Marketing Artist L.L.C.

Corporate Communications Consulting by Andrew Tytla

Monthly archives "August 2009"

Glazed and Confused


That’s right, “Glazed and Confused.” It’s a type of donut made and sold by Psycho Donuts in Campbell, California. They also sell Cereal Killer, Mood Swing and Headbanger (formerly known as Massive Head Trauma) donut varieties.

Love it. Great concept and very creative — an they’ve only been in business for six months. All in a down economy. I think they’ve got a chance at franchising, too. Nice T-shirts, too.

Mental health advocates find their marketing insensitive, and they’ve got a point. Chief Psycho Jordan Zweigoron agrees and he’s changing things around:

Sooner-than-later changes to Psycho Donuts could be the beginning of the end of a months-long controversy between the shop and the mental health community.

Psycho Donuts owner Jordan Zweigoron announced he’d be making some changes to the shop after taking sole ownership at the end of July, but gave few details about exactly what he would do and when he would do it. But last week, Psycho Donuts’ transition began with a revamped Web site that, among other things, includes links to several mental health advocacy groups and changes to product names.

The names of two of the more controversial doughnuts, “Bipolar” and “Massive Head Trauma,” are now known as “Mood Swing” and “Headbanger,” respectively. There’s also now a “Jekyll and Hyde” doughnut.

“It was becoming really something of a polarizing issue,” Zweigoron said of the controversy that began when the shop opened in March. “We had to do some soul searching, and it came down to two things: We had no intention of offending anyone, but we also didn’t see ourselves as a mascot for free speech. Some supporters wanted us to adopt that model, but what we really decided was we wanted to be the most unusual doughnut shop on the planet.

“A lot of [the changes] were things that I planned to do all along,” Zweigoron added. “It wasn’t about giving into demands, but more about in order to be the most unusual doughnut shop in the land, you have to keep innovating, and that’s my intention.”

Watch him defend himself on Fox Business Channel last week. When I visit the South Bay area, expect me to visit this establishment.

Here’s a typical day at Pshycho Donuts, seen in a video from May, 2009…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAHVOn5y8eE]

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Digest-Size Debt Load

Reader’s Digest is filing for bankruptcy? Why? Such a strong publishing organization, it practically had a license to print money. Well, then again, so did many other print media.

Was it the cost of paper and postage or was it the Internet revolution? Partially, yes. I’d think most would agree the company was overly leveraged:

I remember wondering why it was a good idea to take a struggling company and load it up with leveraged buyout debt. But buyers were there for the debt, at interest rates that were not very high, and the deal was done.

Today Reader’s Digest said it will skip interest payments on a bond issue and file a prepackaged bankruptcy. The deal will give equity to some creditors, and slice debt from $2.2 billion to $550 million. The L.B.O. investors are wiped out, and creditors take large losses. Some creditors have agreed to put more money in. The publication will stay in business.

Add “The Digest” to the modern pantheon of P.E. failures.

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