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Burger King: “I Am Man!”

April 30, 2006 50 comments

I couldn’t find a video link, but the new Burger King commercial featuring a bunch of stereotypical men singing a transgendered version of Helen Reddy’s ‘I am woman, hear me roar…” is just too funny for words. 

Not that it makes me any more likely to eat one of those thousand-calorie GreaseWhoppers, but at least it’s funny and not creepy like those ‘Wake up with the King’ commercials…

My son suggests a strategy for companies: use your commercial archive.  Play new commercials for no more than a week and rotate through your archive of commercial favorites from the past (and play them for no more than a week).  Then people would not be lunging for the ‘mute’ button during the 4-month overrun of your clever new commercial.  People would stop what they’re doing to watch a 30-year-old McDonald’s commercial if they would only see it twice.

That boy is brilliant.

Update: Commenters who have dropped in on this post are much more interesting than the post itself,  ;-)   and one left a link to the video.

Categories: Advertising, business

“Time to UN-PIMP da AUTO, JA!!!”

March 11, 2006 4 comments

What’s missing from your life? Is it ‘rapping, stereotypically sadistic German engineers’?  Do you long to see a 30-second parody of the popular TV show, Pimp My Ride? Then you’ll enjoy these three delightfully offensive Volkswagen commercials: Un-Pimp My Ride  :coolsmirk:

>>Videos from YouTube

Categories: business

A modest proposal for sentencing Bernard Ebbers

July 14, 2005 10 comments

AP reports a little happy news as former WorldCom boss Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison.  Ebbers wept as the sentence was handed down.  He won’t be eligible for parole.  A decision is yet to be made if he can stay out of prison during his inevitable appeal.

One of his Ebbers’ victims was present at the sentencing and said; “The man is 63.  He’s going to die in jail.  How much sterner could you get?”

I have a modest proposal:  Ebbers should share the fate of many of his victims. 

He should be stripped of all personal wealth so he can’t leave any inheritance to his children.  Instead of living in prison and receiving free state medical care for his heart condition, he should have to keep working long after it is physically comfortable for him.  Able to get only low-wage jobs, he should have to choose between health insurance and rent, or a car repair and a car payment.

He should be supervised by the court to prevent any of his wealthy friends from helping him. As his health deteriorates he can put on a humiliating smock and hat every day, and stand on aching legs as he greets customers at some superstore, or prepares hamburgers for thousands of hungry customers who neither know or care who he is. 

Every friday, he can check the schedule on the wall in the breakroom to see when he has to show up for work the following week.  When his health finally gives out, he will be faced with a narrow range of absolutely awful choices.

Cruel?  Sadistic?  Hey, if it was good enough for his victims…

Next up: a review of the other movie I saw last weekend, Enron – the smartest guys in the room.

Categories: business

I’ll never learn - change the station, quick!

May 24, 2005 4 comments

(Imagined scene:  child in car asks; “Mommy, why is that bald man in the car next to us yelling at his radio?”)

You’d think I’d learn by now.  When a story comes on the radio about how American companies can’t compete with foreign companies for some reason, change the station now!!!  Continuing to listen will only raise my blood pressure, and that I cannot afford.  That’s what happened this morning as NPR’s Jim Zarroli reported in GM Struggles to achieve financial turnaround.

It seems that in the wake of higher gas prices, SUV sales are down and foreign manufacturers are eating GM’s lunch.  GM is responding by a sales gimmick where you go into a dealership, press the OnStar button, and have a one-in-a-thousand chance of winning a car.  The idea is that it will pack the showrooms with buyers who are so feckless they don’t have any idea what kind of car they want.

GM (and Ford) are engaging in other incentive strategies, too, along with union negotiations, brand consolidation, brand image reinforcement, and so forth.  Everything except trying to build better cars.

I heard a GM company exec say (and this is as near a quote as I can make); “To compete with higher-quality imports, GM will have to lower prices.”

US makers deny vociferously that foreign companies make better cars, but they caught that executive off-guard.  Just to pick one example, my Chevvy and my son’s Toyota both have a little over 100,000 miles on them.  The Chevvy has been falling apart for the last 60,000 miles and lots of things on it don’t work.  The Toyota is in fine shape and everything works – just like our old Nissan which we sold at 165,000 miles (to a friend of ours who fixed the oil leak and is quite happy with it.)  I pay attention to old cars and this is hardly a unique comparison.

