Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

WCCO report on Black Friday Ads

 

The email came in a a few minutes before 5:00 pm  from Reporter Jason DeRusha of WCCO -TV , our CBS affiliate.

He had seen my post about Black Friday Ads on Blogher -- the network of women blogs that where I am a contributing editor and Jason wanted to chat. Then he wanted to do an on air interview. Did I mention that (a) my hair was a mess (b) my office was messier than usual and that is beyond comprehension for some and (c) I had to be on a webex facilitation at 5:50.

When Jason discovered I lived downtown he didn't think that my time crunch was an issue. He, the cameraman and the intern arrived at 5:30 and we were done by 5:45.So here it is, Jason's story on Black Friday Ads with me as his "marketing expert.

Besides the fact that he didn't mention the name of my blog, or Blogher and that my name is actually pronounced  e la na ( like sha na na) rather than e lay na -- I thought his story was great.

Check out his blog  he has a lot of info on Black Friday ads.

Did Donald Trump Go Too Far?

There are bloggers who have talked about their bosses. There are bloggers who have been fired for talking about their bosses. But, Donald Trump may be the first CEO to use his blog to share with the world his reasons for firing an employee.

In a post called Carolyn on the Trump Blog, Trump shares the details that led to his decision to tell Carolyn Kepcher"You're Fired!".

The fact is, I like Carolyn very much but she loved her fame and she loved her celebrity on "The Apprentice" and it was affecting her work. She wasn't doing her job like she used to or was capable of doing. So I felt that after 11 years together it was time for a rest.

I told Carolyn in the nicest way possible, "Go out and enjoy your family. Get a new job."

There are some things that deserve to be confidential. Reasons for dismissal, as long as their are no legal violations, deserve silence -not blogging.Most CEOs have more respect for themselves and for their employees and the potential of a defamation of character lawsuit. I have a feeling The Donald could care less.

But what if The Donald is actually starting a trend---The revenge of the CEO. Or as my friend Nancy White calls it " The Firing Blog". Imagine if this trend continues and Firing Blogs  take their rightful place along  with the mommy bloggers, the food bloggers, and the political bloggers.

Firing Blogs are for  all those business executives who have had to sit back in silence as their employees,and former employees gleefully blog their brains out telling stories out of school about the horror of their leadership style.

So far, most agree its unethical and a fireable offense to publicly blog about  your boss or  your place of employment.  So,if that's the case,  could Firing Blogs take off ,or is this just a one-blogger with  The   Donald being able to do it because after all, he's The Donald?

Gray skies are gonna clear up,

You know when John Stewart leads his program with a clip that the intention of this  spot didn't quite hit the mark. Either the people who created this commercial just took a class in Advertising 101 where the professor demanded they figure out their "real benefits OR, actually, there isn't an "Or" that could possibly explain this asinine commercial. What were they thinking? . Click here to watch.

As I am sure the folks at WTWO are learning now that they've become the laughing stock of the country, is that when someone says "real benefits" what they mean is "benefits" that the target audience cares about.

While the folks at WTWO are probably "taking a meeting' today to figure out whether to pull the spot, apologize to their competitors, or just grin and bear the public ridicule,one thing is for sure, this spot will live in Advertising Infamy as one of the the worst commercials ever.

They should have said NO

For the past couple of weeks, I have been watching in embarrassing agony as Connie Chung, Maury Povitch, Chris Matthews and a host of other journalist participate in a promotion campaign for Connie & Maury's weekend television program on MSNBC.

In one a journlist queries, " I'm not sure Connie is actually Chinese."

The question is, if your boss asked you to do something that you believe is completely humiliating ,would you do it?  Now, we're not talking about breaking any laws or violating the Geneva Convention,  we're just talking about a willingness to abandon your better judgment ( or contract) and do it for  the Gipper .

I haven't seen their show. Not sure I will.  It has gotten mostly negative reviews.

"> Alessandra Stanley calls it a "cheesy talk show" that "almost makes Fox's Geraldo at Large look dignified."

