Advertising Fail

There are many types of advertising fail – confusion about what the product is or does, not knowing or addressing the target audience, offending potential customers, etc, but the topic today addresses a different type: assuming that your audience either doesn’t have a brain or at some point won’t engage it.

The first example is actually kind of funny; it’s for a Toyota dealership in Northern California. Here’s the tagline – “we’re moving around the corner and we’d rather sell them than move them.” Well, that makes sense – wait, these are cars, right? Mattresses, washing machines, dining room sets – sure, but cars? How hard can it be to move cars? Around the corner no less?

Although it isn’t done in jest, it’s just so stupid that it’s funny.

The next one bugs me a bit more, probably because it straight out insults your intelligence. I’m sure you’ve heard this one or one similar – “if we can’t beat their price, we’ll give you the ____”. The particular ad I’m talking about now is for mattresses but I’ve heard a similar ad for cars. “So let me see, I can either beat my competitor’s price by a dollar or I can give away a $500 mattress. Hmm, which one will I choose?”

Now, I get the point that this place will ensure that they have the best price and I guess the normal tack of “we’ll beat any competitor’s price by 5%” probably wasn’t good enough, so they came up with this.

Maybe, I’m too sensitive (maybe?) but hearing this ad makes me think so much less of this store that I’m not at all inclined to shop there and would instead opt for one of their competitors. As mentioned – advertising fail.

Prudential vs. Veterans

The headline of the recent Bloomberg story could just as easily have been: “Credit Card companies profit from Veterans!” because they charge 21% interest to Veterans and their families. Wait, doesn’t everyone pay 21%?

Exactly.

As far as I know, every group insurance policy in the US pays claims via checkbook, rather than as a lump sum check. Not prominently mentioned in the Bloomberg article: it’s easy/allowed/perfectly OK for a beneficiary to take check #1 and withdraw the entire benefit amount and deposit it wherever you please. I did that last year when my mom died.

Incidentally, if one were to do that and deposit the full amount in a typical savings or checking account, you’d get somewhere between one-fifth and one-half of what Prudential is paying. “CitiChaseAmerica ripping off Veterans Families by giving less than half the interest of Prudential!”

Another big deal in the Bloomberg article is the fact that “a secret deal” was made to take advantage of veterans. How many contracts and amendments to contracts are signed by the Federal government every year? Thousands? I’m sure that some of those affect me in some way and even though I check the news and my mail frequently, I seem to be never informed of these signings. Does that mean they’re “secret”? Yeah, to me maybe. I wasn’t there at this particular amendment ceremony but I think the implication that it was signed in some sleazy motel parking lot under the cover of darkness is probably not accurate.

A little background on checkbooks vs. checks: Unsurprisingly, it turns out that beneficiaries, stricken with grief and confusion following the death of a loved one sometimes make bad financial decisions with the large checks they receive from insurers. Even more unsurprisingly, occasionally they are helped into these bad financial decisions by less than benevolent “financial consultants”. Checkbooks were created to take the pressure off from having to figure out what to do with a couple hundred thousand dollars right now. As previously mentioned, if there was no pressure, one check could be written for the full amount.

The general expectation was that six or so months down the road, a check would be written to pay off the mortgage or deposited into the kids college fund, and the account would be closed. The fact that that doesn’t happen all the time is a happy occurrence for insurers.

Now if there is a bone to be picked with Prudential, it’s that they didn’t choose to treat Veterans better than they treat any other policyholder, by crediting their benefits with the full amount of interest earned, and I think it’s safe to say that that’s what they should have done. Obviously, that opens the door to other groups (should they do the same for Police? Fire? Nurses? Teachers?) and would be an administrative headache (no one cares).

One last thing - you can bet that if Prudential and Veteran's Affairs decide to amend the contract to make that change, it will not be done in secret.

Corporate Cluelessness – part 3000

I’ve written about Fidelity before, as they are the repository of my kids’ 529 plans (through no fault of my own).

Now the thing that used to set me off was the convoluted phone system that required me to eventually hit “0” and speak to a representative every time I wanted to withdraw money (about 8 times a year, with two kids in college). So I’d go through this procedure and they would transfer the money to my linked checking account about two days later, so I could pay the bills.

About a month ago I get an e-mail telling me they now have on-line withdrawal capabilities. Yippee – no more convoluted phone system!

Naturally the first two times I try to enroll – it won’t let me, but third time’s the charm. I enroll both accounts and make my first withdrawal. Wait, what’s this? You’re going to mail me a check and I’ll get it in about six days?

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the on-line experience supposed to be easier and faster? The frustrating part is that they already have my checking account info – they’ve been transferring money to it for two years. All they had to do was add a “transfer to checking account on file ending in xxxx?”

So my choices are these: use the frustrating phone system and get the money in two days or use the not-so-frustrating on-line system and get it in six? Or just move the 529 plans to a less clueless institution – yeah, that might be the way to go.

An (almost) Converted Liberal

Being the open-minded guy I am, I've been reading some of the Tea Party information and, once you exclude the really bizarre and/or overtly racist rhetoric, there are some pretty appealing ideas. The idea of a smaller, less intrusive Government and lower taxes really interests me but I've got a problem that I can't figure out how to solve.

In recent memory we've seen several fiascos that were caused, primarily, by the greed and arrogance of individuals and companies, to wit:

- The Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme,
- The financial meltdown/derivatives-caused recession,
- The BP Gulf oil spill.

And I won't even mention all the e-coli and salmonella problems we've had.

The SEC should have been all over addressing and preventing the first two issues and the Minerals Management Service should have prevented the third (and the FDA the food issues). But the SEC didn't have enough folks to police all the Madoffs or folks savvy enough to understand the derivatives mess and the Minerals people were just corrupt and/or drug-addled. So this would seem to argue for more government regulations and regulators, right?

But we already had regulations and regulators and, frankly, there's no way we could ever have enough regulators to stop all the greed and arrogance in the US.

The President's Health Care bill is what seems to have really sparked the Tea Party movement, but again (and I can say this as someone who worked in the Health Care industry for years) many of the reasons that caused the bill to be necessary were caused by the Health Care industry itself.

So, here's my problem: how do we control the greed and arrogance (and subsequent screwing of individuals, companies and the environment) while also shrinking the government, its intrusiveness and the taxes required to support it?

The only answer I can come up with is as unsavory as the current predicament - more lawyers. I know, I know, but hear me out.

In a perfect world deregulation would lead to lower prices and better products but we don't live in a perfect world so many times we get higher prices (via hidden fees), and faulty and sometimes harmful, or deadly, products.

So, in the real world, deregulation doesn't really work - all it does is allow greed and arrogance to run rampant. In other words, unfortunately, we can't just expect people to do the honorable and decent thing.

What if the punishment for being arrogant and greedy was so severe that people felt compelled to do the decent and honorable thing?

We can either spend billions of dollars on making regulations, hiring government operatives and attempting to ride herd on every transaction we make every day or we could simply beat the tar out of folks who we find take advantage and wrong others.

Would the Tea Party support an army of lawyers whose job would be solely to prosecute and brutally punish the greedy and arrogant, in lieu of thousands of pages of regulations and thousands of regulators, in order to protect the American Public?

Would you?