The Tin Lizard

Phil Mickelson, Walking Signboard And Sometime Golfer

I'd become used to seeing pro golfer Phil Mickelson on television promoting his favorite prescription drug (it's Enbrel, I think - but I'm not sure what it does).  In my mind, he had become notable mostly for being able to pronounce the phrase "I've been in your shoes" so woodenly that you would suppose he actually HAD been in them.

But this week something new caught my eye.  What's that on his cap?  Hmm, a logo - KPMG!  A consulting company, as I understand it.    But wait, there's something different on his shirt ... "Barclay's," it says - presumably the banking folks.  I checked briefly on the internet to see if by any chance these products were related -- maybe all owned by Walt Disney or something? -- but that seems not to be the case.

What I did find, though, was a brief report in Forbes Magazine that notes:

Mickelson earns more than $30 million annually from endorsement partners: Callaway, Barclay's, KPMG, Exxon, Rolex and Amgen/Pfizer. He picked up the deal to promote psoriatic arthritis drug Enbrel after he was diagnosed with the disease in 2010 and used the drug for his treatment.

Obviously there's a whole new trend of product placement, with ads visually touting one or more brands while the speaker is pushing a difference product.  I'm not sure if it's effective - I thought subliminal advertising had been rather discredited some time ago.  We grew used to the practice in movies in the first decade of this century, but we don't see it so much any more.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Mickelson were wearing a Rolex in that ad, too.  And if they can figure how to run an ad that shows him bending over, I strongly suspect he'll have Exxon on his back end!

In An Easy-Come, Easy-Go World, You May As Well Stay Well Lit

We've all heard the tales of slogans and brand names that have been trotted out only to fall flat, or even to have negative connotations.  The classic, probably, is the Chevy Nova - as I heard it, the car had actually been marketed in Spanish-speaking countries before somebody discovered "No Va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go."  Maybe this tale is apocryphal, because presumably, "nova" in Spanish also has the same astronomical meaning as it does in English.  (Hmm... but doesn't a nova kind of flare across the sky briefly and then peter out?  Even in English, an ill-fated name for a car.)

While I'm on the topic of cars:   I'm still waiting for somebody to consider that "Subaru" spelled backwards comes out as "You're a Bus" (more or less), and I wonder if very many KIA automobiles are sold to military men and women.

Latest observations:

Those fancy lenses for your glasses that dim automatically in the sun, called "Transitions" are now advertising under a slogan urging you to live "Life Well Lit."  Gosh, I've been living life well lit for many a year now, and I agree it's good advice, but for the life of me I can't see what drinking has to do with eyeglasses.

The Baltimore Airport (officially it's known as "Thurgood Marshall International" nowadays) is close enough to many of Washington DC's northern suburbs that it's really like a third DC airport.  So it's not surprising that it advertises on television in the Washington area.  But they've chosen an unfortunate slogan: "The Easy Come, Easy Go Airport."  It depends on when you were born, I guess, but to me that phrase implies throwing money away unnecessarily, or paying too much for something.

Retailing Geniuses

Every year as Christmas shopping season kicks off at Thanksgiving, retailers make overblown predictions about how much consumer purchasing will succeed in keeping them fat and happy.   And every year they bemoan the results as insufficient.

This year, only three days left, and they're whining that sales are up only seven-tenths of a percent over last year. 

Today I thought, well, how can we help them with this problem?  So I had a chat with the neighbor's kid, who's in 7th grade and really likes math.   "Billy," I asked, "you mow lawns in the summer.  If you mowed 50 lawns a month last summer and charged $30 each, you took in $1500.   Not bad, but I noticed you had a lot of spare time on your  hands.  What if you try to steal customers from some of the other boys by cutting your price and charging only $12?"  

But Billy was way ahead of me.  "Jeez, Mr. Fog," he said, "that'd mean - let's see - umm, I'd have to cut 125 lawns just to make the same amount of money.  A lot more work, and besides, I just couldn't do that many lawns in a month, there's not enough time."

There you have it.  Billy may or may not turn out to be the next Oracle of Omaha, but it didn't take him long to figure out what our nation's major retailing geniuses seem unable to fathom:   Trying to draw customers by discounting your wares so much that there's little or no profit is a fool's game.  Is it really any wonder that revenues aren't up when prices are discounted 50 or even 75%?

Of course ostensibly, if as a retailer you can lure people to your store with a handful of low prices and they then buy other goods at regular or higher prices, you've temporarily won the game.   But I suspect consumers are more sophisticated these days - they will snap up the bargains and move on to your competitor to snap up whatever loss leaders he has.  

But if your competitor starts offering a product at 40% off, you're going to have to follow suit.   After all, whether it's an iPad or a fleece sweatshirt, any good shopper can probably think of a half-dozen different retailers where he could acquire that item.  Dozens of you are offering pretty much the same merchandise. 