> 5 Things: "The opening banter was lame but the newsreel-esc production was pure Liz Winstead. Very funny."

But, it isn't the show that fascinates me, I'm intrigued with  the promos.. They are hideous.

Why in the world did Connie Chung, Maury Povitch and for that matter Chris Matthews agree to participate? As far as I'm concerned it's a lose-lose situation. If this is their idea of cleaver, I am concerned about their professional judgment; if they knew that the promos reeked, then I've lost respect on an entirely different level.

There are two families of promos; one "endorsing Connie and her supposed talents and one endorsing" Maury and his gifts. At the end of each of their promos they either say, " I'm Connie Chung ( I'm Maury Povitch) and I approve of this ad a la a political candidate.'

If this is MSNBC's idea of edgy, sophisticated, cleaver, amusing, delightful, engaging, motivational, endearing or in any way appropriate, they need to hire a new promotional team.

However, it's one thing for someone to try to push a bad campaign, it's another for supposed intelligent and responsible human beings to agree to participate.

Sometimes, you have to be willing to push yourself away from the table an just say 'thanks, but no thanks".--regardless of the consequences.

Erectile Dysfunction

I used to think that the Doublemint Twins were the most annoying ads on television. That was before the days of erectile dysfunction.

When erectile dysfunction ads were still a novelty  and weren't popping up on television more often than Paris Hilton,my friend Janet joked, "from looking at these ads you'd get the idea that if my husband took Viagra he'd finally take me dancing.

The Op-Ed Page of USA Today is running two points of view on the subject of pharmaceutical advertising.The first is the pro advertising. The second is anti-advertising. The author of the anti-advertising editorial is my brother, Bob Centor ,who also writes a blog and is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Alabama. And,yes Bob, you are correct, most bloggers would love to be asked to write an editorial for USA Today- congratulations.

As to my opinion, while no one asked --  I've got issues with both camps. Doctors need to say no to patients who wouldn't benefit from a particular drug.We depend on them  to protect our health, and while saying no is not easy,and may add time to their day, they should still do it.  What ever happened to Hippocrates?

As to the pharmaceuticals, I'd like to see some prosecutions here. It's absolutely ridiculous that companies that knew they were manufacturing products  that could kill people are still allowed to advertise their other product lines. I'd like to see advertising penalties placed on companies who violate the public trust by not telling the truth.

Just as major league sports teams suspend players for violating drug rules, I'd like to see the media suspend pharmaceutical companies who violate the public trust. Not that anyone asked me.

One less chocolate chip

"The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position."
Al Ries & Jack Trout
Positioning: The Battle for your Mind (1986)

So came the news this week that Sesame Street's beloved Cookie Monster is being  asked to sacrifice cookies to project a healthier image.

"My beloved blue, furry monster — who sang “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me” — is now advocating eating healthy. There’s even a new song — “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food,” where Cookie Monster learns there are “anytime” foods and “sometimes” foods."

Repositioning is risky business. Can you say NEW COKE?

"Long before they'd tasted a sip of it, millions of Americans had decided they hated New Coke. Yes, in blind taste tests people had consistently said they liked the new formula better. However, a soft drink is so much more than merely its flavor; a soda is also its marketing. Coke had spent more than a hundred years convincing the North American population that its product was an integral part of their lives, their very identities. Taste be damned: to do away with Coca-Cola was to rip something vital from the American soul. Americans (never ones to peaceably go along with anything perceived as violating their identity) weren't going to stand for it, and they weren't shy about saying so. "

In 1985 my friend Libby was one of those angry people who wasn't shy about her anger.  She stockpiled original COKE in her basement. She wrote letters and she got national attention. Saving COKE was her destiny. She was even written up in either TIME or NEWSWEEK. She was my first friend to make it into a national magazine.

Will consumers have a similar reaction to Cookie Monster's new personal brand message?

Chances are the kids will accept a Cookie Monster who shows more moderation in his cookie habit and who  now may say ME EAT BROCCOLI.

