July 7. 2008 by Dick.

Big Mistake. Really big mistake. Today, as I write this, is July 7. I realize it may not be July 7 where you are or when you read this, but I can live with that. Here and now it is definitely the Monday after our long weekend long birthday celebration for America and the Back to School sales have already started.

Franklin County, Vermont, celebrates the Fourth of July twice: once on the Fourth of July and once on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July when thousands of residents and guests crowd in to St. Albans Bay for a day of family stuff, music, and fireworks. I got my Summer Sounds concert band, Rumble Doll, set up, got my mug on teevee, and, of course, spent some quality time in the lake. My new sandals seem to have stood up to total immersion.

Tom Oliver did a great job with the fireworks; this may have been his best yet with some new “spiders” that dropped their legs all the way to the water and a finale that included high and low skybursts with Roman candles.

And it took only an hour for enough cars to clear out that I could drive home.

Summer.

The entire summer is ahead of us.

I don’t know about the rest of the world but I don’t want to be in a classroom in July.

We read the Burlington Free Press on Sundays here in Vermont because it is the only Sunday paper sold here that has a TV section and a reasonable number of advertising inserts for the stores we patronize.

I like the sales, see…

The sales often confuse me, though. I have to wonder why stores expect to sell Summer clothing in February, Winter clothing in June, and school supplies this week.

Staples® has “one cent deals” through Wednesday as part of the Back to School ‘08 national promotion. I’m reading their advertising flier now. Dixon® #2 yellow pencils for a penny. I like #2 pencils and Dixon® makes pretty good ones but does anyone actually use wooden pencils anymore? There are two-pocket paper folders for a penny, too. I like two-pocket folders but I don’t use them much for reports because I prefer a report that reads like a book, so I use staples or a folder that grabs the edges.

Back to school? It is weeks, count ‘em, long weeks before school starts.

The mistake? Timing is everything. The stores obviously should have held the sales in June when people were still actually thinking about school, not now when I want to sit on the beach. That was easy®.

Posted in Marketing, Seasonal, Random Access | No Comments »

June 2. 2008 by Dick.

I know it doesn’t seem true, but data is everything. Oh, sure, we see plenty of examples of apparent professionals who punch the fire alarm on a hunch, but advertisers want to measure everything. If you don’t know how many people see your ad, if you don’t know when they see your ad, if you don’t know who sees your ad, you aren’t selling. I’m talking names and addresses, people.

Billboards seem unlikely data gatherers, eh?

But wait! Imagine a billboard with a camera that can “look back” at passers-by and gather details about gender, age, expression, and time-span of the contact. “We’re not storing actual images of the peeps we see,” saith the billboard owners, “so privacy is not a problem.”

Horse puckey.

Facial recognition programs already use surveillance cameras in public places to store, sort, and process actual images of the passers-by and to compare those images to the stored images of known bad guys.

That’s pretty cool from a Homeland Security standpoint.

But wait.

Those who would give up an essential liberty for
temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
–Benjamin Franklin

Huh.

A billboard camera that photographs passers-by and a facial recognition program that can tap the databases of every state DMV. Driver’s licenses have photos now; the issuing states require you to update your photo periodically so they can actually identify you. The technology exists now. All it takes is a few lines of code to mix and match.

“Oh, that would never happen,” you say. “We have too many safeguards.” Betcha you think the FBI needs a warrant to rummage around in your phone, email, financial, and library stuff, too.

Can you spell G-e-o-r-g-e O-r-w-e-l-l meets D-a-v-i-d O-g-i-l-v-y?

So. How long will it be before both the Feds and Proctor & Gamble have not only your Social Security number but also your last year’s income tax return?

Posted in Marketing, Society, Random Access | 4 Comments »

April 18. 2008 by Dick.

NAPA and Sears have about the most user unfriendly sites that I have visited this week.

I need a battery for my Keyscar.

Sears.com offers 80 or so choices at different prices but you have to drill down three levels to find out the battery group size. What’s a group size? Sears doesn’t tell you that because there is no “find your battery by car type” button. I can tell you that the $59.99 DieHard doesn’t come in Group 34, but I can tell you that only after 10 minutes of swearing at the screen.

NAPAonline.com does have the button but I had to disable the firewall for their battery page to load; it never did show prices. It showed a column for prices and a column for “selection.” Both were blank.

I have a headache.

I think I shall go eat eggs.

Posted in Marketing, Quickies, Business, Grumpery | No Comments »