Aaron Hoos

Is she a cowgirl? Is she Amish? Did she lose a bet?

I see the reference to “one Texas man” so maybe we’re supposed to think of Texas. But I don’t. I just think that hat looks ridiculously out of place in this ad.

(In the interest of full disclosure: The ad sends people to Carla Pasternak’s Dividend Opportunity report. I am not familiar with her product and this link to her sales page is not an affiliate link)

Leno/O’Brien. It has dominated the news for a couple weeks now and I confess that, even though I’m more of a Letterman-viewer myself (on the odd occasion when I watch TV), I’ve been drawn to the debate and have even tuned in to see Leno or O’Brien and to watch how they are dealing with (and joking about) the situation.

Today, Conan O’Brien cashes out of NBC with a $45 million dollar deal-breaking payout. Leno moves back to “his” spot. And now there’s a big gaping “Leno hole” at 10.

For a brief period, ratings will spike as people watch to see what happens (I’m tuning in and I barely care). Then ratings will decline, probably close to the levels where Jay left them when he moved to his primetime spot. Maybe slightly lower.

For some, it will be business as usual:

• Letterman will make some wiseass comments to get a laugh but then continue chugging along. There’s no win (he won’t gain more viewers from this) but no loss, either.
• The advertisers will get a slight spike in attention for the few weeks that we’re all tuning in but then it will go back to business as usual for them. Meh.

And some come out as clear losers:

• Conan gets $45 million but will be remembered as the guy who got ousted from the Tonight Show for tanked ratings (whether or not those were his fault). Actually, since it’s been reported that he shared some of his money out of his own pocket with his staff, he might actually be positioned as benevolent in spite of the circumstances.
• Leno gets his old job back but will be perceived as petty and vindictive (even if it wasn’t him that initiated the change and he’s doing his best to make it appear that way).

In both cases, this will appear as a “you might remember” factor on every write-up about them in the future.

And, although I’m not in show business, I am in business and work with people all the time on improving communications or using content to solve situations. I would make these recommendations to Jay Leno: Have Conan on your show one day. Soon. Keep it light and fun, make fun of NBC, get seen together smiling. It will be good for BOTH parties. Or, they need to both go to Haiti at the same time and work together. I’m not kidding. That will kill any future story of animosity (and help the people of Haiti while also refocusing the spotlight where it should be).

But NBC is screwed

There is no way that NBC can come out of this unscathed. They’ll make some money on the advertising spike, but that’s about it. They’ll seem foolish for initiating the whole debacle by moving Leno from a place where he was very good to primetime timeslot. They’ll seem like they are jumping the gun a little for reacting to Leno’s and O’Brien’s ratings only 4 months into the shows. They’ll seem cold-hearted for removing O’Brien. And they’ll seem like they don’t know what they are doing by putting Leno back to where he shone. And, they’ll seem foolish for spending millions and millions of dollars to pay off Conan O’Brien and to fill what I’ve dubbed “The Leno hole” — that primetime spot that will now be filled by Law & Order re-runs. Oh, and when Conan gets a new job, NBC will be the butt of nearly every joke (in the same way that GE is for Letterman).

Ultimately, it is going to cost them. A lot. Bad PR, millions in “fix-it” money, and an erosion of viewership. They are almost exactly where they were several months ago, just $45 million lighter (and potentially way more than that if they decide to spend good money on filling the 10pm Leno hole).

This is a classic case of corporate blundering in an attempt to fix a previous error. And they are either going to try to spin it (bad idea) or ride it out without saying anything and hope for the best (a slightly less bad idea).

UPDATE: I just found an article that gives some support to some of the dollar figures I referenced in my blog: $45 million paid to Conan and over $300 million expected to be spent on new shows to fill “the Leno hole”.

Admit it: You love the ShamWOW! guy. Everybody does!

You loved him in the ShamWOW commercial; you loved him in the Slap Chop commercial…

But now it’s 2010 and Vince needs a new commercial!

Here are the top 10 products I’d like to see him pitching this year:

10. The Snuggie.
It’s the blanket with arms that makes you look like a background character in a Harry Potter movie. The low-rent actors in the current Snuggie commercial do a terrible job of showing how bad things are for people who don’t have one. (Acting style: Shake head in frustration while trying to cover feet and arms). Vince could do so much better.

9. Magic Bullet.
The people in these commercials make everything with their Magic Bullet. And they look like they’re having a great time, too! Vince should see right away that this is clearly a step up from the Slap Chop. The Slap Chop required so little effort to chop. But the Magic Bullet. Damn. All you need to do is smile and blend and you have a four course meal.

8. A martini set.
Vince seems like a smart guy but when he lists stuff you can put cheese on (at 2:29 of the Slap Chop video) he gets carried away with the rhyming scheme: “Tacos, fettuccine, linguine, martini, bikini”. If Vince invited me over to his house for martinis, it would be pretty weird to begin with but if he were to then add cheese to my martini, I’d have to leave. So, a martini set, sans cheese grater, might be the next thing he should sell… if only to appease the Bartender’s Union. (“Everyone’s ordering cheese in their martinis because of that jerk Vince!”)

7. Anything German.
Vince loves stuff made by the Germans. (Or, at least he says so 24 seconds into the ShamWOW commercial). That means the market is wide open for Vince’s next project: He could sell Volkswagens, a pretzel franchise, knackwurst, Beck’s beer, or lederhosen.

