Category: Uncategorized

On the Internet, everyone knows I’m a dog…

One of the worst days of my life is now a matter of public record, as Jeopardy has now posted its complete archives including who played what game, what questions they answered, and what they went home with. In my case, all pretty pathetic. I don’t even recall that dome tent as the 3rd prize winner and suspect I gave it to charity. Click the title link of this article for the full gory details.

But here’s what REALLY happened folks: I kept buzzing in TOO SOON. I knew the answers, almost all of them, and was eager to prove it. You believe me, right? Hello?

Batteries not included.. neither is the lid for the battery case.

I just got through a holiday season filled with toys that required batteries, and something finally dawned on me. All of them now have battery covers that are attached with a tiny screw, rather than the slide-on-and-click-to-lock type that I remember.

I first assumed this was some kind of money saving move, and that somehow it cost less to use a screw than to mold a special plastic case that shuts tightly… higher quality plastic, tighter tolerances presumably being needed for the latter. But maybe not.

A bit of poking around the web suggests the screw-on battery cases are in fact for child safety and to keep kids from getting at the batteries so they can stick them in their mouths. Perhaps there’s new legislation requiring the manufacturers to use them. Anybody know?

I want to bring up a couple of points about this, which are completely random and unrelated:

* I can’t find anybody who is upset about what is really a pretty major change in toy design, no Amazon reviews or web postings by folks who are upset about the extra difficulty of dealing with the screws or the need to run out and buy a tiny screwdriver. (And by the way, in most cases these screws are really IN THERE and require a lot of torque to remove.) Suggesting as a nation we are a lot more handy than one might suspect. Wonder if there are any more hidden competencies lurking out there?

* It costs about a 1/10th of a mill (which is 1/10th of a cent) to add a little locking washer so the screw doesn’t fall out and get lost, and yet maybe 1 toy in 5 has it. So picture this. You’re trying to load the batteries while your child with trembling hands awaits. Of course the battery screw falls out and of course it disappears (possibly into the mouth of a smaller child). And now you have a lid with no way to secure it other than our old friend, Mr. Tape.

Progress?

The worst meal of my life

This has nothing to do with marketing, but I think the occasion must be commemorated: last night I had the worst meal of my life at Steak Escape, a “food court” store in the Denver Airport. Worstness is here defined not by the savoriness or healthiness or preparation of the food, but by the total indifference of the staff.

I had time before getting on the plane in Des Moines and thought about picking up a known quantity, a Quizno’s classic Italian from their store right next to the airport. Then I decided that taking a sandwich on the plane to eat 3 hours later was too food-obsessive and I’d just roll the dice when I made my connection in Denver.

I chose the “Steak Escape” because they were right by my gate in Denver and they advertised an Italian sub. I asked the counter person what was on it. He could not tell me. He darted his eyes around the food prep area, and I could tell he wasn’t finding anyone or anything that could help me. Finally he took a stab in the dark: “It’s salami… ham… and some other kinds of meat.”

So I ordered a known quantity, a Philly Cheesesteak. It came bare and I stopped the counter person just as she was about to slather it with mayonnaise. I told her I wanted mustard instead. She said, “we don’t have any mustard.” A cheese steak place without mustard? Impossible. But turned out she was just being lazy… SHE did not have any mustard and her station, and did not feel like stepping over to the next station on a slow night to get some. But a guy cleaning the place heard the conversation and produced a big box of packets. Hope he gets a better job soon because he deserves it.

The food was just as awful as you’d expect, but the non-service described above is what makes this the world’s worst. Here is their phone number: (303) 342-3445. Why not give them a call and ask them a question about their food?

Inside the Baby Boomer cranium

I recently celebrated a Significant Birthday, and celebrated by ordering myself a 30 GB video iPod. Shortly thereafter, I cancelled that order and purchased a refurbished iPod mini.

My reasons say something about selling to baby boomers, a demographic that has marketers salivating because of its size and presumed affluence. The initial impetus for my buyer’s remorse was a search to find ways to import DVD video to an iPod. After finding out it might take a weekend to convert a feature length film, I began to wonder what was wrong with watching a film on my computer or even (drum roll)… the TV.

It also occurred to me that at 4 GB, the iPod Mini has space for all the tunes I am ever likely to listen to. I was attracted the renowned reliability of the Mini and also some potential redundancy—my wife already has a Mini and I like the idea of making use of her various docks, chargers etc.

So. Here we see a Baby Boomer who is attracted by simplicity, the very idea of not doing something he could. That represents a real turning point for me, who has always bought the buggy 1.0 release of everything. Simplicity also means the confidence something is going to work as it should, nothing more and nothing less. That’s also something you don’t get with the newest cutting edge product. The Mini is in fact a long-discontinued product, yet still popular on eBay and occasionally available at the Apple outlet.

By the way, this new iPod is replacing an iPod shuffle which is a great product when you recognize what it actually is: a competitively priced USB thumb drive that comes with a free MP3 player, software and headphones. My only problem with the shuffle is that I want to quickly locate the track I want to play. “Surprise me” is also not a pleasing concept to the baby boomer. My daily life has had plenty of surprises. Give me simplicity and predictability, and my wallet opens like a May flower.

