...three months later at jcpenney

Why yes, I am writing a post about not writing posts.  It's like a post within a post.  [insert too easy inception joke].

So what's with the lack of posting?  We moved to suburbia at summertime, and frankly writing a blog post while enjoying the beautiful park right out our front door is harder than it sounds.

So what did we miss?  Nothing of terrible importance - although remember how I posted about jcpenney's new strategy and how cool I thought it was?  Turns out no one else thought it was cool after they lost $30 million.  The stock price tells the story (with a little help from me):

So here's my take: duh jcp is going to lose money.  It is a dinosaur of a company (huge and old) and a change this size is going to cause some growing pains.  Now I don't know if jcp will succeed or fail in the end, but my point is that it is far too early to tell.  Let's give them longer than 3 months to turn things around.  In fact, if I was a stock buying man I might buy some jcp right now.

And to a larger even more boring point, this is the danger of a publicly traded company.  When the public owns your company, they demand immediate returns ALWAYS.  It makes it difficult to invest in long term success when all you hear from shareholders is "we want money now!"

And to an even more large and more boring (and the final - I promise - expansion of this discussion), maybe that is what is wrong with our "government" and our economy.  We, the people, demand immediate gratifcation.  "Fix our debt" we scream, "but don't you dare take away our programs or tax us more," we scream louder.

That is all.

old spice believes in it's smellf

Old Spice has had some pretty terrible commercials (like anything with Terry Crews - his first and last name are separate links to stupid commercials... not bad eh?), and I have just let them all slip away into their stupid graves built out of stupidness.  That is, until now.  This commercial actual got a legitimate chuckle out of me, although it is no "I'm on a horse".



I, too, believe in my smellf. Do smyou?

how to make a store better? another store.

Target announced recently that they are going to be bringing in a bunch of little shops inside the Target store.  If they (or should I say we) can't win you over with Target, we'll win you over with "polkadogbakery" or "privet house".  Their tagline is, "The shops we stumbled upon and couldn't help but fall in love with".

Here's a little video about it.


Target's not the only brand to jump on the store inside a store, in jcp's big strategy announcement they included a little snippet about a "main street of shops" to showcase their best stuff.

If you like this, wait until they put even smaller stores inside these stores - your money will practically spend itself.  Kristy (my wifey) said it's the inception of shopping.

awesome dancing makes me want to buy

I am a huge sucker for dance, especially street dance like hip-hop, break dancing, and dubstep (my new favorite).  The adrenaline that the audience can get from seeing this kind of dance makes it a prime candidate for marketing messages.

I chose a few of my favorite to show you whazup.

This one's a bit long, but to get the idea go to :35 and watch for 30 seconds and then skip to the last 10 for the brand message.


This is one of the first I remember seeing, featuring break dancing.  Also, a funny line at the end.


Also there this "popping and locking" spot from IKEA.  If you watch So You Think You Can Dance, you'll recognize these people.

I almost cried, guys.

This masterpiece from the P&G for the 2012 Olympics is a tear jerker for sure.  P&G's tribute to moms.  All of us have one, most of us love ours, and those of us with kids know too well the endless service a mom is asked to give.

The whole point of advertising is to arouse some emotion and tie it to a product or idea to motivate behavior, something that this spot does exceptionally well.  I also love when an advertisement shows what power a non-suggestive, non-violent, non-sexual ad can have.

A part of me feels manipulated, though.  I feel a little like the big bad muli-million $ firm is tricking me into feeling something.  Oh well, P&G, you win; I felt something and I think I like you more because of it.

one of these things...

So this commercial is kind of cool.  Nothing overwhelmingly inspiring from Honda, but take a close look at the family in the car.  I can't help but sing, "one of these things is not like the other" in my head.  And if you are still scratching your head, it is the little dark-skinned boy in a car full of very pale parents and kids.

Here's a screenshot, the video is below.

The full commercial:

you smell bad. now read my blog.

I guess I'm on a viral-videos-from-brands kick (can that even be a thing?) what with my post about TNTs drama stunt and Nintendo's mockery.

Here is a stunt from Tic Tac to make people feel bad.  They are basically saying, "You smell bad.  Now buy Tic Tacs". I don't know if that is the best strategy... but I guess that's just the point, I don't know.  I think I'll try it out by making it my blog title.