Badvertising 03/11/22

In last week’s blog we reminisced about how much advertising has changed. This week, it’s more of the same. Hey, many of you have asked about us doing more multi-part series so here it is. Trouble is, we then have to write the blog about the same subject we wrote about last week. Okay, it won’t be exactly the same. It’ll be the same, only different. Glad we cleared that up. This is how targeted advertising has become. Say you were looking for some living room furniture. You type into your search engine the word “sofa.” Now the data scientists of the ad world know you are over 50, otherwise you would have typed in “couch.” Furthermore they know you like soft, overstuffed things so they serve you ads for easy chairs, recliners, extra fluffy pillows, etc. And they know you like the color “yellow” (I just made that part up). So it’s all about data collection, and then how to micro-target all that data to the exact right person. And who doesn’t want to read an entire blog about data collection?

The point is, I can sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I actually have no clue what I’m talking about. The ad business has gone from two weeks in Beverly Hills, driving a Mustang Convertible, and going to Nobu for dinner, to coming up with an “event” and then an invitation to said “event.” Like Tecate Beer Tuesdays at your local taqueria. So a copywriter, which is what I used to be, has to come up with clever lines like, “Music, fun and friends! Join us for Tecate Tuesday’s at Mole Mole in beautiful, downtown Poughkeepsie!” Oh, and they love exclamation marks. Absolutely love them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I don’t know about you but I’d rather be shooting a commercial with Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz sipping cold ones on a beach in sunny Acapulco, but this is what the business has become. And if you’re really lucky these days, you can shoot a video of people drinking beers at the aforementioned Mole Mole on your iphone, edit it on your computer, and then run it on Twitter for under $5,000, soup to nuts. Which version of advertising would you rather be in?

Happily John and I discovered comics instead which is wayyyy more rewarding (except for the getting paid part).

So that’s it for this week, we’ll be back next week with another multi-parter. And before you know it, Spring will have sprung.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Disappointing Results 7/23/21

Did you watch The Queen’s Gambit, a remarkable series about a fictional chess prodigy? Well, if you’re anything like me, it renewed your interest in chess, a game with no luck involved. A game that mirrors life itself. Are you defensive-minded or aggressive? Do you hide in the bushes, waiting for the right moment to attack, or are you out there big and bold, saying to your opponent, “Come get me”? I for one am aggressive. But when I said, “Come get me,” people had no problem getting me. First up was my son-in-law Mark. He and I were both basically starting from scratch. We’ve now played 5 times and he’s beaten me 5 times. At one point, one of my attacking moves left me so vulnerable, he said with pity, “Oh Andy.” Okay, so maybe I can’t beat him. Next up we had a visitor to our beach house who proclaimed, “I haven’t played in at least 15 years and I don’t think I have ever won. You’ve got nothing to worry about playing me.” He won. Finally, we had another couple over and the wife loves games. She is an avid bridge player, but didn’t know the first thing about chess. I thought, “Haha, at last, someone I can beat.” I offered to teach her the basic moves, like “This piece, the pawn, can only move straight ahead but it has to capture on an angle.” So, I showed her and corrected her and at some point she moved a piece directly challenging my king. I said, “Now you are supposed to say check.” And she tentatively called out, “check.” After studying my options I realized it was actually checkmate.” So John changed my friend’s character to an 8-year-old grandson, because we figured it was more embarrassing to lose to a first-time chess-playing kid than a first-time chess-playing adult (either would be embarrassing and I’d lose to both of them). We tweaked the ending, and that was our first comic. Oh by the way, I take back everything I said about “The Queen’s Gambit.” Chess sucks.

Now onto one of our secondary characters Sam, who used to be an announcer who made money by reading commercials. Now he is the official voice of the “Boulder City Boulders” minor league baseball team. My first real job out of college was as a sportswriter for the Pawtucket Times in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and our big team was the Red Sox’ AAA affiliate, lovingly known as the PawSox. As an aside, Pawtucket lost their beloved franchise to a newer stadium in Worcester (pronounced Wooster), MA, with the unfortunate nickname, WooSox, but there you go. Anyway, we invented a character for Boulder City, their all-time leading home run hitter, Bob “Long Ball” Bixon. As it turns out, Long Ball was a bit disappointed at the turn out for Bob Long Ball Bixon Bobblehead night, and who could blame him? As a former Boulder star who hit 38 career homers, he thought he deserved a bigger turnout. We didn’t tell him that half the people who attended were there for the postgame fireworks, because you know, Long Ball is sensitive about stuff like that. Let’s keep it as our secret, huh.

So that’s it for this week. We will be back at it again with two new ones. Until then, have a great weekend.

