Can someone please explain…?

Looking for reason in all the wrong places.

Archive for October, 2009

Are you a victim of Commercialus Interruptus?

Posted by jlsimons on October 28, 2009

Has this ever happened to you?

Your commercial for Romano’s Macaroni Grill Dinner Kits is running on a cable tv network like Food Network. Everything is going well, happy people cooking food at home that’s every bit as good as it would be at the restaurant.

“Just add your chicken and cook for 20 minutes. Romano’s Macaroni Grill Dinner Kits… the restaurant favorites that…”

and then, suddenly,

“How rough are your dry cracked feet? Now there’s Heeltastic”… as a woman takes a sandblaster to her bare feet.

Mmmm…that’s tasty.

You’ve just joined the ranks of thousands of advertisers who suffer from Commercialus Interruptus, a tragic, embarrassing affliction that is, sad to say, occurring with increasing frequency among anyone who advertises on cable television.

Why does it happen? More importantly, why does it seem to be spreading? I first noticed it on the Food Network, but now I’ve seen it on Comedy Central, TNT, TBS, USA, CNN and many other stations too traumatized to allow themselves to be mentioned in public.

Uninformed theories abound, some of them no better than old wives tales. Some say the advertiser couldn’t afford the full slot and is willing to settle for less. Some say it’s because the advertiser didn’t pay the bill. I’ve even seen someone post that they think it happens when the person running the commercials at the station is in training and screws it up.

Commercialus Interruptus can happen to anyone, no matter how famous or successul. Whether you’re Billy Mays or Bob the Enzyte Guy, you too can have your pitch prematurely pre-empted by a puzzling 2-second snippet of a mop in bed banging against a radio alarm clock.

The most promising theory I’ve found suggests that the problem arises from scheduling or programming conflicts between commercials that are running nationally at the same time as ones that are just running in local markets.

But there have always been national stations and local affiliates, and there have always been national media buys and local. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember this happening as frequently even a few years ago as it does now. (I refuse to believe it has anything to do with getting older.)

I know what you’re thinking: this could never happen to your commercials. Your commercials run their full 30 seconds and never, ever end prematurely.

But how can you really know? Do you get full playbacks of every single commercial you run? Do you believe the networks would tell you the truth knowing that it would hurt your feelings and, perhaps, damage your self-confidence?

I thought so.

There must be an answer out there. We do not have to simply roll over and allow ourselves to be stigmatized. We do not have to be victims.

So can someone please explain to me what really causes Commercialus Interruptus , and more importantly, what we can do to stop it?

Posted in Business, Marketing, Media, Misleadership | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Delivery Confirmation Consternation

Posted by jlsimons on October 15, 2009

The other day my wife and daughter and I went for a walk. It had been raining on and off, and now the sun had broken through the clouds and we needed to get outside.

As we walked past one of the units in our garden apartment building, I noticed a USPS package in front of the door to Unit A.

Since I was expecting a package, I went up to check. We’ve only been living in this apartment for about a month, but in that time the Post Office had delivered Unit A’s mail to us in Unit C more than once, so I figured it was only a matter of time before the reverse happened.

The package was actually in the right place, Unit A, except for two minor details. First, Unit A was empty and had been for over a week since the tenants moved out. But more importantly, the package had a Delivery Confirmation label on it.

Now I don’t expect the U.S. Post Office to be mind readers. If someone moves without filing a Change of Address notification, I don’t expect them to peep into a window to find out that the residence is empty. (Although, in this case, since the blinds were up and the apartment was clearly vacant, it wouldn’t have been that hard to guess.)

But I do expect them to deliver on the specific features of a service someone paid extra money for. Here’s the U.S.P.S’s own definition of Delivery Confirmation, from their website:

Verify delivery with Delivery Confirmation.

Our low cost Delivery Confirmation service gives you the date, ZIP Code™ and time your article was delivered. If delivery was attempted you will get the date and time of attempted delivery. You can easily access this information with our Track & Confirm tool.

