Otis Maxwell is a copywriter who likes to mouth off on marketing, technology, food and sundry topics.

Is anybody else getting the feeling that the writers on the AMC advertising series “Mad Men” are messing with our heads as they get a little closer to the present day? Last Sunday, on episode #405 “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, we had:

Roger  referred to as being “out of the loop”, a phrase that could not have entered general conversation until knowledge of computer programming became widespread. Here’s a source that says its first published use (actually “in the loop”) was in 1970, though it’s acknowledged that it was used in the scientific community somewhat earlier.

Don taking his date to Benihana, a restaurant that was indeed opened in 1964 according to Wikipedia, with the first one in New York. However, it was very unsuccessful until the Beatles discovered it a year or two later so it seems unlikely it would have been as full as it was this night when Don ran into his rival for the Honda account.

And the week before, use of modern two-way mirrors for a focus group. Again, the internets tell us that focus groups were indeed a part of marketing as early as the 1960s but I have trouble accepting a modern setup vs sitting behind a curtain…. in fact I remember in my early advertising days (quite a bit later than 1964, by the way!) being admonished to be quiet because the participants could hear us.

Oh! And also recently, we find Peggy Olson hit on by the lesbian photo editor from Life she meets on the elevator. Peggy’s response: “I have a boyfriend!” For a conservative Catholic girl in 1964, wouldn’t a more appropriate response have been, “what are you doing?”

So not exactly untrue but skirting the edge of the truth, just enough to drive us, yes, Mad. And this is from somebody who took the trivia test on the AMC website and got 9 out of 10, by the way.

While I was at it, I forced myself to do a search for “Mad Men 9/11 falling man” because I have always recalled that unsettling photo as looking very much like the title sequence of Mad Men in which the ad man reclines as he plummets down the side of a skyscraper with a cocktail in hand. I had  remembered the 9/11 falling man as wearing shiny black shoes and a crisp white shirt, neither of which is the case nor is he reclining. As horrible as it is to go back there, this realization gave me some relief. I have no doubt that the image is seared into the memories of the Mad Men producers but I will now accept that it could be unconscious, instead of them making a particularly cynical analogy. I’m glad they are not messing with us in this instance.

I was asked what apps on my iPhone get used more often. Here’s a brief list, combined with a rant:

1.  ZipCar. How cool that I can reserve my car, unlock it, and find it in a lot by making its horn beep…. all from the iPhone.

2. Zillow. How much is that house actually worth? Ha! As long as I trust Zillow’s occasionally goofy algorithm, I can get the embarrassing answer while I’m standing right in front of it.

3. Pandora, as long as you appreciate its limitations. “Guy Clark Radio” turns up new thoughtful songwriters. “Robert Earl Keen Radio” is set to deliver songs about going to Mexico and getting drunk… not the right algorithm.

4. Yelp. Just plain essential if you ever go anywhere and get hungry.

5. NPR news.

6. Amazon. The other day I went to Walmart to buy a Smokey Joe mini charcoal grill, found they no longer carry it, ordered from Amazon while I was standing in the aisle. I also like that I can take a picture of something and they will try to find it for me (not always successfully).

7. Tiger Woods Golf. I know, I know. But I have learned a lot of golf by stroking my screen with the tip of my finger.

8. My bank’s mobile deposit feature. A problem that my bank is not in town. A solution that I can take a picture by aligning the check with the screen and deposit that way.

9. Email. This is actually the killer app for me. I don’t read much email in detail, but I do know when somebody is trying to get in touch so I don’t have to interrupt what I am doing and find a wireless connection for my laptop.

10. Caterday on YouTube. I said most used apps, not most used by me. For 8 year olds, a few Caterday episodes make a long car ride pass quickly. Then the battery runs out of juice, and that is even better.

And now the rant: why is it that location based apps (including several of the above) must find your location before they will load any of the program information such as your search box? It makes for a frustrating experience, often means that by the time you get to use the app you have passed whatever you were interesting in, and it just doesn’t seem necessary. WTF?

Last night I attended an “adult entertainment” at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We were invited to roam the galleries showing examples of mods and hacks in which the user (who could be a practicing artist or simply a consumer) modifies an existing item into something else. We also got to do our own mods, such as decorating our shoes with a rich assortment of buttons, dayglo puffs and various appliqués.

"Fragile" salt and pepper shakers must be broken apart before use.

