I wonder which one would be worse?

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I have long been an aficionado of odd foods (not too odd, mind you – thus far things like casu marzu and balut have been off my menu), but there are others that I really enjoy, such as haggis, nattō, kimchi, and others.

I’ve mentioned Hákarl over at my Banquet from Hell – it’s one that I’ve long wanted to try, if only to see if I have a stronger stomach than Gordon Ramsay.

Pronounced “haukatł” – with that peculiar Navajo “L” sound – this Icelandic treat is one that I approach with some trepidation. From the Wikipedia article:

Chef Anthony Bourdain, who has travelled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine for his Travel Channel show No Reservations, has described shark þorramatur as “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he has ever eaten.

Chef Gordon Ramsay, after challenging journalist James May to sample three “delicacies” (Laotian snake whiskey, bull penis, and hákarl), finally vomited after eating hákarl, although May kept his down. May’s only reaction was “You disappoint me, Ramsay.”

On season 2’s Iceland episode of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Andrew Zimmern described the smell as reminding him of “some of the most horrific things I’ve ever breathed in my life,” but said the taste was not nearly as bad as the smell. Nonetheless, he did note that hákarl was hardcore food and not for beginners.

There is no shortage of pages on the internet that describe how totally Satanic this preparation of fermented shark actually is.  Yet the Icelanders continue to make it, and eat it.  It may be a plot by the brennivin industry to bolster the need for consumption, but I won’t be satisfied until I can try it for myself. If I ever get the chance to visit Iceland, I’ll return and report. Provided I survive…

Wikipedia article on Hákarl

Now, it appears that there may be a new contender in the “Ogudjegmåkasteopp” category – Korean fermented skate, lovingly titled 홍어 (hong-uh), supposedly from the sound that patrons make when they first smell it.

img_1791

Something about fermenting fish (read: letting it rot) creates a powerful ammonia smell. Last time I really smelled NH₃ was when someone dropped a bottle of it – the pure stuff – in a tiny, enclosed hallway outside a chem lab at my high school. Remember that the household stuff you use to eliminate streaking on windows is strong enough, and it comes in at between 5% and 10% dilution. So yeah, it was like eye-melting-lung-searing. It appears that hong-uh comes really close.

You can read more about this “delicacy” (a plate of it with steamed pork cost the writer about 80 bucks) over at the Korean Food Blog, whence I extracted the above image. Koreans keep shelling out large money to enjoy it, so I’m not sure if it’s something that really grows on you or whether it’s one of those things which, in a drunken stupor, illustrate how big your cojones are and how small your brain is.

At any rate, I’d be willing to try it.

Thus far, though, insects are still off the menu. A buddy of mine in Japan sent me a small bottle of hachi-no-ko (yellowjacket larva) to try, and it’s still sitting on my file cabinet. If I ever work up the guts to try them, I’ll let you know.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

The Curse of A.D.D.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I’ve alluded to the scattered nature of my mind before, but it’s worse than anything that could possibly be imagined. Like Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or clinical depression or a host of other “invisible” maladies, you’ll never know what it’s like unless you’ve experienced it. As a result, the body of humanity, which blessedly for them does not suffer from such things, tends to think that you’re just lazy, or a complainer, and that you should just sack up and get over it.

I had difficulty in school from the very start. I absorbed information like a sponge from the very beginning, but I couldn’t focus, and couldn’t organize the data in any meaningful way. I hated those “compare and contrast” exercises; the information was in there, but I could never get at it when I wanted to, although bits and pieces would often percolate to the surface at random moments. Look at some of the comments that appeared on my report cards:

  • “He must learn to concentrate on what is being done in class.”
  • “Doesn’t work to capacity.”
  • “Has done little homework, has kept no notes, and pays very little attention in class. He gets lost in his own thoughts, or some plaything or other during most of our class discussions;” this one was for 7th-grade science, mind you, a subject that has always fascinated me.

I can’t count the number of painful, tortuous parent-teacher conferences where two big adults would pile 16-ton weights of guilt on my little head and tell me that I wasn’t living up to my potental (that never-sufficiently-to-be-damned word), and that I needed to buckle down and pay attention and concentrate and do better. As well they might have asked a kid in an iron lung to run the hundred-yard dash… it just wasn’t going to happen. And despite half a century having elapsed, not much has changed on the fundamental landscape.

