Category: Marketing / Advertising

When The Market Bites Back

Corporate Fuckery, Management, Marketing / Advertising

Probably one of the first golden rules of business is “Never anger your existing customers, and never ignore those customers in chasing after new customers”.

I seem to bang on about this endlessly, but I’m always reminded of just how stupid management can be in ignoring that rule.

Now add on an unbelievably-stupid rationale for changing a company’s product line, and…

Wait.

There’s a much better way to look at this foolishness.

First, I invite you to watch Richard Hammond talking about some new Porsche he test drives at the old Top Gear track.  Because if you watch his glee and excitement, then this little video about Porsche’s idiocy becomes all the more understandable.  (Note especially the effect of Porsche’s marketing decisions on their share price and earnings.)

Nice one, dickheads.

From Comfortable Heritage To Modern Banal

Corporate Wokism, Marketing / Advertising

We’ve all seen how modernist logo design has turned the proud familiar into simplistic trash:

…and of the recent Cracker Barrel rebrand we will not speak, as they’ve been forced into a U-turn.

Now if one thinks of modernistic Philistines and Wokery Gone Mad in the civic sense, it’s hard to imagine a better example than that “blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup”, Austin TX.  Who have “progressed” from a traditional city seal to… well, a 1970s-era representation of a homeless person’s tent shelter:

Bloody hell.  It’s an encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with the Left:  ahistorical, simplistic and ugly.

U-Turn

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

…as Cracker Barrel turns away from the Bud Light precipice:

Cracker Barrel will bring back its old logo after days of ruthless criticism and a plummeting stock price following its botched rebranding.

The company’s board, led by CEO Julie Felss Masino, ignored warning signs and criticism for months ahead of the announcement last week that the restaurant chain would ditch its old logo and give its stores a modern look. The company appears to have walked back part of that decision on Tuesday.

Which part, I wonder?  One commenter shared my doubts:

If they don’t change their support for all the weird sexual politics and attendant shenanigans, none of that matters. In fact, focusing on the logo, etc., just drives publicity and brand awareness up for them. Lose the CB-sponsored drag queens and maybe I’ll care about the decor.

As with the Bud Light “fegeleh” and New Coke episodes, companies seem to forget that if your ethos is traditionalist, you mess with your brand positioning at your peril, and chasing new customers is a fool’s game if you alienate your existing base.

I haven’t eaten by myself at Cracker Barrel for years because their prices have become just outrageous — but when I get an overseas visitor to entertain, it’s a must-see experience (along with Buc-ees and rodeo).

Even The Donald weighed in, telling Cracker Barrel not to be idiots and go back to what has, after all, been their basic positioning since forever.

Kudos to them for acknowledging their mistake.

Unlike Jaguar.  [#Morons]

Interesting Concept

Gratuitous Gun Pics, Marketing / Advertising

From PSA:

Why is this interesting?  Well, I like the idea of an easy-switch barrel combo rather than having to hump two .22 rifles around (as I do) in order to get the maximum fun out of the cheap .22 LR and the added power of the .22 WMR.  (Plus there’s that space issue in Ye Olde Gunne Sayfe…)

That straight-pull bolt is an excellent idea.  (The B1 was originally marketed as a Hammerli-designed action, hubba hubba.)

But there’s a snag.  You see, Walther has made this rifle accept Ruger 10/22 magazines — excellent — and they supply three magazines with the rifle — even better.  BUT:  the ratio of magazines is:  two .22 LR mags, and only one .22 WMR mag.

And that’s the problem.  Ruger .22 LR (BX-1) mags are so plentiful that people hand them out to kiddies as Halloween favors or Xmas stocking stuffers.  Ruger .22 WMR mags… errr not so much;  you have to get them online rather than in brick-n-mortar stores.

Far better, in my opinion, to supply two magnum mags and one LR mag.  Or just up the price of the rig by $10 and offer two of each.

OR — gasp! — include two BX-10 .22 LR mags, and one of the BX-15 .22 WMR mags (15 rounds, oh my).  There’s almost no difference in price between the 10- and 15-round mags.