Andy and John

FRIENDS 1/22/21

I think as we get older, we get a bit more unfiltered. We don’t agree to as many things as we used to agree to and we don’t just go along for the sake of going along as much either. In other words, we become more cantankerous. Today’s first comic results from an inability to filter. And it comes from personal experience. Back when I was working in advertising, sometime in the 18th century, there was a woman who worked for me who used to regularly break down in tears or get worked up into hysterics, and, suddenly, she seemed noticeably calmer. I asked her what was different. She told me she had embarked on Transcendental Meditation and it had changed her life. She even showed me a secret hiding place to meditate during work hours. We worked in a huge NYC high rise on the 32nd floor, but right off the second floor, there was a secret side door just to the left of where the company cafeteria was located. There stood 7 rooms reserved for lactating mothers. At most one or two of these would be in use at a time. She would simply claim one, slide the in use tab outside the door, lock the door and sit in the easy chair with her eyes closed for 20 minutes. Heaven. When she exited, she was refreshed and ready to take on the rest of her day. And she didn’t even have to lactate. So I went to take a course in TM along with my wife and it was terrific. But, I’m ashamed to say, I took my colleague up on her secret the very day after my course had ended and used one of those 7 lactating rooms. Fortunately no one ever saw me exiting, because I had no idea what I might say. “No, you don’t understand, it’s not what it looks like…” But I digress. The funny thing is that after paying a semi-exorbitant amount for my wife and I to get our training and our own personal mantras, a friend pointed out that you could get mantras for free simply by going online. Way to harsh my mellow, dude. And if you want to know what that means in English, it means “way to ruin my peaceful mood.” And so was born today’s first comic.

Our second comic came from John enlisting his wife to hold up the big screen tv while he attempted to connect it to an extending, rotating arm he installed in the back of the wall. Note: this is a major difference between us, I just call the super (I believe it has something to do with growing up Jewish but I cannot prove it). So he wondered, what would happen if we tried to call our friends to help us with a physically demanding task? What would their excuse be if they no longer had to work? And this is where our age difference came into play (I am 5 years older than John). I wanted the excuses to be, “Oh I can’t, I’m having an endoscopy, while John was more in the “Oh I can’t, I’m taking the family on a ski trip,” vein. Since I can’t even draw a stick figure and since his version was more optimistic, guess who won. But in the words of the hit play Hamilton, I say to you John, “Just you wait!”

So that’s it for this week but we will be back next week with parts 2 and 3 of our meditation series. Try it, you’ll like it.

Have a great and safe weekend

Andy and John

On Advertising 11/20/2020

Ahh advertising. It’s a career I spent 39 years in and John spent almost as long (he’s just 5 years younger). And it’s a career I’d like to think we know a little bit about. A little bit. And it’s the career we used to do before this new career as underemployed cartoonists. So when we were talking about new topics to explore for some upcoming strips, we thought, why not write about advertising? Al has a pizza franchise, Pizza-on-a-Stick, so let him try to come up with a new campaign that will take his franchise to the moon (that’s the way they talk in advertising). They say stuff like, “We want to own the casual dining experience.” Or, “We want to own the weekend.” Now the question is, who exactly gave you ownership of a particular day of the week/time of day/mealtime/or made you the official non-alcoholic beverage of the Kansas City Royals? And the answer is, who cares? And that attitude is probably why we’re both doing a comic strip instead of creating ads. That and being over 60, which is a fate worse than death (unless you own the agency, and maybe not then either), but I digress. From our years in the ad wars, we know that franchises like Al’s are given ads from “Corporate Headquarters” in places like Akron, Topeka or Cincinnati. Usually, they hate it. And frequently the individual franchisees want to run their own stuff. And therein lies the tension for the first two comics in our three part series. The third and final part is coming next Tuesday.

Here’s a dirty little secret about most creative people. They thumb their noses at pop culture, figuring anyone can do that, but what I do, now that’s special. So Al’s reaction is based somewhat on that emotion. But he doesn’t want to admit to that so he latches onto another popular trend that has taken off, thanks to the internet. Crowd sourcing. What does that mean, you ask? It means fielding ideas from the crowd (online in general, but in this case from his store employees) for free, but then you only have to pay the person if their idea has actually been chosen. It’s just another way for an agency to not have to pay so many employees. It doesn’t matter if the ideas stink, they’re free! Well, in this case, the crowd sourced idea is so bad, it matters. And the trouble is, even though Al detests that jingle, he can’t top it. More on that next Tuesday.

Anyone want to crowd source some comics?

Have a great weekend

Andy and John

Nothing's on tv and doin' nothing 08/21/2020

With no movies, and not much going out to dinner, a lot of us are spending a lot more time together and watching a lot more tv. And when you do get to see friends, you find out they’re doing much the same. Not surprisingly, the conversation turns to some form of “Did you see that great series on TV?” Pre-pandemic, the answer usually was, “We did not.” But now, at least before the baseball season resumed, we had a chance to catch up on all we missed. There was Ozark and Catastrophe and Schitt’s Creek and Little Fires Everywhere and The Morning Show, to name a few. We loved them. And then there was Fleabag. When I mentioned to John that I was laughing my ass off, while Joanie was only watching politely, he said he had a similar experience. When it came to Ozark, at least in my household, we were both so into it. We’d ask each other questions like, “What do you think will happen next?” or “Why did Wendy do that?” Does she want to die?” For Fleabag, it was, “What’s the name of that show again?” And so our first comic of the week was born. It is another version of “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”. I can barely stay awake during an awards show, whereas I find the Mets endlessly fascinating, even when they’re 3 games below .500. Don’t ask. Well, we can always watch the political conventions. Or not.

Next up comes from a common experience and a twist on a joke we heard from our friend, Marvin Waldman. The joke was about feeling a sense of accomplishment from doing nothing. Just make it feel like something. There’s an old cliche that states, if you want to get something done, give it to somebody who’s busy. Conversely, you don’t want to give the assignment to someone who has nothing to do. They have the time to mull over every decision from inside and out and take forever to complete the task. For instance, now that I’m retired (except for this comic strip) I was supposed to return two items to our storage locker (less than half a mile away) and still haven’t gotten to it 4 days later. In contrast, when I was working full time in advertising, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and we had to move from the city into a townhouse in a nearby suburb, we took a train out during lunch, stopped by the condo development office, and chose the wallpaper, kitchen floor, cabinets, lighting fixtures and window treatments in under and hour and took the next train back to work.

Maybe having too much time is a problem. But I’ll take it.

Have a terrific weekend and enjoy the last of the summer. We will be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

The world is a confusing place 08/14/2020

Is it just us, or does the world seem harder to understand for you guys as well? John and I worked in ad agencies of all different sizes. When we started in the late 70’s and early 80’s there were people who worked for the same agency for their entire careers and retired with a pension and stock. You shot your commecials in LA, stayed in nice hotels, flew business class, entertained your clients and ate great meals. Seemed like a terrific deal. Today, not so much. Who needs to fly? Who needs a camera? Shoot it on an iPhone. Why pay $1 million for a commercial when you can shoot one for $10,000? And really, who needs to pay all that money to an older copywriter or art director when you can get 3 kids for half the price? Trust us, it is confusing. But on the bright side, if it wasn’t for that system, and we were still writing commercials, you wouldn’t be getting these comics. Of course we’d be getting rich, but it’s much more important to service you. And if you believe that, we’ve got some land we’d like to sell you…

At any rate, when the end is near you can see it coming from a mile down the road. Marv was going through similar changes in the printing industry and we thought we’d bring some of our own experiences to the table in figuring out what would eventually happen to him. When offered the chance to take an “early retirement” he jumped at it. And now Marv will think about his “Second Act.” Just as long as it doesn’t involve playing the harmonica.

The next strip practically wrote itself. John’s dad had a high school yearbook where most of the women described themselves as “gay.” My stepmother to this day will describe a party as “gay.” So when John had the thought to make this insight into a comic, I jumped aboard. It’s crazy how language changes and how meanings change and if you don’t make an effort to keep up, it can get pretty confusing. Fret not. We’re here to clear all that up. When Fred Flintstone had a “gay old time,” he wasn’t cheating on the side with Barney Rubble. A birthday party was something you attended, not some organization promoting Kanye West for president. And weed was something you pulled out of your garden, not something you smoked.

We sincerely hope that clears up all the confusion. Stay safe we’ll see you next week and may all your weekends be festive and gay.

Andy and John

On getting out there 07/31/2020

Well, we have to get to some form of normal at some point, right? So we thought of Al and Joanne taking a trip on an airplane. The poor airlines have to make money somehow, so they sell us first class, business class, coach, even coach with extra leg room, pillows, snacks and our personal favorite, early boarding. Who knew there could be so many categories, and sub-categories? And how is it that no matter how much privilege we pay for, we still wind of getting on last, with no overhead room for the bags which now go to the cargo hold and then cost you an extra hour as you watch the baggage carousel spin without your bag on it? Ain’t it good to have priority? And that was all it took for our first comic.

Next up we wondered what would happen when people went back to their physical offices. And what would employers do to make their returning employees overjoyed at being back? Plan a corporate retreat? John and I have both been on our share of company retreats before and this time we discussed the kind with “team-building exercises.” I would venture that everyone who has ever been part of a “trust fall” contemplated doing exactly what Marv did and let the bum fall. But nobody would really do that. Except this is a comic, which gives us the right to do anything we like. Sorry Gladys.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next Friday (and please, refrain from trust falls),

Andy and John