6. Tom Vu’s real estate course.
Remember Tom Vu? He’s the Vietnamese busboy who turned into a gazillionaire and sold real estate seminars during late night infomercials. Vince could breathe some new life back into that pitch! I’m thinking of something like: “It’s Vince here, for Tom Vu’s real estate course. You’ll be saying ‘WOW!’ when you see how rich this guy gets.” Incidentally, there were a lot of bikinis in Tom Vu’s commercials, so Vince might have a use for that cheese grater after all.

5. Anything Ron Popeil has invented.
Ron Popeil has invented just about anything that could ever be invented: Chop-O-Matic, Dial-O-Matic, hair in a can, a smokeless ashtray. The commercials I remember most were for his Solid Flavor Injector, which was basically a syringe that let you jam garlic into a roast. It came with a rotisserie grill and Popeil’s line was “set it and forget it”. Combine that with Vince’s mafia-like “fuhgeddaboutit” and you’ve got a potential hit: “set it and fuhgeddaboutit”.

4. The Tiger Woods “Above Par” Cake Decorating Set.
Tiger needs a new career, fast. I just made up the product’s brand name and arbitrarily chose cake decorating as an opportunity for Tiger to invent something dramatic. Vince and Tiger could pitch it together; I really think I’m onto something there. For Tiger’s sake, we might need to get this one going ASAP.

3. HeadOn (apply directly to the forehead).
The marketing people at HeadOn (apply directly to the forehead) need to change up their marketing technique. Vince is the person to do it. “It’s Vince here, for HeadOn, the product you apply directly to your forehead. You’ll be saying ‘WOW!’ every time you apply HeadOn directly to your forehead”. If you ask me, Vince’s very presence in the commercial will eclipse the questionable medicinal value of an external headache remedy.

2. Whatever Billy Mays was selling.
Billy Mays (RIP) was one of several celebrities who died this year. With all due respect to the deceased, he was one of the hardest working celebrities and definitely the loudest. He made a significant career out of pitching products and now those products need another dynamic character. C’mon Vince, OxyClean needs you!

1. Bacon.
Bacon is great. Everyone loves it but no one needs it (kind of like the ShamWOW and the Slap Chop). I can hear Vince right now: “Hey, it’s Vince here, and we’re talking about bacon. You’ll be saying ‘WOW’ whenever you fry up this piece of fat. Not sure what to have it with? fuhgeddaboutit. You can put it on tacos, fettuccine, linguine, martini, bikini. Germans eat bacon, too, so you know it’s good. Hey, are you getting this, camera guy?”
[Photo credit: Dan4th]

It’s rare that I use the Yellow Pages® at all, but today I needed to use them twice. It’s interesting to note that the difference in my own state of mind between these two circumstances dictated what content I was looking for in each ad.

The first time I was in the Yellow Pages® today, I was looking for a coin dealer who might buy back some of the British pounds I still have from my vacation (because the currency exchange place took my bills but not the coins).

My state of mind while looking for coin dealers in the phone book was pretty relaxed. It’s not a huge priority, I just want to find a dealer who will be conveniently located and who deals in the currency I have (because some places only deal in gold or collector’s coins). Consider what my “buying factors” were at this point: Convenience and scope (of coin acceptance).

The second time I needed the Yellow Pages® today was after I received a frantic call from my wife that the keys were locked in our running car, which was parked in the fire lane at the mall (where she had jumped out to mail letters). I didn’t think that I could get to her in a reasonable amount of time so I opened the phone book for a locksmith.

My state of mind was way different! My wife was upset and the car was running and in a ticketable location. I ended up weighing a whole different set of “buying factors” that ultimately boiled down to whether it was going to be easier / faster / cheaper for me to solve the problem or for a locksmith to do so. The content I was looking for in the locksmith ad was: A phone number, a price, and a speed-of-service estimate.

The locksmith I chose had an ad that rose above the rest because it clearly addressed my three buying factors. The ad’s content included: “24 hour lock out service”, a big, bold phone number, an indication of what areas of the city they served, and they even listed their emergency lockout price right in the ad. They addressed the buying parameters that were based on my state of mind and I hired them.

Interesting personal observation
I was surprised at just how big of a buying factor the published price was for me. I never realized it until I was making my decision. The reason is: It quickly indicated to me before the call what the value of calling that locksmith was, and helped me to determine that it cost less to call them than for me to stop working and go myself. Seeing the price made a difference for another reason, too: It mattered to me that they published the price so that when I called, I knew what the price was and some salesperson wasn’t trying to see how much they could get out of me in my emergency. (“Your wife is stuck in the fire lane AND your car is running? Well, Mr. Hoos, let me just get out my calculator here…”)

Remember your customer’s state of mind
Businesses creating Yellow Pages® ads should consider the state of mind of the customers who are calling them. Most businesses obviously include the basic information needed by the majority of their customers… but smart businesses know that customers are calling in different states of mind — “just curious” or “dire emergency” or something like that — and they can increase sales with appropriate content.

This ad, and all the other ones just like it, drive me crazy. They perpetuate a myth that entrepreneurship is easy and that your computer is some kind of ATM. Ask any successful entrepreneur and they will tell you that owning a business is hard work. Not slavishly hard, but you certainly earn your success.

I guess this is just an updated version of those “work at home stuffing envelope” classified ads from pre-web days.