Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Striking a Happy Medias Show

Well, for those of you who have been anxiously waiting to hear, I'm happy to report that FedEx found our Plinko game. Were our salespeople ever relieved! It's a lot easier to show someone how to drop chips down a Plinko board than to ask that same person if he or she wants to buy an ad.
For those of you just joining us, I don't feel like repeating myself. Go back and read yesterday's blog. But, for those of you too lazy to do that, I'll just briefly say that we were at the Richmond Media show at the convention center yesterday.
Now, I'm not one to complain, but some of the exhibitors had some pretty lame exhibits.
Kudos to the radio station that did exactly what we did last year. I guess next year you'll have a tiki hut and a Plinko game. You know who you are. And to the folks in the booth that had an electronic sign reading, "We offer a variety of advertising medias," go back to Latin class, or is that Greek. I know it's not Spanish.
One booth, promoting an exciting new advertising venue, had an attractive, hand-lettered (no, make that hand-scribbled) sign that read, "For more imfo call 555-5555." I made up the number, so if you want more imformation, don't bother to dial. Now, not only am I not one to complain, I'm definitely not one to make fun of stupid people, but really, these folks are supposed to be advertising experts and they can't even spell "info."
I feel that our company went the extra mile to produce an interesting, entertaining exhibit. I mean, when you have Plinko, what more could one possibly want, but some of the advertising "giants" in the Richmond area did little more than set up a card table with a few photocopies of imfo sheets...excuse me, info sheets.
One local TV station had, as the centerpiece of their booth, a big bowl of M&Ms. Okay, I have to admit, they may have been Skittles. But, who, in their right mind, is going to plunge a hand in to a bowl that hundreds of other hands (which you don't know where they may have been) have plunged into for a big sweaty wad of candy? I know it sounds tempting.
I think Gene Cox was at the show, but it could have been a wax likeness of the venerable newscaster. I don't think so, though, it looked to lifelike to be wax.
I was hoping Mac Watson would have been there. He could have found plenty of stuff to make fun of, and he does it so much better than I do. I'm just too nice. That's something Watson will never be accused of. But Clear Channel didn't send any personalities, just salespeople, who, as you probably know, are the very antithesis of personality.
Now, I'm not suggesting that there weren't any other interesting booths at the show. One advertising agency had little bottles of what looked like Jack Daniels. That was nice. I'm guessing it's really honey in the bottle. Hold on. I'll find out.
Well, now, I'm going to do all my shopping at that agency. It's the real stuff. I gotta run. This typing has worked up a mighty thirst, and I'd better go quench it.