Schupp Company Blog

Are the fountains in the Citygarden meant to act as swimming pools for children?

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Finally…a nice park area in downtown St. Louis, The Citygarden! Its artsy, landscaped and a great place to go on your lunch break or to make you feel like you’re not in the city. Great job to everyone involved with this project – I truly love it.

So I pose the question: Are the fountains in the Citygarden meant to act as swimming pools for children?

I understand running through the pop-up fountains, splashing in the pools or even putting your feet in to cool off on a warm day – but I’m talking about the full-on arm floaties and swim suits with your child submerged in the pool of water? Come on! Really? I’m not a parent, but I’m an aunt – and if I brought my nieces or nephews to the park, I would not want them swimming in a pool that someone probably took a bath in or worse the night before. Yes, the fountains are fun, big and very nice, but I don’t think they are meant to be public swimming pools. Your thoughts?

Posted in Culture, Miscellaneous, Recreaction, Water Cooler | No Comments »

Skateboard Graphics Retrospective

Friday, August 14th, 2009

I’ll never forget the day I bought my first “real” skateboard. Standing across the counter at a local skate shop staring at the wall-to-wall spread of colorful wooden planks. Which board would replace my worn out Variflex? My requirements for my new skateboard purchase were pretty simple…it had to look kick ass. At the time, skateboard graphics were just starting to leave the conservative world and manufactures were beginning to realize that technological innovations in skate deck design were not as viable of a marketing ploy as the graphic on the underside. Kids didn’t really care if a board had a concave surface or a steeper tail. Young skaters needed a way to identify with their personal hero’s, or at least immortalize them in any way possible. Personality was punk and punk was attitude. As a pro skater, the place to personify that attitude was with the graphics on the underside of your own pro model.

$35 and 5 minutes later, my first “real“ skateboard became a Schmitt Stix, John Lucero X2 or “Behind the Bars” model. At the time, Lucero was not a world-renowned rider, but the X2 was his first pro model released under the new up and coming Schmitt Stix label. Besides a few snap shots in Thrasher Magazine and the occasional print ad, even though he was already a legend amongst his peers, I barely knew who John Lucero was.

What appealed to my 13 year old mid-western mind was the cool factor of the illustrated graphic on the bottom of his skateboard. The twisted demented jester graphic pried at my hell bent desire to break out of my suburban confines and unleash the fury of my youth upon the world…or at least the neighborhood.

Fast forward to present day…

These days, skateboards are all basically the same shape and size. They closely resemble the early freestyle type deck and it’s no wonder why. The actual tricks have elevated to a level of sophistication that have surpassed segregation from the original methods of style and performance: freestyle, street and vert.

Skate deck artwork has taken a turn as well. Today still, Like Lucero, riders themselves translate their own personality into signature graphics. But, the board as a canvas has come full circle. Art board companies have spawned and the amount of new school vs. old school collector decks have multiplied with the advent of commissioned artwork by world famous artists, fashionable skate deck only designers and the ability to turn the skateboard itself into a political statement.

New Skateboard Graphics written by J. Namdev Hardisty and published by Mark Batty Publisher is a diverse catalog spanning just over a decade and containing over 400 full color illustrations across 145 pages. With a reflective foreword by Michael Leon, rider interviews and an unbiased peek across numerous brands, anyone who has been a fan of skate culture artwork will enjoy the rich visual stimulation this book delivers.

Skateboarding may not be the only industry to have made a complete transition through artistic influence, but reviewing its history through mediums like this book is something I enjoy, and who knows, maybe some day a few of the decks I’ve designed will make it into volume 2.

Tags: marketing, products, sports, trends
Posted in Art, Culture, Miscellaneous, Recreaction, Style | 3 Comments »

Tape Me Up, and Watch Me Go

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

So, my husband, Bryan, is a chiropractor. Some may call a man of his profession a “bone cracker” or, in more serious (I’d say “uneducated”) cases “a quack,” but Lord knows that us advertising folks have probably been called worse. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, one thing is for certain: Doctors of chiropractic and the chiropractic field continue to evolve and impact the notion of traditional health care.

Case in point = Kinesio Taping.

Chances are you’ve never heard about it. However, if you watched the most recent Olympics or consider yourself an avid sports fan, you may have seen it on athletes like Kerri Walsh, Serena Williams or even Lance Armstrong. Certification in Kinesio Taping is often considered a chiropractic, physical therapy or athletic-trainer provided offering.

