Maybe Sex Sells After All!

I mentioned in passing nearly a month ago (“Catching My Eye,” March 26, that USA Today’s Tech Briefing had been touting for several weeks already the article “Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts a big dent in industry”—and I expressed my wish that I had been keeping track from the beginning so I could report on exactly how many months now they’ve been plumping this patently salacious headline.

However, I can report that USA Today has yet to give up on it: Here’s a screenshot of this morning’s Tech Briefing e-mail, with the porn headline still enjoying its place of honor. I assume it’s there after all this time because it continues to generate clicks, so maybe it is indeed true that sex sells.

Let’s not fool ourselves: I’m not particularly prudish, as anyone who’s read one or more of my detective novels can attest. My issue here is with the blatantly prurient intent attached to running this same link day after day, week after week, for well over a month now. Enough, already!

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Advertising...What, Exactly?

The column "Q. and A. with Stuart Elliott" in the New York Times this week featured a question from a reader who wondered what the theme music from Magnum, P.I. was doing in a make-up commercial--specifically, a spot for Maybelline's oddly named Falsies mascara.

Elliott quotes a spokeswoman for Maybelline's ad agency saying that the spot features three "women on a mission" a la Charlie's Angels, but the theme from that show didn't "feel right with the flow of the spot," so they went with the Magnum, P.I. theme instead. (The column is online here.)

That's all well and good, I guess, but I know that back in my ad-agency days I'd have never taken such an idea to a client, and if the client came up with it on his own I'd've strongly argued against it. Why? Because iconic music such as the Magnum, P.I. theme or (even more inexplicably) the theme from The Andy Griffith Show, which has been used in a recent minivan commercial, or the theme from Bewitched, used in commercials for a brand of kitchen appliances, has the effect of distracting the viewer from the product being advertised and pulling his or her attention to the familiar music and the TV series with which it's associated. All of a sudden I'm thinking about Darrin and Samantha Stevens, Endora, Dr. Bombay, and the Kravitzes--notthe fabulous kitchen appliances I'm supposed to be thinking about.

No doubt advertising has changed a great deal these past 20-odd years (we were shocked back then when a rival agency put together a spot for a local video-store chain titled--on screen, no less!--"Video Junkies," since any reference to addiction in such contexts was considered taboo; now it's commonplace, to the point where the local cable company built a whole campaign around urging people to "Get Hooked"), but I can hardly believe that its central objective is no longer to sell product.

One Product, One Vendor, Two Puzzling Ads

One of the disadvantages of having as many e-mail addresses as I have is that you tend to get a lot of duplicate mail, especially advertising.

But that can sometimes make for an interesting experience.

Witness ye this ad from Smith Micro Software, which arrived in one of my inboxes this past Friday, August 20:

Yes, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for just $49.99, ten dollars off the "regular" price of $59.99. In fact, I had contemplated purchasing that very product.

Now I'm not so sure.

Direct your attention, if you will, to this ad, which came to another of my multiple accounts this very afternoon:

Yes, if I respond to this offer, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for a mere twenty dollars more than in the other ad: $69.99...which Smith Micro still would have me believe is, yep, ten dollars off the "regular" price, which they now say is $79.99.

I have a couple-three mailboxes that I haven't checked today. If one or more of them contains a Smith Micro ad for Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, is it your guess that the "regular" price will be higher than the two "regular" prices indicated in these ads, or lower?

Doesn't exactly make a fellow want to whip out his credit card, does it?

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No Wonder Mondays Seem So Long

It's official, as illustrated by this e-mail that I received today (Tuesday) from HP: Monday is no longer an event but rather is now a process.

Next Best Thing to Useless!

I'm not sure why, but this evening I received an offer to check out something called Alice (www.alice.com), which is some kind of shopping service, apparently. "At Alice, you’ll find great prices without buying in bulk or paying a membership fee," they say, touting their low prices and price comparison feature. Mildly intrigued, I clicked the Find the Best Price tab, and got this:

As illustrations go, this one is pretty darn useless, no? I mean, everything is grayed out, so what you really have is just a list of pulled-from-air prices without context--all of which are (surprise!) higher than Alice's. Wow, this does look like a great service! Oh, and that See Details & Disclaimer link? Doesn't work; not a link at all, really.