This is what it’s like in here:

9cACwsc

 

There are more downsides to this than I can count.

  • I can work hard and get things done, but it takes an incredible amount of mental energy.
  • Discussions are a challenge. “Esprit de l’escalier” (thinking of the right thing to say only after the moment has passed – and in my case, long after the moment has passed) prevents me from engaging in rational debate. Hence this blog, where ideas get worked out and crafted over time until they are more or less what I want to say.
  • Wife: “Don’t you remember that we talked about this?” Me: “No. Honestly.” Wife: “Doghouse.”
  • I used to use a Franklin Planner; I’d write everything down, prioritize it 123, ABC… and then I’d forget to look at it. At least a PDA or smartphone beeps at me to remind me to do something.

In the end, it’s a malady that just has to be lived with. I have methods of coping; this blog is one of them. Things that get written down are less likely to worry me later. To-do lists help, but chipping away at them is a slower process than it should be, because I still get distracted easily.

And one final note, after spending a couple of hours trying to craft this entry:

7zlo4

 

The Old Wolf has spoken.

It’s only a Done Deal if you give these scammers your credit card number

Posted on by The Old Wolf

donedealscam

Notice the legitimate address for DoneDeal up there? It’s http://www.donedeal.ie, the home page of a legitimate Irish commercial site.

No surprises, then, that when the email leads you to http://recza.com.mx/donedealone/[obfuscated], red flags wave, sirens blare, and bells ring. Why would DoneDeal be using a web host in Mexico?

Of course, they wouldn’t. This is a phishing scam, pure and simple. I’ve received two in the last couple of days, the second pointing to a different website after the first one was shut down. You fill out an innocent-looking survey (and if you believe that they will pay you €150.00 for that 30-second effort, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you) and then you’re taken to a page where you enter your credit card details and other critical personal information:

Survey2

Most of my readers here know how to recognize a phishing scam from miles away, but most of us have loved ones and friends who may not be computer literate. Protect them; educate them; teach them NEVER to give out their financial data online unless they know what they’re doing.

DoneDeal knows about these bottom-feeders; whether they can do anything about them is debatable, but forewarned is forearmed.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

First Contact

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Back before December 2010, there were comment pages attached to Brooke McEldowney’s “9 Chickweed Lane” and “Pibgorn” webcomics. Over the course of several years, a lively and thriving community sprang up on these discussion boards known unofficially as the Couch of Confusion, or the Order of the Couch (mostly because Brooke’s story lines could get quite convoluted before their final resolution.) There were over 100 of us, and between 2008 and the present I have met a dozen or so in person as I traveled around the country on various trips. They were most pleasant encounters. [1]

On May 13 of 2009, I posted at my Livejournal that I was taking a road trip from Utah to New York, then to Portland, Maine, and finally to West Virginia, where some friends of mine had engaged me (begged, pleaded and whined bitterly is more like it) to care for their 180-acre sheep ranch while they took a belated honeymoon to Hawaiʻi. I mentioned that I looked forward to meeting with anyone who happened to be close to my route, as I had done before.

A lovely lady named ToniAnne, whose posts I had long enjoyed – she was witty, clever, well-informed and had good ideas and sound opinions – wrote the following:

(Anonymous)
May. 13th, 2009 06:41 pm (local)
Don’t be a stranger… just be strange!
Hi!
I see that Gap Mills, WV is 132 miles south mostly of where I am in Harrisonburg,VA if you will be driving anywhere near where I am I’d enjoy meeting you in RL.
I used to live up the road a piece from Port up in Auburn. Have you ever had a Needham a Maine candy special. I think you’ve heard of Moxie.
Drop me a line at [email redacted] I am in Florida at the moment but will be returning late on the 15th..from Richmond on 64 then 81.
or call after the 15th- [phone redacted]
I’d cook you a meal but I don’t have the ingredients for haggis.. it would have to be something more mundane.
Have a good and safe trip.
ToniAnne

