You CAN pick your friend’s nose

Remember that stupid saying,”You can pick your friends; and you can pick your nose; but you can’t pick your friend’s nose”?

I never really got that. I mean, people do all sorts of weird stuff with orifices (or is that orifici?), I would imagine a little nose picking amongst friends might be going on out there with the non-germphobic crowd.

I digress, this post was spawned by an email from the stock photography site, Corbis. I have been a Corbis customer since the olden days of graphic design when they would send out these delicious print volumes of stock photo images and we would flip through the pages to choose the right image. And instead of emails, we would receive teaser postcards with images like these to get us to call and do a search. Yes, I am aware this is the Art Director’s equivalent of the ‘I used to walk to school 10 miles in the snow’ story that my dad used to tell us. All you youngun’s, you will have these stories about archaic, clunky handheld mobile devices instead of the chip behind their ear that your kids will have.

Ughh… digressing again. The point is, the other morning, on a particularly difficult day for me (stay tuned for more on that on Tuesday), the photo above showed up in my inbox. It had that Sleeper-esque feeling about it and just the visual made me laugh. Their 20% headline was excellent for their purpose, but this headline popped into my head:

You CAN pick your friend’s nose.

I know, I am brilliant. What a lovely promo for a plastic surgeon… maybe a 2 for 1 deal! It made me laugh on a morning that laughing was the last thing I thought I would do, so thanks Corbis. But, the best part was yet to come when I clicked over to their site (yes it worked, they got the click-through from me and put Corbis top of mind), I found this photo… the pay off.

The proverbial ‘picked nose’.

Yeh it could be time to pitch a plastic surgery team. Anyone in? Other headline ideas?

Floss over Fifty

Floss for people over 50?! Really?! Please tell me who thought this was a good idea. Marketing a product that specifically targets an age group sitting snugly on the tail end of the baby boomers. You know us. We hardly see ourselves as grow ups, let alone ones with aging gums. What is the likelihood that you will find us buying old people’s floss? Pro health “for life”. You know, because dead people don’t floss all that much.

If my Facebook page is any kind of focus group, I am thinking this one is not going to be a big seller. Here are some comments after I posted this picture and mentioned I would be writing a blog post about it:

I won’t be able to read the blog. I will be experiencing dental conditions because I don’t have this floss.

This floss is for dentures!

As opposed to floss for death? Who flosses in heaven? Doesn’t heaven mean no cavities?

is the font bigger so we can read the label without our glasses?

And an all-time fave:

Maybe it’s dipped in laxatives, vitamins and anti depressants.

Followed by

They should just dip it in wine!

Still surprised that Dr. Jimmy has not weighed in.

Is it bad to admit that I saw this while picking up my blood pressure meds?

When Men do Merchandising

Jana and I went into the drug store yesterday to pick up some tampax. (Now there is a show-stopping opening line if I ever wrote one.) As we walked down the aisle I heard her famous brand of “ARE you kidding me?!” I turned around to see not one, but two NFL free standing displays…

blocking the tampons and feminine hygiene products.

As a marketer and brand-focused professional I tried to see what the idea was behind this. I have come up with a few thoughts and will outline them here, with a poll at the end to get your input.

Put the NFL stuff in front of the tampons because:

1. while a woman is bleeding she feels the need to get a little gift for her guy to distract him.

2. there are women who are football fans and they may want some of these for themselves.

3. stockperson was stoned and placed the displays there as a joke.

4. stock person just put them randomly in an aisle with no thought to surrounding merchandise.

5. there is a level of discomfort with feminine hygiene products and they wanted to hide them.

6. foreshadowing: Tampax will be coming out with NFL branded tampons (Team Tampax?) and this is a pre-launch teaser.

Oh My Cherry?

Seriously, Zara? You really named your perfume ‘oh my cherry’ (nice typography BTW). Gotta admit it was pretty ballsy in a … well you know, cherry sort of way.

This was perched at the counter when I went to pay yesterday. I even commented to the cashier. “Really?!”, I said. “I know, right?” was her response. She said the employees were all surprised, but people love it.

