Strategy Roundup | 4.2.21
Lyndsey Fox
Try as I might, I can’t find any indication that “We Didn’t Start the Fire” has had a resurgence in listeners, though I can’t seem to shake Joel’s gritty, earth shattering “Trouble in the Suez” from my consciousness. Alas, it seems like John Berman and I are the only ones who have found one of The Piano Man’s least beloved songs a salve for the troubles of 2021.
Speaking of salve, Tide is on a mission to be a salvation to the environment with their new initiative asking folks to stop doing their laundry with hot water. #Turntocold suggests that if you switch to cold water laundry, you aren’t only saving the environment, but also about $150 a years for the average household! Wow, that’s a whole month of cable! Employing Iced Tea and Steve “Stone Cold” Austin for their arctic names and likely retro appeal to now Head of Household millenials, this campaign does a good job of finding a way to integrate humor and purpose, validating my own perspective that you can be good without being earnest all the freaking time.
It turns out you can also be good while living your brand values, as Jeep is showing America by installing EV charging stations at trailheads across the country. I love this initiative because it suggests that you don’t have to stop living your life and doing the things you love with the brands you love to do better for our mother earth and for the generations to follow. It’s about evolution, not re-invention, it always has been. See you in Big Bear?
And finally, in a brand partnership that seems to have been created just for me, may I present — Duolinguo’s newest course — Yiddish. To celebrate the launch of the course, they are partnering with famous Jewish delis across the country on April 6 to give a free bagel to anyone who attempts to order said bagel in Yiddish. For the uninitiated, Yiddish is basically German written in Hebrew and at this point in America outside of Hassidic communities, largely a spoken language passed down by immigrants over the past 150 years or so. It’s a fun language to speak because things sound like exactly what they mean.
Seeing & Hearing
This week outside of Billy Joel’s synthesis of the 20th century, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Indigo Girls after reading an incredible interview on identity with one half of the pair, Amy Ray.
Currently back and forth between a few books, “Gut Feelings” by Gerd Gigerenzer, which suggests intuition, not reason is our human super power — “Bluets” by Maggie Nelson, a poetic love affair with life through the lens of blue, and of course, a yearly re-read of “Valley of the Dolls” by Jacqueline Suzanne, my north star.