Although Kinesio Taping isn’t a new concept (invented over 25 years ago by a chiropractor), it is somewhat new to the idea of mainstream advertising. They might be late bloomers, but they are very smart folks at Kinesio. After all, getting great athletes like Walsh to wear a web of black tape during a worldwide, televised event is a fantastic start. Having other amazing athletes like Armstrong write about your product in his book “Every Second Counts” as having “special powers” and making his pain disappear is also wonderful exposure.

Now, they’re making a serious, calculated step into the realm of in-your-face advertising. Just check out the ads below. They’re awareness building. They’re elitist. They appeal to the hard-core athlete. By default, it also appeals to the wannabe athletes of the world. It makes you want to go tape yourself up to look cool and to get your body performing at its best.

It’s advertising, possibly also at its best. It’s acknowledging the fact that a product can’t just be a product anymore. What you’re selling must have a personality, a vibe and to be successful, a following. Kinesio Taping is doing a wonderful job of not only that, but also providing athletic-performance focused chiropractors like my husband the ability to promote providing enhanced offerings (like Kinesio Taping) in a way that demonstrates the multi-faceted evolution of their medical specialty.

Job well done, Kinesio.

Tags: Advertising, marketing, sports
Posted in Advertising, Culture, Recreaction | No Comments »

The Love/Hate Relationship with Right Field

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

There are plenty of great right fielders in the baseball world, from Vladimir Guerrero, to Ichiro Suzuki, hell even Rick Ankiel is pretty good. Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron, Tony Gwynn are all Hall of Fame right fielders. But right field has developed a reputation as being a position where less talented players can be “hidden” without damaging a team’s defense in any significant way. And the same can be said in the world of Coed Ad League Softball. Normally when a female player has never played softball before, or she doesn’t want to play but does so just to be nice, right field is were they’re put.

Since most batters are right-handed, this means that the left fielder will have far more opportunities to make a play than the right fielder. So when a left-handed hitter comes up to bat, it usually means trouble for that nice girl in right field.  When a surprise catch is made in right, there are usually cheers and screams of joy coming from both the girl and the rest of team.  But more often than not when a ball is hit to right field, it usually goes sailing over her head; and there are mixed emotions from the batter – usually shame, maybe a little guilt, but then there is also the competitive side of it that brings happiness and joy, knowing that you will either get a triple or a cheap homerun.

So the question I ask is this, “In coed softball, is it wrong to hit it to right field knowing that the ball will most likely not be caught by the girlie girl playing right field?” I have gotten a lot of grief for hitting the ball to that poor lost girl in right field, and I hate it when someone from the other team hits it to right field too.  But when you can’t hit it over the fence and you need to score some runs, guess where the best place to hit it is.

Tags: sports, st. louis
Posted in Culture, Recreaction | 3 Comments »

Don’t Sweat It

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Perspiration:  A salty, watery fluid secreted by the sweat glands of the skin, especially when very warm as a result of strenuous exertion (dictionary.com).  Well I’m surely not participating in any strenuous exertion in the physical sense at the moment, yet I am drenched in my own sweat. As I sat in my office today with a small oscillating fan as my only means of “air conditioning,” I pondered what to write about for this blog entry.

Just before heading to an afternoon meeting, I stood up and slowly peeled the skirt off my legs, waving it in front of the fan in an effort not to look like I just wet myself.  Then it dawned on me…

None of us really likes to sweat.  I mean, let’s face it. Sweating is unpleasant. It makes you feel sticky and disgusting, and it often causes people to smell bad.  I hope no one forgot their deodorant today!

Regardless of how it makes us feel, sweating is essential to good health.  According to Wikipedia.com, “sweating is primarily a means of thermoregulation.”  In plain English, sweating keeps your insides cool.  When we sweat, we also release many of the toxins that settle in our body from the greasy hamburger we just scarfed down at lunch, or from the beer we drank last night.

I find it interesting that, although sweating is essential for everyday human survival, most people cannot tolerate it in ordinary daily situations. As we pull ourselves through the 8+ hour workday with no air conditioning, the fact that we have sweat rolling down our backs and foreheads seems to overtake our will to complete the PowerPoint presentation due to the client in less than two hours.  Even in non-work related scenarios, like a Cardinal’s baseball game or a BBQ with friends for instance, we do not happily welcome the drops of water that accumulate in every crack and crevice of our body.

