The Hard-Working Words Blog

I went to an AMA event last night and met all sorts of fun and interesting marketing folks, though one of them sort of put me hairs on edge.

It went like this:

Me: “So, what kind of marketing wonk are you?”

He: “Oh, I do everything.”

Me: “Everything?”

He: “Yea. Strategy, planning, copywriting, advertising, design, trapeze . . .everything.”

Me: “That must be tiring.”

He: “I do a lot of drugs.”

Ok, so not that last bit. But all the rest is true. Except for the trapeze. Ok, so the core is true. It’s based on a true story.

But the point is this: If you say you do everything, folks will believe you do nothing. And I usually expect marketing folks to get that point.

I was walking around downtown yesterday getting ready to see “Little Miss Sunshine” with a friend (fine, fine flick, by the way. See it if you get the chance) when I almost got run over by the most recent advertising campaign for “The Sounder,” Sound Transit’s Tacoma-Seattle commuter train.

And if this isn’t an example of the absolute failure of most “creative” advertising, I don’t know what is.

It goes like this on the side of a bus:
Big picture of a guy in Zombie makeup behind the wheel of a car.
Headline: “Is your commute making you into a monster?”
Body copy: (Something about avoiding a “horrorible” commute. I don’t want to guess, since I might make it too good.)

Of course they had others too, with folks in Vampire costumes and Witch makeup. And they were universally awful. Almost as awful as their last campaign which had people pimping out their cars with helicopter blades or rocket engines to try to avoid traffic.

I can just picture the agency creatives huddled in a room, downing bottle after bottle of “Coca Cola Black” and mining their brains for an ad campaign that will have tens of thousands of Seattle-ites suddenly ditching their cars for the glory of the train.

The best part? There’s not even a call to action on the damned thing. There’s no website setup where I can find out more. There’s just this little island of ad-inanity buzzing around downtown in circles and making me nuts.

What I’m up to today: A bid, a phone conference, 3 calls and some yoga. Time to get to work.

Just got this one. The actual email is one of those “Investor Alert” things telling me I should hop on a stock while I can, but the subject line is awesome. It’s elegant in its spam-blocker dodging simplicity.

It says:

“Mustache Forecast.”

And that is beautiful.

Last Thursday I was out dancing with some friends when I was approached by a grim faced guy dressed mostly in red and carrying some sort of touch screen computer. I was sweaty, happy and a little drunk, and when he walked up and said “Hey, would you like a free zippo lighter from Winston cigarettes?” I sort of bobbed gamely and said “Sure.”

Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

Grim Faced Winston Guy: “OK, well I just need to see your ID to prove that you’re over 21.”

Slightly Inebriated Haddad: “Uh, you know I had to show my ID to get in here, right?”
GFWG: “Yea, but we need to be sure.”
SIH: “Um. OK.”

I flipped open my wallet and held it up for him to see.

GFWG: “Oh, uh, I need you to take it out of your wallet. You know. To prove it isn’t fake.”

SIH: “Uh. . . OK. You know, I don’t even smoke, I just figure it can never hurt to be able to make fire.”

GFWG: “Yup. Yup. No problem. Just take it out of the wallet.”

So I did.

SIH: “There. We good? Can I have my free lighter now?”

GFWG: “Uh, well, I just need you to place your license face down on this handy dandy scanner I’ve got here.”

SIH: “. . . . . .”

GFWG: “So if you just do that I’ll give you the lighter.”

SIH: “Um, you know, I’m really not comfortable with letting you scan personal information including my name, license number, address, age, weight, height, eye color, hair color and the fact that I’m an organ donor just so I can get a frikking lighter that I’ll probably never even use, not to mention the fact that I think you’re a real tool for trying to bribe drunk people into giving you access to said personal information so you can market the hell out of them at some later date.”

GFWG: “So, uh, you don’t want the lighter?”

SIH: “No, I don’t want the lighter. And I don’t want anything to do with you or your absolutely morally reprehensible company. It’s bad enough that you sell portable death sticks, but the fact that you’re using deceptive tactics to market them makes me absolutely sick. I firmly believe in bribing people to give you a chance, but you need to be HONEST about your bribe and lay your cards on the table, not chew away at them when their judgement is down in order to grab info you have no right to.”

GFWG: “Oh. Huh.”

And then I walked off.

Man, I hate dishonest marketing.

John Rogers over at the Kung Fu Monkey blog has a great post about how the movie theater industry can save itself.

Go read the post, I’ll wait.

Back yet?

No?

Ok.

How about now?

Oh, good.

So why am I linking over to a screenwriter’s blog as he rants nad raves about movie theaters? Because John has neatly demonstrated something I like to rant on myself and that theater owners, in their desperate drive to cut costs, have seemingly forgotten: Marketing is Customer Service.

Personally, I avoid going to the movie theater whenever possible. I think I’ve seen a movie in a theater just once in the last 3 or so months and that was more at the pleading insistence of a friend than anything else. Why do I avoid theaters? Because the experience sucks. Why does the experience suck? Because the theater owners have no concept of customer service. And that, my friend, is why all those big multiplexes will become ghost buildings in just a few years.

The Cinerama will probably stick around though.

The Victrola is my favorite coffee shop in the whole wide world. I don’t even drink cofee, but if they came up to me and said “Mr. Haddad, you need to drink some coffee or you can never come here to work again,” I’d drink it. I’d drink deep. I’d get a coffee IV.

But anyway, I’m sitting here working, trying gamely to get through the massive stack of projects all neatly put in folders next to me, when I look up and see them. I look up and see the Orange Army.

Five young folks in tight wound orange knit caps and orange jackets each with “Chocolate Orange Truffle” emblazoned on the back near the bottom. The kids in the Orange Army are all bright faced, racially diverse and smiley. A few have orange roses in their orange-gloved hands. One of them has orange pom poms sticking out of the back of her bag. I can only imagine she’s planning on leading some sort of chocolate orange cheer.