Making A List...

I get it.  I am now an old man, though inside me somewhere is still that little voice that says "when you grow up, things will get better..."  I think that little kid needs a bit of education...  But then there's the multiple loads of bullshit I encounter on a daily basis.

So yeah, I'm making a mental list.  Recently, it occurred to me that there are quite a few organizations that very clearly do not want my business.  I am a very big believer in good, solid work, solid items, well-made items that last.  I do not follow this philosophy all the time, because there are times you need to learn.  

For example, my basic philosophy when it comes to tools is buy the best you can afford/get your hands on - unless you don't know what you're getting.  I could have, and have, spent thousands of dollars on tools.  Some of them have worked out, some have not.  But the general idea for me when it comes to getting a new tool is to step back and ask myself is this something I am going to rely on constantly, or is this something I'll use occasionally, for specific purposes.  If it's something I expect to use a lot over years, I'll look at more expensive tools.  If it's "well, I dunno how often I'll use this, how useful it will be..."  I'll look more towards the bargain bin.

As a kid, my father had two electric drills.  The older of the two was a completely unbranded tool - I know, shocking these days, right?  But this thing was old, the same general dull gray over the entire tool, and plugged in with a grounded plug.  It ran in one direction, one speed, and .... well, it just bleeping ran.  As did his "new drill".  Back when Stanley made power tools, Dad had picked up a rather beefy drill.  This had a yellow cord, a chrome coating on the outside, and a yellow sticker around the rear air vent noting it was a Stanley.  It was also his first VSR - Variable Speed, Reversible drill.  Talk about a game changer.  

When we were living in an apartment with two little children, I had a toolbox, and I also had a circular saw - a Black and Decker model.  But then came the day where I had to assemble my daughter's new high chair.  I will be building something along these lines for my grand children, because I haven't seen anything like it recently, but I think it's a darned good idea.  The high chair we bought was in three parts.  The first was a table sized just right for the young kid.  To turn it all into a "high chair" the chair portion which fit under the table also sat in some clever support structure under the table, when that table was turned on end, so that the chair was up at the appropriate height.  And the tray clipped onto the chair whether it was on floor or in the proper setup as a "high chair".

We picked this particular piece of furniture which did do well for a very long time for us.  Or it survived two children's learning how to feed themselves.  But on the day we came home from the store with it, the "that was stupid" struck me right between the eyes.  Without a powered drill, I had to put all eleventy-one screws in by hand.  Yup, that's right, the ancient screw driver.  Well, it was probably more around 32 screws, but it took me the better part of a weekend. 

All of my bitching while putting this thing together came to motivate my wife to purchase a Black and Decker powered screwdriver.  A useful tool within it's limitations, it would have saved me a great deal of time, but it also was a sort of gateway drug down the road to battery-powered tools.  Mind you, I'd had a walkman, and other sort of battery-powered devices, over the years.  But as many may recall "back in the day" batteries were great for radios, music players, and the like.  To get real work done, tool work, ya know, you needed something plugged in that was rated by "horsepower".  How they might have convinced a horse to drive in a screw, I do not know, but I suppose if one put a horse on some sort of capistan system that the horse circled and it drove an internal screwdriver, that might have worked.  But I digress.

When it came to powerful rechargeable battery-powered tools, I was skeptical.  I wasn't going to drop a lot of money on one.  So, when I wandered into a Tool-Go-Round store, I got lucky.  Tool-Go-Round was probably a local idea that started as an offshoot (and, I believe, an affiliated store from the same owners) of Kids-Go-Round.  A local consignment store where we found a LOT of infant and children's clothes, it was an absolute Godsend.  We could get outfits and lots of clothes for often fifty cents or less per item.  They took in items that had served their purpose and were still in good repair, just didn't fit, washed them and tagged them and back on the shelf they went.

Tool-Go-Round was a similar sort of place, for tools of all sorts.  I could walk into the store and find contractor table saws, drills, saws, hand tools, and all other sorts of accessories.  Some items were new, they got good deals and passed them on, others were just plain old "you'll need these accessories to get things done."  I saw a case that was $20, and held a rechargeable drill, battery, and charger.  I thought to myself "A new drill is going to cost me $50 or more, and the extension cord isn't included.  I wonder if this will do what I need."  I tried it.  And it worked so well that I now own one corded drill and four cordless drills.  One is probably close to 20 years old now, not that original drill, that gave up the ghost years ago, but I have one off-brand tool (I think it's Powerstation), then I own two Ryobi drills that use the same battery and were part of a kit, and one Milwaukee drill that is my go-to when I need to drive four inch by 1/2" lag bolts, or any other deep job.

