Category Archives: absurdities

November 19, 2008 · 12:14 am

Spam… A LOT

15spam600

Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times

Am I living in a time warp traveling at light speed back to my childhood? Could Spam actually be back on the top of the food charts? What next, Velveeta – the spam of cheeses? Vienna sausages?

Believe it or not, Spam made it to the cover of Saturday’s NYT business section. Andrew Martin wrote a comprehensive article about Spam sales in the down economy that gave me way more information than I ever cared to know about the grisly little cake of gelatinous gooey meat product. There were however some great factoids I have to share here:

1. They market Spam with the tagline “Crazy Tasty”. I LOVE that. I wonder how long they have used that.

2. Austin, MN advertises itself as Spamtown and has 13 restaurant with Spam on the menu. (Note to self: do not take Gary here, there will be no egg white omelettes, bagels with a schmeer or Earl Grey tea with honey) 

3. There is a Spam Museum where you can buy Spam ties (Rik, you need this account) as well as many other wonderful Spam gift items. The tagline is “Sure Beats an Art Museum”. I swear. I am crying from this. You should see me here in the command center, hysterical laughing. I am so easily amused. I MUST visit this place. Gary’s 50th was a trip to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Same guests, please pack your bags in September, my 50th is going to be in Austin, MN.

4. Because it is vacuum sealed, Spam can last for years. They say it is “like meat with a pause button”. Ew, I am sorry, that is just not right.

5. On a recent day 149,950 cans of Spam were made on the day shift. That’s a hell of a lot of Spam. Perhaps we should start watching Hormel’s stock.

Some other products with soaring sales are Velveeta (I read that after I wrote the first paragraph, I must be a trend forecaster), pancake mixes, boxed mac and cheese, instant potatoes, Jell-O and Kool-aid. Wait, did someone just open my mom’s pantry cabinet of 1968? Are canned string beans on this list too? Do they still make Fizzies? I friggin’ loved root beer Fizzies. Anyone? Fizzies? Was it just me?

So, what? We throw out all that we have learned about healthy eating and go back to high fat and preservative foods to save money? Hmmm… cyclical. What’s old is new again.

Spam is the new fois gras. Honestly, they look the same to me.

Since this post has made me nostalgic for my childhood days, I will leave you with one of my favorite Monty Python skits. Jeanne, this one’s for you babe. (email subscribers, click over the blog to watch this, it will make you laugh)

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 16, 2008 · 9:12 pm

Moms Say No Mo(trin) & International Baby Wearing Week

nomotrin

Oh boy, is someone’s marketing ass on the line first thing tomorrow AM! Or maybe not… read on.

It will surely be interesting to see how this one pans out once it hits mainstream media. Please don’t misconstrue this as a post showing my distaste for Motrin. This is more a fascinating case study to me than wishing any ill will to the brand. I have already heard the term ‘motrined’ used as a description for what happened.

For my non-Twittering readers, this will make your head spin around like Linda Blair and ask, ‘is there this huge underworld of information that I don’t know about going on behind my back?’

Um! Well yes, as a matter of fact there is. Wake up people.

If you are not a product manager or marketing/advertising/PR person then this is probably nothing you need to worry about. Unless of course all your friends are twittering behind your back which is unlikely but maybe you ought to sign up and check just in case.

I posted about Twitter during the election. For those who are tweeters, go get a cup of coffee while i give a quick primer here. Twitter is like instant messaging with the world where you ‘follow’ someone the same way you would ‘friend’ them on Facebook. You can also search topics and follow what others are saying about things that interest you. The most tweeted about things rise to the top of the topic trend. If you market a brand you should surely be monitoring Twitter, if not finding ways to use it constructively.  If you want more info go here. (I am pretty sure my mom just had to go lie down from this, sorry mom ; )

Now, on with the story. Once upon a time, Motrin created an ad with the intent to reach young moms.  This generation of moms is the most target marketed group in history. They are empowered. They use Twitter. They blog. They write reviews. They drive sales. They are honest, loyal consumers who love to share and hopefully their spirit of community will build brand loyalty.

Unless of course you create an ad that is perceived as condescending and insulting to them. Then they will basically cut your balls off. You can see the ad on marketingpilgrim.com. Andy Beal’s fantastic post gives a stunning overview from a marketing perspective with damage control suggestions.

Could there have been a mom on this account? Referring to a baby as a fashion accessory and saying things like ‘supposedly it’s a real bonding experience’ to wear them in a carrier could not come out of the mouth of a young mother.

