Category: Business

Hooray

Business

I’d like to see a lot more of this attitude:

Gerard O’Shaughnessy posted a job advertisement to hire candidates for social media marketing roles at his online ad agency, Business Marketing Services Ltd (BMS) in West Yorkshire.
The 48-year-old created the brutally honest advert saying ‘mickey takers’ and those who call in sick with hangovers need not apply.
Mr O’Shaughnessy became frustrated after wading through stacks of applicants who didn’t fit the bill for the role, which would see the employee working from 9-3, with free gym access, but would also mean their phone was locked away all day.
After stating the perks of the job, he then highlights that he doesn’t want people who are addicted to their phones to apply as well as weekend party-goers and those with ‘psycho’ boyfriends demanding regular text updates.
Mr O’Shaughnessy has been working at the business for 15 years, and said we are living in a ‘generation of snowflakes’.
He highlighted how previous staff members had ‘complete meltdowns’ after the company made it compulsory two months ago for phones to be locked away each day – only being given back at lunch time and of course at the end of the day.

Give the man a medal.

Good Olde Dayes 2

Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Last week I looked at offensive ads from days gone by — and by “offensive”, I mean things that would “offend” the Permanently Sensitive Set, bless their little snowflake hearts.

While doing the research, I also happened on some still-more offensive ads — guaranteed to get others’ feeeewings all tearful (except for those who frequent this website, that is.  Actually, they are enough to make even me a little tearful, but not for the reasons one would expect).  Here’s a sample:

There’s hunting:

Now it’s time for some cismale gendernormative patriarchal fascism (I think I got that right):

And guns for Christmas — nothing like a visit from ol’ Santy bearing the right kind of gift:

(Note the publication for the above ad…)

Now it’s time for a little “flowers” advertising (back the hearse up to the door, and let them smell the flowers):

And then there’s the simple choice:

And one last reminder:

I wonder what the number is for the AR15 and AK-47?  Let’s look at some other options:

And speaking of which, note the prices:

Now that’s enough to make me weep.

Good Olde Dayes 1

Marketing / Advertising

Upon reading this lovely story, I was transported back to a time when advertising gave it to you straight and hard.  But first, a quick excerpt:

Following outrage in the past couple of years over ads that were seen as toxic, the U.K. has responded by banning advertising that perpetuates negative stereotypes or equates physical attractiveness with social or romantic success. The elegant simplicity of this solution might leave us wondering, why hasn’t anyone thought to do this before?

Because until recently, society wasn’t in thrall to the Great Wokening, is why.  So please indulge me as I hearken back to a time when everyone understood their roles in life.

 

Let’s not talk about the kiddies:

 

Not just ads, either:

 

…and even comics did the tongue-in-cheek thing:

And let’s hear it for product packaging and promises:

…and for energy and pick-me-ups:

And given that we’re celebrating Love-A-Homo/Trannie/Whatever  Month, here’s my all-time favorite:

But let me not get nasty.  One more good ‘un:

Like the title suggests:  the good old days.  I miss ’em. [eyecross]

Others may differ.  I, however, have a sense of humor about this kind of thing.

Scarcity Scare Tactics

Business, Marketing / Advertising, Travels

Via Insty comes this silliness:

Companies in certain sectors use the same behavioral interventions repeatedly. Hotel booking websites are one example. Their sustained, repetitive use of scarcity (e.g., “Only two rooms left!”) and social proof (“16 other people viewed this room”) messaging is apparent even to a casual browser.
For Chris the implication was clear: this “scarcity” was just a sales ploy, not to be taken seriously.

Well, duh.  The oldest advertising gimmick is to threaten shortages:  “while supplies last”, “today only”, “limited to the first 50 customers”, and so on.

I’ve used Expedia quite a bit for my international travel planning (they usually handle cancellations better than the establishments themselves do), and the “only 1 room left” warning elicits a response from me of, “Oh well… if the room disappears I’ll just have to find another hotel.”

