Brand Photos: Behind the Lens of Image Recognition

The Wait is Over: New Pongr iPhone App is Here!

Pongr Apps | March 25, 2013 by Darren

Pongr’s new iPhone app includes a PongrCam with creative filters and cropping-on-the-fly!

You asked. We delivered.
Now sharing photos celebrating your favorite brands is easier and more convenient than ever!

The Pongr App for the iPhone is now available as a free download in the iTunes Store.

In addition to emailing or texting your photos to Pongr, you can now upload them, customize them and share them with a few taps on your touch screen.

The Pongr iPhone App includes these features:

* A built-in Pongr camera with fun photo filters.
* The Beautify Button that boosts your attractiveness (wink, wink) on demand.
* Customized cropping that lets you reframe your pics as squares, rectangles or panoramic views.
* Easy access to your Pongr profile and points.
* Easy sharing to Facebook and Twitter.

Customize Your Photos (and Nails) — Add cropping or filters with Pongr’s new photo editing tools. Disclaimer: Make sure you let your nails dry before using the App. It cannot remove nail polish from your glass screen.

So let’s say you just had your nails done and you want to let the world know about it. With the Pongr App, you can give your manicure an edgier or brighter presentation based on whatever mood you happen to be in. I guess the woman in the photo above wanted the “See my nails through a telescope” look.

With the Pongr App, you can share only the part of your photo that”s most important to you.

We’re already getting a lot of positive feedback on the cropping function, which lets you control how wide or tall your pics will appear on the Pongr brand fan pages:

Playing With Aspect Ratios — It’s fun to jazz up the layout of your favorite Pongr brand fan page by sending in different shaped crops to the gallery.

If you’re a Pongr shutterbug, you’ll especially love the sharing features. Once you type in a brand once, the App will remember it for the next time. You can post to Facebook and Twitter at the same time, and major brands’ Twitter handles automatically pop up in your Tweet so you can send them a shout-out directly.

In addition, Pongr Photos that you share on Twitter appear as photos — as you intended — and not as links.

As with all forms of Pongr, the Pongr App is the perfect way to reach out to your favorite brands and often hear back from them.

Keep Tabs on Your Pongr Profile — While you’re sharing pics of your fabulous meal, you can get updated stats on your submissions and Pongr points.

Download the Pongr iPhone App here. And stay tuned for the release of the Pongr Android App very soon…

As always, we’d appreciate your feedback on the Pongr App and any suggestions for what features you’d love to see included in future updates. Please drop us a line anytime at info@pongr.com.

Be The Brand: Candy Artist Makes Celebrity Portraits With Mike and Ikes, Hot Tamales

Brand Ambassadors, Brand Loyalty, Featured Posts | February 1, 2013 by Darren

Channing Tatum, star of the movie “Magic Mike,” reincarnated in the form of Mike & Ike candies! (By Jason Mecier)

Imagine what George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt must have felt like staring at themselves immortalized in stone at Mount Rushmore. We don’t know how they felt — because they and colleagues Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson were long gone when the tribute was first commissioned in 1927.

But heartthrob actor Channing Tatum, voted People Magazine’s 2012 Sexiest Man Alive, is lucky. He does get to stare at his own glorified image, but on a much more humble scale.

Tatum recently starred as a Chippendale-like dancer in the movie “Magic Mike,” a role just recreated out of 5000 Mike and Ike candies by San Francisco mosaic artist Jason Mecier. The artwork’s flavor breakdown is as follows:

Mike’s lips are Red Rageous.
Mike’s belly button is a Berry Blast.
Mike’s chest features Tangy Twisters.
Mike’s underwear and cuffs are Lemonade Blends.
The background consists of Original Fruits, Tropical Typhoon and Italian Ice.

Sometimes the appearance of a product out of the box is just as iconic as the brand logo or CPG packaging. Jason was tickled by the idea of making a famous Mike entirely out of Mikes (which candies are the Mikes and which are the Ikes, by the way?)

He previously made a splash by creating portraits of President Barack Obama and 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney out of Jack Link’s beef jerky. And his Good & Plenty pink-and-white tribute to Taylor Swift is absolutely gorgeous (scroll down below).

We recently caught up with Jason for a Q & A on what it was like to channel the Sexiest Man Alive through his sweet tooth.

Q: When was your first informal work of food art? How did you get started?

