Category Archives: marketing

January 13, 2015 · 5:02 pm

All That Glitters

ship-your-enemies-glitterSomeone getting on your last nerve? Ex driving you crazy? Not all that comfortable with confrontation?

Here’s your solution. ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com. Glitter as a service.

What a great idea. Relatively harmless, it is perfect for someone who has annoyed you to no end. And of course those who want to fight like fairies. Or for those of you out there who get furious but no one really knows (and you know who you are).

Ten bucks, no muss no fuss… on your end. For the enemy… it is the gift that keeps on giving. Or as the site refers to it, passing along ‘the craft herpes’.

Why did I not think of this? As the craft household when the kids were little, glitter was consider a condiment. You can never get rid of that stuff.

I am so not about retaliation, I would rather move on than let people get the best of me. But, believe me, in the heat of the moment I can rant like no other. Perhaps this is a nice alternative to raising the old blood pressure.

The site is quite something. You can be sure the people who came up with this have been dissed in their day – lots of cursing a  and calling people names just to fuel the fire. Don’t miss the reviews page, because it is good to know that snorting glitter will make your nose bleed.

I will file this under the same genius as the selling of 30,000 boxes of bullshit.

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January 10, 2015 · 9:45 am

Who The FCUK is Fabrice Yahyaoui

actorThis man is an actor. He fuckin’ wants to act. Cast him.

Indeed. Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we?

I love this guy even if I have no clue how to pronounce his last name. Fabrice Yahyaoui seems like the type of guy who will not take no for an answer. Talk about passion and nerve! This poster was plastered on the outside of a bus shelter in the East ’30s. I became intrigued and did a little research on him. He posts these all over the world.

The quote from the video below that hit home for me was this one:

“In life you have to fight. He doesn’t give up. I want him to make it.”

Me too!

We can laugh. And maybe ponder that this guy is a little crazy, but I applaud his method and hope it gets him work. It is this kind of risk-taking that sets you apart. He makes me want to root for him. I want to see this guy succeed. If I were a casting agent I am not sure if I could resist the curiosity to call this guy in. He certainly seems to have a myriad of looks, and definitely has the fire in his belly to work.

Hey Fabrice, I hope you have some decent monitoring going on. I would love to hear from you in the comments and find out how things are going.

Want to know who the FCUK Fabrice Yahyaoui is? Watch this vid and find out.

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August 7, 2014 · 4:09 pm

Raccoon Boy

Walking home from the morning dog field the other day we came across the Raccoon Boy truck. I love his tagline: When Animals Annoy, call Raccoon Boy! Not sure if you can see the illustration but there are handcuffs involved!

As luck would have it, he was getting out of his truck as we passed. I told him that I loved his name and he came back with a quick: “I take care of annoying husbands, too!”

Gotta love Raccoon Boy.

racoon boy

Then, as with many oddities that come across my path, I was in a store buying new glass doors for the fireplace and on the counter was this article about a rabid raccoon dropping down the chimney, ransacking a woman’s house and then running upstairs and biting her in the face!

rabid racoon

Of course this was a marketing piece to reinforce not only the aesthetic advantages of glass doors but the fact that they will actually shield you from facial disfigurement.

Everyone has a friggin angle!

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January 10, 2014 · 12:25 am

Salt is So Over-rated

salt-free

 

This is the lid to my cottage cheese. Not Gary’s cottage cheese – mine.

His? Plenty of salt. Like ridiculous amounts of salt.  480  mg to be exact (in resistant hypertension language that is like putting a gun in your mouth with every spoon). Who knew?!

Since I barely survived the holiday season and this ridiculous BP roller coaster has started its miserable incline again, I have decided to eat as clean as possible. Salt-free is nearly impossible out, so during the week I eat home and try to be really good. I have to say, I truly appreciated the camaraderie that Friendship fostered with the lid of this cottage cheese. It’s like some brand manager out there totally gets what a drag a no salt diet is like and wanted to make me smile.

So I bought it. Truth be told, cottage cheese really does need the sodium to taste good. But let’s face it, it’s cottage cheese. It’s really all about the texture. And I appreciate the brand sympathy.

Nice work Friendship, you have made a friend in me.

 

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April 7, 2013 · 8:58 am

You CAN pick your friend’s nose

Corbis-nose picking1

Remember that stupid saying,”You can pick your friends; and you can pick your nose; but you can’t pick your friend’s nose”?

I never really got that. I mean, people do all sorts of weird stuff with orifices (or is that orifici?), I would imagine a little nose picking amongst friends might be going on out there with the non-germphobic crowd.

I digress, this post was spawned by an email from the stock photography site, Corbis. I have been a Corbis customer since the olden days of graphic design when they would send out these delicious print volumes of stock photo images and we would flip through the pages to choose the right image. And instead of emails, we would receive teaser postcards with images like these to get us to call and do a search. Yes, I am aware this is the Art Director’s equivalent of the ‘I used to walk to school 10 miles in the snow’ story that my dad used to tell us. All you youngun’s, you will have these stories about archaic, clunky handheld mobile devices instead of the chip behind their ear that your kids will have.

Ughh… digressing again. The point is, the other morning, on a particularly difficult day for me (stay tuned for more on that on Tuesday), the photo above showed up in my inbox. It had that Sleeper-esque feeling about it and just the visual made me laugh. Their 20% headline was excellent for their purpose, but this headline popped into my head:

You CAN pick your friend’s nose.

I know, I am brilliant. What a lovely promo for a plastic surgeon… maybe a 2 for 1 deal! It made me laugh on a morning that laughing was the last thing I thought I would do, so thanks Corbis. But, the best part was yet to come when I clicked over to their site (yes it worked, they got the click-through from me and put Corbis top of mind), I found this photo… the pay off.

The proverbial ‘picked nose’.

corbis-nosepicking2

Yeh it could be time to pitch a plastic surgery team. Anyone in? Other headline ideas?

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December 5, 2012 · 11:32 pm

Floss over Fifty

20121205-230426.jpg

Floss for people over 50?! Really?! Please tell me who thought this was a good idea. Marketing a product that specifically targets an age group sitting snugly on the tail end of the baby boomers. You know us. We hardly see ourselves as grow ups, let alone ones with aging gums. What is the likelihood that you will find us buying old people’s floss? Pro health “for life”. You know, because dead people don’t floss all that much.

If my Facebook page is any kind of focus group, I am thinking this one is not going to be a big seller. Here are some comments after I posted this picture and mentioned I would be writing a blog post about it:

I won’t be able to read the blog. I will be experiencing dental conditions because I don’t have this floss.

This floss is for dentures!

As opposed to floss for death? Who flosses in heaven? Doesn’t heaven mean no cavities?

is the font bigger so we can read the label without our glasses?

And an all-time fave:

Maybe it’s dipped in laxatives, vitamins and anti depressants.

Followed by

They should just dip it in wine!

Still surprised that Dr. Jimmy has not weighed in.

Is it bad to admit that I saw this while picking up my blood pressure meds?

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January 19, 2012 · 9:57 pm

When Men do Merchandising

Jana and I went into the drug store yesterday to pick up some tampax. (Now there is a show-stopping opening line if I ever wrote one.) As we walked down the aisle I heard her famous brand of “ARE you kidding me?!” I turned around to see not one, but two NFL free standing displays…

blocking the tampons and feminine hygiene products.

As a marketer and brand-focused professional I tried to see what the idea was behind this. I have come up with a few thoughts and will outline them here, with a poll at the end to get your input.

Put the NFL stuff in front of the tampons because:

1. while a woman is bleeding she feels the need to get a little gift for her guy to distract him.

2. there are women who are football fans and they may want some of these for themselves.

3. stockperson was stoned and placed the displays there as a joke.

4. stock person just put them randomly in an aisle with no thought to surrounding merchandise.

5. there is a level of discomfort with feminine hygiene products and they wanted to hide them.

6. foreshadowing: Tampax will be coming out with NFL branded tampons (Team Tampax?) and this is a pre-launch teaser.

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September 6, 2011 · 11:24 pm

Oh My Cherry?

Seriously, Zara? You really named your perfume ‘oh my cherry’ (nice typography BTW). Gotta admit it was pretty ballsy in a … well you know, cherry sort of way.

This was perched at the counter when I went to pay yesterday. I even commented to the cashier. “Really?!”, I said. “I know, right?” was her response. She said the employees were all surprised, but people love it.

Hey, who could pass this up? What a great gift item. Sort of a stocking stuffer, if you will.

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May 18, 2011 · 10:44 pm

Can Glass Cleaner Bring You Happiness?

I am not sure where to start with this one. First, I am thinking that I should not use this product because it is a ‘Limited Edition’ and it might become a collector’s item and be worth something in the future.

Really? Limited edition glass cleaner?

But what blows me away is that this bottle of windex is making the claim that happiness is just a spray away (exclamation point). What makes me mad is that they left the word ‘is’ out in front of ‘just’ so it reads:

Happiness

just a spray away!

No comma, no ‘is’, just a really poorly written sentence.

So how did this product happen. Product manager walks in the room and says I think I know how to spread happiness to consumers across the land. And since this is such a huge claim, let’s make it a limited edition.

Because, you know, it’s hard to sustain happiness.

Ridiculous! (but not going to lie, I really like the crystal rain smell and I am sort of happy when the glass table is clean)

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April 17, 2011 · 11:33 pm

Mini Giraffe is the New Teacup Pig

Have you seen this commercial? The one with the mini giraffe on the treadmill? If not, you are surely under a rock. It’s for Direct TV and I swear if they could promise me one of these critters I would sign up for almost anything. I have been meaning to write about this for ages.

The commercial could go down in history as being one of the most annoying pieces of advertising ever produced. The premise is stupid, the main character is as irritating as they come and I will not even begin to go into the sexist way in which the women are portrayed because, hey, this is about mini giraffes and that would be a buzz kill. But it sticks, and that is the whole point.

There on the right side of the screen is this mini giraffe on a treadmill that has captured the hearts of all who see it. Without the giraffe this spot would just be another stupid commercial that you would probably flip the channel to avoid. But the giraffe… she makes it one you look forward to seeing and you tolerate the idiot Russian to do so.

In a stroke of genius and some really solid social integration strategy, they created a website for Sokoblovsky Farms, Russia’s Finest Purveyors of Petite Lap Giraffes. On the home page is a giraffe-cam. It does not get better than this. The whole site is written in a Russian accent and is stupid, yet endearing. This is my favorite picture.

When you go to this page you can click on the ‘I Want a Giraffe’ button which told me I was 915,499 on the wait list and gave me the opp to… you guessed it, share the news on facebook and twitter.

Gary is convinced that 915,498 of the people think these mini giraffes really exist.

Wait, they don’t?

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