Cool for me were a small table made on the beach by melting pewter then pouring it into a pattern hand-dug in the sand; we saw the table and also a stop-action movie of the artist creating it. Also, a room full of consumer products in which the consumer mods it in some way after purchasing: a dress that comes with a set of Sharpies for decorating; a shaggy lamp, made of discarded packing tendrils, that can be coiffed to your preference; and the “Fragile” salt and pepper shakers shown here that have to be snapped apart to be used. Also cool: mods and hacks by San Quentin prisoners to turn a Bic pen, a toothbrush and a tightly rolled up sheet of paper into a shiv.

Less cool was a lot of stuff that looked awkward and, to the extent it actually means to be used (however ironically) impractical and uncomfortable. I’m especially thinking of an exhibit of 100 chairs made in 100 days of cast off materials, which looks to me like 100 days of a very bad backache.

By the end of the night I was hungry for some Martin Puryear… the artist who makes definitely impractical things out of a reverential processing of everyday construction materials such as wire, tar and wood. Let him make a chair, and I’ll sit in it.

The YBCA show runs through October 3.

I have over the last year become a heavy user of Groupon, the viral couponing site that urges you to recruit your friends to share in the savings. Or, more correctly, a heavy buyer because I currently have more coupons in my bucket that I am able to use on my trips to the Bay Area. And that’s okay (for the merchant) because I’ve paid up front and they have my money whether or not I use the Groupon.

I will devote some time to talking about Groupon at my DMA preso on October 11, because this marketer is a great example of the “in media res” nature of social media. Traditionally there was one entry point for advertising. You hook them with your print ad, TV spot or direct marketing  and off you go.

But with social media, there are many possible entry points. Maybe you are on the email list. Maybe you get a Groupon offer forwarded by a friend. Or maybe you hear about it on a local TV news show, which is quite possible because of the “Groupawn” who has mounted a campaign to live successfully for a year with no money, just Groupons, and he wins $100,000 if he does.

Homer had some thoughts about plot construction when he wrote the Iliad and Odyssey some 3000 years ago. Instead of starting at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, which many of his readers were bored sick about, he starts in the middle. Then the plot has occasional flashbacks but mostly you catch up as you go along.

For social media, what’s key is to have an anchor concept which is always present no matter when you arrive at the conversation. For Groupon, it’s the “live on Groupons” meme which was well articulated in a number of videos from contestants who promised to spend a year without money, using only Groupons (barter ok) to get their daily necessities.

You can “live on Groupons” because they’re so cool and the savings are so great, even if you don’t take it literally. That’s the message that gets across, no matter where you join the conversation.

As long as it is on or near a lake or stream, an upstate NY vacation home is called a “camp”. There’s usually some concession to rusticity without really roughing it. In the case of my wife’s camp, it is a stove with only two burners (the others having been destroyed in a flood), a collection of pots inherited from her parents, and country cupboards which not only conceal their contents, but move them around when I am not looking so I can’t find an ingredient at the exact moment I need it.

I am up here with my two boys and I have learned to make weekly specials at the local market my friend; if it is advertised in the flyer they are more likely to actually have it at the lone store in town. Shopping with a preplanned meal in mind: very bad idea.

We tend to make a big pot of something and repurpose it over several days. Chicken Cacciatore (prepared with Mr. Purdue’s bargain leg quarters, not the prissy organic birds we buy “down the line”), carnitas and Texas chili (beans on the side) have figured so far. There is a steady stream of teen and preteen boys through the kitchen requesting hot chocolate, which is a good thing because I found three boxes of Nestle Cocoa in the cabinets, all expiring in 2010. Now looking for ideas to draw down a dozen half used boxes of pasta and 4 bags of lentils; when one wants to be sure something is on hand in camp, one tends to bring it up from the city forgetting one did the same thing last year, and the year before.

I have learned to successfully cook coffee in a stovetop percolator (the secret: don’t use too much coffee, or the water can’t seep through from the top grounds to the bottom) and broil on an ancient gas grill prone to flareups (always have a can of beer in your hand…. that’s to put out any leaping flames).

I look forward to being back in a kitchen where the utensils and equipment will do what I ask them to, and forgotten ingredients are five minutes away, but it is nice to have limitations and learn to stick with them. I am in awe of caterers and “secret kitchen” chefs who work like this every day.

The past month I’ve been cooking in two unfamiliar kitchens, the first being the San Francisco bachelor/bachelorette pad shared by several friends of my daughter and the second the “camp” belonging to my wife in the Adirondacks.