You see, true  scarcity can and does work to drive a purchase decision — World Cup tickets being a good example because it’s one event, one time, one place — but all the artificial scarcity (as above) should get just a shrug from the prospective consumer.

Even more, if the establishment uses it constantly (e.g. Expedia), it becomes just white noise:  unless, of course, the customer is a stupid dickhead, in which case they get what they deserve.

The very best reaction to this ploy is to simply say, “Well, if I miss it this time, I’ll just find another vendor or postpone the purchase until the next sale.”  Department stores, who seem only to sell merchandise when it’s “On Sale”, have learned to their cost what happens when you turn discounted shopping into an everyday event:  people only buy during “sale” periods — which is why department stores are dying.

As for the various online travel sites:  if you do find an unbeatable deal for the hotel stay of your dreams at, say, Expedia, check the same hotel’s rates at one of the other booking sites as a backup before making your decision.  (By the way, if the deal “disappears”, try calling the hotel direct;  I once got a rate lower than Expedia’s “Great Deal” at an Edinburgh hotel during the Royal Military Tattoo Week simply by asking for it.)

And ignore the bullshit.

Wrong Direction

Business, Nannies

Now there’s this little trinket:

Amazon is selling a bracelet that gives you an electric SHOCK you when you eat too much fast food, bite your nails or spend too much time on the internet

Hmmm… I have an idea:  how about selling one of these little behavior-modification devices which is triggered when you’re spending too much time browsing the merchandise at amazon.com? 

No?

Then fuck off and die, you corporate fucking nanny pricks.  And take your little Stasi girlfriend Alexa with you to the crematorium.

Moving Trends

Business, Friends and Family, Travels

Now this came as a surprise to me:

Why Some Americans Won’t Move, Even for a Higher Salary

Apart from the Great Wetback Episode Of 1986 (emigration, for those who haven’t been paying attention), I’ve moved around the U.S. on several occasions, mostly for job reasons (better job, more money), and every one of them was wrenching.  And of course none of my moves in the U.S. was from my home town, so I can well imagine that someone who has grown up and spent most of their life in (say) Indianapolis would be reluctant to leave family, friends, business contacts and so on to start all over again in a new location.

Many people, of course, take moving as part of life (I’m excluding Armed Forces folks from this, because moving is part of the deal), and I suppose I’m probably one of them — but that’s because my first move was so comprehensive and so final, the uprooting was total.  Subsequent moves, while somewhat disturbing, were much easier by comparison.

After Connie passed away, I gave serious thought to starting all over again, not just in another town, but even in another country.  During my sabbatical travels, I discovered that the cost of living in the south of France, for example, was about the same as living here in Plano, and for the briefest moment I considered it.  I love France, always have, and with little or no language issue, that part would have been easy.  The cultural change, however, would not  have been easy, and so I didn’t move Over There.  (Interestingly enough, while I love Britain even more than France, that was never an option, because the cultural change would have been even more  pronounced.)

And finally, I realized that the urge to move, to start all over again somewhere else, was more a factor of bereavement than from any desire for change:  so I stopped considering it.

Going back to the chart, however, I am very interested in the downward trend of the phenomenon.  If we assume that when America was still an agrarian, immobile society until the Industrial Revolution caused the mass migration to cities, could it be that the beginning of the study (in the late 1940s) was simply the crest of the wave, and that people were once again preferring to remain settled than to move?

And in recent years, of course, the technology has increasingly been able to support work-from-home or work-from-home-city, so one would expect the incidence of moving to slow even more.  That said, however, if one is able to work from home, then it doesn’t really matter where home is — so people could be expected to move elsewhere to improve their standard of living, say to cheaper housing.  So what do the numbers say about that?

Even the “housing” number has been falling — and I suspect that if one were to take away migration away from high-cost areas like the Northeast and California, the trend would be even more pronounced.  Interesting indeed:  I would have assumed the precise opposite trends, from both  charts, but apparently not.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.