What does a copywriter do, actually?

Every now and then I get a request for help in copyrighting something. Here’s an example:

“I am a singer/song writer who has just recorded my first single. I am trying to get my single in stores to be sold but I need it copywrited first. I wrote the lyrics to the song and need them copywrited before I put the single in stores so that no one will steal the music…do you do that kind of thing or would I need to look for someone else? I’m a bit confused.—L.D.”

Answer: no, L.D., that’s not what a copywriter does. (Although I think I know the answer: if you created it, you ALREADY own the copyright unless you expressly sign it over to somebody else. But hey, I’m a copywriter, not a lawyer, so don’t take my word for it.)

For an excellent depiction of what a copywriter DOES do, check out this short movie on the Veer website. In case you don’t have 7 minutes to spare, here’s a synopsis. Copywriter gets a job in a design agency. He keeps showing his work around for feedback and nobody ever has anything to say. Finally he realizes all the designers are illiterate. He teaches them to read and write—and then gets fired. As his boss explains, “now we can write our own copy, so we don’t need you any more.”

Thanks to designer Steve Stanard for sending this link my way. Think he is trying to tell me something?

The S*uper Bowl of copywriting!

Coupon FSIs (freestanding inserts) in the Sunday paper are like Toontown—a separate reality where the colors are garish, the actions outsized, and stories don’t quite make sense. This is especially evident around Super Sunday, when we are asked to believe that across America Big Game hosts are training to lay out a spectacular feed based on branded products.

In the highly competitive FSI pages where package goods makers vie for our attention, you can count on the writers of heads and taglines to rise to outsized brilliance. Thus we have “roll out big game flavors” and “the easy game plan!” (Totino pizza rolls), “Score big when you serve Boboli… the football party favorite!”, “the big game plan…lineup the great taste of Dean’s dips” (this one has a diagram of wings and ruffles going for the goal line, and an invitation to download your own football tablecloth pattern at www.deansdips.com), “kick off your party with Farmer John’s hot dogs”, “savor the taste of victory” with Cattlemen’s Barbecue Sauce, “enjoyed by BBQ experts and football fans everywhere”, “is your sandwich dressed for game day?” with French’s mustard and of course “it’s CRUNCH time” with Mt. Olive…”the super pickle for the super game.”

What makes the copywriting stars shine even brighter is the fact that none of these ads can actually mention the Super Bowl by name, since they didn’t pay for licensing rights. The results are doing a full court press on my taste buds (oops, wrong metaphor) but I’m holding out for an invitation to “throw the MVP—most valuable PARTY” with the ultimate Kraft 7 Layer Dip (heart attack on a platter) and Game Day Football Cake made with extra-strength Maxwell House coffee and dressed with Cappuccino Pudding Frosting. Call the trainer—this playah is DOWN!

The garbage man is not your mother!

My friend Steve, who’s building manager for a church that rents out space to various groups, says you can learn a lot about human nature from the way they clean up after their meetings. One could get a similar lesson from driving the streets of San Francisco this week, when everybody is putting their Christmas trees out for recycling.

ITEM: Lots of the trees are at the curb with plastic garbage bags carefully wrapped around them. What are they thinking? Who is going to take those bags off so the trees can go into the chipper?

ITEM: Lots of the trees still have Christmas tree stands firmly attached to the bottom. Again, what were they thinking? The garbage man is not your mother or your handyman who is going to unscrew or knock off those stands! (Oddly enough, there are very few trees with both bags AND stands. Apparently people are thoughless in one way or the other, but not both?)

ITEM: As you get up the hill into Pacific Heights, the trees get bigger and the discarded stands more elaborate… until you start seeing the $30 wrought iron jobs that are sold by the Guardsmen at Ft. Mason and are reusable for several years. Conspicuous consumption (or disposition) by folks whose room was likely picked up by the maid, not their mom, when they were kids.

I actually pulled over to try and claim one of these iron beauties, but it was lodged too firmly for me to remove without tools. More bad news for the garbage man. Though maybe good news for marketers, when so many can afford to throw so much so carelessly away? Happy New Year!

The world’s best sandwich?

This afternoon I was in Pasadena for a meeting that ended early, so on the way to the airport I slipped into the mysterious zone between the Golden State Freeway and the Alhambra hills to visit A-1 Eastern Pickles, on Johnston St. As I’ve done several times since I saw their phone number scrawled on the wall of a Greek deli in the 1980s below the word “pickles”, my plan was to buy a case of 4 1-gallon jars of fresh kosher dills for the ridiculous price of less than $12, then try to eat and share as many as I could before they became too bitter to enjoy.

But—today I discover they stopped selling the gallon cases 2 years ago, because “nobody was buying them.” The kosher dills are now available solely in a 5 gallon drum, hardly airline carry-on material.

