When it comes to fast food advertising, it’s clear that only Chick-Fil-A gets animal humor.

Back in June, I pointed out that a new line of Captain D’s spots have people who are about to eat things other than seafood being “attacked” by a giant fish that slaps them around until they eat seafood after all. Why, I asked at the time, would a fish want people to eat fish?

Here’s one of the spots in question:

Now there’s Burger King, with a new spot featuring a man hiding in a hotel room, about to eat a chicken sandwich, when a cow shows up at the door, apparently angry that a hamburger is not what’s for dinner. Why, I ask now, would a cow want people to eat hamburgers?

See for yourself:

Chick-Fil-A, on the other hand, has the ad campaign that makes sense. Their cows how old up signs that read, “Eat Mor Chickin.” Cows, after all, don’t know much about the silent e.

Get it? Cows wanting you to eat chicken. So you won’t eat cows. So they won’t end up as the main course.

Is that so hard to understand?

This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

A few years ago, at the television station I was working for at the time, I found myself in a marketing planning meeting designed to look for more ways, and specifically unconventional ways to get out name and logo out in the public more than we had done on our own.

We were also looking for ways to do it for free. No one came right out and said that, of course, but in the television business, when everything costs far more than it should, free is a good thing.

So we went around the table looking for ideas about where we could get advertising space to make sure people were aware that our little station existed. Our marketing consultant, a character I’ll call Louie, who appeared to have stepped right out of a Godfather movie, was listening to the ideas and making notes about ones that he liked. The ones he did like, incidentally, happened to be the ones my boss and I did not.

In any case, we found that we had come up with a handful of decent ideas that might be worth researching. Then he stepped up to the plate with his own little gym.

“You know those signs on the highway that advertise gasoline?” he said, in a scratchy, Don Corleone voice.

You’ve probably seen exactly the kind of signs he was talking about. They are posted near exits on the interstate highways, and advertise the gas stations that can be found at the upcoming exit. There are also similar signs that advertise campgrounds, hotels and restaurants. I’m not sure whether every state has them, but I assume that they do. In any case, most of the signs have three or four slots available for companies — like gas stations or restaurants — to have their logo displayed with an arrow and approximate distance.

“What if we could get our logo on one of those?” he said.

I was shocked. Not shocked in a “Wow, that’s a fantastic idea! I can’t believe no one ever thought of that before!” kind of way. I was shocked in a “are you absolutely out of your mind?!?” way.

“We can’t get our logo on one of those signs,” I said.

“How do you know?” Louie answered.

“Because we’re not a gas station.”

Apparently, the others around the table had the same reaction, because everyone had this blank look on their face. With the exception of a single colleague who was clearly too determined to be right at all costs.

She chimed in with this: “Well how can you be sure if you don’t ask.”

Maybe I had too much coffee that afternoon before the meeting. Or maybe I had just had enough foolishness that day.

“Because if there was some way that any company could get its logo on any interstate sign it wanted just for asking, do you really believe that we’d be the first ones to realize that?”

The room went silent. But the general manager apparently saw my point, because he didn’t argue. Nonetheless, Louie and his #1 fan insisted — insisted, mind you — that I call the state’s highway department and found out how we could get our television station’s logo on those signs.

So I called. I got one of the most Southern-sounding women I had heard in a long time, complete with a drawl that stretched out a mile long.

I explained to her that I wanted information about getting my company’s logo on one of those little signs. She informed me that it was a simple process: all I had to do was fill out an application for whichever sign was applicable and send the logo.

“Okay. But what if the company doesn’t offer one of those four services?”

There was dead silence. This woman would have been right at home at that initial meeting.

“Well, sir, if you’re not that kind of company, you can’t be on those signs.”

Shocking, I know.

“Okay,” I said, anticipating Louie’s follow-up question at the following week’s meeting, “Is there any other kind of sign along the roadway where I could advertise my business?”

Another pause. Then, as dryly as any comedienne could have possibly delivered the line, she said, “A billboard.”

Touché.

Sure enough, at the next marketing meeting, we went down the agenda and came to the now infamous highway sign question. I told them I had called and was told exactly what I said I would be told. I then threw in the additional note about the billboards, and somehow managed to stifle laughter.

