Clients loved it. “Some even expressed an interest in attending personally,” says Aaron Hunter, who helped organize the event for BBDO. “That, unfortunately, was not possible. It would have been a little spooky for our campers to realize they were being watched by 20 men in suits.”

According to Neale Halliday, senior vice president and head of brand planning for BBDO Toronto, Brand Camp was born out of a disillusionment with traditional focus groups. “The older I get, the more I need to connect with these young urban consumers in a very high-quality way,” he told me. “We do not always consider focus groups to be a high-quality form of interaction.” In search of a deeper connection, Halliday and his colleagues began to experiment with other modes of observation. “We’ve done all kinds of observational research,” he says. “We’ve messed around with accompanied shops. We’ve gotten people to do diaries … Then there’s the option of moving into their homes. But two things mitigate against brand planners actually living with people. First, it’s not practical. Second, they usually won’t allow it.”

Meanwhile, his packaged-goods clients were growing restless, demanding fresh intelligence from Gen X and Gen Y. Clients such as Wrigley and Hostess are “extremely interested in young urban consumers — 20- to 25-year-olds,” Halliday says. “But [these consumers] are notoriously mobile and itinerant. They don’t have addresses. They can’t be contacted by focus group recruiters … Yet these are the people that set the food trends for the rest of the population.” Just when BBDO was despairing of ever reaching these sought-after snackers, “along came the whole ‘Survivor’/'Big Brother’ phenomenon,” he says. “And we thought, well, wait a minute. How about getting these participants into a space, a confined space, so that we can spend quality time with them in a way that can actually be recorded for client validation?”

In contrast to the jejune insights of the typical focus group, the snack-cake epiphanies from Brand Camp would be deep, fertile and genuine. “As planners, sitting behind that one-way mirror, we tend to get a little bit detached from the real relationships with brands that consumers have,” says Hunter. “We don’t want to be detached, which is why we undertake a project like this. To actually reach something authentic.”

This effort to strike a blow for authenticity seems not to have been reflected in the “Camper Bios,” several of which appear to have been fudged to increase the campers’ cool quotient. Robin Jull, a 24-year-old film production researcher, is described as a “big jazz fan.”

“I don’t know where they drew that from,” Jull complains. “I mean, I’ll listen to jazz if I really have to. But it’s far from my first choice of music.” Slightly more disquieting was the fact that these young trend-setters, supposedly rousted out of rave clubs and latte bars, turned out to bear a suspicious resemblance to their ad-agency observers. “A lot of us seemed to come from advertising-type backgrounds,” reflected Matt Dell, 23. “There was a copywriter. There were a few visual designers. I work as an assistant editor of commercials at a company called Flashcut … But I guess that’s just where the hip people are.”

Whatever the limitations of its respondent pool, BBDO spared no expense in creating an avant-garde space for Dell and his fellow visionaries. “It was all about this retro aesthetic,” enthuses Jessica Waese, 23. “There were soft chairs, a TV, a fireplace, a kitchen. For the workspace, we had these retro work stations divided by translucent screens. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wallpaper magazine … It was just really well done.” There was a PlayStation, a DVD collection and a fridge stocked with cold beer. Sleeping arrangements consisted of Winnebagos and antique honey wagons parked out back. “Creative thinking demands a creative environment,” says Hunter. “We tried to surround [the campers] with props that would make them comfortable. If you wanted ten Snickers bars for breakfast, you could have them. They were there.”

When not staving off the effects of hypoglycemic shock, the campers attended discussion groups led by BBDO “counselors” who probed their relationships with brands. “They were particularly interested in our early childhood memories of snack cakes,” recalls Jeffery Pearson, 28. “What stuck in our heads? Was it the taste? The packaging? The jingle?”

Eager to expose their youthful palates to a range of taste sensations, staff counselors then escorted the campers to a replica of a convenience store. “There was chicken-flavored gum from Japan,” says Neale Halliday. “Savory prawn chips from Taiwan. From Germany, we had cans of chilled sausage and milk. You can tear the top off, and just slurp.” The counselors watched eagerly to see what products the campers would choose to sample. “They could stroll down the aisles and help themselves,” says Hunter. “[By] watching their choices, we could then glean insights about what they wished for in the market.”

Sadly, the campers’ appraisal of the prawn chips and canned sausage was less than flattering. “A lot of people reacted negatively to the international product,” laments Hunter. “They said things like, ‘This is disgusting.’”

