WHY?

Tonight I noticed that Eight O'clock Coffee had a new design. I have to ask why. Every Friday night as a child(1953 to 1957) my job was to go to the coffee grinder which looked like a machine gun nest surrounded by bags of coffee beans. Yellow bags for something ? Circle, black for Bokar and Red for Eight O'clock. I'd give the man a five pound bag of eight O'clock coffee beans  and ask him to grind it "drip". The rest of the time in the store I would breathe in the heavenly smell of the fresh ground beans, I always wanted coffee to taste like it smelled. I never enjoyed coffee as an adult even though I drank a cup in the morning until I tasted French roast coffee and then Italian espresso. The Starbucks hit the scene and I realized that The darker the beans the more I liked the coffee.

Recently I started to mix lighter, cheaper beans with the french roasted in order to save money. (There is a war on you know) And tonight I found I was mixing Eight O'clock with the french roast except, Some "brilliant" marketing/brand manager I'm sure educated at the finest university with a  undergraduate degree in advertising or mass communication and probably a MBA decided that the package needed to be redesigned. Probably because sales were down. Not factoring in the fact that A&P's are not around anymore and there now happens to be over 50 different coffees around now, some with advertising. When was the last time you saw and Eight O'clock ad. Redesigning the package was a colossal waste of time and money. Oh I'm sure the backed up their reasoning with plenty of facts and figures but it was all BS.

All they need to say was The Red Bag has been around for 150 years, making it older than long-established brands like Maxwell House (1892) and Chock full O'Nuts (1926) as well as relative newcomer Starbucks (1971).

Attention Marketing Idiots,Your new bag looks like S__t!
There was nothing wrong with the red bag

Why do local car dealers have such shitty advertising?

I am appalled by how awful the local car dealer spots are . They show  cars "Hey we got a lot of 'em and our prices can't be beat. What horseshit!" Now suddenly we have  spokes girls. Who have all been to the spokes persons school majoring in"What to do with your hands while you babble on about selection and crap" . The same  horseshit! When I was in college I worked behind the parts counter at a Chevy dealer.  I saw stuff there that questioned the honesty of all dealers.And jaded me from then on when buying a car.

Once I suggested to a local dealer group introducing a new line of luxury sedans.that we (they) should focus on how well the customers would be treated and how fair a deal the buyer would get from all the dealers in the group and let the factory spot network buy sell the cars. Kind of a new car a new deal.I guess the dealer wearing the most jewelry was a Republican because he  said" We don't give good deals if we did I wouldn't have all this bling. We just let them( the customers) think they get a good deal." 

After the "bling " quote it dawned on me that the problem with buying a new car isn't the product or the price. It's the dealer.The image of a car dealer is that of a sleaze that is trying to f*@k you out of some hard earned bucks. And they perpetuate that image with the crap  advertising that they do. To them it's all about selling selection and price and never once  focusing on trust-worthiness, fair price and service after the sale. Car dealers are idiots. If you are a car dealer who isn't...we should talk.