On the importance of smiling

Just saw this and wondered, where the hell can I share this? And, so, ta-da.

Hello, blog. It's been a while.

fire hydrant wearing a shirt. classy.

Oh, yeah...

So I started this new business. Unrelated to advertising. And it's kind of overshadowed le blog. I shall return. I mean, I've gotta keep in touch with the industry. But for now, check out the little endeavor, here.

Everything Is Within Your Reach

The Country's Best Yogurt (if we're open when we say we're open)

I recently had a pretty dumb experience at a TCBY down the street from my house. And as much as I'd like this to be a raving personal rant, it actually has a tie back to the reality of branding.

In a nutshell, the minimum-waged employee turned off all the lights to the store so as to give the appearance of closedness a good 20 minutes prior to their scheduled closedness.

fellow-ice-cream-wanter-in-car: "I think they're closed."

me: "uhh, no they're not. I've checked their site. They close at 11pm. It's 10:40."

So we drove up to the darkened menu board with the speaker-phone, squinted our eye-balls out, informed the "employee" of our inability to read their delicious offerings because of darkness. Surprise - she did (and said) nothing.

We got our treats and left. And went home and wrote a long nasty-gram on their internets.

And we got this in response:

Dear Mrs. ME,

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail our Customer Service Department.

I am very sorry for the poor service that you encountered at our Bright Banc location. Please be assured that we take all such matters very seriously. I will immediately forward your concern to the franchise owners so that this matter may be investigated and the necessary corrections (firings) may be made at the store level.

I will also let our Marketing Department know about the problem with the contact-us page on our Web site. (their internet form didn't allow me to submit the complaint until I removed all apostrophes from it) Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I will be sending you a few gift certificates (bribes) in the mail so that you may return to any of our stores near you at your convenience and enjoy some of our delicious product at no cost. You should receive them within the next two (to 52) weeks.

In the meantime, if I can be of any further assistance to you, please let me know.

Thank you for contacting TCBY on-line No problem.

Robert Schicker
Retail Customer Service
TCBY

As a consumer, I find websites to be hugely helpful in this respect. I mean - how mad would you have to be to sit down and pen a complaint to TCBY HQ and wait several weeks for a response. This, my friends, was awesome. For me.

Probably not for TCBY. But who knows? The ability to have little spies to report this type of thing would be hugely helpful for me as a business owner. It would be great to always have undercover reporters to keep everything in check. It just sucks that they also have to be your customers.

Not the First time

This isn't the first time that such an experience has happened to me at a fine dining institution. Once at a Dairy Queen, albeit 8ish minutes to closing), as I sat looking at my high-tech phone read 11:55pm, I was told very blatantly through the shitty P.A. system a-la drive-thru that "it 12am accordin' to ma clock" If I were the manager of said DQ, I wouldn't care if it were 12:05 "accordin' to yo clock." If a customer has made it to the store, must. serve. something.


Complain and you shall receive

It seems a bit backward, no? This whole idea of complain = reward? When we were kids, complaining got you little more than a hairy eye and swift words of terror.

But here, in the cushy real-world, it delivers sweet reward. Delicious.

Seen the Google Home Page Today?

It's Samuel Morse's Bday.
Clever.

Leo Burnett. The man.

Who knows if this was really how the place was run. I've been at my fair share of speeches where I wonder if myself and the speaker are thinking of the same place. So, perhaps this is to be taken with a tiny grain of salt.

Either way, I'm sad it's taken me 2 years to finally see this:

The making of The T-Mobile Dance

Dance the Dance

So my dad sends me email forwards like whoa. It should be more like LIKE WHOA. It's fine and mostly entertaining.

Any how - he sends me this today:



Nice. only about 750K views so far. I start betting on the views it will garner. And, of course, my dumb advertising brain says "ooooohhh, how can I use that to advertise." I look in the "related videos" section on Youtube and find this:



crap. It's been done. But I like it. And I think more so than the Dutch/German/What-have-you version. Simple. Smart. Fun. And there's a point to it all.

For all I know, the foreign version was an ad too. Just...more foreign.

Your Calling is Calling.

I appreciate this ad for everything it is. And everything it isn't.

Warning - non-advertising post

Only in Texas (and maybe India):

Yes.

Cool Agency Site

McKinney Silver, NC

Have you heard of YouTube Live?

In a land filled with more, we needed more celebrities.

Thank you, YouTube.

I now know who Chocolate Rain is, what What The Buck is, and now...who Bo Burnham is. Put 'em all in a room together, and you've got YouTube Live.

Looks something like this:

Connecting the dots

There's something fun about connecting the dots.

