Was that Marketing??

Image by swing....kn via Flickr

My wife and Youngest both received flyers in the mail for Royal Canine dog food. The only way they would both get them is if the AKC sold them a list of registered owners of pets. (Considering the Youngest is only in kindergarten)

So anyhow. When we saw these flyers we were thinking ‘SCORE’, because we do indeed feed our dog the Royal Canine brand. Upon opening these flyers we soon discovered they were not anything but advertisements stating that if you are not happy with the dog food contact them for a full refund.

What the hell was that?? No coupons or anything? Now I’m no rocket scientist but considering the marketing department had to pay for the AKC list of owners, pay for the printing and then pay to mail the flyers, there was a ZERO return on investment for that marketing campaign. As a matter of fact the company lost money on that deal.

Maybe I should work for their marketing department considering they don’t have to show any kind of profits for their work. I better check out their job board.

Mattress Stores?

Image via Wikipedia

How can mattress stores make any money?  It seems like there is one in every strip mall.  How many mattresses do people buy in a lifetime? 

I can honestly say that I’ve bought one at a mattress store. It is nice and comfy but I’m not married to it.  If I had to buy a new one because of a tornado or God forbid my dog expired on it and released its bowels and everything else I would probably not go back to a mattress store.   All the others I’ve purchased for my children have come from Sam’s Club or a discount mega-mart type store.

 Makes you wonder how many mattresses these stores have to sell in order to pay their monthly rent and utilities or even the paychecks of the poor people that work there.  Can you imagine working commission as a sales rep at a mattress store?  It would be better if they would legalize prostitution and hiring the ladies to be sales rep.  Because even if they don’t make the commission of the mattress sale they could at least make money off of the test drive.

New Strip Mall… coming soon

Why is it that everywhere you look they are putting up more and more strip malls?  I live in Indianapolis and the West side of town is completely covered with them.  The sad thing is once the construction is complete the stores stay empty for months even years at a time. 

What kind of company can afford to do that?  Then when something is finally opened in the building, it’s usually useless like another cell phone company or a mattress store.  I think the cities should look at the overall empty strip malls before they allow new ones to be constructed.  Maybe make a rule like the occupancy rate must be 80% full in the area.  Instead we have strip mall after strip mall with only one or two stories in them. 

What a waste of money and space.  This does not even take into account the area that was destroyed to put up the empty building.  Maybe it would have been better to put in a public park!