People You Should Know About: Piet Hein

Volume II: Piet Hein / Danish / 1905-1996

Discerning the difference between a simple but valuable nugget of wisdom and a horribly tired cliché can be tricky. The context and the medium can sometimes be good clues. Business meetings are of course an opportunity to practice wariness – you never know when you might be handed a “Reach for the Stars Positive Pal Starfish,” offered by the good people at Successories.com, with this explanation:

Let these Positive Pals plush toys work for you - no training necessary! Gifts, incentives, giveaways…these are just a few ideas for using our affordable Positive Pals stuffed animals. Use Positive Pals plush toys wherever a smile is needed!

And affordable they are – just $4.99 in quantities of 250 and up. It’s pretty tempting, really: I believe the “no training necessary” promise, and it’d be nice to forego smiles for a while and just chuck plush at all the overachievers I meet.

I’m happy to report that Piet Hein has nothing to do with Positive Pals. But I did become aware of him in a context that had potential to devolve into cheesy motivational tools. Several years ago, I did some coffee presentations and participated in workshops in Palm Springs as part of Starbucks’s launch of new training programs. The meetings were held at a very cool and authentic mid-century resort; its best days were long in the past, but it was nearly empty and I’m sure the price was right.

At the opening of one of the workshops each participant was given a small, rectangular card, perforated so it could be opened like a greeting card. Breaking the seal revealed a pithy saying; once we read them we were directed to discuss them with our tablemates. Here’s what I saw when I opened mine:

Problems worthy of attack

prove their worth

by hitting back

--Piet Hein

Now this wasn’t life-changing, but in a world where “There’s no ‘I’ in team” passes for wisdom, my little card struck me as pretty meaningful. This was probably in the mid- to late-nineties, which was, as was pretty much always the case, a period of rapid growth and change at Starbucks. I suppose what I like about this little verse (I would soon learn that they were called “Grooks” and that there are hundreds of them.) was that it brought another dimension to the old idea that “if was easy anyone could do it.” For me, it helped crystallize the notion that change, newness, risk – all the things we say are necessary for success – are hard in part because there is always something – a person, an idea, a structure –that would rather see things stay the same. And they hit back. If the problem isn’t big or serious enough to do so, it may not be a problem worthy of our efforts.

So it stayed with me. I kept that little card on my desk for years. And when I got back to the office, I did a little research on Piet Hein – the name seemed a little unusual, so I was pretty sure he wasn’t a motivational speaker from Newport Beach. Turns out he was Danish, and he invented a shape, was a designer, writer, philosopher and more. And internationally, he is considered the third best known Dane of the 20^th century. Can you name either of the other two? (Answers are at the end of this post.)

He invented a shape. That alone seems pretty cool to me. Here’s the story, straight from www.piethein.com :

Harmonic forming in mathematics: The superellipse
Parallel to his poetic work, Piet Hein decided to find an absolutely harmonic physical design. With mathematical intuition he first found the form and then explained it afterwards. His superellipse was to solve the double contrast between the circle and the square and that of the ellipse and the rectangle. By means of mathematics he found a harmonic geometrical figure which was first used on a large scale in connection with the solution to a town planning problem in Stockholm. In a rectangular square, 200 metres long, in Stockholm's centre two motorways were to meet in a gigantic roundabout. The solution was the application of the superellipse to both square and roundabout at the new Sergels Torg. Later on the superellipse has been used in Canada, France, Japan, the US and Mexico in connection with the solution of as different constructions as residential areas and sports centres for example the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City:

Within furniture design the superellipse also became the solution to various problems -especially in relation to Piet Hein's design of tabletops the superellipse became popular. In a three-dimensional version the superellipse became the superegg which has been used for metal versions of various board games, superegg drink coolers and the anti-stress ball. Especially the latter reached an enormous distribution in the 1970s. In addition to his work with the development of the superellipse Piet Hein has executed a great many other design commissions, from board games in wood to the elegant Sinus lamp

If you spend just a few minutes on the website, you’ll likely find something familiar – a design sensibility you may have taken for granted, or even a toy from childhood. Give it a look.