Hey, who could pass this up? What a great gift item. Sort of a stocking stuffer, if you will.

Can Glass Cleaner Bring You Happiness?

I am not sure where to start with this one. First, I am thinking that I should not use this product because it is a ‘Limited Edition’ and it might become a collector’s item and be worth something in the future.

Really? Limited edition glass cleaner?

But what blows me away is that this bottle of windex is making the claim that happiness is just a spray away (exclamation point). What makes me mad is that they left the word ‘is’ out in front of ‘just’ so it reads:

Happiness

just a spray away!

No comma, no ‘is’, just a really poorly written sentence.

So how did this product happen. Product manager walks in the room and says I think I know how to spread happiness to consumers across the land. And since this is such a huge claim, let’s make it a limited edition.

Because, you know, it’s hard to sustain happiness.

Ridiculous! (but not going to lie, I really like the crystal rain smell and I am sort of happy when the glass table is clean)

Mini Giraffe is the New Teacup Pig

Have you seen this commercial? The one with the mini giraffe on the treadmill? If not, you are surely under a rock. It’s for Direct TV and I swear if they could promise me one of these critters I would sign up for almost anything. I have been meaning to write about this for ages.

The commercial could go down in history as being one of the most annoying pieces of advertising ever produced. The premise is stupid, the main character is as irritating as they come and I will not even begin to go into the sexist way in which the women are portrayed because, hey, this is about mini giraffes and that would be a buzz kill. But it sticks, and that is the whole point.

There on the right side of the screen is this mini giraffe on a treadmill that has captured the hearts of all who see it. Without the giraffe this spot would just be another stupid commercial that you would probably flip the channel to avoid. But the giraffe… she makes it one you look forward to seeing and you tolerate the idiot Russian to do so.

In a stroke of genius and some really solid social integration strategy, they created a website for Sokoblovsky Farms, Russia’s Finest Purveyors of Petite Lap Giraffes. On the home page is a giraffe-cam. It does not get better than this. The whole site is written in a Russian accent and is stupid, yet endearing. This is my favorite picture.

When you go to this page you can click on the ‘I Want a Giraffe’ button which told me I was 915,499 on the wait list and gave me the opp to… you guessed it, share the news on facebook and twitter.

Gary is convinced that 915,498 of the people think these mini giraffes really exist.

Wait, they don’t?

Comfort Wipe

Oh yeh, now we’re talkin’ MFTA material. I big thank you to Jana’s friend Sarah for finding this baby….

The Comfort Wipe.

In a nutshell, this is a a plastic arm that holds your toilet paper while you wipe your arse! They claim this is the first improvement to toilet paper since the 1880s. Oh, you mean the year it was invented? So they are saying nothing has changed in the TP world since it was first conceived of… I sort of doubt that. With all those bears and clouds hawking the stuff I would think there have been a few improvements along the way. I mean 2010 alone was a huge year in the land of the wiping of ones butt with advertising smackdowns and the like.

Back to the Comfort Wipe, I love the idea that these people find toilet paper ‘archaic’ and ‘disgusting’.  They are marketing this towards those who ‘just don’t want to touch dirty toilet paper’.

You know, as opposed to those of us who really like to.

With a pitch like that how could anyone not own one of these. Of course I do wonder how the hell you are supposed to clean this thing.

Awareness Weeks

During the course of my work I occasionally get involved with creating graphics for different awareness weeks or months. Usually these are disease-related and we need to create a look and feel for these events. I love patient information work, it makes me feel like during the course of making a living I am at least helping to educate patients and families, making the navigation through the unpleasant a bit more palatable.

Ok, I recognize this is (so far) not a very funny blog post.

I always start a project by procrastinating on the internet in the name of research, or as we like to refer to it in the business – doing a search on what is currently in the market. This week was no different. Here are a few of my favorites that I thought you might find entertaining.

Handwashing Awareness Week (Dec 5-11). Funny, but a good idea. And this site called Henry the Hand – Champion Handwasher, just kills me. I love the remake of Hand Jive that they use as their sound track.

Mathematics Awareness Month (April) because you can never get too much math!