Now, let me state that I don’t find this ad so horribly offensive as I find it horribly lame. (then again my youngest is 16 and he could carry me by now – great visual for those who know him).

Here’s the thing; if you are trying to market to young moms, how about a little research. You don’t even need traditional focus groups anymore, you can use the tools that were the demise of this campaign.

Seeing that within 24 hours there were 244,000 hits of outrage and commentary when I searched Google, 232 hits on Technorati, #motrinmoms and #motrin were the top trending topics on Twitter and there is already a Motrin Moms Facebook page, I would say that it would not have taken too much research to find out this ad would piss people off. Hey, this was the Joe the Plumber of the week.

I know this is getting long but bear with me. For I have just read a tweet from Jessica Smith of Jessica Knows informing us that is International Baby Wearing Week. (I kid you not). Could the Motrin team have known this and timed the ad? I am thinking not. If they did, wouldn’t they have jumped on this social media shitstorm in a heartbeat with some damage control? Although Mashable seems to think it was timed.

So, Mr./Ms. Motrin brand manager and your advertising team, shame on you for playing golf or going to the movies or whatever it was that you were doing on Sunday. Not so much for running the ad and thinking you were smart to time it with International Baby Wearing week, 20/20 hindsight is a beautiful thing. It is the non-reaction in realtime that is distressing. Did you (especially your agency) not have any alerts set for mentions of your brand? Especially if you were doing this timing thing. Isn’t this the job of an agency in 2008?  C’mon folks! I am sure at least the agency guys have iphones or crackberries buzzing away in their pockets all day long to make them feel connected.

Could it be that it wasn’t that the ball dropped on this, but they didn’t even know there was a ball? Good news is that these things tend to spread like wildfire and fade out just as soon as the next thing hits. It will be interesting to see if there are any long-term repercussions.

I don’t know about you but I have a headache from all this. I think I will go take a …

(quick update as of 9:30PM Sunday the Motrin site was just taken down, looks like someone woke up and is on the damage control. Can’t wait to see what the morning brings)

(11PM update (no I don’t sleep much) McNeil’s Consumer Healthcare VP of Marketing, Kathy Widmer sent this email to a mom blogger in response to her feedback on the Motrin site. Hope they get a more comprehensive response up on their site by the AM. And just a tip, if social media bites you in the butt, use it to make some lemonade).

11AM monday update: Mainstream media picks this up here 

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 15, 2008 · 11:41 pm

Cheerleaders are the New Terrorists

cheerleaders

I have known a rabid cheerleader or two in my day (you know who you are, I am sure I don’t have to single you out), so these news stories should not come as a shock to me. For some reason they have struck a nerve.

First, there is the story of Caitlin Davis who was thrown off the New England Patriots cheerleading squad after Deadspin uncovered that she had posted pictures on her Facebook page of herself drawing penises and swastikas on her passed out friend. Niiiiiice. Love the Facebook piece. Has no one gotten the fact that this is stupid yet? This is like the salvia smoking YouTube idiots.

Best part? In an interview she told the Sun Chronicle one of the motivating factors to becoming a Pats cheerleader was the thrill of doing community appearances:

“That’s what I did with my church youth group.” 

Um, right honey, we are all buying the cute little church group girl thing now!

Next Story, an El Paso, Texas cheerleading squad from Chapin Sapphire High baked up a lovely batch of cupcakes and brownies laced with rat poison and bleach as a gift for their rival schools’ cheerleaders.

Yum. And the thinking was what? If the other girls puked up the chocolate frosting the bleach would lift the stain out? How considerate.

Apparently these rival teams are known for ‘little pranks’ before games. Correct me if I am wrong here, but since when was POISONING a ‘little prank’.

Here is the scary part. The punishment for these psycho pom pom bee-otches was a 3 day suspension.

To quote FanIQ “Well that seems fair. If I poisoned someone’s food I’d get 15 to life for attempted murder while these girls get three days off of school. Just more proof that cheerleaders can get away with anything, well, as long as it doesn’t involve drawing swastikas on anyone’s face. But trying to kill someone else, that’s totally cool.”

The moral of this story? You never know what those cheerleaders are packin’ in their pom poms.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

 

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November 14, 2008 · 11:56 pm

I write with dead people…

carbon-copy-pencil

This came to my attention on Twitter from @akaSylvia. Check out her website (way cool).

This little item falls under the category of who the hell thinks of this stuff? The answer would be artist Nadine Jarvis of the UK.

