Do you look cheesy, dull, and out of touch?
I was thumbing through the local rag this weekend, enjoying random stuff like “Police Log” and tips on keeping my tires from early winter wear, when I came across an ad for a local computer store.
They’ve got a great holiday sale going. They also do helpful stuff like data restores, removing shareware, and network setups. Cool.
Unfortunately, the ad looks cheesier than a side dish in a highway diner. I actually had to check my calendar because I thought I had slipped through a wormhole on my way out of the bathroom and landed in 1993.
Now, according to the Design Rules of the Universe, blue and yellow compliment each other. True enough, but it depends on how you use them. In this case, they don’t compliment so much as argue. The ad also displays two supremely ancient clip-art computers. There’s also a clip-art cartoon elf at the top and some clip-art Christmas lights as a border, but we’ll leave them out of this for now.
Let’s say you have a computer company. Let’s assume that you would like people to think that, being an expert in computers, you are up-to-date with all the latest trends in computing. For example, people might want to get the impression that you’ve stopped using floppy disks.
For me, seeing a beige cartoon computer with a floppy slot says, “I still use DOS commands.”
As a person who needs new computers from time to time, I want the future. I want to see sleekness, shiny black and silver things with impossibly thin profiles. I want to feel like if I showed up at the store I would be awed by the technology. I want Promethius working behind the counter, possessing the kind of computer knowledge I can’t even guess at.
Instead, the impression I get from this particular ad is that my grandfather sells calculators.
I’m a smart dude. I can read past the terrible clip art and the ugly choice of colors (by the way, red and green are missing from this holiday ad). I can see in plain Helvetica that they remove shareware and perform system backups. I notice they sell desktops and laptops at “very competitive prices.”
I can read it, but I don’t feel it. You feel me?
Now, I’m betting there are people in my area who only see “Computer Store Holiday Sale” and not “Computer Store Holiday Sale circa 1993.” Some people in this area are not going to care. Those people are this guy’s “Right People,” his niche. So what’s the problem?
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