And from their Delivery Confirmation FAQ:

The customer will be provided the following information about items mailed with Delivery Confirmation:

  • If item was delivered:  the date and time of delivery
  • If delivery was attempted but not successful:  the date and time of the attempt

By what definition is leaving a box in the rain in front of an empty apartment a successful delivery?

I assume it wasn’t an attempted delivery, because that implies that the box wouldn’t have been left there. Although, technically, I guess it was an attempted delivery after all, but probably not in the way the sender was expecting.

As a direct marketer, I’ve had my share of unpleasant surprises from the Post Office. We once did a mailing in the Phoenix, AZ area where the variety of reasons for returned mail was so astounding and inconsistent that our regional rep could only laugh and offer some potential off-the-record explanations that could get them in trouble if I repeated them here. And we all remember the bad old days when Postal Carriers were getting busted for dumping catalogs or storing commercial mail in their lockers and garages.

But for me, this was over the line. I’m not going to get into comparisons with FedEx or UPS, because if you’re like me, you’ve been confounded by their occasional screw ups too. And I’m not going to conflate this into an indictment of  government incompetence and the “public option” like some congressmen or pundits have been doing these days.

But can someone please explain to me what was going through that mail carrier’s head when he or she chose to leave that package in the rain in front of a vacant apartment in spite of the sender having paid extra to know when it was delivered, or if not successful, when delivery was attempted?

Posted in Business, Misleadership, direct marketing | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

How to Make Scrapple Less Appetizing

Posted by jlsimons on October 8, 2009

Have you ever eaten Scrapple? It’s gastronomically ghoulish, made up of pig or hog offal (liver, heart, head, and anything else left over) that’s smashed into a mushy paste, sliced and then fried on a grill slathered in fat.

I know, I know, you’re wondering  what could possibly make something that good tasting that’s also good for you be any less desirable?

The answer is:  Hoovers.

I was doing research the other day on Jones Dairy Farm and banged into the Hoovers profile for the company. You can read the public profile here. In that profile, Hoovers says that

The links on this company’s Web site are of the edible variety. Jones Dairy Farm produces sausage, bacon, ham, and more…In 1981 Jones Dairy Farm acquired Ralph and Paul Adams, Inc., which markets Rape Scrapple.”

Rape Scrapple?

Now some of you may know that I’m a mostly vegetarian, except for one day a year when I gorge on Hot Pastrami at Katz’s Delicatessen in NYC for my birthday, and maybe the occasional classic hot dog from a classic hot dog stand I may come across in my travels. But before I met my wife and became a vegetarian, I’d never met an animal I wouldn’t happily eat. So my vestigial meat-eater’s senses perked up when I read “Rape Scrapple.”

I had to know what tasty extras they put into ordinary Scrapple to make it into Rape Scrapple.

Alas, the truth is that the only way to make  Rape Scrapple is through typographic error.

It turns out that Ralph and Paul Adams, Inc. make Rapa Scrapple, not Rape Scrapple, and have since 1926. In fact, according to their website, they are the largest producer of Scrapple in the world. The name Rapa comes from taking a little bit from Ralph and a little bit from Paul and mixing them together, in not too dissimilar a way from the way they make the Scrapple portion of Rapa Scrapple.

Searching on Google turns up numerous repetitions of the Hoover’s Rape Scrapple error, passed blithely along to unsuspecting searchers by Answers.com, numerous contacts on DemandBase.com, AAAA’s Smartbrief, and of course, the ever popular but highly dangerous varta.rr.nu/germany-dialing/xionghim (NOTE: Don’t check this out: it’s a reported attack site!!!)

I think it’s safe to assume Hoovers made the first typo, and it was simply picked up by other companies that reference or license the Hoover’s information, since the Hoovers free profile says:

“Produced by Hoover’s in-house editorial team, the Company Description tracks ownership transitions, company progress via mergers and acquisitions, major growth milestones, and strategic initiatives, to provide a holistic view of Jones Dairy Farm’s evolution in the marketplace.”

Clearly Rape Scrapple is just a typo. Somebody inadvertently changed an “a” to an “e.”