Then Louie’s #1 fan, the one who had jumped to his immediate defense after he suggested such a silly idea, leaned across the table towards me and whispered worriedly, “You didn’t tell them where you worked, did you?”

“Of course. I told them I was calling on your behalf.”

I hadn’t, but after putting me through that embarrassment, I didn’t mind letting her sweat it out for a little while.

This should have been the end of this little incident, an exercise in futility. But it wasn’t. Good old Louie had one more surprise up his sleeve. He stood up — actually stood up — and applauded me. I got a standing ovation from him, and he thanked me for having followed through to make sure every avenue had been explored.

“Even when the avenue in question is an obvious route to nowhere,” he did not add.

Some people say a bad idea is better than no idea. Trust me: it isn’t.

There’s a new commercial for a medical supply company offering to help patients who need sterile catheters.  That in itself is unpleasant enough.

But it gets worse.

The “patient” — who may be a real patient or just an actress — talks about the inconvenience of having to boil used catheters so she can reuse them.

Too. Much. Information.

Granted, they could have been much less delicate.  But still, that’s an image I didn’t need this morning!

I wish people who were diagnosed with conditions that required such actions could register with their doctors to specifically get this information…so those of us who don’t have to “cath” ourselves don’t have to think about it.

…if there were no problems in the world serious enough to make a cartoon jingle seem an appropriate way to sell a candidate.

Viral marketing for the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, caused the evacuation of a Texas television station.

Employees at KENS-TV in San Antonio received what is being described as an “ugly cake” with wires sticking out of it.  Assuming that it just might be a bomb or some other bit of bad business, police were immediately called and the station was cleared out until investigators could determine that all was well.

The cake, it turns out, appears to be one of several designed to promote the film.  Other cakes sent to theaters and film critics have featured telephone numbers written in icing on the cake, and cell phones sealed in evidence bags inside the cake.  Upon calling the number listed on the cake with the included cell phone, callers would presumably receive messages about the film.

This particular cake apparently came from a local theater chain, according to the industry site Newsblues.  A spokesman for that chain, Newsblues reports, said that an email should have been sent to the station alerting them to the odd delivery.

Ya think?

South Carolina has dropped out of an ad campaign that was designed to lure gay tourism dollars to the state. The state’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department had previously agreed to spend $5,000, not a huge amount of money as ad dollars go, to market to gays in London.

Charleston’s Post and Courier describes one ad that appeared in a London tube station as showing a historic rural home under the headline, “South Carolina is so gay.”

True to form, bible-belt red-state South Carolinians reacted by flying off the deep end. Sure, they want tourist dollars, but just not from them. Even though “them” is a relatively powerful tourist force, according to a Philadelphia study a few years ago, which revealed that for every dollar that city spent on gay tourism advertising, gay tourists spent an average of $153 on hotels, shops and more. At the time, gay tourists were said to spend about $54 billion a year on travel. That’s billion. With a B.

And it’s just a guess on my part, mind you, but I’ll wager those billions are still green like everyone else’s. And still spends, in a sluggish economy, the same.

The problem, according to PRT excuses, was that international advertising wasn’t subjected to the same review process that national advertising is because in this case, a third party firm developed the ad. Does that explanation make any damn sense to anyone? PRT only cares enough to be mindful of the image it is projecting to places like Iowa or Oregon or Minnesota, but doesn’t give a hoot about pulling in tourism dollars from the rest of the planet? And unless PRT has its own ad agency and never uses any third party firms here in the state — which is unlikely — most of their ad projects are ultimately produced or executed by third parties.

And isn’t that what we’d expect, no matter what an international ad said? Who’d know what would appeal to any specific segment of London’s population better than a London-based firm, or at least someone here is from there?

Sounds to me like an excuse about as logical as something a kid would make up after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Is the ad wrong to use the term gay? Well, let’s look at it this way: would there be any objection from gay groups if South Carolina hoped to attract bible belt tourists to the state with the line, “South Carolina is so straight?” If anyone would have a problem with that, but not the gay line, then what we’re dealing with here is a nice little double standard.

Of course, then there are the ones who’ll try to downplay the whole thing by hiding behind dictionary definitions. Gay has different meanings, they’ll say.