Well, stop I did, and we had a wonderful visit. There’s a lot more to tell, but long story short: in May we will be celebrating our fourth anniversary. I just happened to cross this first one-on-one communication, and was pleased that it had been archived. Brooke’s forum was the vehicle for our crossing paths, but our first meeting was all her fault… and I’m eternally grateful she piped up.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

———————-

[1] Unfortunately and incomprehensibly, McEldowney’s work attracted an infestation of internet trolls who delighted in spewing, as Twain would say it, “the ignorantest words” and pictures; despite noble efforts by GoComics, Brooke requested that the comment features on his comics be disabled. Unfortunately, the disabling happened before any word of explanation could be offered, and a number of people were grossly offended by Brooke’s “disrespect” for his readers, which of course wasn’t the case at all, but the upshot was that our little community lost much of its cohesiveness, although it continues elsewhere in a much reduced form. To everything there is a time and a season, and while it lasted, this was a wonderful one.

Shipping Scams: One way the Nigerians find their accomplices

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I have received over the last year or so around a dozen fraudulent checks from Nigerian Craigslist scammers, about whom I have posted previously. I received an email today which illustrates one method by which they get people in the USA to act as their stooges.

New_Mail_Scam_for_Stealing_Identities1

—————————

From: Andrew Joycelyn JoycxuelfaynAncudrew@outlook.com
 To: Me
A US based organization is looking for Mail Associates. This position requires no special knowledge besides entry-level computer skills and physical ability to work with correspondence and dispatches.
Perfectly fitting for stay-at-home moms, retirees and business owners who reside in the personal office during the day.

The work pressure is around five hours every day.

Duties:

– Accepting of correspondence and dispatches
– Checking whether the contents match the description
– Submitting photos 
– Sending shipments to clients
– Submitting of simple reports via our website

Prerequisites:

– A postal address anywhere in the United States
– Can work take responsibility 
– A personal car to deliver mail to the nearest USPS locations
– Physical ability to lift up to 25 lbs

This is a permanent job with a compensation of up to $2,000 net per month.

Should you become interested in this job offer, kindly reply to this email, and we will contact you at our earliest convenience.

——————–
Whatever kind of “work” these drones are offering, you can be certain it’s not legitimate. In addition to printing and mailing fraudulent checks, criminals also use people like this to forward illicit items or stolen property. My suspicion is that anyone who applies will also be taken advantage of monetarily in some way.
The following text is from the Postal Inspectors’ website:

Don’t Be the Victim of a Reshipping Scam!

Have you been asked to receive packages at your home or business and mail them to someone else? Postal Inspectors advise: Don’t do it!

Criminals who conduct reshipping scams recruit victims through a variation of one of these scenarios:

Work-at-Home Scams

Criminals often post phony job announcements at Internet career sites, offering positions such as “merchandising manager,” “package processing assistant,” or a similar title. Job duties generally include receiving packages and mailing them to a foreign address on behalf of a client. The websites may look legitimate, and they may offer to send you postage-paid mailing labels.

The real story? The offers come from criminals who buy merchandise with stolen credit cards and need help smuggling the goods out of the country. Even the mailing labels are phony. And you are committing a felony when you help out these criminals.

What should you do if you’ve been tricked into
one of these scams?

  • Don’t accept packages at your address for people you don’t know.
  • Stop all communication with operators who try to solicit your help in reshipping items.
  • If you already have merchandise from such an offer, don’t mail it.
  • Keep all correspondence (e-mails, faxes, etc.) related to these scams.
  • Contact Postal Inspectors at 1-877-876-2455. They’ll help you return stolen items back to the proper owners.
Also be aware of “Sweetheart Scams” and “Charity Scams” out lined in the same PDF document.
Stay away from such spurious offers; you’re dealing with the worst kind of soulless criminal, and will only stand to lose money and a whole lot more.
The Old Wolf has spoken.

Scam: You can’t win a lottery you didn’t enter

Posted on by The Old Wolf

TAKE NOTE:

Lottery-Fraud-Postcard

From: IRISH LOTTERY <parkerdskirish@hotmail.com>
To: <redacted>
Subject: RE: Irish Prize

IRISH GOVERNMENT ACCREDITED LICENSED IRISH WEB LOTTERY

IS REGISTERED UNDER THE DATA PROTECTION ACT OF
(Registration Z720633X).

