Honest steakhouse

Walking through the West Side after dark, I was charmed to see this sign for the HONEST STEAKHOUSE, est. 1868. I imagined how this place must have built its reputation on giving fair weight for its beef, and not watering the whiskey. It was good to think that honesty was a brand that had served this restaurant well for over a century.

It was only when I got closer that I noticed that sign actually read HOMEST STEAKHOUSE, and that this was because the last three neon letters of HOMESTYLE had burned out. Which, I suppose, is another illustration of the idea that you only see what you are prepared to see. 

The Obama gift shop

Is it just me, or is there something a bit tone-deaf about the products on sale at the Obama campaign’s online shop?

Along with the Obama golf balls, there are Obama golf towels and divot replacement tools. There are Obama grilling aprons and spatulas for the barbecue, and tumblers and martini glasses for the party at the country club.

Martini glasses? Really?

On the other hand, I like the in-your-face Made in America mug and the Cats for Obama cat collar. If Dudley were willing to tolerate a collar (he’s not), we might consider it. 

Life lessons from The Men Who Stare at Goats

On my birthday a couple of years ago, Jenn and I went out to see The Men Who Stare at Goats, which had just come out. Now that movies are $13 a pop, we see a lot more of them on DVD than in the theater, but I was taken by the title of this one, and the tagline: “No Goats. No Glory.”

The movie is pretty loopy, but it contains some grains of genuine wisdom. Here’s Lyn Cassady, the US Army psyops officer played by George Clooney:

“Bob, have you ever heard of optimum trajectory? Your life is like a river and if you are aiming for a goal that is not your destiny, you will always be swimming against the current. Young guy who wants to be a stock car driver—it’s not going to happen. Little Anne Frank wants to be a high school teacher—tough titty, Anne, it’s not your destiny. But you will go on to move the hearts and minds of millions. Find out what your destiny is and the river will carry you.”

There’s a lot of truth in that. Euell Gibbons wanted to be a novelist, but his book was gradually taken over by detailed accounts of wild foods and how to prepare them. Before long he had written Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Alexander Graham Bell thought the telephone would be used mainly to listen to music (and there is a wonderful description in Proust of the narrator listening to an opera on the new device). Avon’s Skin So Soft was intended to, well, make your skin soft, but someone discovered that it also made an excellent insect repellent. Rather than bury that fact, Avon started running commercials promoting it for that use.

Letting the river carry you is just another way of saying: Listen to the customer. Promote the uses and the benefits that are important to the customer, not to you. Because when it comes to the customer and her problems, she is smarter than you are.

Giant heads in the clouds

Marketing is a craft, not an art. One proof is that you don’t always have to be creative or original. In fact, that can even be detrimental.

Why? Because marketing is all about getting results, and marketing professionals have been testing different methods for getting results for generations. Can you do better than they do based on the idea you had in the shower this morning? Well, maybe, but the odds are against it.

If you’re a movie studio that has just spent tens of millions of dollars on a movie, you really want results—and posters are one of your most important ways of doing that. So it’s not surprising that studios have fallen back on a variety of tried and true formats. (This one has been dubbed “Tiny People on the Beach, Giant Heads in the Clouds.")

What can we learn from this? We could conclude that the more money is involved in a project, the more formulaic it is likely to be. But on the positive side, we might note that these formulaic movie posters actually do a good job of conveying what the movie will be like. And at least for me, seeing these dozens of posters grouped by category makes me realize that I have a high tolerance for formula. On some level I’m aware that I’ve seen this format dozens of times before, yet I still find myself wanting to see some of these movies.

Visit sunny Colombia!

This one is puzzling. American Airlines is promoting flights to Colombia.

The photo is inviting, to be sure—it makes this corner of Colombia look a little like Florence transplanted to the seashore. Still, is Colombia really a hot new vacation destination? American Airlines seems to think so: Bogota is one of only a handful of cities mentioned by name on their Travel Deals page, along with Montego Bay and Steamboat Springs.

Lonely Planet, the go-to guide for adventurous travelers, sends a mixed message. Their country summary begins on an upbeat note.

Colombia’s back. After decades of civil conflict, Colombia is now safe to visit and travelers are discovering what they’ve been missing. The diversity of the country may astonish you.

Here’s the second to last paragraph:

In darker days people used to say, ‘if only it weren’t for the violence and drugs, Colombia would be paradise.’ Well the drugs may still be here but the violence is gone, at least for now, and it is, indeed, paradise.

But in the very last paragraph, there’s this.

Travel Alert: Travelers should exercise vigilance at all times due to the level of violent crime. Although kidnapping and homicide rates in urban areas have dropped in recent years, they remain high.

Hmmm.

I’ll assume that American Airlines is not trying to drum up business among drug lords. Then what’s going on? Maybe they’re appealing to the Lonely Planet crowd (though backpackers are not a very lucrative market). Maybe the Colombia poster is meant to signal that they’re an international airline, not just “American.” I’m not sure.