Thursday, April 20, 2006

And Now A Word From Our Founder... In some ancient CEO 101 handbook, there must be a paragraph that suggests it's a good idea to put yourself, as head of the company, in your ads. What else can explain the proliferation of incredibly bad ads featuring the founders of various enterprises. I'm not talking about spokespeople like our beatified Menard's guy or the past-their-prime basement porn stars of the Watson's pool ads. I'm not even talking about the annoying, usually counterproductive, habit of real estate agents putting their mugs on their business cards. I'm talking about the actual owner, the founder, the president. They usually start out honestly enough. As a hard-working entrepreneur, they are low on budget and high on gumption. They just want to be the next American success story. To create a supposed aura of trust and believability, they put themselves in their ads. It's true, we often embrace their cable access quality efforts with an "Awww, shucks. Ain't that cute?" reaction. Some of them actually enter the local cultural zeitgeist. Like a fart in an elevator, their ads creep into the public consciousness. 99.98% of the time this is because they are so bad, so obnoxious, that people start talking about them. Under the assumption that any buzz is good buzz, the president starts to believe his own hype and begins to openly call himself a "local celebrity". The next ads end up being more about their ego than actually selling anything. Of course, there is the eventual sorry decline into obscurity, much like real stars, but on a vastly smaller magnitude. Even though the public is tired of their shtick and only watches out of pity, they either ratchet up the histrionics and ridiculousness or make an attempt to bring it back to being about their business; but they have lost our trust. And God has invented Tivo. The following two local examples prove my point for me... Denny Hecker - The only profession below advertising on the public's trustworthiness scale are used car dealers. And you know why once you see Denny Hecker's off-kilter leer at the end of every sentence, like he's imagining the Hooters' waitress he felt up over lunch. This used car salesman has expanded into other areas to grab the public's money, including loans and selling homes. You don't have credit? No problem. We'll give you a loan to buy a house. Then we'll let you put up for collateral when we sell you a car. And when you can't pay, we collect them all. See? No problem. We're just good people helping good people. His greatest offense is looking into the camera--well, just off camera to where the cue cards are being held--and saying "Nobody makes buying a car as fun as we do." That's like saying I can make rectal dentistry the least painful. If he can say that with a straight face, how can you trust what he's going to say about that '03 Hyundai? His only saving grace is that he hasn't tried to "act" in any of his ads. Still, his marketing strategy seems to be "You should buy a car from me because I have enough money to run really bad ads and not care." Dick Enrico - Like French fries, Dick Enrico is ubiquitous and greasy. And despite being the owner of Second Wind exercise equipment, he never seems to lose weight. Instead he appears to use his vast wealth to buy and consume entire six-year old children and slowly digest them over a period of weeks. Looking like a slightly flabbier, sweatier, older Ron Jeremy, he is the only person to look better when made into a bobblehead. Which was the entire subject of a recent TV spot; selling bobbleheads of him. He has given up on trying to run a business and seems to think he is a local cult hero. Dick, we're not laughing at your ads, we're laughing at you. Entire bathrooms have been taken over by his ads, prominently featuring his face. So now whenever a Minnesotan smells urine or is grabbing their junk, they think of Dick. Given the nature of small businesses, this phenomena is somewhat understandable. But how can it be permitted by national and international companies with massive marketing departments and ad budgets that run far into the six zeros? Cases in point... Augustus Busch IV - This purveyor of the popular pisswater is trying to go after a younger market by putting himself on the screen to tout new Bud Select. This old money millionaire, four generations removed from the brewmasters who ripped off the Budvar recipe from Czech monks, tells us "Bud Select has the best of both worlds. A crisp taste that finishes clean." This is such a blatant out and out lie that I'm surprised the FCC hasn't gotten involved. I have tasted Bud Select. It's reminiscent of drinking wellwater from a week-old pint glass. Busch clearly pictures himself as a metrosexual maestro. There are lots of slow moving, hazy-lit romantic shots of him raising a glass and floating around hipster parties, but no one ever seems to acknowledge his presence. His lines are delivered with the same conviction and emotion that Augustus I is exhibiting in his tomb. But there's a self-important smirk hidden under the Botox injections. You know he's laughing about being able to tell the ad agency to put him in the ads. Perhaps it helps soothe the hole left by his multi-million dollar trust fund. John Scherer - Don't recognize the name? Oh, you probably know him as the Video Professor. No? Why, he's the one who makes computer learning fun and easy. No? John actually says "People come up to me on the street and call me the Video Professor." I guarantee no one has ever done this. You can't give yourself a nickname. But he looks so desperate for acceptance in his ads that you almost expect to see him get up and turn off the videocamera himself. You can see it in his eyes. That is if you can see them through the glare on his fauxtanned forehead. His website has a video of him trying to smooth talk you as soon as it comes up. And it doesn't offer any way to mute it. He pulls out every snake oil trick in the book, including holding up a tenner and saying he'll send it to you if you don't like his product. And he claims himself as 'Seen on TV', so you know it's quality. Actually, if you want to know what people really think of his product, check out these reviews. When all these corporate presidents are Googling themselves--and you know they do--I hope they come upon this and read it. When you do, let me give you some advice: Take at look at the president of our country throughout history. Before the internet and TV, when he wasn't on CNN every ten seconds, the president was a much more mythical figure; the office held a lot more respect and weight because there was an air of elevated mystery about it. Now that we see him all the time, right down to what's on his iPod, it's not that special. He's just another person. That same logic applies to your business. Plus, if the president of our mighty country can have all those high-powered people around him and still come off looking like a slightly retarded frat boy, you can imagine how you appear. Truth is, we don't care if the president of a company is in an ad. If you took the money from your vanity project and used it to hire a couple more people to improve customer service or lowered your prices, we're a lot more likely to come back. If your ads are interesting and entertaining instead of self-indulgent, we'll be a lot more receptive to your message. Remember, your clever little 'production' is interrupting our favorite show, our view, our article, our pissbreak. Instead, visit your stores and introduce yourself to customers. You'll see they react to you with a lot more respect and be much more impressed with your business. In other words, act like a president. Otherwise you're in the same camp as Ronald McDonald, Spuds McKenzie and that dog that chases the chuckwagon into the cupboard. Would somebody please put that in a marketing book. 2:35:09 PM    Say it don't spray it... []

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