Marketing communications lesson from nature: Say what you mean with bold statements; be colorful

My friend holding a red spotted newt, moments before the colorful amphibian's neurotoxins rendered my friend paralyzed from the eyebrows down.

This summer I hiked in the Catskills with an outdoor writer and another outdoor industry colleague of mine. My friends and I came across a red spotted newt or “red eft,” a common salamander here in the wet Northeast.  Apparently, this delicate amphibian secretes a poison when injured or in danger, a nifty defense mechanism against predators.  (Harmless to humans?)  The red eft sports a fiery reddish-orange color–nature’s universal and unequivocal signal to stand back, stand way back!