JM: Though I have no formal art training, I did have an excellent mentor in my grandmother, Anita Tollefson. When I was young, I remember being mesmerized by her paintings, weavings, mosaics, sculptures, collages, and stained glass work that filled my grandparents’ house and yard. If Grandma was working on an art project, she would set me up at a nearby table with a project of my own.

One of my earliest pieces is a mosaic made from beans, noodles, rocks, and cut bamboo sticks glued on a piece of wood. She encouraged me to create masterpieces using materials readily available to me. She would rather paint on the back of her cigarette cartons than buy a canvas. I learned from her that I can make art out of anything I want to, and that there are no rules.

Q: When was your first “serious” piece of food art?

JM: About 20 years ago, I wanted to take macaroni art to a new level and made over 200 bean and noodle portraits, mostly 1970s TV icons like “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Mary Tyler Moore.” I started to feel limited by the earthtone palette so I started working with bright-colored candy. Then, I just started using anything and everything in my mosaics. Now I try to match the medium with the subject. Like Snoop Dogg out of Marijuana, Amy Winehouse out of pills, and Kevin Bacon made out of bacon.

My very first food art piece was Drew Barrymore (from the movie Firestarter) made out of chicken and egg dishes. It was for my friend’s zine cover. Chicken nuggets mixed with chow mein, scrambled eggs, lunchmeat and soup. It was messy and gross, but a fun learning experience.

Q: Why do you like working with food as a medium?

JM: I only like working with things that can be glued down and shellacked, like candy and beef jerky.

I HATE working with things that just need to be assembled, photographed, and thrown away immediately, like fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. The food is wilting or rotting before your eyes, you have to work flat, ants start parading by, and if you bump the table the whole thing would shift. I also don’t get the final time to reflect and make changes at the end.

Jason Mecier, glue gun in hand, in the final stages of filling in the last few “Mikes.”

Q: Do you spray your art with any preservatives when you’re done?

JM: I use Krylon Triple-Thick clear coat, a super high-gloss spray paint.

Q: What gave you the idea to use Mike & Ikes for the Magic Mike? More than just the name thing?

JM: Channing Tatum was really peaking this year. Magic Mike was such a great cheesy movie and you know he is People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive!” I’ve also been wanting to try Mike and Ike’s, so I thought it would be a perfect match.

Q: What special flair do Mike & Ikes give the mosaic versus using generic jelly beans?

JM: Mike and Ikes have a magical psychedelic glowy quality. I also like that I am forced to use their color assortment. Jelly Bellys are really easy and fun to work with, but there are too many jelly bean artists as it is, so if possible I try to find creative ways to use other candy brands.

Q: Has the actor seen your candy tribute yet?

JM: I’m not sure. I would love to get a picture of him with it! Or if he likes it, I can mail him a framed print.

Q: Do you always hope that your subjects get to see their image and interact with it?

JM: Yeah. It’s exciting. A lot of celebrities have my portraits of them in their homes: Parker Posey, Rosie O’Donnell, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Pink, George Lopez, Kathy Najimy, Bjork, Phyllis Diller, Ryan Adams, Barbi Benton, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Cho, Jackie Beat, The Scissor Sisters, Ricki Lake. It’s always exciting when Snoop Dogg gives you a shout out on Twitter!

Q: When you do a food mosaic, how much raw material winds up in your stomach?

JM: Not much. Usually once it’s in my studio and becomes art supplies, it’s not appetizing anymore.

Q: What’s coming next?

JM: The PR rep for Glee’s Becca Tobin (lead cheerleader Kitty Wilde) told me that she wanted to do something fun for her charity, so they had me make her portrait to auction off. I thought Hot Tamales (“fierce cinnamon” candies) would be perfect! I like the idea of sexy bad girls made out of Hot Tamales. So they approached the candy company (parent company Just Born, also the maker of Mike and Ikes) and asked them to donate the candy for the portrait.

Q: So what’s your dream gig?

JM: What I’d really like to do is a show of all Bravolebrities made out of Tic Tacs. Andy Cohen from Bravo network is obsessed with everyone’s breath, and I would just love to do a whole show of all The Real Housewives! But I need a partnership with the candy company and Bravo to really make it work. Cross promotion helps get the exposure that you need to make a project most successful.

Do you get Good and Plenty of Taylor Swift’s music?

(What brands would you like to see in Jason’s next celebrity mosaic? You can keep track of his future candy art here.)

