I received this ad in an email the other day. I thought it was an odd way to pitch a product.
an interesting selling point… ( . Y . )
I can understand “thin and light” being selling points. But “easy to hide”?
“Buy your kid a laptop he can easily hide!” I’m not in marketing, but I can’t see how that would appeal to many parents.
just what they’ve been looking for… ( . Y . )
I was about an hour into this post when it finally occurred to me that maybe they were talking about hiding a gift until Christmas because you wanted it to be a surprise.
OK, now I get it. Most people, when they saw this ad, must think “What a relief! Every time I buy my kid a $1500 computer she finds it before Christmas!”
But it took me a long time to figure that out. I guess that’s why I’m not in marketing.
It’s just a money-grubbing attempt by the NFL to capitalize on the thursday night TV audience, historically the most-competitive night for broadcast TV. It’s working, so I guess it makes sense from a financial standpoint. But it messes with the rhthym of football season. I don’t like it as a fan, I don’t like it as a fantasy manager, and I hypothesize that it results in more injuries, and lower-quality football. The extra-short turnaround for a Thursday-night game means virtually no real recovery time from the brutal slog of an NFL game. And if coaches hold out their superstars because they’re afraid they haven’t fully recovered, that lowers the level of talent that’s out there on the field. The extra-short week also makes it hard to prep for a specific opponent: less time to learn to read and react to the particular quirks and strategies of an offense or defense. One of my favorite elements of NFL football is the “chess game” character of writing and calling the right plays at the right time. TNF undercuts that, resulting in lower-quality football.
