I apologize ahead of time, but this rant has been a long time coming. Why do restaurants always drop my favorite item from the menu? It’s happened time and time again. Baker’s Square dropped their Wisconsin cheese burger. Then they added a tasty fried chicken sandwich with cheese, and dropped it. Granite City Brewery had a Southern fried chicken sandwich that was actually pretty unique and had a nice kick to it. The second time I ordered it the waitress commented that they were dropping it from the menu. Bah.

But TGI Fridays is the worst offender. It started many years ago with the pizza-dilla appetizer. Yes, it was a weird combination of pizza and quesadilla, but it was really good. Then they had this chicken dinner platter that could feed an army. It was two chicken breasts topped with three kinds of cheese and mushrooms. Plus mashed potatoes. And finally there was my latest favorite, the chicken finger BLT. So basic, so tasty. But last night at TGI Fridays I flipped through the pages of the menu and realized in horror that it was gone.

My ability to branch and try something new is now completely destroyed. I can’t try something new at a restaurant because my favorite might not be on the menu next time, so I better eat it now.

Sigh. OK, end rant.

My friends at Personality™ just bought a $250 piece of toast. It’s an actual piece of toast, but they’ll never hold it or eat it. Instead it gets them a prominent position on Your Name on Toast and $250 goes to charity.

It’s the latest twist on these advertising pages that started with the Million Dollar Homepage, only this one is for charity and the price keeps going up (which reminds me of One Thousand Paintings, only it’s not as complex–the price just goes up).

Seth Godin talked about it a while back and it’s just amazing to me that these things take off. It’s kind of like the online equivalent of what modern artists always hear–“I could have built that!”–then why didn’t you?

When it comes to logos, marketing guru Seth Godin says the image you pick doesn’t really matter. The meaning comes not from the logo itself, but what your company actually does.

“A great logo doesn’t mean anything until the brand makes it worth something.”

He uses the example of Starbucks, Nike and Apple. The logos of two of those companies have nothing to do with what they actually do (I don’t think Nike’s swoosh supports Godin’s claim–as abstract as it is, that feeling of movement actually goes pretty well with an athetlic shoe company). So the lesson here is don’t sweat your logo–just pick something and then give it meaning by what you do. Interesting approach. And it takes some of the intimidation out of picking a logo.

All of which is of course inspired by the announcement of the London Olympics logo (Godin: “That’s why spending $800,000 for a logo is ridiculous.”), which is being reviled and revered across the web.

Interesting article on how various businesses make a profit in New York, from publishing to photo copying to a diner to a dollar store. It’d be fun to see a similar story for a small town. (link via kottke.org)

I love this quote from Bono talking about his guest editor stint with Vanity Fair:

“We need to get better at storytelling,” Bono told the Times. “Bill Gates tells me this all the time. We’ve got to get better at telling the success stories of Africa in addition to the horror stories. And this magazine tells great stories.”

It’s all about telling stories. As a writer, that sounds great, but even as a regular Joe that’s what I want to hear. Good stories are captivating and compelling. Tell me a story, don’t put me to sleep with your market-speak. Telling stories is what I do as a writer. It’s part of what one of my clients, Personality does (look, more client synergy!). And it works.

I’ve got a triple whammy of marketing wisdom from marketing guru Seth Godin (who else?).

1. Meetings: Everybody always whines about how unproductive meetings are. I suppose they can be, but when I worked on teams most of our meetings seemed pretty necessary. But if you’re sick of meetings, Godin offer some fresh tips on how to make your meetings intentional and productive.
2. Apostrophes: You get nothing when you use them correctly, but you lose big when you mess them up. Making up a word would be losing big.
3. Recognition: Godin talks about recognizing a band from one second of a song. Same is true with seeing the corner of a magazine or the sound/smell of a coffee shop. He says that recognition is branding and it’s no accident. And that kind of consistency requires an anal person to put their foot down and enforce those brand rules. That’s the kind of thing proofreaders and editors are good at. You might think those grammar Nazis are nuts, but they know a thing or two about consistency.