Annoying Advertising To Attract Attention - Don't Buy These Dell Products!

I have previously, in my other blogs, I believe, mentioned advertising that is created to deliberately annoy the consumer in order to attract attention to the product.
I have no idea what the product of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is, but I do know that should they ever canvas me for a donation, I will point out that they should have saved the money that they paid out for a TV ad showing a crying baby, with the volume and frustration of the child increasing throughout the ad. Yes, MADD people, I saw it. It worked, I was put into a position where I could not ignore it. And I feel sad for the people who donated in good faith to this organisation only to see their money wasted in this manner.

The latest one is DELL.
Now we know that this company, despite good products, has very poor customer care, in fact so bad that it is better not to annoy yourself calling them. And we know, or at least I do, from experience that they have poor internal communication, and will lose payments money in the system for months. We also know that they do, at least when you blog about how poorly treated you are by them, make the money correct by recognising the payment made (in my case to the incorrect department) and correcting the interest charges. Moral of the story - pay cash, or get your financing elsewhere.

BUT.
The latest is a window that pops up in your PC saying DISCONNECTED, together with a loud high pitched whine. After a few seconds, just as you are about to shut it down, it comes up with a DELL ad.
Well, DELL, I have news for you. I think that your ad stinks, and I refuse to finance such activity by buying another PC or digital camera from you. I suggest that you either fire your ad agency, or check their work before it goes online. There are other companies with similar prices to yours who don't annoy me in order to get my attention, but instead just offer good products, the same as you do, you know, the ones that I will no longer be buying from you, even for cash.

Another Classic "I don't care' Customer Care Experience.

So, I noticed that the channel programming guide on the cable TV had an error that didn't get fixed after a few days, so I thought I would do the cable company (Who I have high regard for until now) a favour by informing them.
As I don't want to wait on the phone while listening to how important my call is to them, I chose the contact form on the website, and here is the email result, together with my original text:

Hello Mr. xxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you for taking the time to send us your email. We apologize for
the
recent issues you have in countered with your cable service. We will be
happy
to look further into the issues for you if you are still experiencing
the
problems. Please call our cable support department available to assist
you 24
hours a day, by calling 1-888-xxx-xxxx option 4 then option 2.

Thank you,
xxxxxxxxx Customer Care
"It's That Easy"


Please do not reply to this message. If you require further assistance
please click here   and you
will be taken back to our main web contact page.

Original Message Details:

First Name: John
Last Name: xxxxxxxxxxx
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Comment
Comment: Hi, Just to let you know that your digital cable guide is
incorrect for listings of South Park on the Comedy Network - the
descriptions lately do not match the content. Also, the Men channel
breaks up all the time, losing sound and picture so badly that it is
unwatchable. Do I contact the Men TV for this? The problem is perhaps
theirs? My other channels work fine. Have a great day, John

Now, let me translate what they are actually saying:
Dear Mr xxxxxxxx,
I have not fully read your contact form text that you submitted from our website, and so am ignoring that you asked a question.
I am actually trying to just find a way to respond that will not generate further emails that I have to reply to, as I am the email person assigned this week, and I really hate my job. So I have decided to use a template referring you to the phone-in customer care we have. I do it with all the incoming contact form messages, and most customers like yourself are so brain dead that they put up with it.
I have detected from the brief look I gave your text that you are also having technical issues, so, despite you filling out a silly load of personal info text boxes just to submit the contact text (one of which was an alternative phone number that was not marked as being essential to fill out until after trying to submit the form) that actually gives us your full contact information, I prefer for you as a customer to go through the mindless process that you were trying to avoid, namely, phone us and be put on hold and get annoyed by our stupid eternally repeating message telling you a pack of lies about how we value your business, whereas, as you can tell, we don't.
Anyway, this email to you is done, and I am well within my handle time for replying - obviously if I don't actually do any thinking before replying, it makes my job of keeping good personal statistics a lot easier.
Further, by failing to actually respond to what you wrote, I am avoiding a bad personal evaluation that might occur if I made an error in what I advised, this being a likely probability due to me actually knowing nothing at all about the subject in hand.
It was annoying having to write all of this, I prefer to use templates like are used for form letters.
And no, I am not going to contact someone within our company who can actually help - it is up to you to work at contacting us.

