The Superior Olive:

An auditory nucleus in your brain stem that lets you figure out the position of sound in space based on relative amplitude and/or on time differences between your two ears.

 - Seth S. Horowitz in The Universal Sense - How Hearing Shapes the Mind

Until I read this most fascinating book, I thought olives were simply playful food items used by children as fingertip covers and by adults as martini decorations.

And wouldn't superior olive be a great name for a vodka brand?

Have you "heard" about the new vodka?
It makes an outstanding dirty martini.

After a quick internet search, I learned that the superior olive already lends its name to a rock band ( which is quite appropriate as well).

Below is the image that adorns the home page of their website where their music is described as "blending orchestral tenderness with raw primal rock energy, as if the spirit of Mozart inhabited Ozzie Osbourne and became the front man for Pink Floyd."

Hmm ... I might have to give them a listen while I snack on my fingertips and sip a dirty martini.



Image credits: 1, 2, 3

Always Your Flavorite

Burnett's Flavored Vodkas may have launched the "Always Your Flavorite" advertising campaign over a year ago, but I just saw one of the billboards for the first time last week. Perhaps the campaign is new to Michigan.

The company's press release stated that "the campaign includes a large scale consumer and trade advertising and outdoor campaign." This makes me wonder why, even if the campaign is new to Michigan, I couldn't find one image from the campaign on the internet.

Either way, something about the slogan didn't sit right with me.

I get the portmanteau of  flavor + favorite; that doesn't bother me, though it is nothing spectacular. So, it must be something to do with the adverb always or the possessive determiner your.

I will start with the possessive determiner your. Flavored or not, I have never had Burnett's vodka so nothing about it has to do with me. The same idea applies to the adverb always. Having never had Burnett's, it could not always be anything to me. Even if I had had the vodka, the history on Heaven Hill's website indicates that they did not launch Burnett's Vodka until 1991. I was of the legal drinking age before then and I have always preferred Absolut or Stoli (both of which have long made flavored vodkas).

Off the top of my head, I came up with a couple of alternatives (mind you, I have not done any trademark research).

Retaining the deictic nature of the message but adding an appropriately suggestive spin  -

Your New Flavorite 

And another playful, idiom-based suggestion -

Play Flavorites

Which can easily incorporate a positive reminder -

And Play Safe; Don't Drink and Drive.