We all know the time-honored-client-tradition of showing what you're saying (ergo "see-say"). But seeing and saying the same thing isn't exactly the culprit. What actually makes it bad is what you're NOT doing. And that is, engaging the consumer.

When you're so explicit with what you show and say, spelling it out for the consumer, it's not fun. As a consumer, there's no need for me to participate in your crappy ad if your crappy ad is blunt enough to tell me exactly what I'm supposed to be thinking.

ACT NOW!

Like a comatose patient on life-support, I do nothing but drool.

Imagine giving a toddler a coloring book with all the pictures already colored in. Or - better yet - a connect the dots game that's already been played.

When you're on an airplane and you bust open your copy of American Way (because the brilliant Sky Mall magazine is taken), do you sit idle for your 3 hour flight staring at the crossword puzzle some jackass has already filled in? NO. You steal the magazine of the guy next to you for a fresh puzzle to massage your brain.

When you're made to connect the dots, you're engaged. You fill in the blanks and paint the picture of the story. YOU, in fact, are a vital part of creating that story.

But how do you do it? How do you make something that involves the consumer in a way that also satisfies the client?

I don't know.

But what I do know is this:

Knowing different things - and lots of different things - helps you bridge stuff together that can make people connect the dots, smile, and think different.

Be it cultures, pop culture, sports, food, lighting, medicine, rubik's cubes, or the temperature on the sun's surface. Know more old stuff. Create more new stuff.


It's my knowledge of different cultures (Indian and Pop) that makes this one work my brain:


It's my knowledge of submitting cake orders and sports that makes me fill the gaps in this story:



And I lack a third example for illustration. Which, for some reason, makes me feel incomplete. But there are plenty more - go find your own. And share.

It'll make us all better.

Another from Chuck Klosterman IV

"I'm sure you've experienced situations where you've had your ideas edited or rewritten when they didn't conveniently fit into somebody else's agenda. And then - when someone asks you about those ideas later - you cant' even argue with them, because now your idea exists in that edited form."

- Colin Greenwood of Radiohead

Watching Weight and Watching Public Relations

This morning as I rushed into the lobby of my agency trying to beat the sign-in clock, I was approached by a woman, not unlike the woman portrayed above, carrying a stack of (what appeared to be) flyers.

"We're having a Weight Watchers meeting today in the building and you're welcome to come," she said. As if it made it more appealing, she added, "It's free."

While it wasn't just me, but rather a crowd of people (mainly women) waiting for the next elevator, I still found it rather in poor taste and avoided eye contact.

None of the women around me, including myself, were out of shape. None even appeared to be remotely overweight. In fact, one even looked like she'd benefit from consuming a few gallons of ice cream.

But while most people would get that she wasn't offering the invitation based on the invitees weight, you couldn't help but infer that that's what was intended. It's only a few steps removed from saying, "You're fat. Stop eating donuts."

I didn't really find it offensive so much as comical that a woman, mind you, would feel that other women would be thrilled to be invited to a Weight Watcher's seminar while angrily waiting for an elevator and flanked on either side by co-workers. To say that her timing was off would be an understatement.

I could imagine this scenario working out fine for, say The Emril Lagasse's school of cooking seminar, The Breast Cancer Society seminar, or The Good Housekeeping Magazine seminar. But to approach a group of women and ask that they attend a presentation about losing weight is just dumb.

I'm still trying to figure it out. Would I be able to do this? How could she not see the flagrant foul? She was walking toward a cliff and her intended audience wanted to shove her.

It's just another case in point for the struggle that is a brand. Kudos to Weight Watcher's for their new ad campaign. I dig it.

But BOO for whoever hired this lady.

Another personal post

I forgot to mention. While I was getting married, celebrating the holidays, and back in VA, I was also getting a new nephew.

He was born the day before the wedding (show-stealer). But we were more than happy to have him any time. Here's a video pre-arrival of his big sister (Clara) requesting that her dad "go get da babby brudder."

James update.

James is about to get a baby (Jack Russell) sister (Vesper). So we let him sleep on his own bed in the hotel.

Don't request room 114 at the LaQuinta in Clemson, SC.

Fonts

There's a Hobo Std.

Really?

The elephant.

Let's just go ahead and get it out. The Super Bowl. It's this weekend if you haven't heard. And if you haven't seen, Youtube is choice for breaking some of the highly anticipated ad-porn you're pining for.

Youtube is great on many levels as I'm sure everyone in the universe is well aware. It's a supreme (and free) way to put the fire under most any brand. Plus some videos give you a little more - like an inside peak on what it's like to create the holy grail of advertising: A Super Bowl spot.

While some have spoiled the fun and released their spots early (Career Builder), others have made clever teasers to build the suspense. Here's one from Bridgestone and The Richards Group: