You Sleep When You Die

Thanks to Ed Ethridge for providing one of last week’s top questions. Remember, get your questions about advertising, business, the economy and more answered every Wednesday by posting comments to blog posts or, better yet, on Twitter via #askjz.

“What is your response to Jonathan Salem Baskin’s recent Ad Age article, “What If Giving Up Your Brand Really Means Giving Up?” If the trend is moving towards NOT trusting the people we engage with through social media platforms, how will advertisers and marketers adjust? And will it even still be relevant?

You’ve always espoused growing a brand while simultaneously driving traffic and sales. Where does social media fit into this Brandtailing pyramid?”

It should come as no surprise that the economy has crushed charitable giving for the last two years, and there’s no one out there saying things are going to improve this year. Recession or no recession, there will always be a small segment of the population whose wealth allows them to make the sizeable donations that keep charities afloat. The more important question is, “How do we get the rest of spending consumers to give?”

Floor mat.
Accelerator.
Brakes.

What else is left?? How can so many things be wrong with Toyota’s vehicles? Come on Toyota: you built your brand on dependability and reliability. When did you throw it out the f#%$-ing window? I am shocked and appalled that Toyota – the stellar manufacturer that it is – currently has more than 5 million vehicles on recall for defective floor mats, 2.3 million of its top-selling models on recall for unintended acceleration, and now the Prius on recall for faulty brakes – who knows how many cars that will affect?!

Toyota only has one chance to make this right.

The American Family Association (AFA) is calling for a boycott of Gap, Inc. and its brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic) that is scheduled to run through Christmas Day. The boycott is in response to the brand’s holiday ads that supposedly downplay the word ‘Christmas’ by failing to recognize any specific religion. The AFA is even planning to release a “Naughty and Nice” list of retailers this season, singling out those ‘nice’ retailers who address Christmas and those ‘naughty’ ones that don’t.

I could personally care less whether retailers make ads dedicated to Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa…or all of them for that matter. I’m not offended either way. The problem is, I’m in the minority…

I love what Walmart does and how they do it. Walmart is the world’s largest retailer for a reason: they provide goods and now services to consumers at the best value possible. All that being said, does it make any sense whatsoever that the bigwigs in Bentonville would focus their time and energy towards cannibalizing the Girl Scouts? Of course not! To quote Girl Scout “Cookie Mom’s” blog,

“This time, Walmart is knocking off the Girl Scouts…shoving itself in front of these little girls, and knocking on your door to sell you their almost-as-good fake Thin Mints and fake Tagalongs.”

Are you freaking’ kidding me?