In a video distributed to reporters, the campers are captured in all the expected moments of slacker verité. A pale, tattooed bunch, they can be seen brushing their teeth, playing air guitar and trudging off to the showers, towels knotted around waists. But rather than accusing each other of racism or trading confessions of virginity, participants were caught musing on the benefits of sweet snack food. “With Twix, you’ve got the crunchiness of a candy bar,” drawled a young woman with spiky blonde hair. “But in a way, it’s more cookie than candy.” A telegenic young man in a Scooby-Doo T-shirt wondered, “Can a snack food truly incorporate all the elements of a breakfast food?” Another inquired if “fruit juice can ever be a catalyst for flirtation, a catalyst for sexual activity.” It’s enough to make you long for Richard Hatch.

Meanwhile, the real drama of the weekend was yet to come. Hoping to take the campers from snack-cake ruminations to actual product ideas, agency counselors divided participants into five tribes and asked them to create their own brands. For this purpose, the campers had at their disposal a complete multimedia studio equipped with all the latest graphic-design supplies. “We had all this dummy packaging set up for them,” says Fiona McBride, senior vice president and group account director at the agency. “We had two A/V suites, with two Mac operators working round the clock. We wanted them to come up with novel and interesting product ideas, then finish them up to the very highest standard for presentation.”

Neale Halliday and his group kept an anxious eye on the proceedings. “We knew we only had our campers for a weekend,” he says. “We were keen to extract whatever value we could from them.” The hope was that the prototypes would lead to commercially viable product ideas, or, failing that, at least provide a generalized sense of what young consumers were looking for. “The value wasn’t just in the products they created,” Halliday said. “By studying and analyzing the products they came up with, we could generalize about how this generation thinks about food and the marketplace.”

Says Hunter: “The products that made it through to the final stage are symbolic of a whole process. They are symbolic of all the values, all the conscious or unconscious desires for food that our respondents harbor.”

The products did indeed seem reflective of bottled-up hopes and yearnings. The campers’ proposed product line included Wham Bam Wake-Up Jam, a squeezable caffeinated jam; U-Ho Ice Cream, a portable melt-proof ice cream; and something called “Fruit Snatch.”

“It’s a lunchtime meal in a tube,” explains Matt Dell, who helped create the product. “There are two screw-off caps on either end. On one end is a sweet dip. On the other end is a savory dip. In the middle of the tube are chunks of fruit … We call it Fruit Snatch, because you just snatch it, and go.” Also pushing the envelope of inventiveness was the Smoothie Smacker, created by Robin Jull and his Hearty Meal group. “By smacking it, you mix the juice and yogurt together,” says Jull earnestly. “Our spokesperson would be a monkey … Our marketing campaign would focus on ‘Spanking the Monkey.’”

Will such emanations from the vox populi revitalize the flagging fortunes of Hostess Frito-Lay? Absolutely, says BBDO’s Halliday. “Our campers are sending a clear message that young urban consumers want food that fits into their lifestyle,” Halliday bravely contends. “These campers didn’t ask conventional questions. They came up with unconventional food and packaging solutions. Our clients are very interested.”

I wanted to check with Hostess, Pepsi and Wrigley to find out what they thought of some of these new product ideas. But BBDO said no. “The participating clients are bit nervous,” McBride told me. “They’re all market leaders in their own right. If good product ideas do come out of [Brand Camp], they want to make sure that information is theirs and theirs alone.”

“We’ve been fairly careful about not going into a lot of detail about the learning,” agrees Halliday. “This was an expensive project. There are clients who have paid for this information. We don’t want to give away the farm … What I can tell you is that everyone involved who has had a peek at the findings has had a really good feeling.”

That feeling may be misplaced, according to Lew Berey, president and founder of New Product Insights, a firm based in Overland Park, Kan., that has brainstormed new-product ideas for Pillsbury, Healthy Choice and Hunt’s ketchup. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Berey tells me. “And I must say, I consider this to be the worst possible approach. New products should be created by new-product professionals.”

Asking consumers to come up with new-product ideas, he says, is like “doctors asking their patients to diagnose what’s wrong with them. It’s construction workers being asked to solve a problem of architectural design … To think that consumers are themselves going to come up with a solution is really an abdication of responsibility on the part of the marketing professional.”

Berey stresses that new-product development, far from being the province of zany creative types, is in fact an excruciatingly precise discipline. “There is a whole system devoted to this,” he says. “We have a mega-brand model that we use. It involves something we call ‘transfer analysis,’ which looks deeply at brand architecture. We use video scenarios. There’s some work we’ve done with Alvin Toffler.”