What's all of this got to do with advertising?  Well, I'd seen ads for Ryobi.  My son is a mechanic, he uses a lot of Milwaukee tools - and I did my research.  They work well, and I can buy other Ryobi tools and use the batteries for them.  And they just work.  So I am aware of advertising, and it does form a fair amount of my opinion on things.

Which is where a lot of today's ad trends are just missing the mark with me.  I noticed a number of years ago that many media outlets consider me to be a complete idiot.  They may run the same ad or multiple ads for the same product in a single ad break.  While it does serve to implant that product in my mind, it also puts it in the "don't ever consider" pile of stuff that assumes I am too stupid to remember it for three minutes, and therefore they're plowing an awful lot of money into advertising, not product development, product quality, or support. 

Then there are the products that seem to think that inserting them into my mind in any way possible makes it good.  I can tell you that if and when I need to purchase a new mattress, I'll walk past a Mattress Firm store every opportunity I get.  Why?  Their recent ad campaign shows persons committing terrible behavior.  There's the two mascots at a baseball game, the bird levels the tiger, knocking off his tiger head, and he asks the bird "how do you sleep at night?"  The person in the bird suit gives the impression that thanks to the sleep they get on their mattress, they're doing just right.  So you're telling me this cranky bastard leveled the other mascot because he's feeling cranky and hateful, just because he slept on a rock-hard mattress?  Or there's the first ad in the series I saw which locked it in my mind - a clueless woman in a large SUV sailing past all of the other drivers who were smart enough to get out of the soon-to-be-closed lane, and a man asks her how she sleeps.  Her statement is that she sleeps on one of these mattresses tells me that only real assholes use these products.  We get plenty of road construction in this state, I'm usually the fellow who gets into the correct lane while traffic is still moving.  Clearly, there are a number of drivers out there who simply cannot read, and do not know the road narrows until they come to the signs and other things blocking their further progress in the lane, and have to move over or take the ditch.  

This isn't the only one - there are plenty of ads that show a person using a product and making it abundantly clear that only jerks and assholes would ever use such a product.  It's a small world, we all run into these sorts of people regularly.  And you know what?  I've got a good and long memory for stuff that pisses me off.  In fact, it may be better than for the stuff that I like, that just works, but I get a lot more positive reinforcement from that.  Next time I need a cordless tool, I'll probably head to Home Depot and look for a Ryobi or a Milwaukee, because I know and trust them.  If it's a tool I've never used before, I may take a shot on those brands, or I might look for a product that's one quarter to one fifth of their price, and see if it works for me.  

I most likely will not ever buy another belt sander.  I have one, it's an off brand, but it gets the work done.  As does my rotary sander.  Neither of them are tools I use a lot.  They're occasional tools which get the job done, but aren't often called on.  I bought my rotary sander because I wanted to rough up the surface of a mailbox which I purchased because I needed a larger mailbox.  It came in black, and I wanted it to be Ford Blue.  So I bought Ford Blue down at the local NAPA Auto Parts, and the rotary sander at Menards.  It did a fairly good job removing the black paint, provided I stuck with the edge of the disk and didn't put too much pressure on it.  And changed the disks regularly.  So it did the job I needed it to do, and it's come in handy since then.  But since that time, it spends a LOT of time on the shelf.  

And when it comes to a mattress, I won't be using any from that retailer that glories in bad behavior.  I also do tend to cringe every time I step into Target lately, thanks to their most recent ad campaign featuring some woman that, outside of her career in advertising, is probably a decent, talented, and under-appreciated human, but boy, her portrayal of a Target employee makes just about every one of them I know cringe.  Target did employ a few assholes when I worked there.  Some were slackers who left others to do their work, or made it difficult for us to get our jobs done.  A vast majority of them, however, were good, decent people who were doing the job they knew how to do.  And were grossly underpaid for their efforts, which is the real sad part about retail.  But to be bluntly honest, there's not a hell of a lot of money to be made schlepping a box of stuff from manufacturer to warehouse to backroom to sales floor to the consumer's home.  It's all in the margins, which is where Target does pretty well.  The bigger issue, at least with Target, is that the store lives and dies by it's brand perception.  And while I'm not aware of any "People of Target" web site that produces the number of cringes per instant that "People of Walmart" does, perception is affected not only by what you get and what you see, but how you feel when you see the ads.  And the most recent Target ads have me wanting to avoid Target entirely, because if that's the person they really want you to meet when you enter the store, well, hell no.  I'd avoid the individual, because I really do not want to cringe every time I pick up the item I bought at Target from her.  Or because of her.  

So, kids, in today's 20th Century Advertising for today, you 21st Century kids are going to need to find a way to be inspired by and encouraged to obtain something that isn't because an asshole did it.  Because then, you end up like an asshole in everyone else's memory.  And while the world needs assholes, most of us keep them covered in multiple layers of clothing, and expose them only when needed.  Which is only in private, with a good wipe afterward.