Security Pants

Here's an ad for an interesting new product from Thailand -- 'security pants'. You'll have to watch the video to the end to see what that means.

No statistics are yet available on its success rate.

Re Discussions of Race at Starbucks

My first reaction was 'Huh?' That still pretty much covers it, since it's very hard to see the point of this.

From a business standpoint, it looks like a loser, since I don't think many people go out to eat or drink hoping to discuss political/social issues with their server. I sure don't.

It's also tough to see how this can accomplish anything real positive about race relations; there's unlikely to be much give-and-take in the discussions – on the rare occasions I've been in a Starbucks, the clientele seems heavily skewed to upper middle-class white twenty- and thirty-somethings whose thoughts on racial issues seem unlikely to differ much from the gender-studies and art history majors who will be preaching to them. Of course, that might well be the point – it could be that this is simply an opportunity for the company to preen in front of its core demographic. Ben & Jerry's has done well with this approach.

There is another possible benefit – some folks who have never visited a Starbucks might be tempted to go there just to have an opportunity to tell the barista to STFU. Hey, companies lay out lots of marketing bucks to get non-customers to try their products, this could be a relatively cheap way to accomplish the goal.

Bought a Lenovo Laptop Recently? Sorry to Hear It

It’s hard to believe that a computer company could be stupid enough to sell their laptops pre-loaded with adware, but Lenovo is indeed that stupid. What’s double amazing is that they try to justify it as enhancing the customer experience.

Since at least September, Lenovo has been shipping OEM Windows laptops preloaded with Superfish “adware,” which would rudely inject its own shopping results into your browser when you searched on Google, Amazon, and other websites. This sort of behavior is associated more with spyware than with factory-shipped operating-system installs, and by itself would be a new low for Lenovo. But Superfish is more than just pesky. It’s the most virulent, evil adware you could find. 

By installing a single self-signed root certificate (trust me: That’s really bad) across all of Lenovo’s affected machines, Superfish intentionally pokes a gigantic hole into your browser security and allows anyone on your Wi-Fi network to hijack your browser silently and collect your bank credentials, passwords, and anything else you might conceivably type there.

The linked article contains sites you can use to test whether your computer is infected with this garbage. Die, Lenovo, Die!

Newspaper Tries Paying People to Subscribe

I went to the website of the Arizona Capitol Times, a weekly Phoenix newspaper dealing with politics and government, because they came up on a Google search as having an article that I was interested in; however, they wouldn't let me read the article because I'm not a subscriber. Fine -- that's absolutely their right, and I have no argument with publishers who take that approach.

I didn't care enough about the article in question to pay their subscription prices, though, so I passed.

But then I looked more closely at their offer.

A digital subscription is $179/year. A digital and print subscription is $149.

Read that again -- I had to do so several times before I was sure I had read it right. They are charging thirty bucks less for both formats than for digital only.

Though this seems on the face of it to be totally insane, the reasoning is not too hard to figure. Publishers can make more selling print ads than they can for online advertising. Therefore, the publisher is willing to give you a thirty buck discount if you'll just pretend to be a print subscriber so that they can charge their advertisers a bit more. "Hey, don't worry, you can just throw it away when it arrives."

Presumably they can, or think they can, sell enough additional ads to more than offset the discount (and to pay printing and delivery costs on the extra papers they're sending to people who don't really want them). But one wonders how long advertisers will keep paying for those ghost readers.

The Kind of Marketing That Makes Me Ashamed of My Career

I spent almost my entire working life in marketing, and I am pleased to say that I, and most of the people I worked with, behaved ethically at (almost) all times.

Sometimes, though, I get embarrassed, as a marketer, by the actions of some practicioners. Today's example: AARP. I got a mailer today that starts:

Dear Friend, 

"We regret to inform you that your AARP membership has been cancelled. Unfortunately, because we didn't receive your renewal instructions, we had no choice.

It then goes on to pitch me on the benefits of AARP membership and to offer me an opportunity to reverse my error. There are two problems with this.

1. I'm not their friend, and
2. I've never been a member of AARP and never will be.

A common complaint about people of my age (I'm 67) is that we are a bunch of greedy bastards trying to grab every government freebie we can and passing the bills on to our children and grandchildren.

It's an ugly stereotype, but unfortunately there's some truth to it. And AARP exists for the purpose of making it totally true.

And a mailing of this type, that tries to trick people into buying a service, rather than trying to sell it on its merits, does nothing to change my opinion of AARP.

A New Definition of 'Worldwide'

I was looking at tablets on eBay -- I'm not at all certain I'll buy one, but I was browsing out of curiosity (somewhere in Phoenix or Chicago, someone has a charger they don't recognize -- it's mine; and I have a tablet with no charger).

Anyway, I saw this one, which looked like it might meet my needs, and which, the seller says, can be shipped worldwide. With a few exceptions:

Shipping to: Worldwide 

Excludes: Africa, Asia, Central America and Caribbean, Middle East, Southeast Asia, American Samoa, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, Bermuda, Greenland, Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Switzerland, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

That's quite a list of exceptions, isn't it?

If you look at the dropdown menu that lists the few places to which they do ship, it appears that they define 'worldwide' as the US and Canada, parts of western Europe, Brazil, and New Zealand.

Ebay ought to police their sellers a bit and impose some standards of honesty. Lies of this sort will damage the credibility of the whole marketplace.

Menestras del Negro

I ate lunch today at Menestras del Negro in Plaza Grande (the main square in Quito – it contains the presidential palace and the cathedral).

