The Ice Man Cometh - To A Party Near You

I have written before about my admiration for the skills of the advertiser, so when I discovered I had a relative in what must be one of marketings biggest challenges, I just had to go and investigate.

The relative in question sells ice: party ice; he sells ice for a firm that well, makes it. Apparently there are only three leading brands of ice in Europe and his firm makes all of them - which in turn raises its own questions but let's not get distracted.

I was initially aghast to discover that such a product even exists, until I was put in my place by our Australian relative who said that any self respecting Antipodean would not be seen dead without their cool box packed almost to the brim with party ice into which are plunged 'tubes 'o lager' - apparently you wouldn't want a warm beer. I did try to correct her but she was immovable on this point.

Anyway, I set to wondering how the varying brands of ice compete with each other, and to be honest, I ended up a little disappointed. The principle seems to be: 'It's just ice, buy it if you like'.

Still, it didn't stop my imagination running riot when it came to the potential plethora of ways in which you could reward your loyal staff at Christmas. You could give them all vouchers - for Iceland; or what about taking them to a show - High School Musical, On Ice of course. Or what about the different musical tracks you could play in the factory: Cold as Ice, by Foreigner for example.

Then it hit me - the obvious marketing niche. The North Pole is constantly whining on about how it is melting, so why not simply sell them some fresh ice to replace it. And with the scale of this global warming it's obviously a growing market, you could ship the stuff out by the ton - even better, fly it out there: it would be quicker so wouldn't melt as much.

Here's a thing: I wonder whether the excellent people at Fuel My Blog might like to approach the company for product reviews by our esteemed team of reviewers?

Just in case you think I'm not taking this seriously enough and in the process doing my relative an injustice, here's a link to their website so you know which variety of ice to buy in the supermarket. Just don't be disappointed when you get it home to find you have a bag of water.

Stuff Advertising

I know I am not the first blogger to have told their significant others that their lives are about to embark on a new financial journey thanks to the second income generated by allowing advertisers to pimp their products on their blogs. As much as I am a fan of clever advertising, I have decided that after a three month trial of Adsense - that has earned me not one single cent - I will discard it and give the space to some needy cause. I already have a few ideas about who might benefit from a bit of free publicity among the handful of readers who regularly pass my way; but, just for the moment, I have, you may have noticed, replaced Adsense with my Blog of the Day award from the kind team over at Fuel My Blog.

I was dissapointed by the type of advertising that Adsense felt suited my keywording, especially when, in a bid to spice things up a bit, I started to use mishchievous combinations of keywords. All that got me was some very dissapointed visitors who had entered quite specifically erotic search terms in Google and landed on my blog. I didn't even get anything interesting as the result of my Extreme Depilation post: now that was dissapointing.

So, my sojourn in the heady word of publicity is over and just for the weekend I shall bask in the warmth of the spotlight thanks to Fuel My Blog.

Oh, and just for fun, I've added another spurious keyword to see which lusty Google searchers arrive here only to have their hopes of passion dashed - sorry if that is you, but try visiting Nurse Myra at the Gimcrack Hospital: that might be more in your line.

Look how far we've come

I watched the fabulous Life on Mars last night; it really has to be the best and most entertaining drama on TV at the moment. This week I nearly fell off my chair when I saw my favourite children's TV programme of all time lampooned in a drug-enhanced hallucinogenic experience featuring DCI Gene Hunt, as citizen of Camberwick Green, beating up a nonce. But that wasn't the only high point in the programme, the series has also been notable for the accuracy of it's depiction of the 1970s, right down to the products that were popular.

As you know from previous posts, I'm a fan of advertising, particularly the psychology; so I was delighted last night to see, on the office shelf of Gene Hunt, a bottle of the classic male fragrance Hai Karate. What tickled me was the memory of the advertisements, not just for Hai Karate, but for Denim - the other classic fragrance - both guaranteeing sexual conquest to the man wearing the fragrance. And there we have the great advertising truth: no matter how slick or technologically adept we have become at producing advertising material, the ad-men still appeal to those basest instincts, pushing the buttons deep inside us that we don't always know are there.

Sex, as it always has done, sells. Consequently the bedroom shelves of my testosterone driven sons and their mates contain Lynx. Equally I know that by adding the label 'sex' into this post I will receive far more hits than normal - sorry if you've come here under false pretences.

Bio Oil and other advertising not for men

I like to watch TV advertisements; I like it almost as much as I enjoy the programmes they interrupt; I like trying to work out the target audiences and influencing factors that advertisers use. For instance, the other evening an advertisement baffled me. Why would anyone want a product that reduced the appearance of scars? Yet unsolicited testimonials praised the efficacy of Bio-Oil.

"What?" I incredulously railed at the TV set, "My scars are fading quickly enough as it is; twenty six stitches and clips, at this rate, I'll have nothing to show-off when I finally get back to work."

Clearly, men were not the target audience for this product; men would have bought it immediately if the blurb had read: 'Bio-Oil, make your scars tell your suffering.' Or perhaps 'Bio-Oil, because you've suffered', that would have had men queuing out of the door at Boots; they could have sold off a stall outside the local Accident and Emergency department.
Another favourite of mine at the moment is the advertisement that makes constipation look like a lifestyle choice. In the advertisment for DulcoEase a group of well dressed, comfortably off ladies-who-lunch, are shown enjoying a lifestyle that many aspire to thanks solely to the ablility of the product to make it easier for them to...well, you know.

With no apparent strain, the advertisers have stolen what used to be sketch material for gritty northern comics and made it look unseemly to snigger at toileting. You can picture the sort of thing:

A dowdily dressed woman hesitantly approaches the busy pharmacy counter and, having built up her courage, whispers something to the assistant who, in a broad northern voice, shouts to the pharmacist in the rear:

"Mr Barker, lady here says she can't go, 'ave we anything to 'elp 'er"
The pharmacist mutters something back which the assistant repeats:
"'e says is it 'ard or soft?"

The woman, having now committed herself to a course of action, persists; you can imagine the rest.

But now constipation is out of the closet, we can march up to the chemist's counter with pride and declaim our difficult passage in the full knowledge that people will admire us for it.