Potent Quotables
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Throwin' the Stone a Bone

Call it a blessing in disguise, but lots of annual work Christmas parties won't be taking place this year due to budget crunches. Even companies with goodtime reputations are feeling enough of a pinch to suspend the holiday glee. Take Wenner Media's Rolling Stone Magazine. A 12/4 Wall Street Journal feature (Recession Takes a Bite Out of Advertising, Transforming a Reeling Magazine Business, by Matthew Rose) focuses on the pop music mag's mad rush to fill ad space in its upcoming "People of the Year" double-issue.

Publisher Rob Gregory has been running around like a little red rooster with its head lopped off to woo advertisers to buy pages in the issue. Besides kowtowing to potential sponsors by taking clients to dinners and concerts, Rolling Stone execs have personally presented breakfast to Sony Corp. to thank the firm for its business. That's not all. Gregory sent his "top music critic, Joe Levy" to attend a Northwestern University panel sponsored by Ford Focus to smooch a little Ford fanny. Even editorial is making preemptive strikes. The magazine recently "changed a sarcastic reference about Circuit City Stores, which is an important advertiser, to Radio Shack, which isn't" without being asked.

It's no wonder that the sycophancy got seasonal when Gregory considered allowing a company to sponsor Wenner Media's Christmas shindig. One way to entice Intel Corp. into advertising would be to "hand out Intel-driven MP3 players to celebrities at the party." Then it hit him. "Is that tacky to do that at the holiday party, to commercialize it?" pondered Gregory. Ya know, he's got a point. What could be more inappropriate than to cheapen and commercialize an overly-hyped industry party teeming with lip-synching, teenage floozies, primped starlets announcing who designed their gaudy get-ups and angst-ridden rock 'n' rollers with personal accountants?

Tattooed Cub Boys
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America's Permanent Pastime

Remember the pog craze of the mid '90s? Kids were collecting and trading the coin-sized cardboard discs like older generations would marbles or scratch 'n' sniff stickers (gasoline and freshly cut grass were my faves). Around that time, a band called Rocket From the Crypt (RFTC) got in on the act by releasing a 7" single accompanied by four pogs featuring old-cartoon style illustrations. One had a picture of a mouse flying a spaceship. It must have made quite an impression on me, because from the moment I saw it, I knew I needed to have that mouse permanently flying that spaceship across my shoulder. "Whenever I move my arm, it'll look really cool - like he's lifting off," I thought. Great.

So, I got the tattoo. There's an ironic twist though. Later on I learned that anyone sporting an RFTC tattoo can get into the band's shows for free. (Most people opt for the rocket image that's become the band's logo.) So, here I was, the only idiot who actually chose to get an RFTC-related tattoo strictly because I liked the image. To tell you the truth, I never even dug the band that much. Well, at least most people with Rocket From the Crypt tats are actual fans.

We can certainly assume that Daytona Cubs fans with pictures of the team mascot etched onto their flesh also have some loyalty to the team. Either that, or they just really like polar bears in sunglasses. The main driving factor, however, seems to be the lifetime season passes offered by the Cubs in exchange for proof of tat.

As featured in a 12/5 broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered, any ol' Cubs tattoo won't do. It must be the four-color image of Cubby, the Florida team's polar bear mascot. Hmmm…either the team originated way up North and was moved to Daytona, or the folks in Florida become confused by more than just election ballots.

If you wanna be like the first official Cub skin scout, Pat Drosten (Check out her new ink), don't even think about getting your old cellmate to do the tattoo; it's gotta be done at one place and one place only: "Willy's Tropical Tattoo." Word has it that they're marking down the usual price of the Cubs skin mark from $300 to $100. It's still good business for Willy's, though. You see, not only will certified Cubs tattoos promote the team, they'll promote the tattoo industry. In fact, according to a Cubs press release, May 23rd is "Tattoo Night at the Ballpark" when attendees "will receive rub-off tattoos and a display promoting the tattoo industry will be set up on the concourse."

Man, they're really maintaining that wholesome family environment we've come to expect from a night at the ballpark. But why stop there? Why not hire the Kissing Bandit to distribute condoms or get the Chicken to do free tongue piercings, too?

Chalk the marketing move up to the team's General Manager, Buck Rogers; he's only trying to move baseball into the 25th century. According to the All Things Considered interview with Rogers, a lifetime season pass requires a receipt from Willy's, tattoo inspection and photo. Rogers doesn't care where fans choose to place the image; he figures even if they won't show it to people, they'll talk about it.

