A Lovely Commercial

The Frustrated Female is definitely more oriented towards pointing out what marketers do wrong, but I also really enjoy making note of the good things as well. I have already been a big fan of Tide's Loads of Hope program because it is cause marketing at its best. It gives disaster victim's back some of their self respect and pride by giving them clean clothes. Tide is doing what it does best; washing clothes.

I feel the same way but even more so about this Dawn commercial - also a Procter and Gamble brand. Dawn is being used in this commercial to wash the oil off small animals like penguins and otters who have been caught in oil spills. It is beautiful to watch and it doesn't leave one feeling desperately cynical about the role that Dawn is playing. Like the Tide concept before it, Dawn isn't making huge claims about the brand saving the world and preventing oil spills in the first place - although that would be nice too. Instead it is simply and beautifully showing us that it plays a significant role in helping clean up the mess afterward and rescue some of the animals that get caught in these disasters.

I find myself really liking Dawn for doing this - and yes it does tell me that it is an effective and yet gentle product at the same time - but the message is communicated so well and so indirectly that I am more receptive to it anyway.

Well done Dawn Team!

A Hot Car & The Hot Girl

I have shared this commercial for the Lexus IS Convertible, and although not every woman I have spoken to finds it as offensive as I do, I don't think any of us are inclined to 'hop into' one of them any time soon.

I know that the men who run automotive companies are deaf to the idea that women influence over 80% of all car purchases and that some of us actually earn more than our spouses which allows us to buy the convertible rather than them. Outrageous, I know. Nor am I saying as a result of this information, that the roles should have been reversed so that two hunky guys were running along beside the car and a woman was driving it - although come to think of it, that might have resulted in me liking the spot more.

What I do think, is that this commercial misses the mark. I guess it might appeal to young men - and perhaps Lexus would shoot back that this was the intent in the first place - but unfortunately, the rest of us have to watch it as well. The way I interpreted it was that the lucky guy was driving along in his cool convertible and comes across a couple of beautiful young women who are running alongside the car, just waiting to be 'picked' or 'picked up' by the driver. He decides that the first one isn't cute enough for his taste, so he drives on and chooses the second one instead. I don't know too many women who fantasize about running along the road, waiting to be picked by a guy who decides that they are cute enough to jump into his car.

I am sure that this is not exactly what Lexus wanted to say with their commercial. The problem is that even if they meant something different, it is way too open to be negatively interpreted by the hapless viewer who doesn't have the benefit of a campaign set-up from the advertising agency's account director.

Thoughts anyone?

Selling Cell Phones with Sex

The commercial I have included here for everyone's viewing pleasure is the first of two absolutely appalling T-Mobile commercials with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Firstly, let me say that I like Catherine Zeta-Jones. She has always impressed me as a good actress but also as being a level-headed, intelligent person who rose above some of the really mindless Hollywood women. So to start with I am somewhat amazed that she would even agree to do a series of commercials for a cell phone company - it seems like a real come down.

However, be that as it may, I am very disappointed that she would chose to do a series of commercials in which she so blatantly is there as a sex object. The one above has a series of professors going door to door to find out about people's cell phone habits. After the doors are all slammed in their faces and they are exposed to other, random humiliations, T-Mobile decides to send in Catherine Zeta Jones instead. She rings a guy's door bell and asks in a sex kittenish voice whether he would like a mobile makeover.

It is all so desperately stereotyped and the viewer is left imagining what the lucky guy whose door bell she rang is going to get to do with her once she enters his home. Apart from the stereotyping, the advertisers who created this campaign have to have been men, because it is a total turn off to any women who happen to be watching.

The second commercial that I saw has Catherine Zeta Jones talking to a couple in their living room. She has positioned herself for maximum sex appeal on the sofa, while the husband drools all over her and the wife looks on being a good sport about the whole thing. The final line in the commercial is the husband saying to Catherine 'I am married - well technically speaking.' Most self-respecting wives would have thrown their husbands out on the sidewalk after a humiliating remark of that type, but clearly the guys who wrote this thought that it would be funny to position Catherine Zeta Jones as the quasi mistress in this little set up. Apart from anything else, I imagine that most viewers find the whole scenario so distracting that they can't remember a word that was said about the actual cell phones.

Easy open (for others)

You know those little packets of soy sauce that you get when you get take-away sushi? The ones that contain about half a thimble full of soy sauce that once you have actually got the packet open there is hardly any left because the rest is on your fingers? Yes - those ones. Well, I don't get it because all of them have these handy dandy little arrows on them pointing to the place that you are meant to gently open the packet. Some of them even say 'easy open packet'. However, no matter how I prepare my hands - specifically by washing and drying them so thoroughly that there can't be a smidgen of grease left on them - I am still fumbling with those packets like I had dunked my hands in olive oil. I have been reduced to poking holes in the sides with the prong of a fork or jabbing them with a pencil and nothing works.

Surely there has to be an easier way to serve up soy sauce to go than putting them in these little packets. Actually, come to think of it, the slippery little packets they put ketchup and mustard in aren't much better, and they come with the added aggravation of having my daughter waiting not so patiently for me to break into them. 'Come on mom, hurry up - it can't be that difficult. Here let me.' So she grabs one of them and starts wrestling with it, usually with the same result as mine; she is hot, sweaty and frustrated but the little packet of ketchup is still firmly intact.

