Corporate intelligence: A new Lowe

Well folks, someone has finally done it. After all these decades... well, centuries, really... a business has found a way to break through all the advertising noise, to make all the overloaded, tuned-out consumers around them sit up and take notice, to come to the table when they're called, without having to bang a drum or shout over the constant dull roar of inferior pitchmen.

You may not, nay, almost certainly have not, yet gotten to see what I am about to reveal to you, as I am one of the elite few privy to the rare, twice-daily, special messages from the ritziest of the insanely enormous home-improvement stores, Lowes, a store in which I can't particularly remember the last time I thought about setting foot.

I, as a presumably-now-part-owner of "MyLowes", was just offered the once-in-a-lifetime chance to... wait for it... Get a SNEAK PEEK at their NEW COMMERCIAL!!!

Who wants to wait in line with the common horde for the chance to evaluate Lowes' latest evaluation of their own product offerings and pricing, when can't-miss line-jumping opportunities like this are available?? I can hardly even remember a time when I wasn't this kind of special.

Hopefully, someday, you too will be so lucky to ascend to the airy heights at which I'm now soaring.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 10: We're number -1, we're number -1!

I'm filing this one in the No Press is Bad Press folder:

While perusing the Web to find out if there was already a pitchfork-wielding mob I could join on the march to the Frankenstein's Castle of whoever makes those TVs at gas stations and grocery store lines, or if I'd just have to start my own, Google brought me to GSTV.com.

GSTV stands for Gas Station TeleVision, which, as far as I can tell, is a company that supplies content for the TVs in gas stations and, presumably, other totally inappropriate locations.

But the page to which I was pointed was not their splash page, designed to sell me on the idea of not cursing the waking nightmare this concept has wrought, but rather to a (authorized?) reprinting of a Wall Street Journal article in which the company is mentioned.

The article, despite the WSJ's "pro-business" bent, is distinctly hostile to the very idea of this company, starting with the title, I Don't Want My GSTV, and ending on this gem with which I couldn't agree more:

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Before allowing me to complete my transaction, the pump TV asked me whether I was hungry and exhorted me to go inside to check out the snacks in the minimart. I wasn't, but it did make me wonder -- do they sell hammers in there? There's a TV I'd like to smash.

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I'm thinking someone down at headquarters needs to call a meeting to pass a motion to consider implementing a new policy of manual review of the automatic feed to this section of the Web site.

Next we could hit The Place, then The Restaurant

I just had to say something when I read this:

RadioShack To Become ’The Shack’

Whatever happened to an established name being irreplaceable in the marketplace? Do they skip that section in business school nowadays?

I mean, England still has a store (a huge chain of them, actually) called Carphone Warehouse, for God's sake. They know what they're doing, silly as they may sound now, at least 15 years since anyone expressed an interest in buying "a car phone."

But then nothing says, "Come on in and browse around," quite like a place referred to as The Shack... Traditionally speaking, if your shack needs no modifiers to make people understand which shack is being referred to, it is most definitely a shack no sane person wants to get near.

You know who else felt comfortable hanging out in a shack filled with shelves of electronic odds and ends? The Unabomber.

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This falls right in line with another development I'd read about, which I'll share with you in case you hadn't heard:

Pizza Hut Soon to be The Hut?

Now, they claim that they're only using this name on some new buildings, but it's clear to me they're just trying to soften up the market before the big switch at some point. Also, of course, they want attention. Mission accomplished, idiots!

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The So-Called SyFy Channel: Honorable mention goes to whoever's in charge of the SciFi Channel. That person who decided that their channel, and indeed their job and very existence, wasn't stupid enough, so they should change the spelling of the channel to the uselessly cutesy "SyFy Channel".

All this just so you can own an otherwise generic word? All of your networks' shows are now subconsciously graded down one star in my mind before I even seen them. Just you wait a couple of decades for that to really mean something. I know I will!

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 8

Once again, I'm here to demonstrate the importance of saying exactly what you mean, and nothing more. Just as I am the noble hero of literalism, picking apart your statements at will to reveal the messages you didn't know you were sending, there is a dark side to this power, and those who practice it do not show mercy even to fat, lazy, spoiled, Depressed nations.

My example this time comes from our hard-working United States Congress, doing its best as always to provide a steady, paternalistic hand guiding the feisty sled dogs of capitalism, while those dogs do their best to distract that hand with giant sacks of cash.

Paper industry starts using oil to get billions in alternative-fuel credits

Before you decide this sounds boring, let me sum it up for you, to innocently feed your disbelief and rage while you're trying to decide how you're going to make it through these next few years with both the shirt on your back and an absence of Chinese capitalist Communists laughing while they repossess Mt. Rushmore:

A few years ago, Congress passed a law meant to promote decreased use of fossil fuels. The language of this bill was so poorly chosen that at this most ideal of times, we all are now on the hook for many billions of dollars in unplanned-for expenses paying crafty companies to start mixing diesel fuel in with the renewable fuel they've traditionally created from their industrial waste.

So we have a single bright spot in a generally toxic industrial process, the usage of a waste product as fuel in place of more damaging alternatives, and these giant companies, hemorrhaging money for too long, snuff it out with a shower of diesel fuel injected into the process to qualify them as "mixing a taxable fuel with an alternative fuel."

The result for us, the taxpayers? International Paper, for example, will get "probably close to a billion a year of cash" from the IRS encouraging them to "keep mixing alternative fuels with the diesel fuel", and the manageable $61 million projected by Congress for extending this right-minded credit three months could instead "cost as much as $2 billion." The likely total payout to the top ten paper companies alone for this year is $8 billion.*

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"The money to be gained from exploiting the tax credit so dwarfs the money to be made in making paper ... [that] the ultimate result of the credit will likely be to push paper prices down as mills churn at full capacity in order to grab as much money from the IRS as it can."

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So at least you can get a few reams of paper way cheaper than before, for drafting all those letters to your Congresspeople. Just call me Mr. Sunshine-- I'll always find the bright side even if I have to make it myself! Maybe they can use all the extra paper to print up some more currency-- doesn't that always fix things whenever money is tight?

Remember this heartwarming story of poor word choice** as you hunker down with your industrious neighbors to help patch this sinking ship, making daily sacrifices just to get by, gladly exchanging a pay cut for a non-binding implied desire not to fire you in the immediate future.

At least SOMEONE'S making some money, right?*** That's gotta trickle down somehow... or do I need to go buy the latest edition of this classic 1983 economics textbook?

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* $8 billion! Before all these corporate bailouts and emergency loans, that used to be an awful lot of money.

** I say "poor word choice" only assuming no Senators from paper-producing states were involved in writing this bill.

** For my readers abroad, rest assured that, as you can see, even the economic elite of America are determined to help dig a way out of the hole we've dug you all, by any means necessary.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 7

You know, a lot of ill-informed people claim that word choice doesn't really matter in most everyday areas of life, but I'm here to offer just one random example of an instance that proves these people to be morons.

Recently, I couldn't help but notice the friendly banner on my wife's new package of Aquaphor cream, offering what was surely intended to be an innocuous description of the product:

What that little extra word ("your") did there was turn a sentiment of unity ("All of you people with your varying skin problems can use this one product to solve them!") into a back-handed, bitchy message worthy of a junior high cheerleading squad ("You are so lucky I'm here to help you! ...Because you are way more f***ed up than you ignorantly thought before picking up this package.").

Torpedoing the self-esteem of one's customer base is not generally thought to be a good business decision.*

There is a potential upside for the manufacturers, though, if this tack opens up potential new sales across the Eucerin family of products through the well-established phenomenon of victims latching on to their abusers against their better judgment or interests. Just look at how well this has worked for our** lovable scamps down at AIG!

In fact, scratch this whole post, and give me 2,000 shares of whatever disgustingly enormous mega-conglomerate bottles this goo!

