Catchy slogans, logos and the upside-down ‘WIN’ button

The Maine Lobster Promotion Council has begun distributing plastic tags that lobstermen will affix to lobsters headed for markets all over the world, declaring the crustaceans to be “Certified Maine Lobster” and distancing them from so-called “imposter” Maine lobsters often foisted on an unsuspecting public by out-of-state competitors.

The identification tag program, coupled with an aggressive marketing campaign, seems like an idea whose time has come for a state aiming to protect and enhance its $300 million market share of the industry.

Maine’s lobster-fishing competitors have been riding the state’s coattails of lobster excellence for some time now, according to the lobster promotion council’s executive director, Kristen Millar, who said “imposter lobsters” from other New England states and Canada often wind up in tanks that supposedly hold “Maine lobster” for which consumers willingly pay top dollar.

“People are crazy about lobster – not just any lobster, but Maine lobster,” Millar said. She urged consumers to “look for the tag. Look for the logo. Make sure your lobster is from Maine. Don’t buy an imposter lobster…”

The lobster promotion is one in a long line of state-sponsored marketing initiatives that have touted the Maine mystique over the years, with varying degrees of success. The Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources currently promotes the state’s various agricultural products under its “Get Real. Get Maine” campaign. As well, the state’s dairy industry is presumably helped by the national “Got Milk?” promotion that centers on ads featuring famous people’s faces adorned with milk moustaches.

Advertising 101 teaches that it is crucial for direct marketers to develop a logo and brand name that stands out in a crowd of competitors. “A good logo draws customers’ eyes away from generic brands and toward your specialty product,” counsels a Department of Agriculture Web site on the Internet.

It helps, as well, to have a catchy slogan that grabs the potential customer – one that will rattle around in his head like an old Broadway show tune that refuses to fade away. Some years ago, Maine employed just such a nifty slogan in a campaign to promote tourism. Brilliant in its simplicity, the versatile two-word attention-getter played off the abbreviation for “Maine.”

The idea was to use any action word that might pop into the copy writer’s head, followed by “Me.” Thus, the free world was inundated with magazine advertising and posters bearing such succinct slogans as “Ski Me.” and “Fish Me.” And “Photograph Me.” accompanied by flashy art illustrating the concept: A skier schussing the slopes of Sugarloaf; a fisherman hauling The Big One out of Mooshead Lake; and so forth.

Alas, the campaign tended to wear on people after a while, as too much of a good thing will often do. It eventually played itself out, helped, if memory serves, by cynical wags who began substituting words less complimentary than “ski” and “fish” and “photograph” and the like in their own versions of the promotion.

“Tax Me.” was a favorite, as I recall, and a well-earned one it was, even back then. “Starve Me.” played well with those forced to hold multiple low-paying jobs to make ends meet. Other creative zingers reflecting the prevailing grass-roots cynicism of the day cannot be cited in a family newspaper, which is perhaps just as well.

Sloganeering on a national level has produced winners – and clunkers. President Gerald Ford’s 1974 promotional campaign to “Whip Inflation Now” encouraged the natives to run around sporting “WIN” buttons as a grass-roots move to combat inflation by encouraging personal savings and disciplined spending habits. If you proudly displayed a WIN button on your lapel you were considered to be a patriot of sorts, doing your part to evoke a sense of national solidarity in fighting the good fight.

Like many great ideas that appear to be ahead of the curve, this one died aborning, aided by the ridicule of skeptics whose major contribution to the cause was to turn their WIN buttons upside down, making it read “NIM,” which, they explained, stood for “No Immediate Miracles.”

I discovered an old WIN button recently in my shoe box collection of political flotsam and jetsam that, fittingly, also includes a campaign button promoting the perpetual presidential candidacy of former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, America’s late lamented lovable loser.

If ever there were a candidate to wear his WIN button upside down, living proof that there are No Immediate Miracles in presidential politics – and damn few long-term miracles, for that matter – it would have been the man who ran unsuccessfully for president an inflationary nine times over a span of 40-plus years.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.