But surely Berey doesn’t dispute BBDO’s top-line finding: that young urban consumers are looking for food that is “nutritious, convenient and packaged to be environmentally friendly”? The new-product maven scoffs. “When you talk to consumers, you need to have proprietary ways to get inside their mind, so that you get more than just, ‘I want food that’s convenient,’” he says. “I would never let my staffers accept that kind of high-level definition of need.”

At New Product Insights, “we don’t talk about convenience,” Berey says. “We break it apart into ‘makes life easier,’ or ‘saves time.’ Then we start thinking about what possible ways to express ‘makes life easier’ exist in a particular category. And those insights can transfer very easily into new-product direction.”

Not surprisingly, Berey throws cold water on caffeinated jam, go-anywhere ice cream and most of the other new food ideas coming out of Brand Camp. “These are consumers run amok,” he says. “It looks like they’ve come up with ideas that don’t have too much strategic merit.”

Asked for his opinion of Fruit Snatch, Berey sighs deeply. “When I hear ideas like that, I think: What could possibly be the underlying strategy?” he says. “If someone wants health for lunch, they’re going to go with something nutritious and health-oriented. What you’ve described to me has nothing to do with an efficacious, nutritious product.” Wham Bam Wake-up Jam also leaves him cold. “Are you a jam consumer that wants caffeine? Or are you a caffeine consumer who’s tired of coffee? Either way, I can tell you from 30 years of studying the consumer, there are a lot better places to put caffeine than in jam.”

Berey also turns up his nose at the campers’ crown jewel: Groove in a Tube, an edible glitter body art. “We have come up with thousands of ideas just like that in our own brainstorming sessions,” he says. “Immediately, we get rid of them. There is no purpose in that. Again, this is consumer creativity run amok.”

Berey does like one of the campers’ ideas: Apres Chow, a liqueur-flavored after-dinner gum. “If the underlying strategy is to have a portable alcoholic taste in your mouth after you leave dinner — well, then that makes some sense,” he says grudgingly. “There are already after-dinner drinks. But maybe you want it to be longer-lasting and slower-taking. I like it.”

Of course, one might ask, if Lew Berey is so smart, then why didn’t he think of green ketchup? Meeting no conceivable need state, identical to red ketchup in every aspect but its color, it has been flying off grocery shelves ever since its introduction, in October of 2000, by Hunt archrival H.J. Heinz. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, green ketchup was created not by a new-product algorithm, but by a panel of 1,000 kids, who declared that “a new color” was what they would most like to see in their ketchup. And so, Berey’s track record nonwithstanding, the Green Ketchup proviso suggests that heretical new-product ideas may be the result not of transfer analysis and the collected works of Alvin B. Toffler, but of, well, consumer creativity run amok. Today, we scoff at Fruit Snatch. Six months from now, it will have replaced Slim Jim as the subversive snack option for today’s on-the-go teen.

BBDO’s Hunter, for one, remains a true believer. Whatever the outcome of the weekend, he says, it was a profound and moving experience to see a group of consumers engaged so deeply with brands. “They were pretty intense,” he says of his sequestered hipsters. “They really got into it. They were struggling. They were investigating … They didn’t have the answers. They were searching.” When Brand Camp ended, and it was time for the campers to pack up and head home, “some of them were almost disoriented,” he marvels. “They had immersed themselves so deeply in their projects. It was like, ‘Oh, we have to leave now?’ It was like they were in a daze.”

One of the campers, Jeffery Pearson, gently offers an alternative explanation. “We were smoking a lot of pot,” he explains. “There were seven of us, all pot smokers. We hid in the honey wagons. I don’t think they knew.”

Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)

These red ads (one state, South Dakota, insisted that they be dark blue to keep them from conflicting with the red reserved for warning notices) usually consisted of five signs. For example: “DON’T PASS CARS/ON CURVE OR HILL/IF THE COPS DON’T GET YOU/ MORTICIANS WILL/BURMA-SHAVE.”

Some slogans touted Burma-Shave as a pre-aerosol “brushless” shaving cream—a cream you could scoop out of a jar and lather onto your face without relying on an old-fashioned brush and moistened soap in a mug.

("Thoroly"? I guess if the word doesn't fit the composition, change the spelling. . .)

In 1925, Clinton Odell, a Minneapolis lawyer, took the liniment his father created and transformed it into a brushless shaving cream. He named his company Burma-Vita—Burma, because most of the essential oils in the liniment were from the Burmese portion of the Malay Peninsula, and Vita from the Latin for “life”: “Life from Burma.”