There ya go, Walther:  free marketing advice from a would-be customer (blocked only by poverty from being an actual customer).  Have at it.

Tell me that’s not a toothsome prospect, I dare ya.  (Maybe if I looked under the sofa cushions…)

Better yet, mounted on a nice laminate stock.  Nah, that’s asking too much.

Okay, here’s an offer to any of my Loyal Readers:  buy me one of these Walthers, and I’ll send you both my .22 rifles (the SQ LR and the SSV WMR) in exchange, including scopes and bipods.

Sidestep

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

I’ve spoken about this topic before, but this is a parallel thought.

Whenever I click onto a link which leads me to a PJMedia outlet, I’m often  / always confronted with a message blocking the article, said message requiring me to turn off my ad-blocking software before I may proceed.

Uh, no.  To quote Dubya, “Nahguhdoodat.”  It’s not that I have anything against advertisements, per se — hell, I’ve worked in the ad agency business myself, and I know that ad revenues help media companies remain in business.  What I object to, with a screaming passion, is that digital ads don’t just announce, they shout at me and intrude on my reading with pop-ups, loud audio and all sorts of other bullshit.  And let’s not talk about ads which have tracking software built in, which leads to all sorts of unpleasantness and bastardy down the track.

Side note:  To be frank, I also don’t want to be led to other ads which “relate” to any specific product in which I might show an interest.  Fucking Amazon’s “if you bought this, you might also be interested in this” trope heads the list, but other websites — e.g. Bud’s Guns FFS — also perpetrate this nonsense, even when my interest in, say, a .22 Beretta pistol generates a “suggested list” which includes a Glock 17 and Bergara rifle.

Anyway, I’m not interested in “allowing” ads into my reading of news items, thank you very much, because my indulgence does not extend to being abused by the advertisers.  So fuck you.

Now there are ways to sidestep this little device.  The one I use the most is to Ctrl-X the link, and in the blank thus created, type in “archive.is/” and then CTRL-V the original link and hit enter.  This generally leads to a page like this:

Click on the blue link, and voilà!  you get the article:

Now some websites have found ways to confound this method or the alternative archiving software products, in which case I do something radical.

I just close the page and OMG forget reading about the topic altogether, in that form.  Why?

There is no topic in the news that is so important.

PJMedia is not the only culprit, of course:  it seems as though almost every “newspaper” has created a PPV setup on the basis of:  “if we can’t derive income from ads, we’ll have to get the moolah from membership.”

Fair enough, I concede the point.  It always made sense back in the old print media days, but even then there were work-arounds.  Buying a magazine each week for $1.25 gets spendy — so the print companies made insanely-discounted offers such as “Get two years’ worth of magazines for only 25c per edition if you pay $6!”

And yes, the magazine contained ads — but those ads didn’t require you to read them before you could turn the fucking page, which is largely what digital media requires.

Finally, let me be completely honest about this.  If I’m going to pay to read a publication of some sort, my polymathic nature demands that I don’t confine myself to a single topic, unless it’s a topic I’m insanely interested in.  It’s why for many years I had subs to Gun Tests, G&A and the like.  (I also had a sub for TIME magazine, back before they became irretrievably leftoid, because they carried articles on lots of topics, not just political ones.)

But if I’m going to pay for a daily read, I want the publication to contain topics on just about every topic — and this is where Breitbart News  and PJMedia  fail, because there it’s 90% politicspoliticspolitics — and politics only constitutes about 40% of my interests.

And to be brutally frank, finding out someone’s guess about Georgia’s next senator is woefully insufficient for me to consider paying for the privilege.

Even more to the point, Redstate‘s top 6 articles have so little interest to me that I’m not going to bother opening any of them, regardless of whether there’s a paywall / ad unblocking demand involved.

Okay, #3 might be sorta interesting but hell, we all know that the Democrats aren’t going to give an attaboy to the good guy with a gun, so why bother?

So that’s why I do the digital sidestep.  And if the sidestep is eventually completely blocked, well then fukkem:  I’ll just go to the range or watch an unblocked video on why military pistols don’t matter.  Way more fun.