Here's to you and your horrible excuse for human skin!

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* Unless of course you're in women's fashion.

** I say "our" because we, the American people, now own them almost in their entirety, at least until just before the stock sale by the U.S. government might bring in enough profit to cover the entire stimulus package.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 6: Walgreens

I've been hearing the following Walgreens radio ad quite a lot here in Chicago lately:

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With Medicare Part D, you pay the same co-pay everywhere. So now that there's no hassle of comparing prices everywhere, come join the millions who fill their prescriptions at Walgreens!

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Allow me to translate this into laymen's terms for you all:

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Now that our usurious markups don't matter to you directly, come on over and go through the different hassle of changing your prescription to Walgreens for no apparent reason!

After all, as an old company ourselves, we understand how much old people love changing things, especially --as we just established-- when there's no tangible financial or other advantage, and when they're virtually guaranteed to have "millions" of people ahead of them in line whenever they choose to endure venturing out and about!*

Sorry Gen-Xers, this sweet deal isn't for you! You'll have to keep paying those clearly exorbitant Walgreens prices for at least the next several decades, until the government can foot the bill for you!**

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I wonder how big last year's bonus was for the marketing executive who approved this ad?

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* "Swollen knees and back trouble from standing too long? We've got handy racks of not-inexpensive OTC pain pills lined up along the pharmacy wall, free from the price restrictions of Medicare Part D!"

** In all fairness, someone has to cover the cashiers' overtime pay while each of those seniors counts out $10 in pennies with nearly useless arthritic fingers.

Corporate Intelligence, Vol. 5

Though I was born and grew up out here in the Chicago suburbs, I lived in Northern Maine for over 3 years, until about a year and a half ago. Since that move, oblivious companies of all shapes and sizes who must hate the sight and smell of their own money took it upon themselves, with the assistance of the USPS and phone companies, to update their mailing and calling lists with my new information.

Now, this common practice makes sense for most nationally focused corporations, even if their message isn't always skewed appropriately for the drastically different region, time zone, accent, economic sphere, population density, worldview, pronunciation of various important words,* voting habits, or level of quaintness of my "new home".

What I'm really thrown by is the local businesses and organizations who seem to consider Reality Checks the province of "city slickers who don't have the sense to root for the Mighty Red Sox even when they live physically closer to Boston than we do."

Here are just two examples:

• Once we stopped getting the usual bits of local junk mail forwarded by the Post Office halfway across the country just to be immediately discarded, we started instead getting local junk mail formally addressed to our new house, trying to lure us back 1400 miles just to catch a mildly unbeatable deal on snow tires (This Weekend Only!) or The County's best interest rate on a snowmobile loan GUARANTEED!

• Lately, we've been getting automated calls from the Maine Democratic and Republican Parties, urging us to support their presidential candidate or vote against the opposing candidate, respectively. While you may say that a national campaign warrants a national calling list, you must agree that a long-distance call from Maine begging an Illinois voter to support his own Senator, elected with 70% of the vote just 4 years ago, is a senseless waste of money.

And lest you think that Democrats in Maine just don't have the time, money, or manpower to weed out useless numbers from their automatically updated phone lists, you should know that the strikingly low population of Maine allows it to have a single area code covering the entire state, and I'm pretty sure that even Thomas Edison's original autodialer** could be programmed in 10 seconds to ignore any numbers not beginning with 207.

But then where would AT&T and Verizon get the cash to buy both the ink for their Important Messages AND the souls of folks who'll speak out against Net Neutrality?

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* Moving back, almost exclusively, from Incorrect to Correct, including, but certainly not limited to, the words permit and aunt ("aaaaaaaant"... I say if you don't live in London or Cape Cod, just give the whole "ahnt" thing a rest, already).

