Nobody will Notice... Right?

When you're looking for a tattoo artist, do you worry about little things like the ability to spell? Because if I were having something indelibly inked onto my body (which I wouldn't), I would want the person doing the inking to have a steady hand and be able to spell.

Which is why I wouldn't go to this place:

That's right, "Forever Yours Tatto".

And in case you are wondering, you're right, the word tattoo should have two "O"s.

Some of you are probably saying, "but Kenny, it probably had both 'O's and someone stole one." Yeah, you may be right, but if I owned museum called "The History of Homo Sapiens" and somebody removed the letters "apiens" from the company van, I would not let anyone drive around in a van that said:

The History of Homo S

I would either get new letters or remove them all. Which brings me to my rules of advertising on your car:

1. Think long and hard before doing it, because chances are it won't look good. Even if the above example was devoid of spelling errors, it is still an ugly sticker on an old, nasty van. If you can do something that is well designed, looks classy, and is on a nice car, then maybe you can pull it off.

2. Once part of it starts to go, then all of it has to go.

3. Again, probably not a great idea. See rule #1.

Forget a Name, What's in an E-mail Address...

It is Marketing Wednesday and I present this nugget of wisdom unto you: Email addresses matter.

Which would you respect more on a business card:

crzygurl1028542@hotmail.com*

or

jane.doe@gmail.com*

If you picked the first, you are wrong. I know that some will argue that this is a matter of opinion and there is no wrong answer, but those people are just as wrong as the people they are defending.

Look, you aren't going blow people away with an email address and you don't want to. It should be something that is easy to remember, but not something that is so strange that people take special note of it.

Want an example of what I am talking about?

I first saw this window sticker at a local Mcdonald's years ago. And I took note. In a bad way. I have 2 issues with the email address in the above photo:

1. mcdcmk? At first glance it looks like some blindfolded themselves and randomly typed 6 letters. I get that it is a Mcdonald's (mcd) owned by CMK Corporation, but it is not intuitive.

2. There is not necessarily anything wrong with a hotmail address (I tend to favor gmail or yahoo in the realm of free addresses), but if you are a corporation, I don't like you using a free account. When I first saw this, I specifically remember thinking to myself, "if you are going to go to the trouble of making these stickers, why not have your own domain?" This is especially in this day and age. It is so easy to buy a domain and use gmail to handle it. So easy.

Imagine if you were given a business card from a guy who worked at some big company - say, Bank of America - and on the business card it says "bigbubba107@yahoo.com*". Tell me you aren't going to be a little suspicious. Or even if a friend recommends a local handyman and gives you his email address - "thug4lyfe_1973@gmail.com*" - are you going to be impressed with that?

In the end, having an email address is like the Utah Jazz playing the LA Clippers: you have to do it, and if you do it well, nobody cares; but if you do it poorly, people are going to ask questions.

* - If these email address are yours, sorry. It was purely a coincidence. I was hoping they would be unused.

Quote, Picture, and Spontaneous Human Combustion

Quote:
The other day I was talking to a buddy who is looking to buy a new house. I asked him what he was looking for and he said:

I spend like $100 a month on storage, so if I could find a nice garage with a decent house, I'd be happy.

Picture:
I really like Utah, but here is one thing that I could do without:

For those of you who don't know this, "pop" is really "soda". I don't know how people can stand calling it "pop". The word pop describes a sudden feeling or sound. Examples:

I felt a pop in my shoulder.

I heard a loud pop and it startled me.

Not:

I'm thirsty; wanna go down to the 7-11 and get a pop?

Spontaneous Human Combustion: The other day I was at the grocery store and saw a guy walking out wearing a Lakers shirt and Celtics pants. Does he realize what he is doing? That is like George W. Bush and Al Gore going on vacation together. Or Ja Rule and 50 Cent co-hosting a BBQ.

Does he not realize that they just played each other in the finals 2 of the last 3 years? Or that their are 2 of the greatest rivals in history?

Not to mention, it looked ugly.

But the graph looks pretty, right?

Back in March received my Quarterly Skymiles Statement (also known as Junk Mail), but just as I was about to delete it, I noticed a graph showing how many miles I had earned this year and how many I needed for different medallion levels:

I quickly realized that something was amiss with the graph. It portrayed that I was just over halfway to my silver medallion in both miles and segments, however - if you calculate it - I was really only 10.6% of the way there with miles and 13% of the way there with segments. A little silly, but no big deal. I chalked it up to marketing and psychology - you know, make me think that I am closer than I am so I will fly more - but figured I would hold on to it and share it on the blog some day.

Then June rolled around and I received my latest Quarterly Statement and it contained this graph:

You will notice by the totals at the bottom of the graph that I did a little traveling between March and June - to the tune of over 20,000 miles. But the graph remains unchanged... hmmm.

If the graph were correct, I would now be 92.7% of the way to silver medallion by miles and 33.3% of the way there by segments.

Clocks...

Look carefully at the following images:

Notice anything? How about if I remind you that the Roman Numeral for 4 is "IV" not "IIII". Now do you notice something?

I don't know when, but years ago I noticed that many, many clocks with Roman Numerals get the 4 wrong.

What better way to commemorate the 4th of July then by talking about 4's.

God Bless America!

Signs - UVU Edition

You wanna know what I like about UVU? They are ahead of the times. They are progressive. You are NOT going to catch them by surprise.

In fact, the day Starbursts are able to grow legs and floating heads, UVU's elevators will be ready.

You wanna know what else I like about UVU? They don't concern themselves with using the write right words in the right places...

Yeah, that's right - "sing up" for the soccer tournament... Or is that supposed to be sign up?

Wait a second... That's not a Taco!

Dear Taco Time,

As you will see, above I've included a picture of the side menu from your drive thru in Provo (pardon the quality - sunny day, iphone... you get it).

I'm concerned about your knowledge and understanding of ameri-mex (American-Mexican) food. Let me draw your attention to the specials on 3 days - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday:

These are NOT soft tacos; they're burritos! I don't know who you've been talking to, but they are not your friends - in fact, they are you enemies. You are supposed to know the difference between a taco and a burrito - YOU'RE TACO TIME.

It's not that there is anything wrong with tacos... except you have to turn your head funny to eat them. And if it is a hard shell taco it falls apart after one bite - I HATE that... it's that you look silly making such a HUGE mistake.

This almost makes you look as foolish as those people who put a hotmail email address on their business cards... Who does that? No one will take you serious until you fix this.

I am sorry we had talk under such sad circumstances...

Kenny

Signs!

I love signs that have typos, don't make sense, or are just dumb... so I will post them here... I am thinking this will be a Friday event. Lets get to it!

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In the men's room in one of the chapels in San Francisco there was a baby changing table with illustrated instructions. The instructions always raised so many questions in my mind. I often wanted to take a picture, but never had a camera. Luckily, in a rest stop in Idaho, I came across the same set of instructions and can now share the questions with you!

1. Why is baby so huge?
2. Why aren't baby's legs attached? Why doesn't baby's have a pelvic region? (I know this is representative of the diaper, but not effective.)
3. Why don't baby's arms move?
4. Why does baby have to lay down his own towel and dispose of the towel?
5. Why doesn't baby dispose of the diaper?
6. What is the strap fastening baby to? (I know it's to the table, but the table is not in the picture.)
7. If baby is not to be left unattended, where are the adults in the instructions?
8. Again, why is baby SO HUGE?!?!

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I almost feel bad posting stuff from signs at UVU (key word almost...) But there is a pumpkin icluded when you sign up for this pumpkin carving contest!

Ummm, what is "icludes"?