The Irish Lottery
47 Meadow Vale,
Sligo, Ireland
Ref: UK/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY369
Tel (+44) 701 002 8673

CONGRATULATIONS!
We happily announce to you the draw (#1004) of the IRISH LOTTERY online Sweepstakes International program held on the 30th of March 2014. It is now available for claims and you are getting the final NOTIFICATION as regards this.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 5647560050000 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers:02, 05, 09, 16, 18, 41, (bonus no.03), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 1st category i.e match 5 plus bonus.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of 700,000.00 EURO (Seven hundred thousand Euros) in cash credited to file KTU/902311308/03. This is from a total cash prize of 3,600,000 (Three million, Four hundred thousand euros) shared among the (6) lucky winners in this category i.e Match 5 plus bonus. All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online.Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon. In view of this, your 700,000.00 EURO (Seven hundred thousand Euros) will be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe.

We are once again happy with you that you have won the IRISH LOTTERY PROMOTION. Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds.
Before we can gives you instructions on further step of your claims, you are advice to fill the claims below and get back to me for further instructions.

FULL NAME:________
SEX:________
COMPANY: IF ANY _________
FULL CONTACT ADDRESS:_________
PHONE:_________
AGE:____
CELL:____
CITY:_____
STATE:________
ZIP CODE:______
COUNTRY: ______
OCCUPATION: _____

For enquirers, more information and to file your claim, all contact should be forwarded to us via this email.

Congratulations from me and members of staff of THE IRISH LOTTERY.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Parker (Mr)
Phone: (+44) 701 002 8673
Online coordinator for THE IRISH LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.(Ireland)

 EDIT: Just continuing on with these Lads from Lagos so you can see how the scam plays out. Red flags and gross errors are marked in red.

IRISH GOVERNMENT ACCREDITED LICENSED IRISH WEB LOTTERY
IS REGISTERED UNDER THE DATA PROTECTION ACT OF
(Registration Z720633X).

The Irish Lottery
47 Meadow Vale,
Sligo, Ireland
Ref: UK/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY369
Tel (+44) 701 002 8673

Congratulations: Wolfington X. Analemma,
Congratulation once again your winning price has just been handed over to NATWEST BANK . We wish to inform you as a winner in this year IRISH ONLINE Award. Your check (Bank Draft) has been registered and deposited as a Bank Draft with the (NATWEST BANK) London, UK.

Contact the Bank via email as given below, NATWEST, Your winning check (700,000.00 EURO) was deposited with NATWEST, Kindly contact NatWest for transfer of your winning prize (BANK DRAFT) deposited from the National Lottery Department (IRISH LOTTERY).
You are to contact Mr. Stephanie Hughston ( +447010089271 ) Email: transfer-online@ntwstbonline.co.uk that is in charge of your fund right now in NATWEST BANK OF LONDON who will give instruction to the transfer department to commence on the transfer into the bank account details that is required by the NATWEST bank.

Operations Executive Officer NatWest Bank of London.
Mr. Stephanie Hughston
transfer-online@ntwstbonline.co.uk
+447010089271

Once again congratulation from me and member staff of the IRISH SWEETSTAKE ONLINE
For any clarification, kindly call IRISH Claim office Tell: +447010028673

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Parker (Mr)
Phone: (+44) 701 002 8673
Online coordinator for THE IRISH LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.(Ireland)

By Mogg’s holy grandfather, can the grammar, spelling, and overall English be any worse? Who could possibly believe that this is from any official body in Ireland or the UK? Be aware that the Irish Lottery is aware of this ongoing game by the Lads from Lagos:

Please note – There are an ever-growing number of Irish lotto e-mail scams. Although these scammers have used our name and address in their fraudulent e-mails we are NOT involved in any way with any of these scams.

Please visit http://europeanlottery.net/scam/lotto_scams.html for more information.

An Excerpt:

There are an ever-growing number of lottery scams circulating in the world wide web. Although these scammers have used the name and address of Irish and UK Subscription Services in their fraudulent e-mails, we would like to stress that ILS is NOT involved in any way with any of these scams.

Please be vigilant. These lottery scams are cleverly and convincingly written, but deceptive and completely fraudulent. Thousands of people have lost money paying “commissions” and “charges” to receive cash prizes they’ve been told (falsely) they’ve won. Take for example, the latest Irish Lottery Scam which comes with a forged ILS cheque with your name on it! The opportunists behind these scams are stealing large amounts of money from gullible people and they tarnish the integrity of legitimate marketers of Government Lotteries.

If you have any doubt at all about the legitimacy of a lottery prize “win” you’re mailed or emailed about, just email us atsales@irishlotto.net or sales@irishsubscription.net  An ILS Representative will be very glad to assist you.

The rest of the page is very informative and worth reading.

—————

Just posting this in case anyone else gets this fraudulent email and does a search on the information. Please note the following facts:

  • You can never win a lottery you did not enter
  • There are no “international tombolas,” or lotteries that choose winners from random emails
  • NEVER pay money to collect a prize of any sort.
  • Participating in overseas lotteries is illegal in many countries anyway, particularly the USA. The Irish Lottery and the Spanish Gordo are two favorite cover stories for liars, thieves, scammers, and hqiz-eaters.
  • Again we see a (+44 70) prefix. THIS IS NOT A UK NUMBER: If you call it, you’re speaking to someone in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa, in all likelihood.

Be careful out there. The number of people out there who want your hard-earned money and who will stop at nothing to get it is rising as the Internet becomes more accessible to larger sections of third-world countries.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

There’s bad translation, and then there’s this.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Battery

Found this abomination at the “Selling It” section of the May 2014 Consumer Reports. Engrish.com is full of such things, but this example is so egregious I felt as though it deserved its own shout-out.

The accompanying text said,

“Bang Indeed. The buyer who inserted this battery in his new “pay as you go” phone needn’t have worried about the warnings. “Sure enough,” he writes, “the phone did not work.”

I’ve talked about products made in China before, but it’s also worth remembering that the appetite for cheap Chinese goods is not driven by the Chinese exporters and manufacturers, but rather by American importers who buy their junk, exerting such downward price pressure on their suppliers that the quality goes from the toilet into the septic tank. It’s difficult to walk through Wal-Mart or Dollar Tree, to name two examples, without finding “Made in China” stamped on the goods. While getting American families up to living wage standards would help, it would take a miracle to break people of the habit of buying cheap trash just to save a dime. Frankly, I don’t have an answer, but I know that the current situation is doing nobody any good, except for those who manufacture and sell this type of garbage, balancing their bankbook on the backs of low-wage workers and low-wage consumers.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The People Here *still* Don’t Want a War.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Newser, one of my favorite aggregators, recently published a summary of an article by Stephen Peter Rosen at Wall Street Journal entitled

We Need to Sell Young People on War

Even though the body of the article is behind a paywall, if Newser’s summary is any indication this entire premise is pure kack. Never forget that Congress and the President make war, but it’s our soldiers who fight them; to the latter, honor and respect – to the former, my disdain. If every congressperson who voted to waste noble American blood and resources on futile and inhumane causes were given a weapon and shipped to the front lines, the votes would quickly be different. As Chaucer spake, moste witerliche:

“Up roos tho oon of thise olde wise, and with his hand made contenaunce that men sholde holden hem stille and yeven hym audience. “Lordynges,” quod he, “ther is ful many a man that crieth ‘Werre! Werre!’ that woot ful litel what werre amounteth. Werre at his bigynnyng hath so greet an entryng and so large, that every wight may entre whan hym liketh, and lightly fynde werre; but certes, what ende that shal therof bifalle, it is nat light to knowe. For soothly, whan that werre is ones bigonne, ther is ful many a child unborn of his mooder that shal sterve yong by cause of thilke werre, or elles lyve in sorwe and dye in wrecchednesse. And therfore, er that any werre bigynne, men moste have greet conseil and greet deliberacion.”

For those not comfortable with Middle English, this is what Chaucer wrote:

“And up rose an old man, and with his hand he made signs that men should be silent and listen to him. “My lords,” he said, there is many a man who cries ‘War! War!’ who knows little of what war means. War, at its beginning, has such a great and large commencement that any poor yutz [my translation] can jump in and find war; but it is certain that it is not easy to say what the end will bring. For of a truth, when that war has once begun, there is many an unborn child who shall die young because of this war, or else live in sorrow and die in wretchedness. And therefore, before any war begins, men must have great counsel and deliberation.”

