Trump Marketing: Not for the Faint of Heart

Cracking up 10 year olds (and Brian Ford) since forever: The Ozarkland Fudge Factory

Poor advertising (and poorer placement) in BFE Missouri: Charles Burt Realtors - as seen shortly after the Ozarkland Fudge Factory billboard.

A recent trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas (from Kansas City, MO) has provided the impetus for an article that has been brewing in my mind for a long time.

Driving south from KC, somewhere around the Missouri/Arkansas border you officially enter BFE Missouri. (There's a sign.) About 45 miles before you arrive at the actual storefront, you start seeing signs for famed Ozarkland -- one of those interstate shops that sells sundries you'll not find anywhere else and thank God for that. Because it is one of a kind, I surmise that it's probably been there forever, changing owners every 70 or 80 years. Adam and Eve may have stopped by Ozarkland for some vittels on their way to wherever they were going after being evicted from Eden.

Ozarkland also happens to have an honest-to-God Fudge Factory. Not a Chocolate Factory, or a Fudge Shoppe or any other name that would prevent a fit of giggles from anyone over the age of 6; a Fudge Factory. I was driving down I-71 when I saw my first Ozarkland FF billboard and hadn't finished giggling when it was topped by a sign that read:

"Let Charles Burt Give You a Pounding."

Suddenly, things were not so funny in BFE, Missouri. I rolled up my windows, locked my door and fearfully listened for banjo music. Sadly, I was only able to glimpse (what I thought was) a gavel and the infamous text as I drove by at speeds greatly exceeding the posted limit. I was on my way to somewhere important and didn't want to be late. I called my wife, made fun of the signs, and that was that.

At least until today when I drove past both signs again armed with my digital camera. (Deliverance ain't got nothin' on me.) Pictures in hand, I stand by my earlier (child-like) assertion that calling a candy shop a Fudge Factory is humor of the highest level. On the other hand, photographic evidence seems to show that I might have been a bit hasty in locking my doors when I passed by the Charles Burt sign last week.

The whole situation did, however, make me think: What person in their right mind would ever allow someone to design something that asks us (the consumer) to allow them (the business owner) to "give [us] a pounding" as this billboard so eloquently puts it? (Apparently the answer to that question is Charles Burt.) Indeed, how does something so mind-bendingly obvious get past enough people that it makes it's way onto a sign next to an American interstate? Did no one inform Mr. Burt of what people (like me) might infer from a sign that motorists (like me) will barely have time to read as they zip by? (Let alone the chances that they will be able to take in the whole thing for some sort of context? "Oh, I get it, he doesn't want to visit my Fudge Factory, he wants to sell my house.")

It's bad enough that he hired someone who would make such a horrendous mistake (assuming he did not do it himself) but they then made the mistake of placing it somewhere near a sign advertising a Fudge Factory. Again, these are not temporary signs for Ozarkland; they've been around for years and years without moving.

So, you're thinking: "Big deal! It's Charles Burt from BFE, MO. No one cares about that sort of stuff there and he's just a small-time guy."

To which I agree. Sadly, this sort of mistake is made all the way at the top of the business chain as well. I need only reference the infamous "I'd Hit It" advertising campagin launched by McDonalds -- which was intended to advertise a hamburger. Apparently they wanted us to want their hamburgers so badly that we'd be willing to sleep with them. (The burgers.) On the other hand, it's also very likely that no one at McDonalds knew what the phrase I'd Hit It meant -- perhaps they had merely heard it coming out of the mouths of their target audience a few times and didn't bother to look it up before launching an ad campaign which featured the phrase. (Bingo!)

So, bad marketing decisions happen in Little Town, MO and they happen all the way at the top. The question then becomes: How does something like this happen anywhere?

We're going to need to turn to the Apprentice for my answer. Week after week, The Donald pushes his cast into one marketing task after another. It doesn't matter that few (if any) of them have experience in marketing or that their future job probably won't involve much in the way of heading up a marketing campaign. (That's what marketing agencies are supposed to do.) They're given (a week?) to complete tasks that would take a professional agency with experienced designers (often) months to finish.

What this says is that everyone at every level of business still operates under the age-old misconception that anyone can design and implement a marketing campaign. Trump himself released a product called "Trump Ice" on The Apprentice and managed to keep a straight face while doing so. (I realize that the name Trump has to be included within all of his branding but seriously; Trump Ice was a bad name thought up by bad people. Where does he get off criticizing candidates for bad marketing decisions with that faux pas under his belt?)

I don't get (1) why Trump keeps pushing marketing tasks on these people and (2) why he is continually surprised that they turn in horrible work? Further, if you're McDonalds and you've just released a campaign that literally asks people to @!$%# your hamburgers, someone has got to be fired. If a marketing team made the decision, fire the marketing team; if the CEO made the decision, fire whoever didn't inform the CEO that he was an idiot that needs to learn how to Google a phrase.

The moral: Marketing (tasks or campaigns) need to be handled by people who know what they're doing and who have extensive experience in marketing. Simply being Donald Trump or a member of Mensa does not mean that you always know what you're doing -- design happens to be a unique field in that it has been proven over and over that experience is of the utmost importance and yet in which uneducated people continue to try and excel -- despite ample evidence of how horribly things can go wrong by doing so.

Imagine if any other field were treated with this seeming disregard for the necessity of experience: I could save a lot of time by treating medical patients, trying criminal cases, and selling real-estate. (No pounding involved.) This is not to mention any number of other jobs that I realize I'm not qualified for. (For what it's worth, if I considered the things I write for Newsvine to be examples of journalism, I guess I'd be a hypocrite right now. Still, my professional reputation isn't riding on this article in the way that reputations often ride on marketing.)

I suppose there's little hope for Charles Burt: He can't really fire himself, and I doubt he has a marketing team to fire. The good news: He's apparently in great company.

I'm lovin' it.

(Ba da ba ba baaaa.)

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