That’s a wrap.

Literally. Here’s video of us getting some tour closure and me jumping around like an idiot. Enjoy ad freaks.

Van strippers.

Good times. Watch us strip a van. Hey, it’s either watch that or watch another episode of Mad Men, your choice.

A grittier, hipster kinda Dallas...

...that Fair Park is, according to James H. Aka ‘One fun thing leads to another.” One of the dudes hanging out this past Friday at Bar of Soap, well, we never did catch his name, but I think he would have no problem with us calling him ‘Krazy-as-fuck hardcore biking dude.’ The good times all started over Darryl, himself a biker, noticing his ride against the wall, a 26” Banshee–with no brakes and blown out shocks that he rides through town. Riding everywhere from Moab to NY, he told us as a competitive rider he’d been taken off the warranty lists of every major cycle brand because he tears through their stuff like it was nothing. Helmets too. Which he doesn’t put on until after that first fall of the day, and which, after wrecking one was told by the manufacturer that only the good side of the helmet left remaining would be covered. Just a hunch, but if we pushed a little, I think we coulda got him to jump over the van.

Tags: Banshee

4,068 miles later...some notes from the road.

And that’s a wrap as they say. Friday saw us in Dallas for some blogging/agency fun. (More on that shortly.) We’ll be putting together a more extensive wrap-up of the tour for people to see, the good, the bad and the fugly. For now, a few thoughts about life on the road to Brandville:

- Once you cross the North Carolina border, everyone smokes. Everywhere.
- Sometimes, Texas pickup trucks hate Plaid vans with NY plates.
- Tennessee has some pretty damn good barbecue.
- Some of the most out of the way brands can surprise you. In a good way.
- Keep shooting pics and video until you are physically led off the premises.
- There’s hot, and there’s Southern hot.
- “Are we being recorded live? “Yes, absolutely.” “Nope.”
- Always preface the food hunt question with “Where’s the best place for...,” not, “Where can we get food?”
- The further south you go, the less you get carded.
- Always Occasionally show up unannounced–it can only go one of two ways.
- “Bless your heart” is a verb, noun and adjective.
- People. Love. Free. Anything T-shirts.
- Nobody ever said “ARE WE THERE YET?”
- Always give a little something to the receptionist. Always.

More things seen.

A dj spinning Ray Charles on vinyl in a funky Panera, Starbucks kinda place called Boulevard Bread, run by Rod Bryan, former gubernatorial candidate who once biked across the state of Arkansas, and then went on to open a really funky record store called anthro-pop, and who also today tried to troubleshoot our wireless connection problem.

Yep. Just another day on the road.

Tags: Rod Bryan, Boulevard Bread

“I’ll have the 145-year old chicken please.”

Our dashboard is a collection of things from every state. Half in fun, the other half, well, mocking. But I’m guessing this dash in the Graceland parking lot today is 100% for real. (Click to enlarge.) Maybe the Bic spine is waiting for a suitable body to be transplanted into?

Forget the trees, what about saving the soaps.

Where’s Greenpeace when you need them. Even when I don’t open or use the soap, they leave another one. Plus, you use the bar of soap one time for your hands, and that’s it. Why not have hand dispensers like public washrooms have, no? Think of all the soap that wouldn’t have to die needlessly. Won’t you please help?

Um...

Really, nothing surprises me anymore–on tour.

Art behind art.

Let’s just say there’s some art behind art on this tour, and leave it at that.

Tags: secret wall tattoos

Apparently, this is the typical Memphis bar promise. More photos from yesterday.

When “Independently owned and operated” sucks.

One of the things this tour shows you is how the level of service can vary greatly from state to state within the same brand. Most chains that rely on franchises are also at their mercy when it comes to making sure the brand is presented well, especially the food service industry. Travelers are also at their mercy. Tonight, I may be in one of the worst Super 8 motels I have ever stayed at. I’m not trying to be ungrateful since the tour is covering everything, and I am also currently doing unrelated work for Super 8 as well, but we all share horror stories the next morning usually starting off with, “Hey, did your room come with (insert creepy description here)?”

And we knew going in that we needed to keep the budget down, so encountering places like this was likely. (As an FYI, Super 8 is in no way sponsoring this tour, we just happened to pick them. I’ve also had great experiences with Super 8 across the midwest, so it’s certainly not the entire chain.) But that’s the point. Consistency. It’s one of those things you notice if you talk about brands all day. Little thing like, oh, the refridgerator doesn’t work eventually worked–at all. The ‘free’ wireless that we need and that they lure you in with hasn’t worked now in three different states.

In one, I literally had to keep the laptop in one corner of the bed or risk losing signal. The phone in our room says Ramada. I’m actually posting this with the help of the Sprint USB card from the van. The bathroom had about 1/8” left on the toilet paper roll and no spare in sight. (Ironically, I found myself wanting to see that little fancy Origami trick they do with the edge of the paper by folding it up into a triangle, just to complete the experience.) And the entire mount was coming out of the wall, almost as if Clint Eastwood was trying to dig his way out of this Alcaltraz.)

