Your so smart

In my home town, they are resurfacing one of the main thoroughfares and, as I was driving home from a meeting on Wednesday, I saw this lighted road sign:

"Double
Lane
Closure"

"Tell
Sunday
Night"

Now, unless Sunday Night is a person and the construction company wants us all to tell her (or him) about the double lane closure, my guess is we are dealing with a serious devolution of the word "until". Let me demonstrate:

Until   >   'Til   >   Til   >  Tell

Which is annoying, confusing, and reinforces stereotypes about construction workers' intelligence, but may not be the worst lighted road sign I saw this week. It was at least helpful once you figured out what the author was trying to say - something I can not say for this sign:

"Road
Work
Ahead"

"Next
Four
Weeks"

There is nothing technically wrong with that example, but if you didn't see it the day the construction company put it up (and mark your calendars accordingly), there is no way to know when the four weeks of construction will be done. Therefore, the notice is completely useless; when I saw it, I didn't know if the construction was nearly done or had just begun.

However, if the author was trying to be funny and play on the fact that construction projects are rarely done on time, then I award him (or her) props for creativity and subtly mocking the system. But I also take away those same props for forcing me to think too much about it.

The Best Marketing Wednesday... on this blog... today.

Last year I introduced a feature on my blog called "Marketing Wednesdays" and there are some people (not to mention any names, but we will call them Esteban and MBSB) who rarely let a week pass with out reminding me that I have not stayed current on my Marketing Wednesdays. This is true. I have not. However, I would like to take a little trip down memory lane to that fateful day and re-examine my promise to the blog-o-sphere.

Wednesday, November 17, 2011
To that end, I introduce to you "Marketing Wednesdays: A Mini-series of Marketing Fails". This will run for at least 4 or 5 weeks.

Including that original post, I had 6 Marketing Wednesdays in a row, thus fulfilling my original commitment. Since then, Marketing Wednesdays have become somewhat intermittent and will continue to be an occasional gem to the world. Now that I have cleared that up, I present my most current gem:

Imagine, if you would, a nearly empty college library. In this particular room there 3 people:

Jessica - An attractive, young, single woman.
Bubba - a large, hygienically-challenged man who likes amateur gator wrestling and wearing clothes that are five years too old and two sizes too small. 
Ted - A nice, young guy who is average in every possible way.

After a few minutes of working up the courage, Ted walks up to Jessica and lays doozie of a pick-up line on her:

"Hi, my name is Ted and when I noticed you from across the room I couldn't help but come and mention that I am the most desirable man in the room."

What is Jessica to take from that? At best, Ted has issued an underwhelming statement of his desirableness; at worst, he has damned himself with faint praise*. Why would Jessica be intrigued by this? The best thing Ted could come up with was that he was better than Bubba?

Last week, on my iPhone, I was reading an article on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Embedded was the following ads:

Seriously? The #1 Fish App? How many fish apps are there? And why is your icon a clock? This reeks of poor marketing. If you can't come up with an icon and all you can say is that your app is the best in a minuscule market, then you don't have much of an app.  Needless to say, I was not impressed enough to look up, or purchase, Tap Fish 2.

* - There are those in the world who feel I use a lot of sayings and cliches in my everyday speak, to them this will be another example of such. "Damned with faint praise" means to condemn not by saying anything bad, but by not having any praise that is substantive. 

Dear Kylee, I am sorry that the public school system failed you...

On November 5th last year, my friend Kylee authored a blog post about how she hates Thanksgiving and attributed most of the hatred to the fact that Christopher Columbus is remember too fondly by history and really wasn't a good guy. However, myself and several other people pointed out that, while Columbus may not have been a great dude, Thanksgiving is not a holiday to celebrate Christopher Columbus (that's what Columbus Day is for); Thanksgiving is about giving thanks (if only we gave our holidays more obvious names, then we wouldn't have these confusions).

Well, once that was pointed out, her blog post became much, much shorter and without mention of Columbus. (This is why I have a love/hate relationship with the internet... anyone* can publish anything and then change later to cover up damning (or embarrassing) evidence).

Well Kylee, today - October 10, 2011 - is Columbus Day; if there is any day to post your beef with Chris Columbus, this is probably it. Or you can wait until Thanksgiving again.

*Case in point - I have a blog.