Menestras del Negro is a popular local fastfood chain (they have a dozen or so outlets in Quito, and more in other cities around Ecuador). If they should decide that they have ambitions to enter the US market, though, I think they will have to do a bit of work on their marketing. Here is their signage:

I looked up menestras in Wikipedia, by the way, and they define it as a sort of vegetable stew (apparently the word may be related to minestrone) -- that appears to be the Spanish version. What this place offers, though is a plate of beans and white rice with a choice of meat. It's pretty good, about what one would expect from a cheap ($3.99) fastfood place.

Chistmas Ain't Very Merry for Retailers

Retail sales were poor for Thanksgiving weekend, and have gotten worse since.

Brick-and-mortar retailers saw no signs of relief last week, as store traffic in the final week before Christmas posted the third straight week of double-digit declines, according to the most recent report from ShopperTrak. 

According to the analytics firm, traffic for the week ended Dec. 22—which included the crucial final weekend before Christmas—was down 21.2 percent year over year. The first two weeks of December saw double-digit decreases, which trailed a 4 percent decline over Black Friday weekend, it said.

Online sales are up, of course, but there's no way online could make up for those declines.

Could it be that consumer confidence is another casualty of the Obamacare fiasco?

What Not to Buy for Christmas

They're selling this at the Democratic National Committee's website. How many do you think they've sold lately?

I suppose somebody really hard-core might have worn it on October 1st or prior, but it's hard to imagine anybody brave (or clueless) enough to wear it today.

Do you suppose your local Democrat congressperson will be showing up at his/her campaign rallies thus attired?

Just in case you're wondering -- no, it's not on my Christmas list.

Sex Sells -- But ... Will It Sell Fertilizer?

This ad from Thailand is a classic in the 'sex sells' category. It may well be the sexiest fertilizer ad in history (though I doubt there's a lot of competition).

Snake Oil: A Bit of Arizona History

.

As a proud Arizonan, I am always happy when I discover another area in which my native state has distinguished itself. I am pleased to report, then, that snake oil, as we understand the term today, was invented in Arizona. Sorta.

According to this item, snake oil was introduced to the United States by Chinese laborers on the Transcontinental Railroad, who used oils from Chinese water snakes to relieve muscle pain. Recent research indicates that such oils are high in Omega-3 and may actually work.

However, the snake oil that gained widespread fame being peddled by travelling salesmen in the late 19th/early 20th centuries was generally made from rattlesnake oil, which doesn’t have the same value. And some such products contained no snake oil at all.

Walpi at roughly the time Clark Stanley
would have been there (late 1870s).

Which brings us to Clark Stanley, the most famous snake oil salesman of the period. Stanley was a Texas cowboy who migrated to Arizona in the 1870s, where he met up with a Hopi medicine man (is that a politically-correct term?) in Walpi (on the First Mesa up in the northwest part of the state) and learned how to make snake oil from rattlesnakes. Stanley sold this snake oil from town to town, finally hitting it big at the Columbian Exposition here in Chicago in 1893, where he killed rattlesnakes as part of the demonstration of his product, and became known as The Rattlesnake King.

Stanley did quite well, it seems, until the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, subsequent to which an analysis in 1915 indicated that his product consisted of mineral oil, a small amount of fatty oil (presumed to be beef fat), red pepper, turpentine, and camphor. He was fined twenty dollars.

I’m always pleased to see a local boy make good.

N. Jacob Praff, DDS

Update: I changed the title of this post by deleting the words " ... is a spammer."

I received a message (see below) from Dr. Praff in which he says that a firm he hired to promote his website was sending out spam without his knowledge, and that he has discontinued their service., Well done, Dr. Praff.

The following is the original post:

About a month ago, I posted a recommendation of a good dentist, Dr. Redulla-Salupan, whom I had visited recently. 

Since then, I have at least twice (I think three times) had the following spam posted in the comments of that article:

N. Jacob Praff, DDS is a dentist located in Spring Valley, NY. Dr Praff offers general and cosmetic dentistry for adults and children. Some of the services offered Bonding, Root Canals, Zoom! Whitening, Veneers, Scaling, Root Planning, Cleaning, Dentures. more information then visit : http://url-deleted   

Give us a call on +1 845.deleted 

cosmetic dentist (link deleted)

I presume N. Jacob Praff has hired some spam service to post his garbage on any blog entries that it finds dealing in any way with dentistry. Perhaps that isn't true and maybe Zeniya Opi (the name used by the purported poster) is acting on her/his own, for whatever reason. 

I will send a copy of this to him and see if he has a good explanation (or if I get a response at all). In the past, I've deleted N. Jacob Praff's spam (as I do with the rest), but I think I'll leave it there (with the links removed) 

In the meantime, if you are in the Spring Valley, NY area and are looking for a dentist with high professional and ethical standards ... I'm afraid I have no recommendations.  

Marketing Humor

Poor execution of a good idea.

'Christmas Creep' Continues

Remember when the Christmas season started at Thanksgiving? If so, you’re really old, like me. But even younger people probably don’t expect to see Christmas ads and in-store displays until Halloween.

Too bad – because now it starts with Labor Day.

In an unprecedented move, Kmart has aired its first holiday ad. The commercial, which promotes the retailer's layaway program, features a gingerbread man sneaking up on a woman working in an office cubicle. A voiceover says: "Don't let the holidays sneak up on you. Shop early with Kmart free layaway. … Kmart. Get in, get more Christmas."

The article in Ad Age notes that Target ran its first Christmas ad (well, they call it a ‘holiday ad’, but I’m not politically correct) on October 7 last year, so the Halloween barrier had already been demolished.

Worst Ad of 1918

This ad appeared in the April 1918 issue of National Geographic (or so I'm told -- I'll take their word for it). No doubt it didn't seem so awful at the time -- the connotations of words and phrases having changed a good bit in ninety-five years.

From today's vantage point, I'm not sure which is worse, the product name or the ad slogan. Certainly the combination is unfortunate.