I want to be a Marketer?
Recently, I graduated from college. Before you flood me with golf claps, let me inform you that I have been in and out of higher education for over 16 years. Matter-of-fact the above picture is my graduation announcement - to emphasize my point. Anywhoo, my sad desperation to make up lost time has become palpable. Nay, it has become an absolute driving force in my life. Maybe it is an early mid-life crisis, I may never know. Maybe the fact the schooling is free - nah, that can not be it. Regardless of why, I have started my MBA. This has lead me to attend a marketing class, the first in my long, illustrious student career.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed it and learned a lot. One thing the professor emphasized was the cost of a marketing campaign. I built my theoretical one around The Lunch Game, the best Facebook application ever. As far as I was concerned this innovation, handed down to my friends by the grace of Zeus himself, could be pimped successfully with whatever I could dig out of my car seats. But alas, my arm was twisted behind my back to force me to spend hundreds of thousands of hard-earned yet simulated cash.
So I can relate when I see the Pepsi logo redesign madness - and the cost. But let me assure you that rolling out a new branding for a huge corporation is nothing to be taken lightly - so if the logo is a worthwhile expression of the corporate identity then…
Wait…that’s it? Jeezus. Hundreds of millions of dollars for that? Holy crap. Maybe the entire campaign will make sense if you see the marketing video presentation:
Find more videos like this on AdGabber
Or maybe not. Apparently, the economy is going to hell in a handbasket but bloated, overkill marketing screwjobs are still alive and well.
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Speaking of economical hell, I can not express strongly enough how surreal it is reading business rags in this day and age. It’s a lot like reading christian magazines if the apocalypse was dragging out for months and months. I imagine article titles would include “Why That Handjob in the Back of your Dad’s Pontiac in ‘87 is Coming Back to Haunt You” and “Pitchfork Proof and Loving It - The Fourteen Homeless that Knew”. I came across yet another article about how General Mills is saving bundles by “optimizing” their Hamburger Helper products. Specifically, they are minimizing the number of pasta shapes. I know I have expressed in the past my distaste in these particular foodstuffs, and the fact it still sells billions sickens me. “You are killing yourselves and your kids” might not be a strong enough argument. In this day and age of watching your budget, I am trying another approach: the actual frugality of the ghastly boxes of salty doom. Check out my math (all prices from Albertson’s online as I write this):
Box of Hamburger Helper = $2.99
1 pound of ground beef, being conservative = 2.99
2 cups of milk = 1 gallon/8 = 3.99/8 = .50
Total cost = $6.48/2 servings = $3.24 per person
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Now compare this to something way more tasty, way more convenient, and with probably a lot less sodium and fat:
Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna with Meat Sauce family size = $8.99/3 servings = $2.99 per person
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You may wonder why those serving numbers don’t match the boxes. Well, if those boxes had asses, you know they would be flat-out lying out of them. In the history of Hamburger Helper, a box has never been split between more than two hungry people over the age of four. Also, Stouffer’s goes down pretty easy - especially if it has had time to coagulate in the refrigerator, then brough to luke-warm before devouring. In conclusion, I’m pretty sure if the apocalypse does come, it will commence with a Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff hailstorm.
Join today its almost as cheap as bacon.
Two Grumpy old men but funny as hell
Trick or Treat?
What would happen when you dress up a dummy and set it on peoples’ front porch? Well these two videos pretty much sum it all up for us.
The best part of this one comes at around 2:10.
If you like us and you know it….
CLICK OUR AD! (its over on the right).
OOOOOH If you like us and you know it…
TELL A FRIEND ABOUT US GOD DAMNIT.
If you like us and you know it…
CLICK AN AD ALREADY FOR PETE SAKE.
If you like us and you know it…
I don’t drink enough. Good night.
Hybrid Nonsense
Don’t get me wrong, I am a dog lover. I was raised around dogs, because, well, my parents raised them. We had Great Danes when I was a kid - I considered them an over sized dog or an under sized horse. Either way they were neat. The general theories on dogs is that Pure Breds are expensive because they are “pure of blood”, aka they only have their original bloodline in them. Tragically this typically makes for serious inbreeding - resulting in weak stock. Mutts on the other hand were dogs as nature intended - two horny dogs get together and viola! Puppies! Hardy, loads of em, and Cheap!