In San Francisco, my task was to prepare a Texas brisket meal for 60 people for the wedding party. I knew what I was in for and brought a number of key components with me, including my chef’s knife, a stack of aluminum trays and several necessary spices. But there were some things too big to carry on the plane, like the brisket itself and hickory chunks for the smoker (my old one from Phillip Claypool, which had been kindly stored in the back yard of the same SF flat). Chunks were hard since not only are San Franciscans not known for their smoking but in fact there is a city ordinance against open fires; finally I found a small expensive bag at Action Rentals, which also rents cooking equipment.

Brisket, on the other hand, was a major score. Cash & Carry, a restaurant wholesaler, had USDA Choice for $1.57 a pound… a lower price than I’ve ever seen in Texas. They also had an enormous bag of shredded cabbage at the same per-pound price I’d paid for the 10 pounds I’d just shredded myself to make sour slaw, so I added that to the hand truck. I stood in line with several other happy guys sharing hints (but no trade secrets) for what we were going to do with our brisket.

I was prepared for challenges in the prep, just didn’t know what they would be. The beans (to be used for Jack Daniels style baked beans eventually) were precooked in another alien location, the galley kitchen of the “home away” where I was staying with my boys; I used every pot and pan in the place. Back at the flat, the cookspace turned out to be tiny and without a cutting surface so I went out and bought a cutting board, the only outright cookware purchase I made. And I had too many briskets to fit in the smoker so I had to cook them in two batches, making for a 10 am to midnight cooking day. Fortunately the apartment dwellers were away at the formal pre-wedding ball where I was supposed to be; I put in an appearance then scurried back to tend my brisket and I knew the culinary gods were smiling when I was able to carry four trays of dripping brisket down three flights of stairs to my car parked in the towaway zone without spilling anything on my fancy duds.

The meal turned out just like it was supposed to, served the next night to hungry people at a conference center in the redwoods who kept coming back for seconds, which I was happy to be able to offer them. One half a brisket made it through the night and for the rest of the weekend whenever you went into the kitchen at the center (which hadn’t been available to me for prep) you’d see somebody surreptitiously sneaking a scrap out of the fridge. Among them were the renowned caterers who prepared the next night’s wedding feast, high praise indeed.

I signed myself up to do a presentation at the annual Direct Marketing Association conference called “How Twitter Killed Direct Marketing Copy (Just Kidding)”.  The idea is to show great examples and tips of how classic marketing techniques still work in new media, while also giving old-school copywriters some juice and inspiration as they attack assignments in the unfamiliar and slippery turf of Facebook, Twitter and their ilk.

Click the pic to spread Otis' influence!

The conference is in early October in San Francisco, but my Powerpoint is due August 20 for “peer review” (WTF?) so it’s time to think about what I am actually going to talk about. One thing that’s definitely going to be there is Fast Company’s recently launched “Influence Project”.

Fast Company asked SF agency Mekanism for a pitch on how to make itself more successful through viral marketing. The ideas were brilliant and you can read about them all at http://www.fastcompany.com/finalists as well as download the actual presentation which is a great piece of work any creative practitioner can learn from. The chosen concept was what would eventually become the Influence Project.

The idea is that you register on Fast Company’s website, and get a special “influencer URL”. (Mine is http://fcinf.com/v/bf8c )Then promote that link by whatever method you choose. The more clicks you get (with bonus points if you get other people to join the contest), the more influential you are. The winner will be featured on the cover of the November issue as the most influential person in the world… but wait, there’s more.

The concept would have brilliant if it stopped at one winner. Maybe it would be Lady Gaga, or maybe an intrepid dark horse American Idol-style. However, in this contest EVERYBODY is a winner. Pictures of all entrants will be featured on the cover, with the size proportionate to amount of influence. If you’re too small for a dot of ink, you can still find yourself on the Fast Company website where there will be special magnifier tools and lots of cool analytics.

How this ties back to marketing is explained by the problem description in the Mekanism product brief: “Fast Company is the best thing that too few people read.” And the solution is to get people to interact with the website and hopefully stay around for other content as well as, of course, read that November issue.

To try this out, go to http://fcinf.com/v/bf8c then wait a long time for the server to load. Vote for me by clicking the “Spread Otis’ influence further” button or register yourself by clicking “Discover YOUR influence”.  Email me after you do either or both, and I’ll send you a complimentary copy of the DMA preso after the conference.

Residents of Saratoga Springs, NY have been noticeably more clueless over the last two months because of delivery problems with the Wall Street Journal.  Apparently there is some kind of turf war among carriers. So every morning I go online to https://services.wsj.com, sign in with my account number and login, and report the missed delivery.