Because I am much more verbal than spatial, it’s the little bits of verse that I find most intriguing about Hein. In 1940, the Danish newspaper Polotiken began publishing Hein’s little poems, which were known as “Gruks” – “Grooks” in English. It’s not clear where the name came from – apparently Hein said it “just came to him.” Others believe it is combination of the Danish words “grin” and “suk” (laugh and sigh). I’d like to think that this is the origin, because so many of them prompt in me those two reactions. So I’m just going to end this with a few of my favorites.

Here’s one about patience:

T. T. T.

Put up in a place

where it's easy to see

the cryptic admonishment

T. T. T.

When you feel how depressingly

slowly you climb,

it's well to remember that

Things Take Time

This one’s just fun:

SOCIAL MECHANISM

When people always

try to take

the very smallest

piece of cake

how can it also

always be

that that's the one

that's left for me?

On being one’s own worst enemy:

ON PROBLEMS

Our choicest plans

have fallen through,

our airiest castles

tumbled over,

because of lines

we neatly drew

and later neatly

stumbled over

And finally, something familiar:

A MAXIM FOR VIKINGS 

Here is a fact

   that should help you fight

      a bit longer:

Things that don't actually 

      kill you outright

      make you stronger.

To read a whole lot more of these, visit http://tiny.cc/ULoGp

Oh yes: the two 20^th century Danes with more international fame than Piet Hein: physicist Neils Bohr and author Karen Blixen

Miracle Whip Is the New Black!

“We are Miracle Whip. And we will not tone it down” is the defiant tagline for a new ad campaign for Miracle Whip, which was once known as simply “the Kraft bread spread.” The new Gen-Y focused TV ad first caught my eye a couple weeks ago. While I haven’t rushed out and bought a jar (or a one-gallon vat, which is apparently one of the options), if my Gen-Y daughters request it, we may give it a try.

I found the really cool ad, which you can see here (http://tiny.cc/sAC1w) quite remarkable. For one, it took me back to childhood: ours was a mayonnaise family, and one of my best friends lived in a Miracle Whip household. I should mention that I was somewhat more aware of this kind of stuff than most kids, because my dad worked for General Mills. Though “Big G,” as we called it, was not in the sandwich spread business, (Kraft makes Miracle Whip and appears to be the leader in mayo) I was probably more aware of food and foodlike substances than most kids my age, because where there were choices, we were pretty much limited to General Mills products. Because breakfast cereals were hugely important to Big G and a significant part of my diet, I was keenly aware of foods I ate at friends’ houses that were unavailable at home. So for some reason, the allure of Miracle Whip, which I only experienced elsewhere, was conflated with the frankly superior hedonics of cereals like Cap’n Crunch and Super Sugar Crisp. So all of that is to say that I’ve always been aware that Miracle Whip and mayonnaise are two different things.

The other reason I found the ad remarkable can be summed up with the word “Huh?” I suppose it’s possible that the flavor of Miracle Whip – with is “zing” (more on that word later) and sort of assertive, weird sweet-but-tangy quality – could appeal to the Gen-Y taste buds, which are known to favor extreme (XTreme) flavors. I’ve long suspected that Miracle Whip was invented when someone at Kraft was testing the shelf life of mayonnaise and discovered that just before it’s foul enough to actually sicken someone, mayo takes on a pleasing-to-some tanginess. The food scientist involved no doubt reported this to the product management and marketing people, who rather than thinking of the words “food safety” thought of the words “line extension” or “new product opportunity.”

“It’s a Miracle,” said the product manager.

“I’ll Whip up a deck,” responded the marketer, “and start socializing it with leadership.” And a product was born.