Earth to General Motors: If I buy something so expensive I’d have to borrow money for it, I don’t want it to start turning to crap before I finish paying for it.  American car companies should buy fleets of ten-year-old cars, all different brands foreign and domestic, and make their executives drive a different one to work every day. 

Categories: business

The really bad news at McDonald’s…

March 14, 2005 5 comments

You’ve heard that McDonalds is planning to outsource their drive-through-window communications to a call-center in North Dakota, but have you thought about the terrible news behind that item?

Call center professionals with “very strong communication skills” could help boost order accuracy and ultimately speed up the time it takes customers to get in and out of the drive-thrus, the company said.

“You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders,” said Matthew Paull, McDonald’s chief financial officer.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. McDonald’s employees’ communication skills are so poor they’re experimenting with a call-center to handle lunch orders?

Ouch.  McDonald’s should sue our public school system.

Here are the numbers:  about five percent of orders have errors, and it’s seriously cutting into their business as customers are understandably upset.  The call-center charges the franchise 28 cents for – and shaves about five seconds from – each transaction.

Categories: business, News, observations

Culture clash in the sky

February 23, 2005 1 comment

Chicago Tribune reports in “Battle for the skies” that Boeing (which just moved its corporate HQ to the windy city) is reinventing itself as a systems integrator instead of an aircraft builder. They’re decentralizing, spreading risk and manufacturing capability all over the world.  The article is about how Boeing culture is being forcibly reinvented to counter Airbus competition. 

Especially compelling is an account of a meeting where Japanese consensus-based meeting style collided with American-style brainstorming.  Some excerpts:…

…“Boeing has given all its major partners a vote on matters that affect them. Engineers from Japan, Italy and elsewhere are stationed in Seattle and participate in top-level decision-making. Others routinely hook up via teleconference from around the world. A robust, computerized design system enables engineers around the globe to meet and propose changes on the spot.

“In my Dad’s time, you’d all be standing around the same drafting table,” Guirl said. “Now, there’s one drawing, a single model, but it is being made by a group of companies around the world.”…

Boeing’s biggest challenge has been working across cultural barriers. This came to light last summer when Boeing flew a team of design engineers to Nagoya, Japan, to focus on a seemingly mundane task: working together to eliminate parts from inside the 787’s wing. The idea was to mix groups of wing specialists from Seattle and Japan, so they could come up with a solution neither would develop on its own.

But as a moderator tried to jump-start creativity, he struggled against the tide. Engineers from Boeing sat on one side of the U-shaped table. Japanese engineers sat on the other. The space between them looked as forbidding as an empty dance floor.

Ideas bubbled from the Americans. Middle-aged men in polo shirts, they scribbled thoughts on Post-It notes, then bustled to press them onto the front wall. The notions sprouted like leaves on a canary-hued tree.

The Japanese barely spoke. A pair of jumpsuit-clad Mitsubishi engineers sat with eyes closed, either concentrating deeply or sleeping lightly.

The more the Americans prattled on, the less the Japanese had to say. If this was brainstorming, the Japanese didn’t get it.

“This is new culture for us,” said Masnori Yamaguchi, a Mitsubishi engineer, wrestling a bit with his second language. “At this time, I’m always shocking. It’s very culture shock.”

Boeing’s Mark Jenks, a former space-station designer in charge of developing the 787’s wing, explained that the American style is to dive into problems and attack them almost helter-skelter. That creates wasted effort, but it also leads to innovative solutions.

The Japanese, on the other hand, are more deliberate. They prefer to plan carefully and create a targeted series of tests to arrive at a high-quality solution…”

That must have been a tense meeting.  It will be interesting to see what the art of project management will learn from the 7E7 Dreamliner experiment. I have a hunch that whole business courses will be taught about it. (Registration required to view article) 

The courses may be taught about a company that used to exist.  This statement from a Boeing engineer explaining why no new competitors will enter the marketplace sounds especially foolhardy to me:

“It requires the wealth of nations anymore, over several decades, to establish yourself to the point where you can be competitive. Besides, the world only needs two providers,” said Walt Gillette, the chief engineer on the 787 program.

Categories: business, News