"Our scope on this is you're doing free advertising," concludes Rogers. "You're out there; you're a walking billboard for us."

Most self-respecting individuals will have a negative, knee-jerk reaction to the tattoo promo. Is free entry to a bunch of baseball games worth the permanent alteration of one's body? And what of the walking billboard factor? That's pretty distressing, too. Then again, rabid sports fans gladly pay to display their favorite team's logos with pride on their apparel, beer mugs, car bumpers, key chains…you name it. Hey, I promote my favorite bands, record labels or cartoon characters through my T-shirt collection, so I guess that makes me something of a walking billboard.

There's a greater question looming here: is there a difference between donning a Buffalo Sabres jersey or getting a Taz tattoo and promoting a corporation by wearing a Coca-Cola T-shirt or Nike swoosh cap? To me, the difference lies in the nature of what's being promoted. Sports team logos, rock band images and cartoon characters reflect particular cultures, events, creations and attitudes that lend themselves to the fan embrace. Although every corporate brand manager on the planet would like to think that his logo can evoke the same spirited feelings, I'd like to think it can't. The average corporate brand logo, be it AT&T, VW or Budweiser, may invoke feelings, but they're typically marketing-induced and inspired by contrived culture and the façade of personal involvement, as opposed to real-life experience. And don't expect anybody to remain loyal to Jif peanut butter if Skippy is cheaper or found to taste better. As any die-hard sports or music fan can attest, the quality/cost barometer doesn't necessarily apply to beloved teams or songwriters.

Still, if I could convince Maker's Mark to award me with a lifetime supply of bourbon in exchange for a Maker's Mark mark, I might change my mind.

Buy One Get Baited
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What do Housewives and Warhol Have in Common?

Every house has staple foods, things that are always in stock. For some, it's pretzels and beer. For others, it's sardines and peanut butter. When I was growing up, there were a few things I could always count on being in mom's kitchen: ice cream, pasta and at least one kind of Campbell's soup. I always loved Tomato. Although nowadays, the thought of eating anything that's supposed to be m'm! m'm! good! for me, yet contains corn syrup as a main ingredient, is less than appealing.

Why Campbell's? Well, for one thing, Campbell's soup can labels were a form of currency when I was a kid. Inside cupboards and drawers, those red and white labels would get tucked away, one by one. And every once in awhile I was sent to school with a stack of 'em. My mission: to give them to the teacher. "What the heck does she do, wallpaper her house with these?" I wondered. It turns out it was all part of a socially-responsible marketing campaign; the more labels moms hoarded, the more money or educational equipment Campbell's would give to their kids' schools. Imagine that: Campbell's creating incentives for folks to buy more soup.

School promos like this go on all the time, but some argue that they're just not worth it. As featured in a 6/12 report on The Register, "consumer rag" Which? claims that "school-targeted shopping promotion schemes don't provide particularly good value to participating schools."

The story refers to campaigns like the one launched by UK retailer, Tesco. The company gives vouchers in exchange for grocery sales; once a certain amount of vouchers is collected, they can be swapped for computer equipment. The more food purchased, the more vouchers received.

Evidently, Which? isn't too keen on the idea, arguing that "for a primary school to obtain one free entry-level PC plus printer and digital camera it would need 232 kids to collect 90 tokens each over a ten-week period. To get the tokens, their parents would together have to spend £208,800 on groceries."

Walkers Crisps and News International also are in on the act, coaxing shoppers to buy crisps (a.k.a. potato chips) and newspapers which can be used towards HarperCollins books. "For instance," notes The Register, "seven weeks of dedicated Sun reading will earn kids a £4 book." Most books published by the company cost about five times more.

All I can think of is those poor, deluded souls, always scrounging around for the coupons that come with cigarette packs, thinking, "only 722 more packs and that Marlboro Racing Team trailer hitch is all mine. Maybe I should graduate to smoking two packs a day."

But are they really being duped? And what about the parents who remain loyal to certain grocery stores or brands in an effort to support their children's education? Are they being fooled, too? I don't think so. The argument that £208,800 is too much to spend for a PC and digital camera doesn't hold water. That money also bought £208,800 worth of groceries, didn't it? Sure, in the scheme of things, the awards may seem chintzy, but they're only there as an extra incentive to shop. If the main reasons to buy groceries from a specific store (location, service, quality), or to buy them at all (hunger, cravings, food supply running low), no longer existed, even a more impressive giveaway wouldn't attract people to shop for food when all they really want is a computer.

Then again, people willingly exchange cash for worthless lottery tickets everyday in failed attempts to get more of the money they just gave away, so go figure.