Speaking of brands, I was startled recently to see a type of deodorant called Tsunami, which to me is a bit like naming something Hurricane Katrina (I realize that tsunamis are a natural phenomenon, but nonetheless . . .). And I know that’s how we felt immediately after “the” tsunami. I was standing in line in Boston in January 2005 with Steve Hibbard, the former CEO of Lonely Planet who had worked with us the previous year when he happened to land in western Massachusetts. Steve had come back from Australia that month to do some consulting and to come to Boston for our American Library Association launch. Steve and I noticed the Tsunami bottles and exclaimed over them. “That’ll be a collector’s item,” he said. We bought two, and I have one sitting on a shelf in my office.
Brand Tsunami
About the Author: Karen Christensen
Karen Christensen is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and occasional scholar who also writes about how women gain and wield power. She is the owner and CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, a research associate of the Fairbank Center at Harvard, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and founder of the Train Campaign. She was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Press, Read Karen’s occasional dispatches from the frontlines of international publishing at Karen's Letter on Substack, and follow her on Twitter etc @karenchristenze.
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