Unfortunately, when you are hot, your body will react naturally.  Just like a dog pants to cool itself down, sweating is the body’s natural reaction to avoid overheating.

On the flip side, it’s amazing how we welcome the sweat when partaking in physical exercise.  I teach group fitness classes at Club Fitness in the evenings after work.  It amazes me how sweat becomes almost a status symbol at the gym. The harder you sweat, the harder you are working. It sounds crazy, but it really is true, and not only with those guys you see grunting while attempting to bench press a whopping 350 lbs.

When it comes to group fitness classes, it’s a great disappointment to the instructor if they don’t see their students breaking a sweat. We do all we can to provide the best workout possible, and the only physical evidence of the students’ hard work is the amount of perspiration dripping down their faces.  I will admit, when I finish teaching a class, I consistently find myself making remarks about my drenched appearance, which is as if I have just jumped out of a swimming pool.  And when I look around and see others who may not be sweating as hard, I wonder if I delivered the workout they came for.

As a fitness instructor, I strive to provide not only a great workout for my students, but also a fun and safe environment. Although sweating is important, I never hesitate to offer a break for water, and I always encourage my students to rehydrate any time they feel is necessary. Over sweating can be very dangerous in that it can cause dehydration and dizziness, among many other things. The same goes for other aspects of physical activity. It is important to be conscious of how all elements of exercise can affect your body.  In the coming months, I will share with you some fitness tips and ways to incorporate physical activity into your daily routine at work or at home. In the meantime, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Tags: popular, work
Posted in Culture, Recreaction, Water Cooler | No Comments »

Another American Icon Bites the Dust…

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

I’ve been a bit sad recently…  You see, a part of my past has been rendered obsolete.  On June 22, after 74 years of vibrant life, Kodak announced that it will cease production of KODACHROME color film.  Sales of KODACHROME have dwindled to less than one-percent of Kodak’s total film sales (which are eroding rapidly overall due to the digital revolution) – and as we all know, it’s all about the Benjamins.

What is so special about KODACHROME, you ask?  Isn’t it just some film for the camera?  Here’s the thing about KODACHROME.  Not only is it a great Paul Simon tune, it has captured many iconic scenes over the years from family snapshots to Presidential addresses.  Plus, it holds its dazzling quality.  Wikipedia says “…When stored in darkness, KODACHROME’s long-term stability under ordinary conditions is superior to other types of color film; images on KODACHROME slides over fifty years old retain accurate color and density. It has been calculated that the least stable color, yellow, would suffer a 20% loss of dye in 185 years”. Too bad they didn’t have KODACHROME to shoot the Cubs last World Series victory!

Since its introduction in 1935, KODACHROME has been produced in several still-camera and movie formats, and was used by many professional color photographers, especially for images captured for publication in magazines.  You may recognize photo to the right taken using KODACHROME for National Geographic in 1984.  Kodak has put up a gallery of famous shots captured on KODACHROME, you can see it here.

One thing I have always admired about KODACHROME is the very complicated development process, which requires extensive chemistry training, as well as bulky machinery which is very difficult to operate.  The task is so arduous that Kodak no longer processes KODACHROME film itself. Dwayne’s Photo, an independent shop in Parsons, Kansas, is the only remaining KODACHROME processor in the world.  I think it’s a cool parallel that the process to see that work on KODACHROME is just as deliberate as taking many of the shots themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, digital photography is here to stay, and I have been on board since day one, craving the instant pleasure (or displeasure!) from my photos.  In younger days, I had to “bracket” my shots to make sure I had at least one with proper exposure (at least I hope I did!) Now, all you have to do is take a quick look, and say, “that one’s good, but I’ll shoot 10 more just to be certain”.

So…  Why am I sad?  My late uncle (and dear friend) taught me how to use a 35mm SLR when I was seven years old and to this day I can hear his voice in my head as I compose a shot.  He used KODACHROME frequently and raved about its color-reproduction and sharpness.  I personally never have used the film, but a tinge of sadness hit me when I heard the news, like when an old friend passes on.

