A House of No Historical Value

Once upon a time in a very nice city, there was a very nice street. And, on that street there was small, plain, white house.

The white house had a real estate sign in the front yard.  The white house knew that every time the sign appeared, the family that lived there would move out. 

The white house loved young children.  She enjoyed having them play in the front yard.

The white house did not have an Italian garden, or miniature fruit trees, or a swimming pool like other houses on the very nice street. 

But the white house did have a large expanse of lawn in the back that was perfect for kickball in the summer …  and Fox-and-Geese in the winter.

The white house sat plainly on her lot, looking window-to-window with the house next door, a Victorian Painted Lady.

The Painted Lady’s color scheme was pink and purple and aqua that its owners always referred to by numbers.  Like most Victorians, she was very tall, with tall windows, a very tall turret, and a Cupola that looked like a crown at the very top.  The Painted Lady sat very smugly on her lot and did not talk to the plain, white house.

“What an eyesore,” the Painted Lady said. The white house thought she was referring to the real estate sign.  “A house like that does not belong on our street.”

“I quite agree,” came the confirmation from the other side of the little white house.

On the other side of the plain, white house was The Splendid Colonial.  He was Nantucket Blue, and was always painted every fourth year.  (He had just gotten his quadrennial coat last month.)

His lawns were watered every afternoon. The Splendid Colonial’s owners liked to walk around the yard and pull up little bits of crabgrass and little stray maple saplings that had found their way into their flower beds.  

Once they even found a Black Walnut sapling. That puzzled the Splendid Colonial’s owners greatly as there were no Black Walnut trees on their street.  (The white house knew that an absent-minded squirrel had buried the nut last fall and had forgotten about it by the spring.)

Most days, the white house felt inferior to her grand neighbors.  But on sunny days, she opened her windows and let the breeze ruffle the curtains, and then she felt better.  

This day was a bright Sunday afternoon, so she tried not to fret about it.  A group of people were walking along the sidewalk from house to house on the very nice street.

They stopped in front of the Splendid Colonial.  “This is a splendid Colonial,” said the guide of the walking tour. Everyone oohed and aahed.  

When they were done taking pictures and making notes in their tour programs, the tour guide said, as he shepherded them past, “And this is a house of no historical value.”  Some people stopped and looked, and one took a picture anyway.  Then they noticed they had become Stragglers and they hurried to catch up to the tour.

The white house slept in the afternoon sunlight. It was a warm day and the house liked to remember all of the happy families that had lived there over the years.

A car stopped in front of the white house and a man, his wife, and his two small children climbed out of the car. “This is it,” the man announced, and he waved his hand at the plain, white house.  The children climbed up the front steps and sat down and looked out towards the street.  

The man hugged his wife.  “This is the house I grew up in.”

“Should we buy this house, kids?” the man called to the children on the front porch.  “Oh, yes,” they said, and they ran off to explore the back yard.

“Then this will be our home,” the man said.  He pulled the real estate sign from the ground.

The plain, white house smiled.  “I now know what I am,” she said to herself, proudly.  “I may be a House of No Historical Value, but I am a Home.

© 2009, Jonathan Cowles

The Plot To Kill Hitler's Dog

Drew Carey used to tell a joke along the lines of: I fell asleep while channel surfing between the History Channel, Animal Planet, and Biography, and I dreamt about a documentary: The Plot To Kill Hitler's Dog.

Now, it's pretty well known that Hitler was a dog lover, and FDR, of course, had his Scottish Terrier, Fala. What if Fala was jealous of Hitler's dog, Blondi? What if Fala, in an attempt to win the psychological war, plotted to deprive Hitler of his beloved pet?

Once upon a time in a place called Brooklyn, there lives a dog named Scotty.

Scottie is the king of his domain – ten blocks of Brooklyn.  He knows every tree, every fire hydrant, every restaurant, every backdoor and every back alley. And everywhere he goes, everyone knows Scottie.

He has his routine, his early morning rounds, his afternoon rounds, and his night rounds. He knows when the chef at Cosi Fan Tutti makes tripe. He knows when Mrs Torrelli makes lasagna.

When war comes, to help with the war effort, wartime rationing is instituted, and it hits everyone in Brooklyn hard – and Scotty is no exception. Handouts are less frequent, food is scarcer. People are scared, There is talk of bombings and invasion. Blackouts are common.

Scotty loves blackouts. What’s better for a hungry, little black dog than a blackout? Scotty has free reign of his turf and has his pick of all the garbage cans.

But, even during blackouts, he has to be on the lookout for his arch enemy – the dog catcher.

Scotty is nimble – and shrewd. He uses the night to his advantage. He uses his speed and agility, and he hides in the shadows. And, once again, he eludes the clutches of the dog catcher, when –

He’s scooped up into a black limo and whisked away.

Then bundled onto an airplane and flown to Washington, DC.

Then another black limo that drives to a secret underground entrance at the White House. He is ushered in by the Secret Service and comes face to face with Fala, the White House First Dog.

Fala needs Scotty because Scotty is an exact double for Fala.

And Fala has hatched a scheme to kill Hitler’s Dog, Blondi.

(more to come...)

Radio Days

Here are some radio scripts I wrote for Sibley's department store. The first set is for our intimate apparel department named Amanda's Closet, started to compete with the then-new Victoria's Secret. The thrust of these ads was to be a little naughty, in keeping with the theme and design of the department. Alas, they were deemed a little too sexy for our image.