Some of Burma-Shave’s primary “brushless shaving cream” competitors were Barbasol and Noxema.

The company was sold to Philip Morris in 1963, and all the signs were removed soon thereafter. As a testament to the campaign’s cultural significance, a set of signs was donated to the Smithsonian, where it still resides. But the brand eventually petered out. After being sold yet again (this time to the American Safety Razor Company) and then reintroduced in 1997, it never regained a hold in the market.

A history of the Burma-Vita Company, written by Frank Rowsome Jr. and illustrated by Carl Rose, was published by the Stephen Greene Press in 1963.

By the early 1960's, the rising costs of road-sign maintenance (as well as new and more effective ways of advertising) sounded the death knell for the Burma-Shave signs.

The following pages from Frank Rowsome Jr.’s book list all the road-sign Burma-Shave phrases produced from 1927 to 1963.

The soft drink that would be known as 7Up was created in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg in St.Louis as part of his “Howdy” line of sodas and was originally called “Bib-Label Lithiated (it contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate until 1950) Lemon-Lime Soda.” It was almost immediately re-labeled “7 (7 natural flavors) Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime,” and then finally just “7Up”.

The first 7Up logo from 1929.

In terms of logos, an original winged trademark soon gave way to the red squared logo that lasted until the late 1960s that coincided with that period’s brilliant “Uncola” re-branding campaign. I always felt they had GOLD in that Uncola moniker. . .

A 1935 7Up label before the Howdy Company's name was changed to 7Up in 1936, followed by two Howdy beverage labels.

By the late 1940s 7Up was the third most popular soft drink in the United States. By the time the 1950s rolled around, the company had employed extensive branding techniques to keep the momentum going. The following three binders contain examples of what was offered to the bottlers and distributors to reinforce the product’s presence.

A catalog of 7Up sales/marketing items circa 1954.

This page includes tipped-in glossy paint chips.

These next three pages would NEVER fly with the HR Dept in 2012. . .

Before everyone had TV's in their home, it was common to go out to watch television.

7Up Sales & Promotion Merchandise Catalog circa 1954 - 59.

(would love to have those binders. . .)

Actual cloth swatches included.

More swatches.

1959 "Salesmakers" Catalogue

2 actual decals using the older logo with the woman reaching for bubbles- love the way the color is broken down into separate shapes and levels.

Actual booklet attached.

"Fresh Up Freddie" was the 7Up mascot created in 1957 by ad agency Leo Burnett and Walt Disney to help sponsor the Disney "Zorro" TV series.

Here’s a link to more info on “Freddie”: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/fresh-up-freddy.html

Remember, it's from 1959. . .

Ditto. . .

2 mid-1930's 7Up bottles.

Left: 1940's bottle with 8 bubbles on label. Right: 1950's bottle 7 bubbles.

"Like" was introduced in 1963 as a diet version of 7Up. It contained Calcium Cyclamate which was determined to be a carcinogen in 1969. "Like" was discontinued in that same year and Diet 7Up was introduced in 1970 sans the Cyclamates. This bottle is dated 1964.

Late 1960's/early 1970's can.

"The Uncola".

As a final footnote, I was lucky enough to work on spots for 7Up International using the Susan Rose/Joanna Ferrone character “Fido Dido”! Here’s one of my favorites done while I was at the Ink Tank Studio in N.Y.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JpHjeGXyw8

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

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Even dead, Jackson is a massive draw. He’s currently the subject of a global Cirque du Soleil tour with the horror movie title “Immortal.”  And Pepsi knows that overseas – especially in markets like Asia — his brand is as ubiquitous and American as well, cola.

Bringing back the dead is a peculiar – if increasingly common – gambit. Now that the earth has run out of living celebrities, they’ve had to revive Tupac to perform at Coachella  and Grace Kelly to make kissy face with Charlize Theron to sell perfume.  They even had to dig up Martin Luther King Jr., to pitch for Mercedes-Benz.

There comes a time when a celebrity passes into our iconography. Today, seeing the images of Elvis and Marilyn and James Dean in different pop culture contexts barely seems any stranger than fake Abraham Lincolns selling cars in February. And why wouldn’t Jackson’s people wring a few more opportunities out of his incredibly lucrative image? Somebody’s got to pay for all those $10 million mansions.