A few minutes later I get an email that confirms my delivery problem and tells me I will be credited for the missed issue and the local office is working on the problem. It then goes on to advise me: “In the future, please go to services.wsj.com to report any problems with your delivery.  It’s easy and quick to use, and our delivery staff is notified directly from the site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

See the problem? Since that’s exactly what I did, WSJ assuming I did not do it puts into question the rest of the message. And the takeaway is that I assume they are in fact doing nothing about my delivery problem, which in fact they are not.

Then, every few days they vary the mix and send an email that says “To make sure we provide the field office with everything they need to resolve this issue, please answer any of the questions below that apply to your situation.

Location questions:
– When did the problem begin?
– Where is the paper usually delivered?” Etc.

Once I rose to the bait and responded that nothing had changed about my delivery situation (the house has been here for 130 years) but it didn’t actually make any difference. Nor should it, since this is boilerplate that some helpful scribe inserted in the rotation (“if missed deliver complaints = >5, then print ‘n’ ”) so I wouldn’t see the same thing constantly. Instead of fixing the problem, they’ve focused on creating an extended library of customer service correspondence for people who get the same message over and over again.

The lesson here: If you have a contact strategy as elaborate as this one, then there’s something wrong at the core that needs to be addressed. Handle it, instead of asking some copywriter to paper over it. Oh, and don’t insert a marketing message when a customer is already pissed off, such as “Here’s an opportunity to give a great gift at a great price: The Wall Street Journal Print and Online for just $119!” Hey, I could give it to my dad… then he and I could both not receive the paper.

You can’t make this stuff up. The VP, I mean Vice President of Marketing at GM, I mean General Motors, has asked all employees to stop calling Chevy by that casual name and refer to it by the formal “Chevrolet” henceforth. The request presumably extends to the brand’s new agency, Goodby Silverstein, but hopefully did not originate with them.

“We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward,” read a memo which was also signed by the Chevrolet Vice President for Sales and Service. “When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke [they mean “Coca-Cola” of course] or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding. Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Of course, you can also make a brand recognizable through generations of casual use until it becomes part of the national vocabulary as well as the title of several Facebook fan pages and the auto dealership of its chief NASCAR representative, Jeff Gordon Chevy. And presumably Don McLean will be asked to return to Café Lena here in Saratoga, where he originally penned “American Pie”, and revise its most memorable line to “drove my Chevrolet to the [whatever Chevrolet rhymes with] but the [whatever] was dry”.

The New York Times article which broke this story reports that there now is a “cuss jar” at Chevrolet headquarters and employees must deposit a coin every time they use the forbidden word. Once it’s full the proceeds will be used for a “team building activity”. Times reporter Richard S. Chang suggests that activity will probably not be a Mexican dinner at Chevy’s.

Thanks to Carol Maxwell to bringing this to my attention. And thank you America for making possible this badvertising epiphany. Your tax dollars at work.

Did you ever get punished as a child for doing something naughty, because a parent or teacher didn’t believe you even though you were telling the truth? The problem here is a lack of authenticity—or, to borrow a favorite word from ace copywriter and gore movie maven Herschell Gordon Lewis— verisimilitude.

Consumers in general tend to be skeptical of marketers, which is why verisimilitude is very important. In addition to actually being true, a claim must APPEAR to be true or you break the spell and lose the sale. Today’s badvertising classic is a case in point.

Original State Seal Label (from a plaque at the springs)

I live near the bubbling natural springs of Saratoga, NY. Folks have been coming here to “take the waters” for centuries and the greatest number of springs, as well as the classic bath houses, are located in a park which is owned by the state.

Early in the 1900s an entrepreneur had the idea to bottle the water and sell it nationally. To emphasize the official connection, it was called “State Seal” water and the antique-y state seal of New York was actually shown on the label. Millions were sold and FDR became a big promoter of the springs and the water.

State Seal Spring Water label, c. 1980

Fast forward to the 1980s, and another entrepreneur had the idea to revive the brand. But he/she picked the wrong thing to revive. The new water is again called “State Seal” but the label design is bland and modern. Within a few years the revived brand was defunct.

The original State Seal water had verisimilitude. It looked like the kind of packaging a civic department might come up with if it had no clue about marketing but was simply trying to promote healthy water to its citizens. The revived water had none of this charm and authenticity. The revivalist probably thought the old design was out of date when in fact it was the essence of the brand.

Fetch me that paddle, ma. I think some marketer needs a whuppin’ here….