So price wars are blindingly dumb for retailers, but they nevertheless proliferate.  They're a natural part of the marketing life-cycle, keeping the economy lean by effectively forcing some retailers out of business.  Which dogs will be eaten, and which will survive, this year?  (Personally I think the venerable J.C. Penney may be one devouree.)  Find out in a month or two.  But don't complain that people aren't buying stuff. 

Thanksgiving Attack

In only a few days now, Americans will be celebrating that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, the one holiday in which we all share equally, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or the number of fingers on our hands; and also the one that has remained remarkably untainted by commercialism.

Until now.  Some major retailers (Sears, Target), with others sure to follow, are opening stores to shoppers on Thanksgiving evening.  No more waiting until midnight for those bargains!  The motivation is pure greed:  Stores want to get more of your money, sooner.  No waiting until tomorrow to acquire your dollars if they can have them today!  And they'll gradually expand hours in coming years so that Thanksgiving can be just another day to go buy something.  (Pity their poor employees.)

The stores offer the justification that consumers want to shop on Thanksgiving, nobody's doing much of anything Thanksgiving afternoon anyway.  They're probably right about that:  I'm sure there are people - lots of them - prepared or even eager to dash out that evening to acquire a fantastic bargain on a television the size of a football field, or other such essential merchandise.  

If you're not among that group, you can stay home (and boycott these stores for the season if you like); but your holiday will still be different if your wife, or even your uncle Harry, plans to rush out to the nearest mall.

 

 

 

Will The Real Holiday Please Stand Up?

Which statement is correct?

Last Sunday was Veterans Day in the U.S. 
Last Monday was Veterans Day in the U.S.

They both are.  When Washington calendar-manglers decided, in the early seventies, that nearly all our national holiday observations should always take place on a Monday, Veterans Day was included in that sweeping proclamation, to occur on the fourth Monday of October.

But it wasn't long before veterans' groups pushed to retain the original date, November 11, because of its historic significance as the date of the armistice that ended WW I).  That move was duly approved, and Veterans Day was officially restored to November 11.

Or not.  This year, we have the confusing situation of two Veterans Days, for no better reason than that November 11 fell on Sunday, so nobody got the day off.  Call me old school, but it seems sensible to me that a holiday with a specific date should be observed on that date.  If it happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, that's too bad.  Particularly since veterans specifically requested it be observed always on November 11. 

Moreover, in the case of Veterans Day, the things we normally do to observe the day can be accomplished perfectly well on a Sunday (maybe better):  parades, observances, and the like.  And even moremoreover, we already have another day honoring veterans -- Memorial Day, in May. 

The push for all these Monday holidays is/was commercially driven.  For retailers, any day off is a day that people should devote to shopping.  In all cases, it cheapens the meaning of the holiday by turning it into a fire sale.  Let's restore integrity to Veterans Day, and productivity to our economy.   

Do Telephone Polls Have A Future?

Today's news had an interesting review of statements by various pundits whose predictions about Tuesday's election had been flatly wrong.  It makes for fun reading, but all it suggests to me is that it's difficult even for the most objective observer to predict outcomes without factoring in his/her own personal biases.   If I had had time to write anything the day before the election, I'd have forecast that Obama would win, and that his electoral-vote total would be much less close than was generally forecast.  It turns out I would have been right, yet how could I assure myself that it wasn't biased thinking on my part?

The pollsters largely proved themselves correct, though:  The electorate was indeed narrowly split, eight or nine states were key to the election, and most of those were showing "too close to call" but generally giving Obama the edge. 

That seems to me to be a greater feat of prediction than it appears at first glance.  Despite our sometimes desperate and frenzied attempts to suss out beforehand what we'll learn in due time anyway, it's getting harder and harder to do election polling. 

Pollsters have usually said the most reliable results come from telephone interviews, yet as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, wired phones are becoming rarer, especially among the young, and cell phone numbers are not so easily accessible as land-line ones. 

On the other end of the scale, lots of us geezers who still have landlines have caller ID; we added it at my house a year or two ago, and it's been a godsend, especially in this election season, when we were besieged as often as 20 times a day by "private" or "unavailable" phone numbers seeking contributions or wishing to learn our views.  All those calls went unanswered. 

So who, exactly, are the pollsters reaching?  That they came up with such an accurate picture is quite amazing.

Not So Sweet

"Hocus, pocus, dominocus!" was the mantra of amateur magicians when I was a kid.

How appropriate, then, is the brand name "Domino," which has made a pound of sugar disappear? 

We don't buy a whole lot of sugar for our house.  We don't use it on cereal, or in coffee, and only once or twice a year do we make any kind of cookies or batter breads.   So, a bag can last a year or more.  

Nevertheless, when I picked up this bag at the store this weekend, I could tell from the feel of it that something was wrong - it was too compact, smaller and lighter than I remembered.  The package tells the story:  four pounds, not five.

