marketing at its finest

It’s one of those high-annoyance-factor days here in fluorescent heaven, what with the burgeoning sore throat and the never-ending trickle of niggling little changes and the blah blah whinge whinge, and I find myself needing to make a conscious effort to keep the cranky at bay. Fortunately, there’s a fantastic presentation being made in the conference room five feet from my desk, and as usual they’ve rudely left the door open. I looked up just in time to catch the title page of the PowerPoint. It read:

idiom

Turning Content Management into
GLOBAL CONTENT MANAGEMENT

At first, for some reason, I just found this terribly amusing. I mean, how long of a presentation can one build around the introduction of an adjective? But after spending a few minutes (ok, seconds) perusing their web site, I began to get sort of a Dr. Evil vibe off them: Globalization Management Services? Sounds like something involving an ultimatum and one billion dollars, or perhaps just a giant and glorified version of babelfish. Maybe it’s just me. Oh well.

While I’m on the subject of questionable marketing, I’d like to reopen the topic of utterly bewildering billboards. Two more that I just can’t get my head around:

1. At the corner of Armitage and Ashland, there’s an enormous full color billboard for the local classic rock radio station. It reads, “Now, MORE PETTY!” Lest we mistake this to mean they’ve hired a bunch of passive-aggressive DJs who now bicker on the air, this is printed in one of those retro-psychedelic looking typefaces across a twenty foot tall photo of Tom Petty. So, in this case, it’s not so much that I don’t know what they mean as that I can’t fathom how this is a prime selling point.

2. Somewhere along the Kennedy, on my way out to the office, there’s a Hooters billboard. About two thirds of it is occupied by their logo and the requisite morsel-in-tight-t-shirt, but then next to her there’s this enormous bowl of salad. It’s roughly the same size as her torso. The top of the billboard reads something like, “see inside for details.” This one just has me mystified.