The only reason war is justified – in my poor and simple view, is to “support our lands, and our houses, and our wives, and our children, that we might preserve them from the hands of our enemies; and also that we might preserve our rights and our privileges, and our liberty.”  [1] Insane conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, waged to preserve what we consider to be our oil, our power, and our influence do not now fall under this head, and never shall.

Take note: I believe in a strong defense against all enemies foreign and domestic. I do not believe in disbanding the military. But I do believe that a vast percentage of our nation’s resources are being squandered on inhuman and inhumane causes. Have a look at the OMB’s chart showing the president’s 2014 recommendations for discretionary spending:

spending_-_discretionary_pie_2014_big

With so many people in this country out of work, with so many children going to bed hungry every night, with so many roads and bridges crumbling to the point of catastrophe, with funding for education and science being cut year by year, a military budget that size is unconscionable and obscene. This is not building a world that works for everyone, but a travesty of global proportions.

With apologies to Bobby Darin, the people here *still* don’t want a war.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

—————-

[1] Paraphrased from The Book of Mormon, Alma 43:9

 

Change Nothing, Sell More

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Marketing

The webcomic “Doc Rat,” by Jenner (a practicing physician somewhere in the wilds of Australia) has long taken potshots at the marketing department of drug companies. It’s no coincidence that the marketing floor is represented by weasels.

I’ve written about the nature of persuasion before, but sometimes an example of the extreme folly of advertising and marketing rises to the surface, and I feel moved to share – a recent marketing campaign for Shreddies, a Wheat-Chex-like cereal sold in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.

post_shreddies

It was a good seller, and popular, and as well known as Wheaties or Cheerios in the USA, but the manufacturers wanted to breathe new life into the product, and so Kraft Foods came to advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather with a unique request – to re-brand Shreddies as a leader, without having any news about the product to work with, and while keeping in mind that focus groups showed that Shreddies’ customers liked it just the way it was. The resulting campaign was devious, brilliant, humorous, and successful, all at once.

shreddies-ooh-02

 

All they did was rotate the image of the cereal by 45°, altering the visual perception of the product.

 

diamond-shreddies-pack

 

And despite the fact that the product was identical, taste-testers actually reported a difference in flavor – and a positive one to boot. They liked it better. Not content to rest on their laurels, the company milked the campaign for all it was worth:

combo-pack-3d-big

The campaign was percieved by many as being tongue-in-cheek, but there were many who did not… and as a result, the sales of shreddies increased by 18% in the first month, and remained higher for many months thereafter. You can read the details of the campaign and see some video clips at Visual Targeting.

There are two main parts to marketing: 1) convincing your target audience that they absolutely need what you have to sell, whether or not they do, and 2) tailoring your product to what your target market actually wants and values. This bit of marketing jiggery-pokery addressed the second in a brilliant way, without the manufacturers having to do anything whatsoever to the actual product.

That’s funny, but it’s also scary. We are being bombarded on a daily basis by upwards of 5,000 ads a day, up from around 500 in the 1970’s [1]. That is an incredible amount of clutter to either tune out or sift through, depending on what your needs are. And almost every one of those ads is using targeted persuasion techniques to get your attention and influence your purchasing behavior. President of the Marketing Firm Yankelovich, Jay Walker-Smith, has said, “Consumers don’t hate advertising. What they hate is bad advertising.”  There is some truth in that; I’ve mentioned some of my favorite advertising spots before, and if all advertising were as clever as these, I’d be persuaded to watch more of them. At the same time, it’s important to remember that this advertising has only one purpose – pushing every single one of your buttons in the hopes that you will open your wallet.

A couple of good tips:

  • Nothing is free. You’re paying for it somewhere else. A “gimme” is only a good thing if you’re willing to pay the price elsewhere, and if that price has value for you.
  • A sale is not a sale. It’s simply a retailer cutting an inflated price back to the profit level he wants in the first place. (Liquidation sales can be the exception to this rule.)
  • Saving 20% on an item is not a good deal if you can’t afford the other 80% in the first place. Don’t buy things you don’t need.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

——————–

[1] CBS News.