True.

Gay means happy and carefree, although it is used less and less for that these days because “them homasexshals” took over the word.

Gay is also used, mostly by people who aren’t, to refer to something that is screwed up, backwards.

Some would argue after this little display of homophobia and/or sloppy procedure and/or poor judgment, depending on your personal point of view, that maybe, one way or another, the headline isn’t so inaccurate after all.

You have to love the irony of this one!

A little girl shown fast asleep while a hypothetical world crisis is happening in Hillary Clinton’s fear-mongering campaign ad says she was shocked to see stock footage of herself appearing in a Clinton campaign ad.  The girl, now 17, was photographed eight years ago as part of a video library that the Clinton campaign ended up using for the ad.

Using such stock footage isn’t really that unusual.  It’s almost always cheaper than arranging a new shoot just to get the required shots.

The only trouble is that the little girl, Casey Knowles, who turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote next month is a fierce supporter of Barack Obama, according to Seattle’s KING-TV.  “I was actually a precinct captain at the caucuses a few months ago. I attended his rally a few months ago and I’m a very, very avid supporter,” Knowles said.

As part of the agreement to be photographed for stock footage, the actors and actresses generally don’t get to stipulate how their footage is used.  But I bet the Clinton campaign now thinks it would have been better to have arranged their own shoot after all.

I love the ads for Burger King with the (presumably authentic) hidden camera footage of customers being told that the Whopper^® had been discontinued.

Here’s a summary of the practical joke:

Anyone who knows me well probably already knows that had I been one of the customers being told that there was no longer any such thing as a Whopper on the menu, things wouldn’t have gone well.

Not well at all.

My favorite quote from one of the customers who thought they were being interviewed by a legit news organization after the joke:

“What are you going to put on the logo now, ‘Home of Whatever We Got’?”

On the other hand, the chain was spared any tirade from me by the fact that I haven’t had a Whopper (or the more-damaging, 1400+-calorie Hardee’s Monster Burger) in almost a full year.

Oh, yes…I still miss them.

Sometimes, as many of you know, it’s what a political ad doesn’t come right out and say that is worth thinking about.

I’ve been thinking about a campaign commercial called, “Searched” from the Mitt Romeny crowd. It’s a testimonial by one of his business associates, a father whose daughter went missing in the Big Apple. Oh, yes…you’ve seen it, right?

I’ve seen the spot often enough now that when I do, I start asking lots of questions, starting with whether I’d run the same spot if I were going for your vote. And the answer I keep coming up with is no.

It seems innocent enough. There’s a father, Robert Gay, who obviously loves his daughter, at times struggling to avoid breaking down as he recounts the terrifying story of her disappearance. It’s one of those “parent’s worst nightmare” moments that we promo people like to mention when we’ve hit writer’s block in a script.

Mitt Romney, he says, brought the company both men were partners in, (Bain Capital), to a halt so that all of the employees could travel to New York City to search for his daughter.

Nowhere does the ad claim that the 14-year-old girl was “abducted” or “kidnapped.” But it also doesn’t report that police said that she voluntarily went to a rave — one of those underground concerts where drugs are, unfortunately, often served — and took some Ecstasy, after which she “wandered the city” and met a young man who took her to his parents’ home in New Jersey.

This additional information came from the same source that tells the story in the emotional political commercial: her father. That’s according to this article in the New York Times from 13 July, 1996.

It is interesting to note that this article also reports that police said at the time no charges would be filed, which certainly would be strange if she had actually been kidnapped.

It also explains that police responded to the house after receiving several phone calls, but makes no mention of the much-heralded search itself being responsible for her discovery.

And there’s more: the same article says this about how the search began:

“Mr. Gay, a partner in the private investment firm Bain Capital, launched a huge search with the help of business partners Thursday to help locate his daughter, whom the family had not heard from since last Saturday.”

It was Gay, the article says, who launched the search. Not Romney.

A second Times article adds this:

“Bain Capital’s partners closed down the firm and drew on friendships and connections to find volunteers for the search.”

Neither article mentions the selfless act of friendship by Romney. Neither article mentions Romney by name at all. And both articles, including the one written after an interview with Gay himself, make it clear that the decision involved several people: “with the help of his business partners,” for example.