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that Hoovers is a D&B company, and their stock in trade is corporate research. Hoovers made the mistake, and then they failed to catch it, and  it got picked up and repeated across the Internet (where it will most likely stay forever) by people who have reason to trust Hoovers to get it right.

Now I’m not suggesting that some potential investor or business person doing their due diligence will choose not to invest in or do business with Jones Dairy Farm because they make Rape Scrapple.

But can someone please explain to me why, if Hoovers can’t catch a simple error like this, we should trust them to get the financials correct? Or the media spend?  Or the annual sales?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to microwave a Morningstar Farms Vegetarian Sausage Patty and pretend it’s Scrapple. It’s not the same, but then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

Posted in Business, Media, Misleadership, PR and News | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

If Lee Marvin were alive today he’d kick Don Draper’s ass

Posted by jlsimons on October 1, 2009

So I’ve got the place all to myself the other day and I’m watching The Dirty Dozen on AMC.

It’s bad enough that they’ve edited the hell out of this classic and see fit to interrupt me every few minutes with commercials, turning a 150-minute testosterone thrill ride into a slogging, 210-minute endurance test.

But I’ve got a DVR, so I’ve given the movie a head start and I’m racing through the endless commercial interruptions, jumping from scene to violent scene. I mean, it’s The Dirty Dozen:  Lee Marvin, Charlie Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and company killing Nazis…it doesn’t get tougher than this.

Then we get to one of the few scenes where there’s no action at all, and Lee Marvin’s got me riveted to the screen with just a hard look, a bottle of scotch, and his gravelly voice, when suddenly, in the lower left corner of the screen there’s this hot chick in sexy lingerie standing in a doorway exhorting me to watch Mad Men — and she’s totally blocking Lee Marvin’s face!

Did the sexy chick make me want to watch Mad Men? Not one bit — quite the opposite, in fact. Nor did that slick Don Draper guy in the 1960′s suit that stood in the same left corner later on, blocking a scene where a real mad man was actually killing something. Nor the next time the sexy chick came back…nor the time after that, nor the…you get the picture. (Where’s Maggot when you need him? Hey, it’s an inside joke — if you don’t get it, watch the movie.)

What’s AMC’s plan? Do they think that somehow, somebody who has avoided tuning in to watch Mad Men for the last 3 seasons will be swayed suddenly by the sexy chick in the lower left corner? Or that somebody who is already watching Mad Men will suddenly go, “Oh my god, that’s right, I nearly forgot that I love Mad Men and I must make a note to watch it the next time it’s on. That Don Draper is so tough.”

Now I’m pretty sure there’s no intelligence behind the timing of the tune-in ads. They didn’t plan to obscure Lee Marvin with the sexy chick, it just worked out that way because nobody who cared was paying attention.

And that’s my point. AMC is supposed to be a channel about movies for people who love movies. In their own words, “Story Matters Here. Dedicated to American movie fans featuring popular movies and original productions. Long Live Cool.”

Does anybody else remember when AMC walked the walk they still talk? They were all about great old movies… and they played them without commercials. Sure, sometimes they edited them for content, but I could overlook that — what’s a few deleted expletives between friends?

But as bad as that got, at least they weren’t obscuring critical content with their own tune-in ads for their original TV shows. (TV Shows? Don’t they understand that if I want a good cable TV show, I’ll watch HBO or Showtime?)

It all comes down to respect. AMC doesn’t respect me. (At least not the way TCM does!) To AMC, I’m just an eyeball to be advertised to, whenever they want, as much as they possibly can, regardless of what I’m watching, in whatever inappropriate manner they think will work this week.

Can someone please explain to me why — in this day and age when dozens of commercial-free movie networks are just a click away, when I can download movies from Netflix instantly, or watch them On Demand — AMC still thinks any self-respecting movie fan will swallow their disrespect?

Maybe that kind of thinking used to work in the fictional 1960′s in which Mad Men is set, but it doesn’t fly now. And if Lee Marvin were alive today, he’d kick Don Draper’s ass for dissing The Dirty Dozen. Long live cool.

Posted in CRM, Media, Misleadership | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »