I get a lot of e-newsletters, follow some interesting folks on twitter and subscribe to several RSS feeds. Every so often I get a few articles around the same time that touch on a similar topic in a slightly different but related way. Today for example…

Victoria’s Secret, I learned from mobilemarketer.com, “launched a marketing initiative that uses the mobile Web and SMS text messages to promote its products and shopping on-the-go. ”

Lingere shopping “on the go” from your cell phone didn’t make sense to me. So I posed the question, “Would you buy lingere from your cell phone?” to my Facebook friends.  A whopping two women replied. Both just said “no.”

Yesterday, I wrote about “who uses texting.”  Teenagers and twenty somethings were the main users – by far. “Older folks” over 35 years old are slowly adopting SMS yet 41% of respondants didn’t use text messaging at all….

This afternoon, the @imediatweet turned me on to an article on WSJ regarding online clothes shopping and women.

The author, Christina Binkley, said, “Online sales to women aged 25-34 fell 8% in the year ended in March, but sales to 55-to-64-year-olds rose 11% — recession be damned.”

So 55-to-64 year old women are shopping yet they aren’t using SMS text messaging but Victoria’s Secret is launching a text and mobile Web shopping platform.

Something here seems disconnected to me….is this mobile underwear effort missing the mark?

Who uses text messaging?

• 97% of Teenagers
• 87% of Twenty-Somethings

Yet, 41% of all people responding to a recent study said they do not text at all. The reasons:

• Don’t like to type on the phone
• Cost of text messaging

Both of these road blocks could easily be off-set with the “right” phone and the “right” plan. 

But re-engineering phone keypads for easier typing and reducing data transfer plan fees will only make a small change in the number of 40 and 50 year olds who use text messaging.

You can lead a horse to texting but you can’t make him drink.  Why?

The explaination why these people don’t use text messaging is the same reason some (usually the same) people don’t “get” social media.

Texting (and social media) puts more “power” into the users hands.  It is a lifestyle and/or a paradigm shift in the way people communicate.   

Studies with teens have shown that they like text messaging because it allows multitasking, offers speed and privacy, and gives them control to avoid verbal communication.

You can’t “make” someone switch their lifestyle or preferred way of communicating and start texting by lowering the price or giving them a new phone.  But some people will be “forced” to text.

Parents and grandparents of teens will make the transition to texting as a matter of necessity. To communicate with teenage family members, older adults start texting – the way they (the teens) prefer to communicate. 

Teens and pre-teens have always wanted more control and more power over their lives. By “forcing” the adults closest to them to communicate in a way they prefer teens can gain some of the control they desire. 

And, by default, they drag the “old” folks into the “new paradigm” of communication where they can begin to realize the benefits of text messaging (and social media) = multitasking, speed, privacy and the ability to avoid verbal communication.

What do you think?

A chip bag and a sign in front of a dry cleaner’s shop got me going on this post – first a few definitions….

Semantics: the study of meanings.
General Semantics: the language used to achieve a desired effect on an audience esp. through the use of words with novel or dual meanings.

A line of copy on a chip bag caught my eye the other night. It said, “All Natural Corn Oil.” Hmmmm. Seems tricky….

The corn oil used in food factories, such as the chip maker’s ”kitchen” no doubt, is processed. Can it be “natural” if it is treated with Hexane solvent, distilled, refined, bleached and deodorized? The raw material for corn oil – corn itself - is the product of a huge farm factory teated with fertilizers and pesticides.

I guess corn oil could be “natural” if you grew it and made it yourself - horse manure only please (depending on what the horse is fed and the medications its given though…some of the nasties go through the digestive tract without being absorbed, ya know.)

So, “natural corn oil” isn’t really natural at all then.  What is “natural” oil?

Way before there were any “chemicals” there were plants and animals. “Natural oil” then is a petroleum seep, like the LaBrea Tar Pits, Pitch Lake (Trinidad) and The Perpetual Fires of Baku. 

The source of the petroleum in a seep is organic plant matter from millions of years ago, ‘fermented’ under the earth and naturally forced to the surface.  Somehow, this seems more “natural” than the corn oil in my chips – and it’s “organic.” 

“Organic Dry Cleaning” said the sign on my way to the office.  I had to look this up because I know a little bit about dry cleaning after spending a few years working on B-2-B dry cleaning advertising and PR.

A quick Google search confirmed what I thought. “Organic” is used as in “organic chemistry” – any chemical containing a string of carbon is considered organic. It also pointed out that the “organic” dry cleaning solvent being touted by many cleaners now is slightly better than the older solvent (perc). Perc solvent is also an organic chemical though – according to chemists.