The New Face of Marketing

Brand Ambassadors, Mobile Marketing, Shopper Marketing, Social Media | August 16, 2012 by Connor

In a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, Bill Lee makes the claim that traditional marketing is dead. It’s quite a proclamation, and he backs it up with several studies that confirm things like the relative lack of influence traditional marketing has on buyers’ decisions, as well as the apparent disillusionment of many CEOs with traditional marketing spending versus sales results. We still think traditional marketing has its place, but tight integration with newer, more social marketing tactics is definitely the future.

Lee posits that what may be creeping in to replace traditional marketing is a return to what he calls “community marketing”—companies empowering brand advocates to promote the product using social channels. For consumers, this “approximate[s] the experience of buying in their local, physical communities,” by applying the trust inherent in social networks to buying decisions. Community marketing is good for brands, because it makes the search for influencers easier. What better place to look for people to promote and advocate for your product than among people who already use and like the product?

Lee also argues that in exchange for helping promote the brand, consumers should be rewarded not with cash prizes or other similar incentives, but with social capital. By allowing brand enthusiasts to build trust and authority within their social network through promoting the brand, companies appeal to our desire to belong to a community and be recognized in that community.

Although he doesn’t know it, Lee is describing all the best things about photo response marketing. User-generated content is the most authentic and compelling form of content. Photos, too, are especially attractive and appeal to our universal human desire for authenticity and self-expression. Pongr’s platform lets brands empower their customers to create compelling original content to express their relationship with the brand. Our one-click sharing capabilities give users the opportunity to spread their content throughout their social networks, helping their influence to reach places traditional marketing never could.

Even if, like us, you believe traditional marketing still has a place, there’s no denying that integrating traditional with social marketing has become an essential part of running a business. Investing in new media marketing strategies is no longer a choice—it’s a requirement. According to a recent survey by Empathica, 62% of consumers feel brands are not participating sufficiently in online conversations. It’s time for brands to give consumers what they want and take advantage of the power of community marketing by enabling brand enthusiasts to promote the brand through social photos.

Photos Make Social Media Social Again

Brand Ambassadors, Social Media | June 28, 2012 by Connor

Brands—how much do you know about your Facebook fans? I mean, really know? You know how many you have, you can see how and when they interact with your content, but what else can you say about your fans? How many use your product on a daily basis, or how many wish they could? Which ones clicked “like” on your page two years ago and then forgot about you entirely, and which ones remain devoted brand enthusiasts who proudly advocate for your brand and spread word of mouth via their own personal profiles?

Chances are, most brands can’t answer these questions. A new like or follow doesn’t tell brands much about the users themselves, and this makes it very challenging to engage with fans on the personal, one-to-one level that social media promises. As a result, lots of brands have resorted to simply blasting their message on Facebook and Twitter, and they’re a bit lost when it comes to personalized, individual engagement with fans.

Victoria Ransom points out this challenge in her latest blog post for AdAge today. She proposes that brands need to implement systems to aggregate and analyze social data in order to be able to create highly personalized interactions with consumers. Of course, this is exactly what makes Pongr’s photo response management tools so great.

Photos: The Secret to Facebook Success

Advertising, Social Media | May 7, 2012 by Connor

For quite a while now, there’s been no question that Facebook is an essential aspect of every brand’s marketing strategy. But there hasn’t been much in the way of definitive stats telling us what works and what doesn’t when it comes to marketing on Facebook. Every brand has their own idea of how it should be done, usually figured out by trial and error. But as Advertising Age reported today, Facebook has recently released the results of their own study into the effectiveness of different ways brands are using their timelines.

Facebook conducted a one month study of 23 brands, plugging information about what the brands post into an algorithm to predict engagement— that is, likes, comments, and most importantly, shares. Shares are incredibly valuable to brands. Getting fans to like or comment on brand content is great, but that’s still only a one-on-one, brand-to-consumer interaction. On the other hand, if a fan shares brand content, then everyone that person is friends with will see it. Shares are what make Facebook really powerful for brands. And what type of content are people most likely to share? You guessed it— photos.

George Takei posts funny photos that get thousands of shares on Facebook.