You know in movies how the bad guys will pretend to be good guys in order to fool the cops, like in Die Hard when officer Twinkie shows up to investigate possible gunshots at Nakatomi? It’s like that here. Nobody apparently knows how to run a motel. I think the people at the main desk are really a front for something far more sinister. Contrast that with another Super 8 nearby: they have an indoor pool, great landscaping, cucumber wraps, plasma TVs, Bono and the boys playing live out back and even someone to do your taxes.

It’s still puzzling how brands can let themselves be held hostage by the individual owners when it comes to offering a consistent level of service, all in the name of ‘Independently owned and operated.’ If I was the brand, I’d take back control until the worst offenders got their act together, because this just hurts them in the long run.

Little things.

Noticed something today as we were streaming from inside one Starbucks. They had the music going and the staff was on top of things. Contrast that with the other morning: a staff that was way too cheery, almost to the point of faking it, and no music playing. Now I’m not a Starbucks fan like the rest of the group. I just hang out while they get their fix. But having no music kills the experience. Little things make a big difference.

Tags: Starbucks

“Any body part piercing–$29”

The line is so great, I don’t even have to have a visual in order for you to appreciate it. Which is good. Because I don’t have one. This was a sandwich board some guy was wearing in Asheville, NC as we left. It’s stuck with me so much that even though I’m in Nashville tonight, I still want to go back and get a pic. The voice(s) in my head saying I might find something even better this week, so maybe I should just hold off on that for now.

Notes from the road.

Sometimes it’s the little things on a trip you remember most. Like the AirKing™ light switch technology in your room at the Knoxville, TN EconoLodge. It’s almost like a Mission Control panel circa 1968. And to steal a paraphrase from Gene Krantz, switching rooms is not an option.

Tags: EconoLodge, Gene Krantz

Motel life.

It’s a given that on a tour like this, you’ll be on the road for weeks at a time, staying somewhere like Super 8. Courtyard by Marriot, maybe next time. Four Seasons? Some day. But for now, continental breakfast, free wireless and a place to crash for the night are all we need. So it’s a little surreal after weeks of below average to pretty good Super 8 experiences that we hear the following line upon arriving in our Asheville, NC location:

“We’re really sorry, but it’ll just be another five minutes. We’re not done installing the 37” plasma TV in one of your rooms yet.”

Wearing it on your sleeve.

Or rear window. To each his own, but this is one of those special things ‘statements’ you come across while on the road.

Day 8, aka, Swatch loses its cool.

(Note: This is a continuation of the day’s wrap over at Plaid.) Our visit to Swatch proves how people reflect the DNA of the brand they work for, both good and bad. We got thrown out of the Swatch offices. Now, to set the stage lest people think we just show up out of the blue, well, we do. Kind of. But, we send out mass mailings to perspective brands we want to visit ahead of time and follow up with calls.

Sure this is a guerilla kind of tour in some ways, but we do notify people, and in some instances have actual appointments scheduled. So after security let us through to ‘marketing,’ we were able to secure a little time with someone really nice in ‘marketing.’ (Name withheld to prevent lawsuit.)

More on that in a sec.

After giving the general pitch we do, there seemed to be some interest expressed. Granted, we know at times we see people when they literally have two minutes. No problem. It sharpens how you pitch things as you tend to cut out the extra 90 ppt. pages agencies tend to present. Plus, we had an interest in the brand as we felt it could use some life.

And then Brandzilla appeared. Like his 20-story counterpart, you hear the voice before actually seeing it. “Who’s here? Who are they?” He rounds the corner making a beeline for Darryl and repeating his soon to be famous mantra “Who are you? What are you doing here. Who invited you?” He didn’t stop to listen. As he turns his attention to shirt-of-the-day ace camera guy Ryan, the threats pour out. “And if I see any footage I didn’t authorize of this on, online, well,...” wait for it, “...I’ll see you in court.”

PLEASE. We’d welcome the traffic on the blog. The reaction was unlike anything we received using the exact same approach. Almost every brand has seen the value of what we’re doing and are really into it. It's too bad, because when BZ came out, the people who obviously worked under him became afraid. Nice way to run a brand. Scare the crap out of your people.

And they didn’t even take a Twinkie. Wonder why Swatch has lost its cool? We blame Brandzilla.

Discussions on tour.

One of the joys of sharing a van for three weeks with essentially the same crew is, you guessed it Lee Harvey: the stories you tell. Like the time your friend took tonic water and wrote a message on the bed so that it would show up under black light like in that 20-20 special on hotel cleanliness. The four of us together? Forget it.

I wanna party with you cowboy.