Marketing Snark Talk

Every so often this blog veers off from the usual yapping about my misadventures with public transit and humiliation involving my nether regions to randomly go on about marketing and ads. This is one of those posts.

My interest in marketing, advertising and branding seemed to start with Angela Bower, Ad Exec extraordinaire on Who's the Boss. Even though I didn't really like Angela (woman had teh crazy in a big way), I loved the episodes where she'd bring her work home, like the one where she had to come up with a marketing angle for avocado chips, a product that looked like crisp mold spores.

There's just something so neat about taking any brand or a product and making it meaningful and desirable for the masses. As you can imagine, I can't get enough of Mad Men.

Finding marketing marvels is awesome, but so is witnessing marketing misfires that even the non-ad obsessed will ask "WHO the hell approved THAT?"

Sometimes they're new ideas and sometimes they're old, dated ones that companies cling to because they're too cheap to invest in re-branding. I like to keep mental notes of these for fun. Because - I - am a bit of a loser.

Today's Bad New Idea got on my radar through The Daily Grind when they highlighted horror franchise Saw's recent attempt to get people to their next installment (and yes, I realize that by blogging about it, I'm falling right into the 'buzz-creation' they were hoping for. But no linky for them!). Seems the geniuses behind Saw's marketing are from the easier-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission camp when they telephone-spammed hundreds of individuals and creepily insinuated they had kidnapped a friend / family-member (a re-occuring plot point from the movies) ... and then gave them a link to the film's promotional website. Needless to say, people were freaked and confused, cops were called and the promotion has been cut short. If ever there was a reason to get on Canada's do-not-call list, this has got to be it.

Today's Bad Old Idea is one I've laughed about for a couple years but am pleased to know that they're going to do something about it (I hope). Sherwin-Williams has just retained a new marketing agency that will hopefully modernize the brand.

Because nothing appeals to today's ultra-green, eco-savvy consumerism like a logo like this: