THE HARD SELL, SELL, SELL

(Humorosity #37)

by Honeydew Zubari

I thought I’d pay a visit to the mall yesterday, until I opened the car door and was blown backward by the heat fumes wafting out like a hurricane—only dry and way hotter. The spiffy thermometer in the dash read “tilt,” but I estimate from the baked-potato feel of my face that it was at least a thousand degrees in the car. Boy, did I burn the treads on my sandals getting back into the air conditioning!

Heh heh.

I ask you, what’s with this weather? I also ask you, when did I become a cranky old woman? Summer used to be a “thank goodness it isn’t January” affair, now it’s a groan and stick my flaming head in the freezer time of year.

Since somebody has to be blamed, I choose the penguins. Yeah, they look adorable, the men all hunched-shouldered and sitting on the eggs while the females peek over the glaciers at their sucker husbands before re-joining the margarita party and whooping it up with studly polar bears.

Point? Of course there’s a point. Sheesh. One point could be people get mighty impatient in the heat. (Ahem.)

The point of this article would most likely be how to write an effective ad campaign, unless I think of something better in the next few minutes.

HONEYDEW’S 10 OR SO TIPS TO AN EFFECTIVE AD CAMPAIGN:

1. First, decide the who’s, what’s, etc.’s of your ad. Who is your target audience? Where will you be selling your product/pushing your idea/campaigning for office? And most important, how much money will you be sending me for this free advice that might make you bazillions of dollars?

2. You want your ad to be catchy yet NOT annoying. Note the word “NOT” that’s all in caps? That’s not a typo. We all know those local car dealership commercials on television that involve the owner of the business standing in the middle of his lot and screaming like a lunatic at the camera for the longest thirty or forty seconds of our lives. Multiply that times one dealership every mile down the main boulevard and a few sprinkled in the ‘burbs, and it makes for deafening TV viewing. I’d love to take a hammer to every one of their big yappers. But that’s another story.

Also in this category are the campaign ads that are filling the airways where the oh-so-original runnee decides he/she’ll use his/her child/children to do the talking. Excuse me, who am I voting for here? An adult with ideas on issues that affect my life or a drooling pork pie in diapers that hasn’t learned to speak in two-syllable words yet? And NO (note the “NO” again) print ads with cutesy kids doing cutesy yet unnatural things like hugging puppies that lick their faces or examining their (the kids, not the puppies’) belly buttons. Save it for the greeting cards and pictures that get passed endlessly around the e-mail circuit. Show me a kid sticking a fork in a socket and you’ve got my attention!

3. Colors are important. Nothing works like, say, turquoise and orange…for making a person’s brain melt. NO clashing combinations or you deserve to have your house painted Pepto-Bismol pink and snot green.

Do a visual survey of the area you’ll be putting up your poster. Is it dingy? Then go for yellow. If the area is already littered with posters, you know what Smokey Bear says about litter. Or was it that dog in a trench coat? Wait, maybe I hallucinated him when they gave me an overdose of benadryl in the emergency room after I ate the clam bisque.

Anyhow, we’re supposed to throw away litter. Bye-bye trashy posters! Now there’s plenty of room for your nicely understated blue or green ones.

10 . Okay, so this is running long and I’m hungry and there’s a doughnut calling my name. Let’s talk brochures. Those bi-folded, complete-with-photos wonders that people so often overlook as an advertising option. These are great because they can be mass-produced by your local Kinko’s for a modest four-figure sum. Then you and everyone you can bribe or threaten get to spend quality time folding the things and distributing them throughout your neighborhood by cramming them into mailboxes, screen doors or under windshield wipers of cars. This is an efficient way to create lots of trash where once there existed only green grass and flowerbeds. If you make the mistake of putting your address on the pamphets, expect many of them among larger things like bricks to come a’knocking at your doors and windows. But any publicity is good, right? Isn’t that how the cliché goes?

In summation, watch less television—the ads will drive you bonkers.

Happy dog days! Arf arf.