Thank you,
Anon Customer Care Person

And finally, here is my response:
Hi, Thanks, but that's Ok, all the info I can give you is in the original note I sent. Your choice what you do with it.
According to my son, the guide has been incorrect for a while now, and as for the Men channel, I just have to not watch it if it has breaking up sound and picture. I will take it up with the Men channel.
Thanks,
John

It came back at me as the address was a noreply one.
So, I have been converted from liking this company and being reasonably satisfied with the service, to being pissed off.
I cannot for the life of me know why they bother having an online contact form if they are not supporting it.
Anyway, screw them. They can boil their heads for all I care. I have better things to do than endlessly chase them to assist them in correcting errors that are probably caused by their own incompetence.
As they say, "It's That Easy"

Here's Proof That Corporate CEO's Are Idiots!

Here's some proof that corporate CEO's are idiots!
Any company is ultimately run by the CEO and his/her team, and so if the members of the team, or for that matter, anyone in the organisation, fails to perform, then it ultimately rests on the shoulders of the CEO.

Let's take advertising.
Say a person in the organisation decides to advertise the product of say, landscaping services, in say, a child's comic, then we all would agree that this might be a stupid move, because the ad will not likely reach those who might want to purchase landscaping services. The advertising budget would be wasted.

So, it follows that the end media of advertising must reach the expected prospective customers of the advertiser, right?

Television is fairly good for this, as there are many programs that will suit various products. For instance, put a beer ad on during a ball game. Put a childs toy ad on during a morning cartoon.
Put a female product ad on during 'The View'!

So, if a company places an ad in an incorrect slot where it would not be seen or heard by the target audience, it would be just the same as the childs comic example - the advertising budget would be simply wasted.
And the CEO would ultimately be responsible because they are employing idiots who would do such a thing.

Stay with me here, I WILL get to the point eventually!

Say I was responsible for placing my company's advertising onto a TV station, then all I would have to worry about is that the time slot was appropriate for the product involved, right? WRONG!

No Sound On TV?
Say I placed an ad with a TV station where the sound was switched off, would that be good placing for the advertising budget? Obviously not. It would limit my advert to being visual only, with no sound. And yet it is happening every day.
And if I was the guy who had the job of deciding where the budget is spent, then I would not, in that last case with the sound off, be doing my job, right?

And if I continued to do this incompetent work over a long term and it went unnoticed by those higher in the organisation, then they would not be doing their jobs, am I right?

Viewers Have TO Use Mute Button
So, WHY , OH WHY, OH WHY, are advertisers doing just what is written above, namely wasting their advertising budgets, or at least not maximising the budgets.
How are they doing this? Simple, by not watching the darn TV after they placed the ads.
No doubt all people in the advertisers organisation are all patting themselves on the back, saying how great things are, or no doubt these days wringing their hands in worry wondering how to increase market share in a folding market, and all they have to do is PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL!

Here Is The Actual Example
The TV Station is MuchMusic, out of, I believe, Toronto Canada.
The Programming is generally excellent.
The sound control is pathetic, however.
The sound on this station during some programming is so loud during the ads that it forces the viewer to either abandon watching, or hit the mute as soon as the ads come on.

CEO's Don't Watch TV?
This means that the CEO of MuchMusic is not watching his/her own station. The feature is so annoying that if he/she did, then the problem would get resolved post-haste.
It is even more interesting than that though.
Not only is there incompetence in the MuchMusic TV station, but also in the advertisers corporate structures.

The Advertisers Don't Watch TV?
The advertisers agents who are paying out their company's budgets are obviously not checking on the quality of service they are getting.
And their supervisors are not checking that those individuals are doing their jobs. And the CEO's of the advertising companies are not monitoring what is going on below them. They probably depend upon what they are told by the stool-pigeons below them rather than do proper checking, or even set up procedures for accurate checking by those below.

MuchMusic Stinks From Top Down - it never used to!
So, MuchMusic, your organisation appears to now stink from the top down.
So, those who advertise on the Muchmusic TV station, your organisations appear to stink from the top down as well.
And while the upper echelons are confident in the way they are doing things, the people below are probably going to work each day wondering how they can put up with the stupidity above them for years on end.

As for me, I am considering contacting all the companies who advertise on these badly engineered TV stations, and let them know that I am considering a "Don't Buy This" blog, listing all the moronic companies who are financially supporting badly engineered TV stations, in order to try to get the TV stations funding reduced until they fix their internal sound engineering issues.

Here We are - A New Subject For This Blog!

I have often wanted to run a website that has high traffic, and that I can make money with. So, I thought of the idea a while ago to have pictures of gals in the blog, hoping that this might do the trick as far as getting lots of traffic so I can sell advertising and make money for doing nothing. But it is not to be. I can't even be bothered with all the fuss in uploading pictures. Too lazy.
So, welcome to the Rant & Whine Blog! Now, that is a subject I am good at!