People have been doing a double take in their local supermarket recently because they’ve caught a glimpse of the past, something from a mental montage that includes Steve Austin in a jogging suit, Pinky Tuscadaro doing her finger snapping thing, and Fat Albert’s “Hey, Hey, Hey.” The kitschy pink can is familiar, yet, as is everything else today, it’s tweaked with a new twist. Tab is back, but it now is smaller, taller and thinner. (Or have you gotten bigger, shorter and fatter?)

Upon closer inspection, Tab diet soda of your youth has been turned into the highly stylized energy drink Tab Energy. Last month Coke, the company that’s owned Tab since its debut in 1963, released this caffeine blast from the past packed with counter-culture hipness like only a multinational corporation can. Tab Energy hopes to be the next fashion accessory of every teenage girl, and it might succeed. Not that Tab Energy tastes great—its flavor is reminiscent of cheap watermelon candy found in a bowl at the bank—no, the real reason people will buy it is the marketing. There is a lesson to be learned here, one from which money starved nature-based groups like N.H. Fish and Game and N.H. Audubon could benefit.

If you go to www.Tabenergy.com, you will see how a cancer-causing, metallic tasting diet soda of the 1970s has been turned into the “Fuel to Be Fabulous” (the official slogan of Tab Energy). The drink is targeted to young women who for some reason are not attracted to energy drinks like Red Bull, AMP, Venom or Whoop Ass. The Web site is aurally flavored with four looped tracks of techno and explains that “it’s hard work being fabulous.” Tab Energy is the pink drink that can help. Capitalizing on retro pop art coolness, the slim hot pink can is easily carried and identified from afar, which comes in handy when celebrities are spotted sipping the stuff. Recent Tab celeb sightings include Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Fergie (Black-Eyed Peas, not the royal one). The drink was launched during New York’s Fashion Week during (what else?) a fashion show.

Madison Avenue has always loved Tab. During its development in the 1960s, market researchers discovered that a short name would resonate with the chic middle- to upper-class diet soda drinkers of the time, so they used an IBM computer (wow) to generate 250,000 three-letter words that could be the diet soda’s name. The company decided on Tab, reportedly linked to the concept of keeping a “Tab” on one’s weight. The idea that Tab stood for “Totally Artificial Beverage” is a myth.

Groups like N.H. Fish and Game and N.H. Audubon hang their hats, in part, on the profession of environmental education. A noble cause, but not much bling. What might marketers do to help teach the public about nature?

To explore this, let’s examine a case study: the natural history of the spruce tree.

In New Hampshire, there are three native species of spruce: black, white and red. All in the genus Picea (of the pine family), they can be distinguished from other conifers by their square needles, cones that hang down from the branches and rough stems. Spruces occur farther north than most trees, forming forests within the Arctic Circle. The white spruce and black spruce cover extensive areas in Canada, but the red is concentrated around northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes. Spruce is harvested for lumber and pulp and provides valuable wildlife habitat.

About now, the traditional nature reader is wondering what role spruce play in the interesting boreal ecology, but the stylish people reading this article have lost interest and are on their cell phones ordering Juicy Couture jeans. One is spending money, and the other is not.

To get consumers to buy what they’re selling, nature-based groups must market their subject, and market researchers would say that they must emphasize one aspect of their product and hype the hell out of it.

So what about the spruce? Spruce are sometimes used as Christmas trees, but celebrating the birth of Jesus is so 2,000 years ago. Spruce are important for many species of animals including the spruce grouse, which is a chicken-like bird of the north that eats primarily evergreen needles and buds. Still, chickens are not that hip. There is one thing about spruce that could get a marketer excited, though: spruce gum.

Spruce gum is the thick sap or resin that oozes from breaks in spruce bark and hardens into little amber chunks. According to historians, Native Americans chewed it often (funny to think of groups of local residents popping their gum as they watched Columbus come ashore). Real woodsy folk simply find a chunk of resin, bust it off, and pop it in their mouth. The turpentine-flavored lump will immediately break into small hard bits, but after 15-30 minutes of chewing and spitting bugs and bark, the spruce gum will turn as pink and soft as Hubba Bubba.

Spruce gum was actually wildly popular in the 19th century. A guy by the name of John Curtis first sold a lightly refined version of spruce sap in 1848. He formed it into little sticks, wrapped it in tissue paper, and gave it the name “State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum” (Curtis was a marketing idiot). By 1850, he enjoyed a thriving business that employed more than 200 employees. Because of lousy marketing, spruce gum lost market share to sweeter paraffin and chicle-based gum by 1890.

To begin hyping spruce gum, it needs a brand name that will attract a target audience to this coniferous confectionary. One group that might warm up to spruce gum, and that could certainly use some back to nature education, is the young urban male.

Here’s the marketing pitch: “Pic” (short for the spruce genus Picea) will be the next iconic accessory to rappers everywhere. Pic’s slogan would be “Tough chew for a tough you.” Rugged rappers like 50 Cent would be seen chewing and spitting Pic at press conferences and at their shows. Advertising text would emphasize that “sweet gums are for chumps, but the ’tine taste of Pic makes a man of punks.” Pic would be sold at bait and tackle stores (with part of the proceeds going to N.H. Fish and Game, of course). Spruce Up, Dog.

If you are interested in trying some spruce gum, find a spruce tree and take a bite. For a description of how to get the impurities out of spruce gum or to actually buy some, go to www.naturallist.com/gum.htm. To try the new Tab Energy, go to your nearest convenience store and look for the thin pink can in the cooler. To sample the taste of the original Tab go to www.ILoveTab.com and search through the list of Tab distributors in your area.