Aggressive Driving Month Hmm, I know a few people who could ‘celebrate’ this… you know who you are, I will not call you out. Looks like this one was dreamed up by a promo company, go fig. Talk about a ‘Hallmark Holiday’.

National Ethics Awareness Month (March) Note: not observed on Wall Street (oops, so sorry to my finance friends, cheap shot but you can take it)

Optimism Month (oddly the same as Ethics month in March) Pessimists need not celebrate.

But, by far the best thing I stumbled upon today was…

Rabbit Awareness Week (April 22 – May 2nd) “…because rabbits get a RAW deal”. Get it RAW… Rabbit Awareness Week. Hey, if I have to explain this to you forget it, ok? Believe it or not this is a week and a website (nicely designed BTW) dedicated to fighting what I consider to be one of the great tragedies of our time…

Rabbit Obesity.

Seriously, I have nothing more to say after that.

Naked Cowboy is suing again!

A while back I posted about the ever-famous Naked Cowboy and his quest to protect his brand. This man, who most of us New Yorkers regarded as simply another Times Square nut adding peripheral color to our otherwise drab days, turned out to be quite the savvy businessman.

When Mars used his likeness to promote M&Ms on a billboard he went out and hired himself a lawyer. Much to my surprise, and surely the shock of a giant like Mars and their not so savvy creative team, the (not so) little (naked) guy won the suit to the tune of 4 million bucks!

Now it seems our beloved undressed cowboy has gone one step further in protecting his intellectual (and I use that term loosely) property and has begun to sell franchises. For a guy who serenades without clothing in all sorts of weather in the middle of Times Square he has surely become wise to the ways of protecting his brand.

During a press conference on Wednesday (in his skivvies, of course), he announced that he is suing Sandy Kane, a 50-year-old former stripper who calls herself the Naked Cowgirl, for ripping off his Times Square act. It seems the king of the tighty whities already collects $5,000 annually in franchise payments from a woman named Louisa Holmlund, 27, who also performs as the Naked Cowgirl.

Now here’s the thing, and I don’t want to appear to be cruel here, but the woman who pays is, well, there is no other way to put this, she is a babe. And BTW, way more authentically naked. The new one, not so much. See for your self. Here is the ‘legally Naked Cowgirl’ in Naked Cowboy terms:

And here is the new one. Sorry grandma, if I were the cowboy I would not want you ‘diluting’ my brand, if you will. Oh and I would like to add; 50 MY ASS! She is pushing 60 if she is a day, maybe even 70 from this picture. Or maybe she just lived 50 really hard years, but seriously, cover that up. All of it, actually.

Yikes! This is just wrong. (I particularly like the woman on the left with the big smile).

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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Flushing out ideas and marketing the crap out of them

Ok, today’s post is a little entertainment from the land of advertising. Is it still referred to as Madison Avenue or have the likes of crowdsourcing and word of mouth made that obsolete?

Whatever, this sucker came up as a facebook ad and I could not resist the click. You know, considering my obsession with ‘output’ and all. Would it really come as a surprise to you that a women who wrote about her colonoscopy in three acts would be inclined to go for the click on an ad with the title ‘Potty parody’ featuring a geeky guy on the toilet? I mean, a woman has only so much restraint!

I have also written about the Toilet Paper Advertising Smackdown so I suppose I am an expert the excrement, if you will.

Or won’t, for that matter.

So Clorox, don’t get all excited about me promoting your brand of toilet cleaner (mostly because I fear my green friends will get their underwear all in a knot over that… cough cough Dani and Jessica G). For the purpose of this post I am simply recognizing the creative and commending you on the facebook ad placement. That silly little targeting algorithm sure has this chick’s number.

The video is goofy but well written in an I-can’t-believe-how-lame-this-is-cheap-shot-sort-of-middle-school-bathroom- humor-that-I-still-have-not-outgrown sort of way. Tragically geekster hip but funny just the same. However, Ode to the Commode does not wring my bell nearly as much as the title of this post which came from the copy.

Here’s the vid, kids. See for yourselves. And there is a little poll at the end to vote for your favorite campaign name. Simply for my own entertainment.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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