Marketing gone crazy

One of the best examples of marketing fluff is in hair spray. I wanted to use some the other day and I couldn't figure out which of the many bottles in our cabinet would do the trick. Where was the bottle named, 'Hair Spray'. It didn't exist.

"You used the wrong one!" said my wife. What? The wrong one? How should I know? The cans are named "Thermal setting mist", "Seal and Shine", "Sculpting Spray", and on and on. We have like 10 products and they all have the same ingredient list and none of them say "Hair Spray".

What is wrong with the world? Shampoo has the same problem. There are 100 different brands on the shelf and they all have crazy names. If you look at the ingredients they are all essentially the same.

Observation: If you want to find a good marketer, find someone who was successful selling shampoo or hair spray.

Hollywood's hidden agenda

KSL is reporting on a Federal court ruling against film editors. <a
href="http://www.ksl.com/?sid=347823&nid=148">Story Here</a>. I have
stopped watching movies in the theaters and have waited to get the
'edited' version at home because I don't enjoy Hollywood's gratuitous
inclusion of amoral ideas, verbiage, and depictions which, 90% of the
time, have no bearing on the story line.

The edited movie boxes include the original and edited versions side-
by-side and allow the consumer full choice on what to view.

Why should this be illegal? What is the difference between watching a
shortened version of a movie and reading excerpts of a political
speech in the Wall Street Journal? Aren't both just providing options
to consumers? Why aren't speech writers demanding that their work
should be read in entirety?

It seems Hollywood is more interested in debasing us than in
providing entertainment to the largest possible audience.

McNuggets - real food?

Last Saturday I took the kids to lunch. For some reason they like
chicken nuggets. That's good. If they liked real food it would be too
expensive.

I have proof that nuggets can't possibly be real food too. My son,
unbeknownst to me, left four of them in the glove box. The nuggets
sat out in the car in the hot sun for 6 days before I discovered them
and when I opened the glove box, they didn't even stink. What kind of
meat can sit in a car parked out in 95-degree heat for almost a week
and not even slightly stink? I'm convinced. McDonalds must get their
nuggets from DuPont.

Today I feel very bueno

I'm working on my Spanish. I think I'll put labels all over the house
so the kids can learn Spanish too.

Why not?

There is something about 500,000 protesters marching in American
streets under the Mexican flag that makes me think Spanish would be a
great language to learn.

Our immigration problem isn't going to go away. Mexicans are doing
the entry-level work and their hard work will pay off.

In the meantime time it would be nice to at least make sure some mad
bomber isn't coming across with the workers.

Adios.

First post

There is always a first for everything and the first is supposedly the hardest. This is my very first blog entry. Maybe it is so hard because my two youngest daughters are climbing on my head. In any case, I'll start with something simple so there will be a low bar set for the next one.

I work at a company called AtTask, Inc. (http://www.attask.com). We create project management software. I have a family and too little free time.

So why the blog? Why do you care? I can talk out into cyber space if I want to. My expectation here is that I'll have my own little corner of nowhere to post my random thoughts and comments.

Cheers!