Ramblings of a Marketing Mind

In this age of political correctness, it’s hard not to offend someone. Almost every day you read about some actor, public figure or politician who said or did something that “offended” some group (some of these are more radical and aggressive in their response than others). A few years ago a friend of mine sent me an e-mail, copying our circle of common acquaintances, about the Christian vision of Halloween as a Satanic celebration, and why, according to them, decorating your house for the holiday is a way of inviting evil into your home. Whoo, boy, do we decorate our house. Halloween has always been a big deal for me, and that message I received was questioning that (in a friendly way, I have to admit). I did not feel offended or attacked in the least (frankly, I couldn’t care less). I’m always open to all points of view… however it did make me curious. Years ago I did my research about the origins of Halloween and discovered it’s a mish-mash of various beliefs a

This will be a quickie, but I really wanted to write about this. A few years ago, between 1997 and 2001, I worked for a small advertising agency called González de la Vega & Associates. It was so small, my work was not limited by my title of Associate Creative Director (i.e. they had me multi-tasking without paying me more, but I didn’t really mind). One of my roles was drawing cartoon characters for different brands and miscellaneous advertising materials. Back then we had the Fiesta Ice account (the kind you buy in bags at convenience stores and gas stations). I drew a very sketchy ice cube character which fortunately was immediately approved. From that, as part of the campaign, I drew various different poses and situations which, to my surprise, are still present on their packaging, POS and distribution refrigerated trucks. I visited their website  a couple of weeks ago and found some familiar faces there… the characters have lost their outline quality when they animated t