Think For A Moment

Just Plain Silly...

From a friend in London comes this story about Ocado, an online grocery business (home delivery) who made some poor choices for a particular customer. In essence, when the groceries were delivered (later than promised), the loaf of bread had an expiration date of the following day. When probed about it, the Ocado customer service representative was anything but apologetic. Worth a read.

Reminds me of my own issues with the Grand Hyatt New York last summer.

What Do You Want Me To Know?

This was in this week's issue of Time; an advertisement from Bridgestone.  Notice I did not write "an advertisement for Bridgestone" as I am not sure what the tire company wants me to think.  Take a look at the ad below.

 

We see the name "Bridgestone" in the upper left (not integrated, stand alone), embedded in the imagery ("It's Bridgestone Or Nothing"), on the prepaid credit card, and in the url in the footer. Clearly, this is from Bridgestone.  But then there's this other word that seems like they want me to notice it- POTENZA. What's POTENZA? Is it a line of tires? Is it a service committment?  I can guess but do the marketers at Bridgestone really want consumers guessing?

Yes, I see the copy above that talks about "performance" and has imagery of fast cars and attractive people- I get it.  But what does Bridgestone want me to think?  Here is my assumption- Bridgestone has a line of high performance tires called Potenza.  Was that clear? No.  The only use of the brand name "Potenza" is at the lower left of the page and not tightly integrated into the 5 tires above it which is the only real indication that the word "Potenza" is a line of tires. It's almost as if it were an afterthought.

Time magazine is not cheap.  We're in a recession so my assumption is that high performance ANYTHING may be suffering at the registers of America.  And Bridgestone wants to promote something other than clarity?  Best of luck.