When you think about it, this isn’t particularly surprising. While many animals rely on other senses like smell or hearing, humans are naturally visually-inclined. We are captivated by images, so it makes sense that this is the sort of content we’d want to share with our friends most. AdAge provides an example from Skittles’ fan page: a status that read “Like this post if you agree with what I’m going to say tomorrow” got more than 10,000 likes, but only 21 shares, while a photo of a football helmet made of Skittles got over 400 shares. Actor George Takei, known for his role as Lieutenant Sulu on the original Star Trek series, has practically made a second career posting funny photos to his Facebook timeline, most of which are shared by literally thousands of people.

These findings underscore the need for brands to have robust photo marketing capabilities. Pongr makes it easy for brands to collect photos taken by their fans and post them to Facebook with one click. As we’ve already pointed out, it’s amazing the kinds of exciting, visually stimulating photos brand enthusiasts take. The key for brands is to make sure as many people as possible see those pictures and get pumped about the brand.

This post is based off this article in Advertising Age.

The Fan-Defined Brand

Brand Loyalty | April 23, 2012 by Connor

Here at Pongr, we’re all about connecting consumers with brands by letting users express themselves however they like through photos. But some brands take that a step further by allowing their customers to actually create and define the brand themselves.

Perhaps the best example of this is Jones Soda, and their use of fan-submitted photos is especially close to our hearts. Every bottle of Jones Soda features a different picture taken by a customer. There are candids, portraits, landscapes, and everything in between. Jones is sure to make it all about the customer, as exemplified by their slogan: Your Photo, Your Soda, Your Brand. They also accept ideas for different flavors of soda as well as fortune cookie fortunes, which they print on the underside of their caps. Fans can order custom labels with a specific picture and a message to commemorate a special event.

PBR has become part of the hipster subculture.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is another example of a brand that has been defined by its customers. PBR enjoyed a peak popularity in 1977, but by 2001, their sales had declined drastically and the company was in danger of going under. But then something curious happened. Urban hipsters started embracing the brand and made it a part of their subculture and identity. The brand experienced a revival, but more importantly, PBR didn’t fight the trend. PBR has made hipsters a part of their own identity through their sponsorship of indie music, dive bars, and local businesses, in addition to posting fan photos and artwork on their website.

Even if brands aren’t able to include fan content on their labels, like Jones Soda, it’s important for brands to allow customers to express themselves through the brand however they see fit. We define ourselves in large part by the products we buy, like hipsters with Pabst Blue Ribbon. Whatever message consumers are trying to get across through their choice of product is just as important as whatever message is coming from the brand. In that sense, every brand is a fan-defined brand. People are incredibly creative and want to be heard. When brands really listen to their customers, it’s amazing what they have to say— not to mention how they say it, or in many cases, how they show it.

Fans will always find surprising new ways to express themselves with the brands they love.

Pongr is Exploding With Passion: Behind the Scenes of the Fast Company Photo Shoot

Artificial Intelligence, Image Search, Mobile Marketing, Our Favorites, Shopper Marketing | April 9, 2012 by Darren

Fast Company magazine recently explored Pongr's quest to retire QR code technology and asked CEO Jamie Thompson to demonstrate his feelings. Photo Credit: Jordan Hollender. (Click Jamie's mustache to read full story).

Fast Company magazine never settles for boring corporate headshots and their interview with CEO Jamie Thompson (“Forget QR Codes: Pongr Easily Turns Your Photos into Brand Rewards“) was no exception.

Given our focus on tapping into the power of brand logos and iconic advertising imagery, the action scene above may remind you of the Kool-Aid Man mascot, who is constantly bursting through brick walls and shouting “Oh, Yeah!” whenever there is a distress call from thirsty kids.

However, Fast Company editor Jason Feifer had other inspirations in mind.

“Photo recognition isn’t an easy thing to show in a still image. It’s a process, all done digitally, and any attempt to illustrate it would have come out cheesy,” he says. “So I started thinking that, rather than show Pongr’s business, it should show Pongr’s nemesis—the QR code, an instantly recognizable symbol.”

“We thought about various ways we could have Jamie fighting a QR code—he could be stuffing a big one in a garbage can, setting it on fire, kicking it. But in each of those, I just pictured a guy and a square piece of paper drowning in the photo. They all felt empty. Too much dead space. We needed the QR code to be bigger, badder, something requiring a full-on assault. And from there, the answer was obvious: Jamie needed to be busting through one, high-school-football-player style,” adds Jason.

Jamie met Fast Company photo editor Kathy Nguyen at the Manhattan studios of photographer Jordan Hollender, who was charged with the task of bringing out Jamie’s personality — again, no stodgy corporate stuff.