Tags: photography
Posted in Art, Culture, Recreaction | No Comments »

Playing Like a Girl

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

I’ve always been one of those girls who could hang with the boys. In fact, I preferred it. All through my school years, you could find me playing soccer and competing in foot races instead of jumping rope or hop scotch. To me, ‘Playing like a girl’ had negativity about it and was never something I wanted to hear. Fast forward a few years (ok, several years) and I still find that attitude present in all areas of my life.

I play kickball. Yes, I play kickball, on a team, in an organized league for adults who love to play kickball on sunny spring Sunday afternoons in Tower Grove Park. My team is named Tower Pub, after a bar in South St. Louis. We like to think we are semi-pro, especially with two championships under our belt.

Now, I could jump right to the point of this story with some long-winded philosophical advertising analogy about how you don’t have to knock it out of the park to win customers, that by letting go of what you’ve always done and being open to alternative possibilities will provide you the guidance to create that one smart, well-placed, strategic piece of incredible advertising and thus, a successful campaign….but let’s face it, my story about kickball will be much more entertaining and no one is really here to read about advertising anyway.

I started playing kickball because Tower Pub needed a girl – an athletic girl who could play well to help them win games. This was the perfect job for me. As a hot shot soccer player, I knew it would be easy to, once again, hang with the boys and hit home runs. I couldn’t wait to be the coolest girl on the team, and maybe even the league! Because how difficult could it be to kick the heck out of that little red playground ball rolling toward you at 1 mph?

Very.

My first at bats were shameful pop outs. I had the accuracy, I had the power, I had the knowledge. But what gives? I was ‘that girl’ every team loved for the easy out – how embarrassing! That red playground ball was getting the best of me and I was not happy. (Hey, you can take the girl out of the competition, but you can’t take the competition out of the girl)

There was an option. An option I wasn’t too thrilled about: bunting. Girls can bunt in kickball, according to official St. Louis Kickball Association rules (yes, there’s an official kickball association here in St. Louis – www.skarocks.org if you don’t believe me). Males, however, are not allowed to bunt and if you do, you will promptly be heckled by everyone on the opposing team, earning yourself the dishonorable title of ‘Munter’. But I digress…

“I don’t want to bunt!” I said to my coach, stomping my cleats. “I am a soccer player; I can hit home runs like the boys!”

I was overruled.

“You will play like a girl,” he said to me.

And because I figured riding the pine was more embarrassing than bunting, I gave in. This forced me to see that the best way to out-smart that ball, and essentially the defense, was to use the all-powerful bunt. The bunt is a very smart choice for girls at bat in kickball. And it’s the best strategy for how to advance the lead off guy to third base.

Let me back up. The lead off guy comes up to the plate and he hits the ball on the ground, preferably out of the infield, and hustles to first base. The girl comes up and gently taps the ball down the third base line. The opposing team’s catcher, pitcher, or third baseman snags the ball and chucks it to first in hopes of getting the all-important first out. As the ball is thrown to first, the guy runner takes off and should be rounding second about the time the ball is gets to first base. With the guy safely on third and, hopefully, if there’s an overthrow or a really fast girl, we now have runners on first and third with no outs by the time the second guy comes up to bat.

Repeat process. Victory is inevitable.

This strategy became Tower Pub’s secret weapon in winning games and running up the score. And I loved the victories. I loved the victories so much that I succumb to the bunt. I started to love to bunt and more importantly, to respect the bunt. It’s not shameful to tap that ball three feet (well, some girls might get it three feet, though I bet I get my bunts farther) to my left.

It’s smart. It’s strategic. It’s playing like a girl.

I know what you are thinking, ‘The bunt was such an obvious choice – you should have just given in earlier!” Well, as with most things in life (insert philosophical advertising analogy reminder here), the obvious choice or answer isn’t always clear in the beginning. You may think you know what to do because it’s what you’ve always done, and relying on basics and foundations of previous success can sometimes make you triumphant. But there are times when it’s the better choice to let go of your preconceived notions and open up to all the other possibilities out there, because there are many, and the victory is that much sweeter.

So while you mull over the surprising parallels of life, advertising, and kickball, (let’s be honest, who knew such parallels existed before this very blog entry), if you were to ever think of telling me that in any of those areas, I play like a girl, I’ll gladly take that as a compliment.

Tags: Advertising, st. louis
Posted in Art, Culture, Miscellaneous, Recreaction, Water Cooler | No Comments »