Why "The Rocket Formerly Known As Black"?
You are here because you are wondering why a rocket would have a symbol instead of a name? Hang with me while I give you the background, and I'll explain how this rocket became known as ç.
Have you ever seen a television ad that was so convoluted and obscure that it left you perplexed and confused? Maybe even just a little dyspeptic? Such was the case with the ad campaign for an integrated E-business network platform.
The television ads were indefensibly cryptic. They gave no clue regarding the nature of the product they were advertizing.
They featured a guy who would pull this foot-tall rocket (which, by the way, was black) out of his briefcase in tense situations. It worked like Kryptonite.
Everyone within a 100 foot radius instantly fell into a stunned silence once it was unsheathed.
It humbled Customs officials, Eastern-bloc commissars, traffic cops, and even that sultry IT executive with the pouty lips.
Heaven only knows what it would do to myopic marketing VP's named Janet and heavy-handed intellectual property lawyers named Merton.
The campaign was just incomprehensible enough to send me scrambling for more information -- not because I needed an integrated E-business network platform, but because I liked the rocket.
The Internet yielded little more in more useful drawings or few pictures. I found a few ads from various places on the Web, but I can't show them to you. (They're advertisements after all - think about the chaos that would ensue if someone actually saw them!) It was during the construction phase of the Happy Birthday Party Napkin Rocket of the Apocalypse that I realized I could a build an href="http://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/arsenal/bradrocs/napkin/napkinrocket.aspx" target="Napkin upscaled reproduction of the icon used in the aformentioned advertisements using similar construction techniques; so I decided ç would be my next big project after the Napkin rocket took flight.
Neither the company or the product were mentioned here by name until two years after the company -- Genuity, Inc. -- filed for bankruptcy in 2002. This is because I have been threatened with legal action if we make mention of them. Why? Foolishly, I made the mistake of contacting the company's communications, advertising, and marketing departments to tell them what I was doing. I offered them photos, video, invited them to tell employees, and asked for nothing in return. I even complimented their ad campaign, AND -- I invited them to tell me if they had misgivings about my project. But rather than speak to me directly, the next correspondence I received came in the form of a threatening letter from a law firm.
Click HERE! to read the letter from their legal council - and also Brad's scathing reply! Feel the razor-edge of his rapier wit!
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