Now, eleven years later, unnamed “business partners” becomes Mitt Romney alone.

Maybe Romney, like like Mike Huckabee, forgot that this is the Information Age, in which such information is readily available to anyone who can type a few keywords into Google. Maybe, the father was so overwhelmed at the time with fear and worry about his child, that he just didn’t think about praising the “one man” who saved his daughter.

Or maybe time has changed the perception of who did what.

But beyond the selfless gesture itself, what is one really supposed to get out of this spot?

That Romney knows that nothing — especially money — is more important than family? That Romney is the kind of guy who wouldn’t mind letting a business he’s run lose millions of dollars during a humanitarian crisis?

Or maybe that Romney, given a cause he’s passionate enough about, wouldn’t be ablve brining everything — possibly even the government? — to a standstill just so he gets the outcome he wants?

Now that Christmas is over, perhaps we can finally be rid of those ridiculous campaign commercials in which candidates attempt to make everyone believe that they’re actually taking a break from campaigning to share with you their take on the real meaning of the holiday.

The highlight for some was that infamous cross image behind Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, the one who started all of this holiday Christmas madness. The cross is actually the intersection of shelves in a white bookcase.

The Huckabee campaign says that there was no intention to subliminally insert the image of the cross into the spot, during which their man offered his own reminder of what Christmas is supposed to be about.

Huckabee himself said of the accusations:

“I wish we had been so smart as to be able contrive every frame of the shot.”

You may well have been one of Huckabee’s critics, who scoffed at the notion that it could have been a “happy accident.” You may well have cited some great conspiracy to “force” Christianity into everyone’s homes. Some of his critics would have happily sworn on a bible that there was no way such a “coincidence” could really happen.

I’ve worked in television for more than 16 years, and the reality — as unreal as it may seem — is that sometimes, a coincidence like that really does happen, and it’s the sharp-eyed viewer with absolutely no videography experience sees it and begins accusing the filmmakers of trying to pull a fast one.

I’ve seen it happen in local television, when someone spots something in a background and tries to make something out of it that no one intended…or even noticed. We were left to sit around scratching our heads wondering either why we didn’t see it or how someone else did.

I’m sure we’ve all snapped a photo that we’ve taken an extra moment or two to frame, only to discover some element in the background that we hadn’t noticed when we took the shot itself. For me, that’s an extra appeal of photography: discovering new details you didn’t notice the first time around.

And even big league film crews miss little details. Continue reading “The Christmas Campaign”

So you need to know a telephone number, but you’re too lazy to pick up the phone book…if you even remember where you put it.

In the past, you dialed 411 for a little “411,” and the phone company’s computerized billing system nearly blew a chip billing you for the call.

Now, enter AT&T’s new 1-800-YELLOW-PAGES, which is a free service…for a small price.

All you have to do is call…you guessed it…1-800-YELLOW-PAGES. (Have I ever told you how much I hate trying to dial words on a telephone dial?!?) Make that 1-800-935-5697.

You deal with the same computer prompts that have become so common with the traditional 411, because Heaven forbid you actually get a human being to help you in the 21st century. But your number will come up and you have the option of being connected directly for free. (That’s for the people that aren’t only too lazy to find their phone book, but are also so ill-prepared that they’d actually call a directory assistance line without first picking up a pencil and a piece of paper.)

The only catch? You have to sit through a couple of brief audio commercials, which happen to be for businesses (wherever possible) that match the category of the listing you called for to begin with.

For most people, it’s a small price to pay, and since most people fast-forward through the majority of commercials they’d otherwise be subjected to on television, they’re still coming out ahead. I just wonder how many people will hear the commercials and decide they’d rather deal with that company…then have to redial to get their number!

By now, you’ve probably seen the commercial for Fruit of the Loom with country star Vince Gill. In the spot, he sings a few bars of a song with the Apple guy and their duet is interrupted by Grape guy’s cell phone.

It turns out, believe it or not, that they actually wrote a lot more than just twenty seconds worth of lyrics. Here, for your enjoyment (or torment), is the full two-and-a-half minute tune. Keep in mind as you listen to what is otherwise a beautiful melody that they’re singing about underwear!

