Notifications Since WEDC Created
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports Now I thought, as it’s what I have heard again, again, and again, that the WEDC was the Laser-Focused Semi-Private Job Creator of Wisconsin™. How odd, then, to read that since the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s inception, Wisconsin is on pace for more job layoffs than…
City, Government Spending, Local Government, Marketing, School District
Kidney-Selling as a Threat to the City’s Future
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In a city where some have had an unfortunate tendency to favor marketing over actual accomplishments, and where ‘Whitewater Advocacy’ often amounts to the laughable exaggerations of a few insiders, loss of funding poses a double risk. First, communities across the state have to make do with less, and Whitewater (with a public campus) will…
City, Marketing, Press
The Meaning of Whitewater’s Not-Always-Mentioned Demographics
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Our signs say that Whitewater, the city proper, has a population of around fifteen thousand. We do. What they don’t say, and what we know but don’t always mention, is that a significant portion of that population is attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. So much, when looking at data from the ACS Demographic and Housing…
Local Government, Marketing, Politics, Science/Nature
The Cold Fusion Problem
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
In the late 1980s, scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons told the world that they had a device that demonstrated the energy-producing consequences of a nuclear reaction, but at room temperatures. Since humanity had produced energy from nuclear reactions only at very high temperatures, this sort of fusion would have been cold (and more easily-produced)…
Development, Economy, Government Spending, Marketing, Public Relations, Taxes/Taxation, WEDC
WEDC’s Development Gurus Fail Again
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
All Whitewater has heard Chancellor Telfer, City Manager Clapper, and CDA Chairman Knight tout money from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation as though it were manna from Heaven. We were supposed to see this money as they meant us to see it, as blessing and providence. Meanwhile, each time those officials flacked these public funds,…
Marketing
Two of Three Little Pigs Weren’t Disappointed Because of Insufficient Public Relations
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Business, Marketing, Politics
Roger Goodell could swing a gig in Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over at Esquire, Ben Collins writes (accurately) about Roger Goodell as “a visual representation of everything wrong with corporate America squeezed into one empty suit made of blood and money.” See, Roger Goodell, World Class Client of Crisis Communications Experts, Still Needs to Resign.” Collins can be confident because he saw Goodell’s 9.19.14 news conference. …
Corporate Welfare, Development, Government Spending, Marketing, Press
In a City of Sixty-Thousand, Fifteen People Aren’t a Sign of Community Enthusiasm
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Nearby Janesville is considering a downtown revitalization, and at the most-recent meeting for the large & expensive proposal, only fifteen-people attended. The Gazette wrote about the plan with this headline: Last meeting for Janesville’s downtown plan doesn’t reflect ‘widespread championship’ (subscription req’d). Well, no, it doesn’t. (The online version of the Gazette had a more…
Culture, Development, Marketing, Politics
The Bad Bet Placed on an Eternal 2004
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Some local proposals, in Whitewater or nearby places, look like they were designed by someone from 2004. Some in that year assumed that local residents would support public funding for any designated purpose, that claims of job-creation would be swallowed whole, that the press would support those claims relentlessly, that press support would make a…