Motivation is everything.  I'd like to think that the sugar lobby is trying to help people cut back on a product that's bad for them by giving them less of it.  HA HA HA.  No, I'm pretty sure this is the usual manufacturer's trick of reducing the package size rather than forcing consumers to face the horror of a discernible price increase on the supermarket shelf.  Like those amateur magicians, Domino hopes to distract our attention from what's really going on.  We're all used to it. 

But it seems a particularly ridiculous effort with a product like sugar, a basic commodity of relatively low price (this package cost 2.99).  Really, now, how many people even look at the price before they buy it, and how many who look would notice or care, if this package cost 3.49 instead of 2.99?  Wait a couple of years, and we'll see the 5-pound package on the shelf, "NEW! 20% more!", with a price of about 4.99.

 

 

Olympic Madness - People Acting Dumbly

It's been discovered that the uniforms the U.S. Olympic athletes will wear in London were all made in China.  (By a guy named Ral-Fu Lo-rong, it seems.)  Naturally, a lot of people have become exercised by this news.  Indeed, as so many are already asking, "what were they [the USOC] thinking?" 

One answer might be that they weren't thinking at all.  In an environment where outsourcing of jobs is an almost daily matter of discussion in the media, and when a "made in America" movement has gained quite a lot of traction, to have made a conscious decision to buy Chinese for this patriotic flagship event is pretty blindingly stupid.   Not to have considered where the clothing was manufactured is equally as dumb. 

If the Committee was thinking, presumably they were focused on the bottom line:  could China produce more cheaply?  Perhaps they were blinded by the desire to get a "designer" involved.  That would seem to have backfired -- these uniforms are really dorky looking, and should make our athletes a laughingstock at the opening ceremonies.  But while we're talking about the designer - shouldn't Lauren have had the foresight to think about "made in America," even if the USOC didn't?

The USOC's blunder is just one of those things - it will blow over with no lasting effect.  But its object lesson is that corporate types (for that in essence is what USOC folks are) can't be left isolated in their profit-oriented bubbles, they need adult supervision to do the right thing.  Executives at Wells Fargo are learning that today, too.

 

Stylewise

Fashion is an important marketing tool.  Every year in certain fields (women's clothing being one of the main ones) style mavens make their pronouncements:  This year, perhaps, the must-have color is lime green, hemlines are up, and three-quarter sleeves are all the rage; next year, it will be sky-blue, ankle-length, whatever. 

I often wonder who listens to these "experts."  My wife has often found that it's these outlandish "in" colors that look good on no one, that remain on the deep-discount racks at the end of the season.  The secret, I think, is that the real fashion prognosticators are a cabal of manufacturers, who decide what they'll do to make things look different this year, then put out the word to the supposedly independent arbiters.

We men are more fortunate.  Most of us would laugh at the concept of a new "in" color for men's suits, or even casual wear like polos.  Despite occasional attempts to change that, haberdashers have found, I think, that a foray into some strange new shade or style usually ends in a retailing disaster.  Nevertheless, we're not totally immune.  Every two or three decades somebody will decide we need three-button suits (à la Richard Nixon) instead of two, though in the current environment, doubtless causing the would-be game-changers considerable anguish, people seem to have decided for themselves to wear whichever they want.  (And who wears suits anymore, anyway?)

Home decorating has become another bastion of ever-changing styles to push sales.  Today, for example, one report tells us our future lies in bright colors for upholstered furniture, such as "tangerine tango."  But trends are quickly overtaken by new trends.  We bought a house in 1976, fully outfitted with pink metal kitchen cabinets that were hot stuff in the 1950s (and which we quickly changed); and a different one in the 80s, where we had to swap out a batch of avocado-colored appliances to avoid the feeling we were in a time machine.  

Even the interior decor columnist who imparts the above revelation about "tangerine tango," however, admits that two years hence, he's "not going to want a tangerine-colored dining room." He prescribes caution and graduality in following any trends. That's great advice.  

Security For Computers

I guess it's really true that anyone with a computer ought to have some program in place to protect it from evil-doers sending viruses, spam, trojan horses, keyboard loggers, and all kinds of other bad stuff.

My security program subscription expired recently.  I had been using the product for several years so I decided it was time for a change.  I spent at least a couple of hours, probably longer, looking at reviews and rankings.   The rankings I found varied wildly in their selection of which are the two or three "best" programs - there's Kaspersky, and G-something, Avira, Norton, at least 15 or 20 "security suites," including a couple of free ones.  How to decide?

What I eventually discovered was that the difference between the top choice and the #20 choice in most of these rankings is marginal.  ALL of them do a pretty good job these days, and the differences often lie more in the interface than in the actual performance.   I renewed my "same-old, same-old," and saved myself the time and effort of having to remove one program, install another, and learn its quirks.

Best advice, in my view:  If you've got one you like, there's no need to go chasing after "the best" unless you're a serious geek.  Otherwise, stick with what you've got and you'll be just as well off.