I stumbled out in to the hazy sunlight and moved on to my next ritual stop, the subs at Giamelas on Los Feliz just east of the Golden State, a few miles north. Would these be gone too, perhaps my fault because I haven’t told people about them or eaten them more frequently? No. The subs, price list and even the serving and kitchen personnel were exactly the same as when I was last in town in July.

Here’s what I order and my ritual: the Italian Cold Cuts sandwich, no mustard or mayonnaise (why do they even ASK?), Italian dressing on the side, plus lots of their little yellow chili peppers and the carrot sticks which become flavored by association when they are wrapped with the peppers. The “regular” is $4.50 and the large is $4.95—ooh, tough choice!

The kitchen, which has not changed since I first went to Giamela’s some 20 years ago, is perfectly organized for preparation of this meal. The cook splays a soft sesame roll on the counter, like getting a diaper ready for a baby. He reaches into the reefer and pulls out a setup of mortadella, coppa and provolone on wax paper. He whacks the setup lengthwise with the back edge of a knife to score it and make it easier to mold to the bread. Then scoops of diced tomato, lettuce, pickle and onion are added with an artful chorography involving a slotted spoon dancing up and down the bread.

I used to get my sandwiches dressed but they got too sloppy before I was ready to eat them. So now I bring down a little jar with a tight lid and transfer the dressing from Giamela’s flimsy container (which once popped open in the Hertz parking lot—disaster) to my own more substantial one. Then it’s on to the plane with my sub. Tonight I was back in Oakland and on the freeway home at 7 so I spread a towel on my lap, poured on the dressing, and ate as I picked my way toward the Bay Bridge. Perfection.

I don’t really want to insist this is the world’s best sandwich. A Burger House cheeseburger and Carnegie Deli pastrami are also pretty good. But meanwhile, who’s interested in going in on a 5 gallon tub of pickles? We’d need to bring our own gallon jars, convene before A-1 closes at 3 pm (the neighborhood’s not safe after that anyway), then offload from the tub in order to avoid paying a hefty deposit.

Dead Sons

My two favorite TV dramas, “Rescue Me” and “Deadwood”, wound up their 2005 seasons by killing off a major character’s young son in a bicycle accident. I thought the device was appropriate in the Victorian confines of “Deadwood”, over the top in “Rescue Me” where the characters are already spinning out of control with no need for a deus ex machina.

But the bigger question is how two inspired screenwriting teams settled on the same out-of-the-blue plot device. I think it’s more than coincidence. Going back to Orestes, the classic dramatic arc is that the parent dies, there is a struggle, then a son (or daughter) emerges as the successor tested by fire. (True, Abraham did offer to sacrifice his son, but God spared him.)

To go the other direction, with the child dead before the parent, is an tragedy that’s maybe symptomatic of these writers’ world view and, if we keep seeing it, maybe of our culture. The death of a child, whose life is the older character’s reason to live on at least some level, represents an implosion. There’s no longer an heir to the world the character is striving to create. The hurt can diminish with time, but never go away. One goes on, but one’s world is smaller.

I know, this doesn’t have much to do with advertising. Unless you see popular culture as a mirror of current moods, in which case our customers and prospects could use some good news and cheering up.

Land mines in the “last mile”

Telephone companies, cable operators and such refer to the “last mile” as the final step of actually getting their service into a home or office. For marketing companies, the “last mile” is the process of actually delivering the product or service to the customer—and that’s where more and more companies fall short, perhaps intentionally.

Infoweek columnist Chad Dickerson describes a situation in which a hotel reservation was not honored because the “last mile” procedure of the online booking company was to send a fax to the participating hotel, where it was ignored. My wife had the experience of ordering expensive curtains from a company called Smith and Noble, whose “last mile” procedure when a customer complains about a missing order is to send an email to the factory and hope they respond. (This outfit couldn’t even CANCEL an order efficiently; when they still hadn’t delivered the drapes for our little vacation cabin on the next-to-last day of our stay, she was assured the order would be shipped that night overnight or not at all. Neither promise turned out to be true; our friendly neighbor signed for the package a few days later and the curtains now sit uselessly in a closet. Sure hope they fit when we show up next year…)

As to intentional disappointments, this is what happens when a company looks for ways to cut costs and finds that it can save big by lowering expectations or simply failing to meet them for the small percentage of orders that are more expensive to fulfill. This is happening now at my beloved Amazon.com, whose “Prime Shipping”—two-day shipping at no extra cost beyond a yearly fee, and overnight shipping for $3.99—is I predict destined to be a one-season wonder.

When Amazon consistently failed to get a Prime order to me in 2 days, AND email customer service failed to reach a solution or adequately explain the problem, I wrote a detailed letter to Jeff Bezos. (As a practice this is what I recommend as a final step to get a resolution from a company; if the CEO (or someone else with responsibility) fails to respond or sends you a form letter, that tells you as much as if they fixed the problem.)

In my case I got a personal response from a personal representative of Jeff’s, but she got both the shipping date and the item description wrong—data that was readily available in Amazon’s own files, of course. Trouble in the last mile which presages more disappointments down the road…