Now America is on the leading edge of the Hybrid Dog thing. Basically it is the controlled method of making Mutts. I can’t make this shit up. Jack Russel got ripped a new one for “creating” the Jack Russel Terrier, which has recently been renamed the Parson Russel Terrier so that the AFKFCDOGHUMPERS, or whoever the hell they are, would recognize them as an actual breed. Think that through. This dude Jack Russel and his cohort Parson Whiner bred the crap out of some dogs to get a new hybrid dog, which they called a pure breed and now force Jack Russel owners to breed them only with other Parson Russel Terriers. Confusing to say the least. Did I fail to mention I have one? Manic, napoleanic, little man syndrome angry sonofabitch. Love that little guy.
Nope we Americans couldn’t stop there. We chastised the hell out of Jack Russel. Then someone realized that if you made “hybrids” you could give them snazzy names and charge loads of money. Some of these new Hybrids are costing upwards around $2k! So what sort of names? My favorite is this little diddy: Cocker Spaniel x English Cocker Spaniel = Colonial Cocker Spaniel. Could we get an sillier?
I am of the love at you!
I have this bit on here where I show the Daily Spam - basic gist being I post a cool Spam email that I received and comment on. Today I received a spam email that pointed to a Russian Bride website. I have to admit I was intrigued for the very simple reason that this entire situation is odd to me. What confounds me just a bit is these women, and let me assure you there are hundreds if not thousands on there, are willing to put themselves on the Internet with full color pictures of them wearing almost nothing in some cases for the hope that they can draw the interest of an American or European “buyer”.
This entire thing may be confusing to you so let me explain. My friend Zhazoo used to have a correspondance with a couple of Russian Brides to be and thus I had the opportunity of reading some of their emails. There are a couple of things that I’d like to point out: 1) The English is terrible and in most instances an online service like babblefish was used to do that actual translation. 2) The desperation in the tonality of the emails was staggering. The ladies in question went very shortly, like 3 email exchanges, from “Hello my name is Svetlana!” (btw their names are sort of slick, but all seem to end with the letter A) to “I am the love of your life. Send me money so that we may of the marry and have of the fatter babies!!”
Apparently the aim here is two fold: 1) Get a guy on the hook and get as much cash out of him as possible - both women asked Zhazoo repeatedly to send them money, which is odd as their photos and the clothing in the photos could not have been cheap. I smell a scam. 2) If it is actually real then their idea of love is the word hello wrapped up in desperation - tragic to me for sure. think about it, apparently Natalaya up there on the left who according to her Profile has a college degree and is arguably one of the hottest women I have ever seen, has it so difficult wherever the hell she lives that she is willing to marry some guy sight unseen.
Mother Russia is awesome.
Why didnt we come up with these?
While reading through my hundreds of RSS feeds I ran across these two rather profound greeting cards. I thought I would share them with you.
Who can be as sarcastic as we are, but have artistic talent to boot and then turn it into greeting cards? The folks over at Someecards.com pure brilliance I tell you. There are hundreds of these cards to send to your friends family members, and enemies.
DOH! another awesome idea that I cant come up with.
Until I have my brilliant Idea I will continue to take over the world one blog post at a time. O and I will be sending someecards.
Thanks is all.
Bible Fun!
I am a huge fan of holy books such as the Bible, Koran and Playboy. Cracked.com did this little bit on some lovely passages in the Bible that tell us of how things used to be. Take a read - the religious experience is breath taking. I would love to sit down with a Bishop and have him explain to me how this was taken entirely out of context. Pay close attention to the “boobies” piece - the vocabulary used there describes a party at the Playboy Mansion perfectly.
Sam Kinison in all of Us.
If you don’t remember Sam Kinison, look here, and here. I bring up Sam because he had this saying that always cracked me up. “I don’t condone the beating of women, I understand it though. I know what turns Mr. Hand into Mr. Fist.” Today I found myself thinking about these people that keep losing it at the work place, coming in with some form of high powered gun, and blowing the crap out of their co-workers.
So I will now say what most humans who have a job have thought at one time or another but know that it is wrong to say in public. “I don’t condone the shooting, slaying, and slaughter of my co-workers, but I do understand the desire to do so.” We generally say its wrong to go on shooting sprees - but take a minute. Stand up out of your chair and look around you at your co-workers and ask yourself WHAT IF, then quickly remind yourself that you are NOT CRAZY, and have no intention of ever doing so, because if you ever really got to that point, do yourself and all your potential victims a favor - go get a different job.