There were a number of other dry cleaning solvents in use before perc was developed - two of the earliest were petroleum-based kerosene and gasoline. According to the chemists then, these solvents too were “organic.”

So then, what exactly is the ”organic dry cleaning” that I read about on a sign today?  Nothing or nothing new depending on your perspective. (Some say simply it is best to avoid clothing that needs dry cleaning.)

So “natural” and “organic” can apply to petroleum products if you look at them in just the right way.  Kinda makes me feel a little better about mashing on the gas pedal when a good song comes on the radio….

Next Up: 5691gerg explores all the nasty-stuff that goes into a battery for your Hybrid-Electric car.

Previously: e-Cards, environmental angst, flourescant light bulbs, damaging dentistry.

First, let me say I DID NOT WRITE this piece. It came from “Grant’s Client Brief” an email newsletter (Vol 9, No. 3, April 1, 2009) I subscribe to (you should as well). I tried to find a link to this piece elsewhere but couldn’t so I am reposting it here…it is that good.

So without further ado here goes….

Chances are you know the TalentZoo folks – they specialize in connecting people with jobs in the ad agency business, but that’s not all.

Their website at TalentZoo.com is a first-rate clearing house for fresh industry news, salary data, career advice, and insightful articles about the ad business.

. . . Like the one I wrote for them a couple of weeks ago, reproduced in full below. Hope you enjoy it.

And you should make it a point to visit TalentZoo.com regularly, too.

Are You in Advertising? No Worries!

TalentZoo guest columns usually offer pithy advice with a lot of focus lately about how to survive this economic laxative we all seem to have ingested.

Well, I don’t have any pat answers for you here, no “6 Easy Ways To Keep Your Job” stuff. I’ve seen bad spells several times in my career and all I can say is like a rodeo cowboy, you just ride the beast as long as you can, get the tar whupped out of you, and hope it stops before you’re bucked off. If you land in the dirt, get up and find another bull.

So instead of a bunch of platitudes, I’ll tell you about an art director named Fred, may God rest his gin-soaked soul, who taught me an important lesson.

My first ad agency job a long time ago was in Rochester, NY. When the CEO said I’d be spending the first couple of weeks shadowing Fred, I couldn’t believe it. He was snarly, petulant, and usually hung over. But worst of all Fred was an art director. And I on the other hand had been hired as an Account Executive which I always spelled capital A capital E. Before starting work I’d even bought a shiny new suit and a couple of ties at Sears so nobody would miss that I was on the clean side of the business. So why am I stuck with this old fart?

It didn’t go well in the beginning. He wouldn’t speak a word to me the first week, wouldn’t even let me sit in his office so I perched on a stool just outside the door to peer in without aggravating him. But after some time he mellowed and started tugging me along like a pet to printers, type houses (I told you this was a long time ago), art studios, photo shoots, and a couple of bars where – believe me – everybody knew his name.

[You know, every new account person should get baptized by spending their first few weeks in Creative. In retrospect it was invaluable and really helped years later when I landed agency management positions that included creative oversight]

Well, times grew tough in Rochester and we lost some accounts which meant staff cuts were looming. Everyone knew they were coming and I was petrified. Like many young couples we had more bills than income plus a new baby at home. I couldn’t sleep, had trouble concentrating, and was observably scared.

Old Fred read me like a book, of course.

He took me aside and said, “Always remember – once you’ve been in the ad business a while you can get a job doing just about anything anywhere.”

He said our business is so demanding, requires so much talent in so many different ways, that almost any other job will be a cinch and you’re guaranteed to be successful. “If you can sell stuff to these [expletive forgotten - supply your own] clients of ours, and push ads through this place then you can do anything. Besides, people on the outside think advertising is magic. You’ll be fine.”

Wow. I never thought about it like that.

I did get the axe, and in fact it happened a couple more times in my 35+ year (so far) career. But each time it was a comfort recalling what art director Fred declared: I can do anything . . . I’m in Advertising!

He was right and I’m still riding the beast. Lots of people who got shaken out of the business in prior bad times became successful elsewhere; many came back and thrived all over again. But you know, if you look closely they never really shed what it takes to succeed in advertising – they just applied that special mash-up of skills, creativity, and craziness someplace else. (5691gerg note – that’d be a Jack Ass of All Trades BTW)

Once an ad guy, always an ad guy.

So you were expecting some profound magic bullet advice in this column?

You just got it.

Sign up for Joe Grant’s new blog It’s free, topical, and engaging, and will come right to your mailbox several times a month (you can always bail anytime. Sigh.).  Subscribe using an RSS feed reader.

So, there you have it! A “special mash-up of skills, creativity, and craziness” = Jack Ass of All Trades.