And, of course for the holiday season, we had the "Dear Santa" versions.

The second set is a series of light-hearted scripts for the young men's department. There was an adventure writer at that time named Tim Cahill, who took amazing adventures and wrote about them for magazines such as Outdoors. A collection of his articles had been published in book form, called "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh." These ads followed in that adventurous spirit, and the emphasis was on the imagination, and painting pictures in your mind.

The Young Men's department did a lot of radio advertising, for the most part generic price advertising that ran on WCMF-FM since they owned the men's demo in Rochester. I came up with quite a few different ways of advertising the Young Men's department, highlighting ADG's house brand, "Rugged Elements."

We also had the opportunity to run radio for Jockey underwear, an opportunity to use the Theatre of the Mind to get customers to visualize The Man in the Jockey Underwear.

2010 Golf Tournament for Vendors & Contractors

Every year, we put on a golf tournament to bring together our vendors with our best contractor customers, for an afternoon of golf, a little business, dinner, and a lot of camaraderie.
Our slogan is "Shop Where the Builders Shop." For our tournament, I modified that in a playful, tongue-in-cheek way on our sponsor signs:  "Golf Where the Builders Golf."

To add an element of fun and competition to the afternoon, I designed a series of T-shirts that would be passed out to the golfers at the end of the competition. I selected vendor names that could be paired with appropriate colloquial verbs indicating victory.

As the event approached, however, the decision was made, while the shirts were funny and would be well-received at the dinner after the day of golf, the money would not be spent for further "giveaway" prizes.

Invoice Messaging

With the advent of eMails and electronic invoicing, a great portion of our invoices and monthly statements are now sent electronically. Unlike traditional printed "statement stuffers" in snail mail, tagging product messaging at the bottom of the email adds no cost, but increases the positive communication we can have with our customers.
Messages were designed for three types of communication: image building, time-sensitive events, and new product introductions, and fit at the bottom of the emailed communication.

New Product Introductions:

Banner ads could be timed for new product introductions, and can be targeted geographically if, for example, a product is rolled out a selected locations, such as North Main Lumberyards only, or due to contractual limitations, available in New York but not Pennsylvania.

Time-Sensitive Events:

Special deals can be promoted, such as a sale on smoke detectors to coincide with National Fire Prevention Month, or special events, such as our annual appearance at the Empire Farm Days.  The ads can be created ahead of time and placed into the queue. They can be turned on or off remotely, so if an event is doing better than expected, we can stop additional messages from being sent to avoid customers arriving when our stocks are depleted, or change an offer to reflect an evolving supply situation ("New Models now available.")

Image Building:

We can create messages for our vendors to send out to current and/or future customers. The message can tie-in with the vendor's existing campaign, or, more likely, we can create the message to enhance the vendor's image with our customers.

Signs, Signs, everywhere signs

A unique part of the 2010 Vendor Marketing Program were the billboards. This allowed us to present a variety of clients, and client messages, that underscored the broad range of products we offer, while presenting a Big Message in a stylish and timely manner.

This particular billboard was facing the traffic traveling towards the Big Box competitor just a few miles down the road, one that typically sells their CFLs for more than double the price at which we sell our CFLs, giving a nice double meaning.

The idea of the "twisty light bulb" was intriguing. The main thrust of the advertising was always the cost-saving and environment-saving aspects. But, they are just fun to look at, and play with visually. Here's one of the ideas that generated smiles from the client, but didn't make the final cut!

Keep On Truckin'

As part of our first-ever Vendor Marketing Program in 2010, we gave vendors the opportunity to use our trailers as a canvas on which to put their message. As we have 15 locations throughout central New York and northern Pennsylvania, our trailers travel widely along many major thoroughfares, and their message is seen by several thousands of people each week.

Several vendors opted in to the program, representing a diverse array of products. I designed a unifying look that was carried through all vehicles. It had to present the vendor's message without overpowering our own branding.

In addition to trailers, each store has a box truck that is used for local deliveries, and also available for vendor branding. As the majority of local deliveries are to contractor's job sites, the messaging on the box trucks is delivered both to prospective users of the vendor's product, as well as current users to reinforce the vendor's image.

2011 Ugly Bathroom Contest

This year we initiated the Ugly Bathroom Contest, which will run thirteen weeks, beginning on February 6.

Again, I designed a series of ads, posters and department signs and tent cards, to grab customer attention and let them know about the Ugly Bathroom Contest. The idea was to design distinctive-looking ads that playfully suggest your out-of-date bathroom would be a prime candidate for a bathroom makeover.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love & Flowered Wallpaper?

By naming decades or eras, the out-datedness was implied. The target audience (women) were more likely to want to "update" their bathroom, even though all the fixtures may still be in proper working order. 

The ads were introduced in two waves. The first wave appealed to women, usually the prime mover when deciding to update a kitchen or bathroom. The second wave, introduced five weeks into the contest, was more broadly posed at men, focusing on ugly and/or broken fixtures. To urge the customer to enter the contest, I used some not-so-subtle word balloons to illustrate that your bathroom's dilapidated condition is really a cry for help.

And, of course, you can't have humorous ads for an Ugly Bathroom Contest without indulging in a little "bathroom humor."

Again, the signs and ads were designed to mesh with a cable TV/YouTube campaign that could put a voice to the word balloons, using voices that would embellish dripping faucets, slow drains, toilet bowls, etc. Unfortunately, the decision was made against carrying the campaign across several media.