Roadside Advertisements......

I'm not sure if this is something that mainly occurs in the South, or if it's all over the country in this sucky economy. Maybe it's even in other countries - some of you folks in other parts of the world will have to let me know.

I've noticed a trend people standing on the street near some businesses holding advertisements for those businesses. Some are old, some are young. Most of them have earphones or earbuds in, jamming to some music while they work. A folding chair is often nearby, along with a cooler. If it were me doing the job, that cooler would have to have something in it besides Gatorade and Snickers bars.

You can tell some of those folks got the job of standing outside in the traffic because they were the low men on the totem pole. The expression tells it all. Some of them make the best of a bad situation, dancing and waving to the drivers. Some of them, particularly at income tax time, at least have the anonymity of hiding behind a costume. Although I'm not sure the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam wore Nike tennis shoes. I could be wrong, though.

I wonder if anyone has done any research on the effectiveness of this particular kind of advertisement. Obviously it must work to some degree, or more and more businesses wouldn't be jumping on board with it. I've seen these folks outside pizza places ($5 FOR A TWO-TOPPING MEDIUM!!!!!), pawn shops and jewelry stores and other places that buy gold (WE BUY BOLD!!!! TOP DOLLAR!!!!!), furniture stores (GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!!!!! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!!), and one that I saw for the first time today (HUGE TOOL SALE!!!!!) Does that mean they were having a huge sale, or were they selling huge.... never mind.

I'm certainly not knocking the folks who do these jobs. With the way the economy is today, people are darn lucky to get a job anywhere doing anything. I'm just curious as to the effectiveness. And the cost-effectiveness.

Because clearly I don't have enough to worry about.

Thanks for Adding Insult to Injury.........

As I approached my 50th birthday, I fully expected the AARP notices to arrive. They weren't a surprise at all. In fact, they were a welcome bit of frivolity in an otherwise stressful week. I was tempted to join just for the discounts I can get on hotel travel. You know, for the dozens of times handful of times twice a year I go out of town and stay in a hotel. Instead I threw the membership card in the trash. But I wasn't insulted to get it. It's a rite of passage for those turning 50.

Today's notice was not from the AARP. It was an official-looking document with these words in bold: OPEN IMMEDIATELY - DO NOT DELAY. In smaller print, the words "Important Non-Government Document Enclosed....." appeared. And right above my name and address, the words UNITED STATES MAIL RECIPIENT.

Although it clearly said "Non-Government Document," it was designed to look just like an official government document. Along with the instructions to "Slide finger under this edge" to open the document.

Well duh.

How else would one go about opening a folded document?

Inside, these welcome (not) words at the top:

Funeral Advantage Program Assists Seniors

The flyer went on to tell me that I MAY qualify for the Funeral Advantage Program that will pay my family $20,000 in the event of my death. I'm supposed to send in the postage-paid card to see if I qualify. If I don't send it in, I might already be dead, and therefore I wouldn't qualify. 

Even if I didn't already have life insurance, I wouldn't buy anything from this company. Beside the little graphic that I guess is supposed to represent a booklet I will receive if I send in my card (but only within the next 15 days, because after that I might be dead) were these words: MAIL TODAY TO ALSO RECEIVE THIS VALUABLE PLANNING HELP.

Let's say I didn't have life insurance. Just for fun, say I wanted my family to have $20,000 with which to party after I'm gone. I still wouldn't buy anything from a company that would carelessly split an infinitive in their advertising.

Grammar snob to the bitter end.

Advertising....

Advertising sometimes annoys me. Sometimes it's clever, like during the Super Bowl when companies spend enough money to run a small country for a decade or two just for a 30-second spot, but a lot of the time advertising is downright insulting.

I knew back in the 70's or 80's or whenever they changed the law to allow lawyers to advertise that it was a bad idea. If I see one more "if you've been hurt in a car wreck" commercial, I may sue THEM for hurting my feelings. No wonder we have to pay such astronomical rates for insurance. We have to foot the bill for get-rich schemes for deadbeats and their lawyers. Now before you get all huffy, I realize that there are some legitimate claims and cases in which someone NEEDS to pay and get paid. For every one of those cases, however, there are ten that are frivolous and/or possibly downright fraudulent. But I digress. This really wasn't intended to be an anti-lawyer/anti-lawsuit post.

I realize that the whole purpose of advertising is to convince us to buy a particular product or service over another. And I've been just as guilty as the next person of falling for advertising. We took a trip to Aruba one year based solely on their advertisements. And the fact that no one I knew had been there.

Some things, however, make me just scratch my head and say, sometimes out loud, "WTF?" The other day I was on my way to school and I heard an advertisement on the radio for a new hysterectomy procedure. Because clearly there is a good chance that many women, driving to work at that particular moment, hear that advertisement and say, "Well, there's an idea that hadn't occurred to me. I think I'll get a hysterectomy."