Pongr's Jamie Thompson with his archenemy, the QR Code! (Photos courtesy of Jordan Hollender)

Kathy had a more daunting challenge. Where do you find a printer to churn out billboard-sized QR codes on short notice? And then how do you prop it up?

Large format printers charge about $300 to $400 per sheet for posters that size. And with the plan being to take multiple poses and shots, the budget wasn’t generous enough to go through props like toilet paper. High school cheerleader pep rally banners were also considered, but most of those open and reseal with velcro and that wouldn’t capture the “torn” look the photographer would be striving for.

The giant barcode you see Jamie burst through is actually nine squares of paper glued together. Originally, the plans were to mount the squares onto foam core board. That image would have stood firm, for sure, but it also would have been impenetrable.

Kathy finally settled for firmly stretching the code like a canvas over a wooden frame.

Saving Jamie from countless headaches and a possible broken nose, the prop stylist cut a small hole in the middle of the code for Jamie to stick his head through and then tear a larger opening.

“The thought was that once we ripped it, we couldn’t go back, so we took baby steps before we let Jamie act like the Incredible Hulk,” says Kathy. “I couldn’t believe how animated he was — such a great model. He really brought his A-game!”

To get the “action” look, Jamie tried his best to get a running start behind the QR code, despite the tight quarters in the studio. At one point, he stumbled through the hole and accidentally caused a larger rip than anticipated.

“We were looking for lots of options so we had him running and jumping the whole time. He was absolutely dizzy by the end,” Kathy says.

Jamie's distaste for QR codes is well known in the image recognition technology universe. (Photos courtesy of Jordan Hollender).

The Fast Company fashion shoot (Did you notice how Jamie is even dressed in the colors of a QR Code) also included poses of the Pongr CEO throwing the shredded code into a trash can and trying to rip apart the remnants like a grizzly bear. Those shots ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor (or whatever magazines call the place they send their outtakes).

“I appreciate his willingness to humor us and keep trying new things. Jamie didn’t need much direction. He kept pushing the boundaries on his own. This was definitely one of my favorite photo shoots,” says Kathy.

Whenever you ask a CEO to act like the Kool-Aid Man, a high school cheerleader and the Incredible Hulk, how could it NOT be?

How to turn your Nike sneakers into an airborne photo studio

Pongr Contests | April 3, 2012 by Darren

Matt, one of the more adventurous Mountain Dew fans out there (and there's steep competition) is a skydiving coach who rotates gigs in Indiana, Ohio and Florida.

When we say that some Pongr fans go ABOVE and BEYOND the normal requirements to enter our brand-themed contests, we’re not kidding.

You may remember our daredevil player Matt’s skydiving snack photo session back in February for Pepsi and Frito-Lay’s “Ultimate Match-Up” game to win a VIP trip to Super Bowl XLVI. The Pongr-powered contest, which requires fans to snap photos of any Frito-Lay brand and any Pepsi brand together, continues this spring with a grand prize of a VIP trip to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

The number of different brand combinations, which you can enjoy by land, sea or air, will blow you away. Click on the chart below for more details.

BRAND AWARENESS -- Some of the members of the Frito-Lay and Pepsi family may surprise you (Click the chart for a closer look.).

But back to Matt. How DID this die-hard Mountain Dew fan get such great shots of himself cascading to Earth in what may be the world’s first Parachute Snack Bar? And with the wind knocking him around like a kite, how did he avoid blurry pics? Check out the sharp action shot below, for example, of his attempt to create a Doritos rain shower (no worries, the chips that didn’t land in his mouth are biodegradable).

Cool Ranch Weather Report: 100 percent chance of nacho showers.

Matt relied on the GoPro HD Hero2 camera, a favorite for action-adventure sports enthusiasts to capture their scenes with a panoramic 170-degree angle.

GoPro caters to the same demographic as Mountain Dew: Snowboarders, surfers, motorcyclists, skiers, etc. Take a look:

But although the company sells numerous variations of helmet straps, curved and flat adhesive mounts, 3-way pivot arms, suction cups, hooks and buckles, they don’t make a mount for running shoes. Just seems impractical as you’re likely to trip over it.

So that’s when Matt pulled a McGyver.

A close up look at how to mount a GoPro Hero 2 camera to your Nike Shox for Pongr'ing awesome photos (click the pic to enlarge).