Senior PepsiCo marketing executive Frank Cooper told the WSJ that the new campaign will be both “respectful” and “forward looking.” It may be respectful. But there’s nothing “forward” about the dead. Jackson’s image survives as an easy symbol of pop music, but the man whose life ended from propofol intoxication three years ago, whose doctor is currently serving time for involuntary manslaughter, couldn’t seem less like the right spokesman for the notion of “living for now.”

Shockaroonie, some people found this offensive. The ad went the wrong kind of viral, with a social media explosion of negative feedback. It’s not that comedy with a racial element is always wrong wrong wrong. The Jewish Hank Azaria is currently in his third decade of playing the Indian Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on “The Simpsons,” and nobody seems to be outraged about this. Kutcher’s incredibly unnuanced performance isn’t that, though. On his blog, writer Anil Dash explains it perfectly –  “a fake-Indian outfit and voice” constitute “the entire punchline” of the clip. And, as he eloquently put it, “I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course. Make some different decisions.”

And so that’s what Popchips is trying to do. On Wednesday, in a “message from Keith” on the company’s website, its founder, CEO and foe of proper capitalization Keith Belling wrote, “we received a lot feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. we did not intend to offend anyone. i take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.” That’s a constructive, self-aware response to a potential public relations disaster. (Kutcher, who in recent months has been tainted by his hasty Twitter support for Penn State coach Joe Paterno and a divorce that featured rumors of unprotected extramarital sex, has so far had no comment on the problematic ad campaign.)

It’s a positive thing that Popchips understood its mistake and made an immediate effort to rectify it by pulling the ad. That step forward is mitigated somewhat, though, by the a large number of “get over yourself” responses on Anil Dash’s blog. We’ve still got much work we need to do in this country around issues of stereotypes and sensitivity, folks.

You don’t have to look any further than the entire Popchips campaign to see what I mean. Its remaining “World Wide Lovers” include the stoner Brit “Nigel,” who’s “seeking higher planes of consciousness” (GET IT????), the effeminate German “Darl” — a swishy riff on openly gay designer Karl Lagerfeld — and the dumb redneck “Swordfish.” In the end, there’s also regular old, newly single Kutcher, who describes the other guys in the club as a “freak show.” Hey, geniuses at Popchips – you’re still perpetuating gross generalizations. Also: They’re not funny. It’s a great big snack-loving country. Being cool about brown people – and gay people, and people others would call “white trash” – shouldn’t be such a crunch.

The FCC rejected a push by the industry to water down the measure. But the rule as passed also has serious limits. For example, the data will not be searchable or uploaded in a common format.

The rule will first apply to affiliates of the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in the top 50 TV markets. All other stations will have until July 2014 to come into compliance.

“[L]arge areas of some swing states, like Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, could see an influx of advertising in markets outside of the top 50,” the Sunlight Foundation noted in an analysis today. It was also not immediately clear exactly when the rule will go into effect for the top 50 markets.

Then there’s the crucial question of the format in which the files will be available. FCC spokeswoman Janice Wise told ProPublica that the commission is not creating a searchable database of the political ad files.

“We’ll accept whatever [file] format they provide,” she said in an email.

That will make it much more difficult to analyze the information.

Wise said there are no specific plans to make the database searchable.

By opting to allow stations to submit political data in any format, the commission departed from a recommendation made last year by in an FCC working group report.  The report called for the political file to be put online and that “as much data as possible [be] in a standardized, machine-readable format” that “could also enhance the usefulness and accessibility of the data.”

Also not clear is how the broadcast industry, which vigorously lobbied against the rule, will react.

“[W]e will be seeking guidance from our Board of Directors regarding our options,” the National Association of Broadcasters said in a statement decrying the vote.

In March, the industry group submitted a filing with the commission raising “serious questions about the FCC’s authority” to require stations to put political ad data online.

“That was written as a legal memorandum, which is code for, ‘We’ve lawyered up and we’re ready to sue over this,’” says Andrew Schwartzman, a longtime FCC watcher at the Media Access Project.

The broadcasters’ group declined to comment beyond its statement.

On a Thursday earnings call for Belo Corp., one of the companies that has been fighting the disclosure measure, CEO Dunia Shive suggested that broadcasters would continue to fight the new disclosure rule.

“I don’t think the conversation is over with respect to being able to continue talking about if we will ultimately have to include ad rates online,” she said, Broadcasting & Cable reported.

Belo spokesman R. Paul Fry told ProPublica that the company merely “want[s] to continue the dialogue on this subject.”

The FCC also said today it would review the new rule after a year to see if any changes need to be made before all stations will be required to come into compliance in July 2014.