This box of 240 pencils is made from the cremated ash of a human being. Yes, you read that correctly. Kind of like Soylent pencils, if you will. It would appear that one average body yields 240 pencils. I would suppose results may vary with say an anorexic or someone who was morbidly obese.

Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the person and their dates of birth and death. What a lovely personalized touch. Imagine the factory, ‘Damn Joe, who’s ashes did you say we used for this one?’ ‘No worries, how will they be able to tell?’ Oh we loved ones can tell, Joe, don’t screw this up!

Only one pencil can be removed at a time, it is sharpened back into the box where the shavings take up the space of the used pencils. At the end of the line the shavings, or reconstituted ash, fill the box making transforming it into an urn. How lovely. Kind of like ashes to pencils to shavings… hmmm, kind of a weird ring to that. The window in the box acts as a timeline showing the amount of pencils that are left. 

Of course I became curious as to who Joseph Wald was on those pencils. But the Google search only yielded more blog posts about this item. Bloggers love weird shit, for sure.

Myself included!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 12, 2008 · 9:30 pm

We are #1…

no1atno2_small

…at picking up #2?!

Oh yes, you read that billboard correctly. This is an advertisement for Callahead. And who, might you ask, is this company? Well, if you live in the suburbs near a house under construction, or you attend an outdoor concert or event, then you would know that Callahead would be a supplier of…

… you guessed it, porta-sans. Yes, my friends, here is a company that capitalized on the funkiness of its product with a campy name. Then went one step further in the school of ‘i know you are but what am I’ advertising and came up with what I think is a brilliant tagline. Seriously, how can you not laugh when you see this? Come on all you lofty sophisticates and award-winning creatives. I challenge you to say that this is not effective and memorable. At the risk of using a marketing term with a double entendre, this sucker is extremely ‘sticky’.

So you get the full picture of why I took this shot, let me first say that my sister-in-law called me the day before I saw this billboard to tell me that she saw the truck and did not have a camera. The next day, there I am driving into the city for brunch and right on the ramp to the Midtown Tunnel is that crazy billboard. I missed it on the way in, so on the way out I hung my camera out the window facing backwards and caught it at the last minute. NO, I was not driving. Give me a break, I am not that nuts.

I was going to crop it till I noticed the Empire State Building, that crazy sky and the wild angle and decided the whole shot was a keeper.

callaheadJust in case you were wondering what these look like in person, I took a picture of one on my walk this morning. This baby is the Econo-Head. Oh, how I love that name. As the website states, ‘this product has evolved dramatically over the years… Econo head is one of our most attractive portable toilets available today.’ Wait, here it comes…

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? How did anyone write that copy with a straight face?

Hold on, this gets better. Here are a few of my faves in the product line: The Special Event Toilet (for those special events, you know what they are). The Construction Flush (is that like a Royal Flush?) and my all time favorite…

The Job-Site Head. OMG, this one kills me. Go ahead, think about that one. Job? Head? This reminding anyone of anything here? Really, who would not like a little head on the job site? If you remember way back when I did a post about ‘a little head would be nice’. (You really need to click on that link now, don’t you?)

Face it, bathroom humor and infantile behavior always gets a laugh. And remember, this ain’t no mom blog 7 days a week, that’s for sure.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 11, 2008 · 9:41 pm

Was that Just a Box of Rain?

dso

File this under ‘you can’t make this stuff up’. Jersey City councilman, Steven Lipski, was arrested for urinating on the crowd from a balcony of a Washington night club during a Dark Star Orchestra concert last Friday night. For those who are unfamiliar with DSO they are a Grateful Dead cover band. The same band that not one, but both of my kids are going to see the night after Thanksgiving. Perhaps they should bring their umbrellas to avoid that potential Box of Rain.

With more Dead shows in my past than I care to admit, I can say that public peeing at such events was not all that outrageous. But off the balcony? Hey Steve, get a grip. And at 44 and in the public (or is that pubic) eye, perhaps a little discretion is in order.

I believe he was in a state that my family likes to refer to as ‘that guy’. You know the one. We have met ‘that guy’ before. They are like a tribe. One of them puked down my son’s shoulder at his first Jets game when he was 8-years-old (funny how he never asked to go again for a long time). I believe another spilled a beer down the part of my mom’s hair at a Rangers game. And of course game day in Madison, Wisconsin brings out scores of ‘that guy’.

In The Daily News report of this incident a source stated, ” he was very drunk”. REALLY now? Well this comes as a surprise. Don’t most middle-aged guys pee off a balcony when they are stone cold sober? Could they not get a better sound bite than that one?