I'm sure that, were I to join up, all of Alice's wonderful features would be revealed to me and I could see With Mine Own Eyes how it makes my life easier, and also cheaper. But isn't the point of an illustration or example to convince me first so I will then be inclined to join? This does nothing of the sort. It merely asserts "Our prices are lower than every place where they're higher. And we won't tell you their names, either, so you can just take our word for it."

Thanks but no thanks, Alice.

(And why "Alice"? I suspect some kind of Brady Bunch angle here, for it was Alice who got stuff done in the Brady household. I suppose I could find all that and more under the See Alice in Action link, but, well, I'm just not that interested.)

Yeah, This Makes Me Want to Shop Your Sale

The salutation: "Hi null, Additional 30% off plus $1 shipping!*"

Geez. I'm touched.

Not Every Day

This is the subject line on a piece of e-mail, from Crest Toothpaste, in my box this morning:

Emeril and Crest need your help!

Not, you will admit, the sort of request you get every day. Evidently Emeril needs my help to come up with a new catch phrase for Crest. But as I see it, Emeril came up with "Bam!" with no help from me, and I have no reason to think he can't do it again.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

It's one thing when ordinary citizens can't bring themselves to put an s on the end of a word without sticking an apostrophe in front of it. (I wish I had a firecracker to put in every mailbox in town that has Anderson's on it. But it's another when "professional" products are so afflicted, and when the "professionals" who produced them can't manage to check a style and usage guide...or ask a clever junior-high student.

Here's a screenshot from Zap2It.com, which I checked to see when Doctor Who is on tonight (7:30, in case you're interested):

For the record: The lackluster Flash Gordon reincarnation, which was on SciFi last season but now has moved to Ion, is on at 7/6 C on Fridays. Not Friday's. Fridays. I know it's difficult, Ion marketing/advertising people, but with practice you too can learn to put the letter s at the end of a word without an apostrophe.

I put it to my students thusly: The apostrophe-s indicates either possession or contraction:

It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood = It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood = Correct!

The ball belongs to Spot = It is Spot's ball = Correct!

Members of the Nelson family are coming for dinner = The Nelson's are coming for dinner = Incorrect!

The lackluster Flash Gordon is on every Friday at 7 = The lackluster Flash Gordon is on Friday's at 7:00 = Incorrect! (Except for the lackluster part.)

So as I told the class, if you can't rephrase the sentence to indicate a contraction or possessive (and still have the sentence make sense!), then you need to ditch the apostrophe.

We will save for another day the matter of forming possessives when the word ends in s already!

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Addendum A: I do wonder, however, about the mailbox mentioned above. It is, I suppose, possible that the labelers of said box intended to indicate that it belongs to Anderson, in which case Anderson's would be correct. But I rather suspect it's meant to indicate that the box receives mail for members of the Anderson household, in which case Andersons is what you need. Of course, you can save time, confusion, and a sticky metal letter if you go with Anderson and hope the letter carrier can figure it out from there.

Addendum B: Some years ago I worked for a company called The Webb Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. It no longer exists. The company, I mean. Anyhow, some time after I left there I communicated to a former co-worker that I would be meeting a friend of his who also had worked at Webb but had left shortly before I joined. My friend told me not to be alarmed when the other fellow referred to the place as Webbs, as my friend rendered it in his letter to me. And sure enough, when I introduced myself to the other fellow, mentioning our mutual friend, he in turn introduced me to his wife and said that I too had worked at Webbs...except that, as I later expressed to my friend, I think it was in fact more properly rendered Webb's. I have often noticed a local tendency to incorrectly render various business names as
possessives. One of the most common around here is the John Morrell meatpacking plant, which is universally referred to ('round here) as Morrell's...even though none of their signage or labeling has ever, to my knowledge, said anything except John Morrell or Morrell. I don't know why this should be, unless it goes back to a time when many if not businesses carried the proprietor's name: Bob's Grocery, Foley's Garage, etc. (Sure, names like that are still around, but my guess is there are fewer than in bygone times.)

New for the New Year!

It appears that that which, in my youth, were known as "blaxploitation films" now have a new, less provocative, but easier-to-spell name. Witness this, from "The Lion's Roar," e-mail newsletter (well, okay, ad flyer) from MGM Studios:


It's important that the Marketing Department doesn't run out of things to do...