I mean seriously, the result is way out of proportion with the process. The process being the pawing and struggling with a hideously resistant piece of plastic for a minimum of 10 minutes. The result being obtaining a drop of ketchup, mustard or soy sauce that usually lasts about one mouthful or in equivalent time ratios - 10 seconds.

Please can someone put me out of my misery and invent a packet that really is 'easy open' - I would be eternally grateful.

Appearances Do Matter!

Okay, so maybe this is just me, but I am not sure whether I like the new layout that has been adopted by the print edition of Newsweek. I realize that it has probably been re-designed with a new layout and font due to the increasing tendency of readers to want bite sized pieces of information. Nothing too long or ardous to read and broken up with lots of pictures. In fact, I am sure that magazines feel that they have to do this in order to compete with on line sources of news and information which are in many ways more easily digestible.

However, I also realize that there is something to be said for sitting down with a good cup of tea and enjoying a really meaty news article. The master of the meaty article must of course be The Economist that has the least digestible form of news on the market. However, their articles are unfailingly good and once one sits down and concentrates, they are always worth reading.

So what has appearances got to do with all of this? Well, I have a sneaking suspicion that most Economist readers secretly enjoy reading the magazine in public places because it says 'I'm smart enough to read this incredibly dense, hard to read publication and have a global outlook to go along with it.'

So what about the new appearance of Newsweek?

Well a lot of people probably really like it because it definitely seems to make it easier to read. I on the other hand, feel somewhat offended that such a worthy publication feels the need to spoon feed me political and economic information in such a lightweight format that they clearly think that none of us have more than the attention span of a gnat. If I want to read something light weight, I can go to the supermarket and buy one of Jackie Collin's latest musings on the life of the rich and boring.

So that is my reaction. It probably sounds desperately snobby but I just can't help myself. I don't believe news should be served up in a format that caters to the shortest attention span on the planet - there are other people out there that like it to be slightly hard to read. After all, that's the point isn't it?

The One Week Discount

I am a bit of a pill popper when it comes to vitamins. I have no idea whether they are actually making me healthier/keeping me fitter/adding to my youthful aura, but if there is a link between how feverishly one believes in these things and how much they actually work, then I am on to a good thing. The downside to swallowing all these vitamins every day is that the price tag can get pretty high, which is why I am a gold card carrier at GNC. For those of you not familiar with the program, it allows you to get 20% off your purchase the first week of every month.

So you can imagine what happens. As I get to the bottom of one of my vitamin bottles I start obsessing about whether I have enough to get me through to the first week of the following month. Will I have to start cutting some of them in two to make them go further? Or find a friend who takes the same vitamins and ask to borrow a few until I can replenish my supply?

However, what usually happens is that I get so busy that I don't have the time to get to GNC in the first week of the month, so I end up having to pay full price. This happened to me this month, when I rushed into the store on the 8th of the month and tried to beg to be allowed to use my gold card since I was only one day late. The sales associate gravely told me that the promotion had ended the day before and that there were no exceptions. Damn.

So this made me ask myself why GNC limits the offer to the first week of every month anyway. I mean if you pay your annual dues to have a gold card then you are probably a loyal customer so what does it matter what day of the month you shop the store? It probably results in the majority of gold card customers flooding the store the first week of the month and then hardly darkening its doorstep for the other three weeks. Unless they are like me and find that they have annoyingly missed the first week and have to forego the discount and then they are dissatisfied shoppers anyway.

So I guess I am one of their frequent shoppers who needs this loyalty program explained to me, because I really don't understand the benefit to the shopper of this one week a month deal. In the meantime, I am still grumbling about having missed the cut off date by one day......

Robotic Service.

Firstly, let me say, that I am actually a big fan of Biscuitville. I try to stay away from cooked breakfasts, but when I do give in to temptation, they really do have excellent biscuits which you can watch being made from scratch. Sometimes, I will just get an order of scrambled eggs, which are always hot and moist - yum.

However, there is one thing that diminishes my pleasure a degree or two. Every time my daughter and I go through the drive thru they start the conversation by saying 'do you want to try a combo?' This statement, not only seems vaguely meaningless to me, but also very impersonal. We go through the drive thru at least 1-2 times a week and they know us personally at this point. When we actually get up to the pick-up window, they are always very welcoming and cheerful. They even recognize my voice - which I guess isn't too hard because of the British accent. So why still inflict the robotic 'do you want to try a combo' on me every time I go there? How about asking something a little more personal such as 'what looks good to you today?'

When I went through the drive thru most recently, I couldn't help myself asking the women at the cash register why she had to say 'do you want to try a combo?' every time anyone came through. She admitted that she hated saying it, but that Biscuitville management would really have her butt if she didn't say it. Yikes!

The whole experience left me feeling how out of touch with consumers many companies really are. Trying to force a combo down my throat - "if you don't get one this time, by golly we are going to keep asking until you do" - does not make me feel like a valued and special customer to them. There are so many things that they could ask their customers that would feel a great deal more personal and interested in providing the food that will deliver exactly against each individual customer's needs.

I don't think that it is possible to approach service in any category from a 'one size fits all' perspective - or at least that's how I see it. Hmmm.....maybe it is time for some scrambled eggs......