However, they may not adore a COOKIE MONSTER who sings Cookies are a sometimes food.

Cookie Monster is more than a character on a children's show that kids adore.  Cookie Monster is Big Business  that depends on an adoring public to generate sales. There are Cookie Monster books. Cookie Monster Christmas Stockings.There's even a Cookie Monster KidzMouse for computers.

Not having adoration could take a bite out of sales of these Cookie Monster Branded Products.

Then there's the parent trap to consider. Parents of the current Sesame Street audience are people who grew up with Cookie Monster. Many of them adored the old Cookie Monster. They may have a more difficult time accepting and adoring the new Cookie Monster.

From an IM shared on Harry's The View From Here.

HARRY: This is preposterous!
NOAM: Absolutely horrible.
HARRY: I mean, do you think you eat more cookies today as a result of Cookie Monster's influence?
NOAM: Uh, no. It's not like I have OCD and count things furiously as a result of The Count's influence.
HARRY: Good point.

As influencers, these parents may opt to buy the ELMO tee-shirt rather than the new and moderately behaved Cookie Monster tee-shirt.

Will Sesame Street stick with the new positioning if kids no longer adore and buy Cookie Monster branded products?  Or in a year from now will they pull a Dallas on us and say it was just a bad dream?

Ladies and Jellyspoons

During my tenure in the newsroom of WWBT-TV in the 1970s, I was quick to point out to my bosses every time they made a misstep on the equality road.

If they passed me up for an assignment because they said it was too dangerous, too dirty, too whatever, I balked.

I balked a lot. Certainly in the early days of my five years in the newsroom, I believed I had an obligation to fight for equality. I took my role very seriously.

Maybe because women in the newsroom were such a novelty, they tended to listen.  I absolutely thought progress was being made.

After all, I wasn't suggesting anything that radical--basically equal opportunity and fairness. It never seemed like a radical concept to me.And, it still doesn't.

Yet, according to a report issued Fairness &Accuracy In Reporting, women opinions on the Sunday talk shows are virtually silent.

"Surprisingly, NBC's Chris Matthews Show came out almost exactly even on gender, with 51 men and 49 women. Unfortunately, the show is unique in its gender balance: This Week and Fox News Sunday hewed more closely to the print media's unspoken "quota of one" for female pundits, featuring 22 percent and 25 percent women respectively. Meet the Press—which occasionally included more than one woman per panel and once (2/20/05) even filled its panel with four—had 39 percent women.

All of the program hosts, who direct the discussions, are white men: NBC's Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Fox's Chris Wallace.

But which women get to speak? Certainly not women of color. While the Chris Matthews Show did well on gender parity, every one of its 49 female panelists was white."

What is more disturbing then those paltry, pathetic, inexcusable statistics, is the fact that there is no outrage.It's not as if no one's noticed the dearth of women on these shows.

It's in your face every time you watch them. For those of us who stare at the TV monitor at the health club on Sunday mornings while getting in our allotted time on the elliptical machine, it is a visual reality that is repeated week after week after week. Forget the No Spin Zone. You're about to enter the Testosterone Zone.

The absolute idiocy of the situation reminds me of my favorite childhood poem--author unknown.

Ladies and Jellyspoons.

I come before you to stand behind you to tell you something I know nothing about.

Next Thursday, which is good Friday there is going to be a mother's meeting for father's only.

Admission is free, pay at the door,

Pull up a seat and sit on the floor.

We will be discussing the four corners of

the round table.

Queen Bees Part II aka words count

For some time English has been evolving toward having nondiscriminatory grammar, structure, and form.

However, that doesn't mean we don't mentally assign gender to certain words and idioms.

Take "whiny"-- it's as pink as a ballet slipper. According to Merriam Webster, whiny is " a prolonged high-pitched cry usually expressive of distress or pain"

Whiny is exactly how radio talk show host Don Imus characterized Maureen Dowd’s recent column on the lack of women writing for the op-ed page of major newspapers.

During a chat with NBC Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Imus tried to get her to comment. She tried to take the high road and explained to Mr.Imus why this is such a big issue right now. As Dowd explained in her column:

"The kerfuffle over female columnists started when Susan Estrich launched a crazed and nasty smear campaign against Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times editorial page editor, trying to force him to run her humdrum syndicated column.

Given the appalling way she's handled herself, Susan - an acquaintance for many years - is the last person Michael, a friend of mine, should hire. But he should recruit some more talented women to write for him. So should The Times, The Washington Post - which also has only one female columnist - and anyone else who has an obvious gender gap on their op-ed pages."

The issue isn’t whether Imus liked Dowd’s column. The issue is the choice of words. What made it whiny?  Was it the fact that Dowd pointed out that very few women are represented on the op-ed page?

Or that she provided an explanation that had more to do with female personality traits than female talent?

Or, was it whiny because a woman was pointing out that there is a disparity between men and women who hold power positions in the media?

Mitchell didn't challenge Imus on his use of the word whiny. She's not alone. Listen to the language used to describe women in power.All too often it is gender-biased, painting a picture of a less than desirable leader.

It has become standard fare to dodge the real issues of gender discrimination by attacking women with verbal euphemisms that communicate women are not as capable leaders as men.

Heaven help the woman who believes in feminism. She’s a FemiNazi. And, a woman who does exert power is called a bitch, naggy, diva, goddess, glamazon, alpha woman, bossy, blonde, scattered, ditzy, screechy, or high-pitched. (This is not the entire list, it's actually much longer).

Who wants the head of the department to be run by a naggy, high-pitched diva that operates like an alpha woman in heat?

There was a time in the late 60s and 70s when women were quick to correct men when they behaved or spoke like a male chauvinist.

Women didn’t wait to have a man walk around the car to open a door, we did it ourselves.

Heaven help the guy who referred to the women in the office as “the girls” or tried to call us honey.

We spoke up. Changes were made.

It's no longer the best man for the job, it's the best candidate.

It's no longer a one-man show, its a solo show.

We were diligent in our desire to be treated as equals. Some would say we were obnoxious. But, it worked—sort of.  We changed some of the language. We got the jobs. Okay, we didn't’t get the pay. Thirty years later, women still earn 75 cents to every dollar earned by a man. And we should be raising a ruckus about that. We don't.

It’s been all quiet on the work front for too long. Women have lost their voice. If more women were hassling newspapers about the lack of female voices on the op-ed pages, there would be more women. No one seems to care, and when they do mention it, they’re whiny.

Women have no one but ourselves to blame. Instead of fighting the fight, we now simply walk away. Women’s solution to the inequality in male run companies is to leave corporate America.

According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, between 1997 and 2004, the estimated growth rate in the number of women-owned firms was nearly twice that of all firms (17% vs. 9%).

Language matters. We may have taken the man out of the mail carrier and police officer, but we haven't taken the sexism out of our every day language.

So the next time you hear a female executive being called a bitch, diva or glamazon, challenge it. Demand that she is described in the more gender neutral language we assign male executives we don’t like.

Call her a jerk.

.

Unfortunate Timing

Had a nice chat yesterday with Jess Blackburn, a spokesperson for DELL computers. As it turns out, I was part of a very small group of people who either noticed or cared that the DELL commercials running the day after Christmas mentioned tsunamis.

"We produced the commercial three or four months ago and never could have anticipated that an actual tsunami would occur," said Blackburn who added, " we moved as quickly as we could to reach people at the networks to get it out of rotation."

As it turns out DELL isn’t the only company that had ads with a Tsunami connection.

Pepsi decided to pull its new ad . As dabitch explained in a post at AdLand

"A planned ad for Pepsi, with David Beckham, Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry among others has been delayed indefinitely following the the tsunamis in Asia. Teaser press releases about the ad sent out to Norwegian trade press the 21st of December with a reminder sent only a few hours before the real world tsunami happened contained images of the football heroes posing in front of a giant wave. "If we had a crystal ball we would never have sent out these images" said Lene Gjestad, Pepsi marketing Director in Norway to Verdens Gang. "The image was taken from the commercial which has a surfing theme, and was meant to be humorous, but looks frightening now after the disaster."

Then there is EBAY ad called "Toy Boat". It started running in November. I didn’t see it until a few days after the Tsunami. As I was watching it I was sure this was an ad for Tsunami disaster relief.

It wasn’t.

The ad ,which relies on visuals with no voice-over until the very end, begins with a young boy on the beach playing with the sand and a toy boat. The graphic says its 1972. His mom calls his name. He runs away from the ocean, leaving the toy boat behind.

The waves carry the boat out to sea. We see the boat riding massive waves and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Fast Forward to today. Fishermen on a different continent bring up the toy boat in their fishing net.

The young boy, now a grown man sees it on EBAY. Life is good.

What were they thinking? It was a wonderful ad BT (before –Tsunami) but they really needed to have better sense then showing a small child on a beach, with massive waves and a boat sinking AT ( after Tsunami).

It felt creepy.

EBAY needs to take a cue from Pepsi and DELL. For the near future, ads featuring the ocean and crashing waves just doesn’t send the right message.

The Tsunami is going to be this century’s Titanic. Just like it took a long time for the luxury cruise liners to overcome the Titanic disaster, its going to take the world a long time to look at the ocean in the same way it did before December 26th. For the time being, the ocean represents the tears of the world.

Many corporations are doing their part to support Tsunami Relief Campaigns. DELL computers is running a large banner ad on its website to encourage visitors to contribute to one of the agency’s providing Tsunami relief. Dell’s spokesperson Blackburn said that DELL is also running a matching campaign so that for every dollar an employee donates, DELL will match that contribution.

No mention of the Tsunami at either Pepsi or EBay's website.

Why DELL is running pre-Christmas ads the week after Christmas

Looks like Grant Thornton isn’t the only company that is taking the week off. DELL Computers is evidently closed for the holiday week as well. That’s what their message said when I contacted media relations.

I wanted to know when someone finally realized that the TV ad they were running all day Sunday had an unfortunate reference to Tsunamis.

DELL Computers must have bought a very heavy schedule on CNN this past Sunday .It seemed that their commercial popped up during every break.

The ad was a post Christmas ad –targeted to the people who had just gotten a new DELL computer (this was the day after Christmas after all). The purpose of the ad was to reinforce that  DELL’s phone support lines are open 24/7 –365…and in the case of leap year, as the ad says 366.

The creative shows a man lying in bed. He’s on the phone with a DELL phone customer service person. It’s obviously in the middle of the night. The guy in bed starts rattling off all sorts of situations that might cause the customer service center to close. He names holidays. The DELL guy says something like   “We’ll be here.”

After listing a series of bizarre events, the new computer owner says, ‘what about a tsunami?’

The DELL guy hesitates. Then says, ' yes we’ll be here'. A few more plagues are mentioned and the ad ends with the guy saying “I’ll call back in an hour.”

The first time I heard the ad I wasn’t sure that I heard correctly. The news had been saying Tsunami all day so I thought maybe I imagined it. I didn’t.

Talk about bad luck. Listening to that ad you got the feeling that someone, somewhere in DELL’s advertising department is going.  “Holy $#(&!”. Obviously the ad needed to be pulled.

What was supposed to be humorous and entertaining while simultaneously getting across the message of DELL’s commitment to customer service, now sounded horrifically in bad taste. World events made the commercial un-airable.

Unfortunately, it continued to run all day Sunday. The question is…why didn’t someone pull it sooner? Surely I wasn't the only person who noticed the Tsunami reference?

That is what I would have asked if anyone at DELL was working today. I also want to know how many complaints they got on Sunday for the perception of “insensitivity”.

Those answers will have to wait until next week. Meanwhile, DELL is running their pre-holiday ads and probably someone is working overtime to shoot a new commercial that lets new computer users know that DELLs help line is available 24/7. The new ad probably won’t include any natural disasters.