No castle in the south of France,
but what we had were underpants
that made us feel like royalty…

I’d love to have seen the look on Vince Gill’s face when they first pitched this idea.

As most of you know by now, I work in television. As I’m sure you can imagine, there are plenty of people who love to jump on media-hating bandwagons often enough that those of us who work for one in the media often feel like we work in a hated profession. Within television, my particular area of interest is marketing. There are lots of people who hate commercials and those who have anything to do with anything that remotely resembles a commercial.

So there are times when I feel the “double whammy” of under-appreciation when it comes to my career choice.

I have debated going for a law degree so that I could become a triple threat, but it didn’t take long at all to talk myself out of that idea.

In any case, every time October rolls around, I hear marketing-weary people complaining about Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and specifically, the marketing of the month-long reminder designed to save lives.

Some people denounce the merchandising, like $30 pink t-shirts from which only five bucks or so is actually donated to breast cancer research. Some people criticize businesses offering various pink-colored products in an attempt to cash in on the month rather than do anything to help fight breast cancer.

The concerns are valid to an extent: I’d have no hesitation whatsoever in joining in a protest for any t-shirt that costs $30, and there are some products that just don’t connect with breast cancer very well.

Such transparent displays of money-grabbing are distasteful considering the real intent Breast Cancer Awareness Month is supposed to have. And there are critics who say that such attempts to make money is taking money away from the research needed to eradicate breast cancer once and for all.

The purpose of marketing breast cancer awareness isn’t to turn a $30 donation into a $5 donation and a t-shirt.

But there is a big difference between fund raising and marketing.

Here’s an example: think of cola. It can be any kind of cola, although by now, a specific brand of cola, like Coke or Pepsi, has already popped in your head. Most of you will note that you came up with the brand before I mentioned it. That little automatic association, in the advertising world, is known as “top-of-mind awareness.” It’s what every advertiser wants you to have about their specific brand.

When you think of facial tissue, you probably think of Kleenex. When you think of copy machines, you probably think of Xerox. When you think of home computers, depending on your platform of choice, you either think of an IBM (or equivalent) or a Mac.

How does this relate to Breast Cancer Awareness? Simple. The purpose of marketing breast cancer awareness isn’t to turn a $30 donation into a $5 donation and a t-shirt. It’s to raise top-of-mind awareness of the illness to the point that when someone sees a pink ribbon or any decoration in pink, the first thing they think of is breast cancer.

When that happens, the marketing campaign has worked, regardless of the fund raising.

There are people out there who might never send a check for $30 to breast cancer research, because they might think that $30 is too small an amount. But they might buy a t-shirt to show support for a friend, relative or colleague who has fought the illness. Given a choice between receiving nothing or $5, which do you think cancer researchers would choose?

What’s more, when someone wears one of those t-shirts, they’re reinforcing that message to other people, who then may or may not choose to donate themselves.

More importantly, cancer rates show that the number of cancer deaths, breast cancer included, have dropped. That’s proof that as medication has gotten better at fighting it, people are getting better at finding it early. And the awareness that has women (and men, since it can affect men as well) performing breast self-exams is the best we could hope for short of a cure.

I can’t imagine that someone who feels passionately enough about fighting the illness would not donate just so that they can buy a t-shirt. The people who are the most dedicated are likely to donate first, and buy goodies later.

As consumers, we have every right to ask a business selling something and promising to donate a portion of the proceeds how much they’re actually donating. If they don’t want to say, we have every right to walk away without buying anything.

But if you’re really committed to helping raise money to find a cure for breast cancer, finding out how much some business is going to donate if you buy something pink shouldn’t be your first concern.

Send your donations directly to where the money can be used. You have enough t-shirts in your closet, anyway.

One of the newest commercials for Bowflex — at least it appears to be a new commercial — has a guy who claims to gotten into great shape with the use of the fitness machine.

During the spot, he says, “I gave my ‘fat clothes’ to my fat friends.”

Considering his ability to make such a remark, after having allegedly been out of shape himself, this isn’t the kind of person I’d want as a friend.

This isn’t exactly a commercial that warms me up to the product.