If that headline doesn’t win an award for best SEO-optimization, I don’t know what would? The only thing missing is Kardashian and “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.”
Anyway, one of the reasons I hadn’t been blogging much is, as stated last time, bandwidth issues. When I took on the new job, I didn’t give up writing the column at work, so, well, it’s sad really. I remember back in the day when James Lileks wrote a daily 6-katrillion word piece for his own blog, did some sort of radio stuff, wrote a column for work and more (actually, I’m pretty sure he still does it). Here I am bitching about getting a column out every other week. In my defense, I totally kick ass at going to meetings, though.
Anyhoo. So the column. What have I been writing about? This week I wrote about the Super Bowl, as one would expect. But I did not do the ad review this year. No, I just wrote about surviving your $4.8 million hangover if you were a marketing executive who bought an ad in the game and, perhaps, it didn’t go so well. Also: PuppyMonkeyBaby.
I wrote about Coke’s new marketing as well, but that might be a little TOO focused on marketing for anyone outside the industry to get into it.
One of my favorite ones of recent vintage was when I piled on Hasbro and others for leaving Rey out of the toy lineup for their Star Wars merchandise. “Blah blah blah, we couldn’t be sure … logistical something … blah blah blah.” SHE’S THE HERO OF THE MOVIE, YOU IJITS!
I even took some time out of my busy schedule to write about Donald Trump and his political campaign, such as it is. This was well before Iowa. And, as you can imagine, I got an earful from his supporters for daring to suggest that his marketing efforts, while great for him, aren’t replicable for anyone else, much less real companies that have to sell actual things to actual people. (Try to imagine Coke or Procter & Gamble, straight-up calling people smelly ugly losers … rather than just implying you could be one if you don’t use their products.)
So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to.
Oh. And Happy Mardi Gras.
KEN WHEATON 