Matt, who has recently jumped at small airports in Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Illinois and Iowa, took his regular handcam mount and zip-tied it to the toe of his Nike Shox sneaker. The mount is anchored through the laces and also strapped around the treads for extra stability. In case you’d like to duplicate it, he used five ties.

“The thing that surprised me the most is that my camera didn’t flap around while I was doing a freefall. I was kind of nervous that one of zip ties would snap, but they stayed put,” Matt says. “I was pretty confident that it was going to work, but you never really know until you try it.”

Matt took 1400 pictures of himself drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos (at a rate of two per second) under the floating canopy. Perhaps a brand-themed coffee table book is in his future?

“I love my job. It doesn’t get any better than this,” says the skydiving instructor, who jumps between 100-250 times per year, usually without food. “You know what they say: If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Etch A Sketch Mania: How One Brand Hit the Political Jackpot

Brand Ambassadors, Featured Posts | March 22, 2012 by Darren

Who would've imagined that the classic Etch A Sketch toy would have an impact on the presidential election?

You want to know the biggest voter demographic in the 2012 presidential election?

Former Etch A Sketch artists.

There must be millions of us. Who DIDN’T play with that fabulous toy as a kid?

What are Republican presidential candidates doing with Etch A Sketch props during their campaign stops this week?

It all started when Mitt Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters that there would be a different set of issues debated during the general election against President Obama — topics covering different priorities than those shared by social conservatives, who tend to set the agenda in the primaries.

According to NPR, here’s what Fehrnstrom said:

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

So now Romney’s rivals are gleefully pulling out every toy metaphor they can imagine. Gingrich set up a fundraising site with a phony Romney-A-Sketch that changes its political position every time you shake it — essentially a variation of the old flip-flop souvenir (past candidates have given shower sandals away to mock opponents with inconsistent positions.

Newt Gingrich's Etch A Sketch-themed fundraising campaign

And Rick Santorum added to the mockery. Here’s how ABC News reported his anti-Romney toy analogy in San Antonio:

“You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there. If you’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Turns out that Etch A Sketch revenues are skyrocketing from this accidental immersion into political waters (we don’t recommend submerging your tablet by the way, they are not waterproof).

According to a statement obtained by Pongr from parent company Ohio Art, sales jumped by 1556 percent on Amazon.com in just one day:

“We feel our stock has gone up over the past 24 hours due to an increase in consumer exposure and an anticipated increase in product sales. While it is still too early to tell what type of spike the product will achieve, we’re confident we will see a spike in Etch a Sketch sales,” said Martin Killgallon, Senior VP of Marketing and Product Development.

The company also put out a public statement playfully filled with Etch a Sketch puns:

Happy to see Etch A Sketch, an American classic toy, is DRAWING attention with political candidates as a cultural icon and important piece of our society. A profound toy, highly recognized and loved by all, is now SHAKING up the national debate. Nothing is as quintessentially American as Etch A Sketch and a good old fashion political debate.

We are pleased with the added attention being drawn to Etch A Sketch which is truly one of the most recognizable, iconic and fun toys ever developed. As one of the most classic toys of all time, Etch A Sketch has always sold particularly well with today’s consumer. It is too early to tell, but we are hopeful to see if there is an uptake in sales given this recent exposure.

The Ohio Art Company has been in the toy business for more than 100 years and Etch A Sketch for over five decades. Our company values bringing smiles to kids faces and providing hours of fun playtime for young kids.

What impresses me most about Ohio Art is how its marketing executives instinctively knew to embrace the political product placement, even though one could easily interpret the brand analogy as a negative one. Calling Mitt Romney an Etch A Sketch is not meant to be a flattering comparison. Just like an athlete wouldn’t take kindly to being called the greatest cookie mascot ever, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

But Ohio Art has stayed above the political fray and proved that the love of their hallmark brand is much stronger than any partisan sniping.

I look at the pics of Santorum and Gingrich above and forget about their issues or rhetoric. I just see two grown men reuniting with a toy they likely played with their own children and which has been entertaining kids since John F. Kennedy beat out Richard Nixon in 1960.

If nostalgia is overwhelming you and you’d like to try the Etch A Sketch online right now (controls are the up and down arrows on your keyboard), Ohio Arts can oblige.

It’s a lot tougher than it looks. I tried to sketch out the word “PONGR” and failed miserably.

Can YOU do any better? How are your Etch A Sketch skills? Click to find out.

But I had a heckuva lot of fun trying!

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