Given the resources that Kraft has, why wouldn’t they just develop a new condiment? In a world where “Baconnaise” becomes news, wouldn’t it make more sense to get something new out there, to try to really create some buzz? I’m sure Kraft looked into this, and perhaps concluded that they were better off spending their money on marketing. And really, given all that’s going on “in the social networking space,” why not skip the headache of product development and just change the way they talk about the product? So in addition to the hip TV ads, they’ve also developed “Zingr.” (Apparently Gen-Y consumers don’t like spelling the whole word if they can avoid it. LOL.) Zingr is “the newest way to add your own flavor to the web. Zing anything you deem worthy of your wit.” You can download Zingr and use it on Facebook to “zing” your friends by adding your own witty remarks, validated by Miracle Whip’s ever-so-right now graphic motif. So we must conclude that Kraft’s research showed that Gen-Y consumers are most interested in products that somehow create synergy between social networking and sandwiches. I can only imagine the marketers at Heinz and French’s scrambling to counteract Zingr: “I know, how about ‘Splat?’” It’d be awesome to splat someone when they write on your wall…we could totally make it look like yellow graffiti…”

In an interview with Media Post, a Kraft spokesperson said, “Many people enjoyed Miracle Whip in the past, but with so many flavor options today, many of them -- especially younger consumers -- have lost sight of this tangy original dressing.” So they’ve ended up in Shredded Wheat territory, which has a campaign going now that boldly states “Progress is overrated” and “We put the no in innovation.” (The Shredded Wheat campaign has a fun series of episodic ads available for viewing at http://thepalaceoflight.com/.) Fair enough – a TV ad that looks like MTV combined with a social networking add-on might do the trick.

But the Kraft spokesperson goes on to say, “We have reinvented Miracle Whip, and we want to bring its one-of-a-kind flavor back in front of younger consumers who might not be thinking about it." Hmmm. Two things:

• You are wrong on the first point. You have not reinvented it. The whole point is that you haven’t changed it. (“And we will not tone it down.”)
• You are correct on the second point. Younger consumers are not thinking about Miracle Whip

Zing!

Disclaimers and clarifications:

• Some of you have noticed that I recently became a fan of Miracle Whip. This is Facebook fandom ONLY, and is for research purposes only. I am a mayo man, though for sandwich-based applications, especially if roast beef is involved, I’ll go with mayo on one slice and horseradish on the other. That’s some real zing.
• For the record, mayonnaise predates Miracle Whip by about 180 years. Mayo was invented in France in 1756, but didn’t debut in the US till 1905. Miracle Whip came along in 1933.
• Miracle Whip tastes the way it does because it has a whole lot of sugars in it as well as what I’m sure is a secret blend of spices.

People You Should Know About: An Occasional Series

Volume I: Introductory Remarks

When I was in about third grade my parents gave me a book called “The Golden Book of Quotations.” I still have that book, and still remember a lot of the quotations in it. One of them, attributed to Alexander Dumas, I have found both funny and true since the first time I read it. (“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.”) I have always enjoyed having little aphorisms like this at my disposal, so I look for them, and I usually remember who said it and where I read it. So I guess I’ve always been curious not just about information, but its source as well. I cannot imagine, for example, loving a book, telling someone about it, and then not knowing the author’s name. In fact, I’m more likely to correctly remember an author’s name than a book’s title.

Now, as a curious adult who has both the time to be curious and easy internet access, I am able to dig a bit deeper when I read a pithy statement or hear an interesting idea, and often I’ll try to learn something about the sources of things I find intriguing. I don’t dig as often as I should, arrogantly assuming that my not having heard of someone is a reflection of their lack of fame or their unwillingness to retain a proper PR firm. Other times, my curiosity gets the best of me and I dig; what I find out is always rewarding.

So that brings me to People You Should Know About (PYSKA). In the coming weeks, prepare to meet some interesting people here at Sodcutter. The folks I plan to write about came to my attention in a variety of ways – including what appeared to be junk mail in one case. I make no claim to have discovered these people, and they have no need of the meager “publicity” an appearance in this blog will provide. So this is really about appreciating the special, unique intelligence that is all around us. I learned about these folks only because I took the time to respond to one tiny jolt of curiosity, and then found that my appreciation of their work grew as a result of knowing a bit more about them. I think the same will be true for you, and I hope over time you’ll share some of you discoveries with me.