** Used to plant seeds in the minds of the nation's 137 early telephone adopters that Nicola Tesla fathered a black baby out of wedlock with his secret Muslim terrorist mistress, and that Alternating Current was just typical Liberal flip-flopping.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 4: Bank of America

Let me pose this one to you: say you were Bank of America settling into a new market (Chicago) after somewhat recently buying up a pretty big chain of banks (LaSalle Bank). Which would you consider the smoothest opening move?

1) Running a print ad welcoming yourself to town using an outdated, inaccurate picture of the cityscape, or

2) Running a radio ad congratulating the Cubs on making the playoffs and wishing them the best of luck in their quest, two days after they were bitterly swept out of competition?

3) Both of the above.

If you chose number three, congratulations! You are officially entitled to millions upon millions of dollars in bonuses while commanding thousands of employees and billions of dollars in assets!

If you chose either option 1 or 2, you are still entitled to the above, but you'll also be disgraced by receiving a few billion dollars in charity sales of bad mortgages to the federal government.

Try living that one down, you poor sap!

Corporate intelligence: Hydrogenate this!

By this point in the campaign by the nation's sanctimonious (myself included), I think we're all aware of how toxic partially hydrogenated oils are. Semi-solidity at room temperature is not a natural state for most liquids, and does not make for a friendly substance in your body.

However, because it's cheaper than similar natural substances and because it help keep food from turning into a science project* that even the uninitiated can recognize as an unhealthy thing to put in one's body, the country's mom-and-pop food producers pump it into most everything we eat.

This tide has been slowly turning for a few years, as corporations try to respond to what vocal demand there is while still making sure to increase profits enough to not be considered "stagnant" (dun-dun-dunnnnn!).

However, this effect clearly does not extend to product lines aimed at the poor and/or desperate, such as vending machine and convenience store foods or generic store brands. The only exhibit you need is this jar of generic peanut butter we unwillingly purchased, which contains as its third ingredient the elusive Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil:
What's more, they go on to specify in parentheses the vegetables whose oils they are fully hydrogenating, beginning with the startlingly named Rapeseed. Now, if you were trying to convince someone to buy your product versus another, you'd use the happier-named Canola breed. But when you know you've got your target market right where you want them, you have no need for artifice, and you just do the cheaper, easier thing and let them know exactly what you're giving them.

Mmmmm... nothing like some good old hydrogenated rape to keep you going through the afternoon!


* A fact that of course indicates even filthy mold spores can't find much nutrition in these alleged food substances.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 2: AT&T

To follow up on their previous note, AT&T also felt compelled to inform me of the following this month (emphasis mine):

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ONLINE UPDATE
February 16th launched the new redesign of att.com, featuring task based navigation for Explore, Shop, Support, and MyAccount. Notice the vibrant use of orange, approachable tone of voice, and expressive use of photography. A new section called Explore, features and highlights AT&T's latest products, technology, and consumer information.

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They send me these important notes on my paper bill and online. I think maybe a very bitter, underappreciated employee has drunkenly stumbled out of his or her pity party and hijacked the customer notification system. Only after commanding people to openly acknowledge their hard work, which has foolishly been believed to be best when it's least noticeable, will they finally get all the praise and attention they've soldiered on without all these years.

So let's all be sure to mail in our To Whom It May Concern letters showing our appreciation as soon as humanly possible!

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 1: Citibank/AT&T

You know what ridiculous e-mail I got from Citibank the other day? One suggesting I add them to my address book to make sure I never miss an e-mail from them.

I think it goes without saying that if their messages were being filtered out, I would not have received this helpful tip.

That's almost as delightful as this hilarious Important Notice I got in my phone bill recently (emphasis mine):

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THE NEW LOOK OF AT&T
Over the last several months, we've transformed the AT&T brand to reflect our commitment to our on-the-go customers. As more customers seek to stay connected at home and on the road, we're borrowing from our mobility group and including more orange throughout our communications. In the next two months, you'll see more AT&T orange on your bills. Why? We're in the business of keeping you connected, and we want you to know it.

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Thank god they let me know!! What would I have thought when I got my bill if I hadn't been forewarned?!?