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 9, 2008 · 5:22 pm

Naked Cowboy Wins the Big Buck(aroos)

naked_cowboy_in_times_square

I posted about the Naked Cowboy vs. Mars, Inc. lawsuit back in June. Robert Burck sued the candy company for copyright infringement when they created a blue M&M in his likeness and plastered it over Times Square. (On his turf no less).

Over the past couple of days I have noticed there was a lot of traffic on this blog with the search term Naked Cowboy. I did a quick scan and guess what?

Apparently he has settled. And get this, the NY Post is reporting the settlement was for $4 million!!

What a great country. Where a raving lunatic half-naked singing cowboy can hang in Times Square and create an intellectual property that warrants a multi-million dollar settlement.

Check out his website. Seems all those years of freezing his scantily clad butt off on the streets of NY has enabled him to create a brand that has yielded an EP called Year of the Cowboy, a podcast available on iIunes (yes there is a typo on his website), an MTV video, and Naked Cowboy.TV.

He is even available for Business/Appearance Opportunities through Naked Cowboy Enterprise. Under what circumstances would a business want to hire this guy? Who knows. Think creatively. And surely he would be the hit of any over-the-top Bar Mitzvah or Sweet 16.

Think about this. If you create a brand, no matter how ridiculous, and you are persistent and stick with the essence of that brand, the possibilities are endless.

Oh right, and if a major corporation does not do their homework on copyright infringement of an intellectual property, that helps too. To the tune of $4 million smackaroos…

Buckaroo.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 8, 2008 · 7:55 pm

So You Want to be in the Secret Service?

secret-service

Driving in my car today I heard a radio spot for…

The Secret Service. All I could think was, do they mean THE Secret Service? Like the White House guys? How could this be? Do they really recruit on the radio? This does not seem all that selective to me.

The spot went something like this:

“Do you want an exciting career that pays well? Have you ever considered a career in the Secret Service?”

Correct me if I am out of line here, but I seem to recall that the line after ‘Do you want an exciting career that pays well?’ is usually ‘Have you ever considered a career in air conditioning and refrigeration?’ Not that I am dissing the AC and fridge crowd here, it is an honorable living, but I think it is more likely that the everyman/woman would probably be more fit to perform that job than say…

guard the friggin’ president!

Of course I had to check out their website. The first position available:

Special Agent (what young boy does not dream of this one. I keep humming Secret Agent Man in my head now).

Damn, I wish I wrote the phone number from the commercial down!

Note to self: drop Obama a note about this.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 6, 2008 · 7:23 pm

Pigpen and the chihuahua, separated at birth?

cats-and-dogs_with-gd

For those who missed yesterday’s post, the picture on the left was featured there. In the comments, Dr Jimmy mentioned the Grateful Dead resemblance in this line-up, with Pigpen being the chihuahua.

Since many of you are not Dead fans, I thought I would post the inside flap of the Skull and Roses album with the picture he referenced (and so graciously sent me a link to). Thanks Dr. J – what slow day drilling today?

El Nel informed me that she cracked up when she saw the pet picture as it is featured everyday in Newsday. Being in suburban denial I refuse to read this Long Island newspaper even though it is quite good. (BTW, I moved out of the city 20 years ago.) The ad is for the North Shore Animal League if you were wondering.

Back to the photo. Take a look at the guy in the middle (Pigpen) and tell me this is not a separated at birth scenario.

Just plain scary!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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November 5, 2008 · 9:14 pm

Is it me, or is this creepy?

cats-and-dogs1

For those who are complaining that this blog has gotten way too serious, here is something completely stupid for you. (give me a break, a couple of election and dream posts and you forget all about the week of halloween?)

I was flipping through the paper the other day and this picture was in the middle of… come to think of it I am not quite sure what section it was.

Pet classifieds? Is there such a thing?

Anyway, this picture jumped out at me for its overall bizarre quality.

First, I believe the scale is off. Either that or this is one enormous chihuahua in the middle. Second, where the hell are their bodies? That is what is so freakish about this ad. Why would this Photoshop happy artist choose to  silhouette their heads this way? Ew, I am not kidding. I am really having a hard time looking at this, yet I can’t pull myself away. It is like staring at the accident.

I am pretty sure I am going to have nightmares from this. (Note to self: don’t show this to Gary)

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms and at 50-Something Moms Blog where Jana joins in the election bloglove.

For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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