Vex and trip

This column first appeared in Column 8, 8th September, 1993

My self-imposed moratorium on a certain word rhyming with ‘vex’ must come to an end. The reason? The overwhelming emphasis this week on the word rhyming with ‘vex,’ and a companion word rhyming with ‘trip.’

Can I ask: If you were the mother of seven and came into a load of money after your husband died, what would you spend it on? Most mothers-of-seven would probably answer: ‘On getting the bills paid. Or buying the kids (or grandchildren) some extra clothes. Or putting aside for their future, especially their education.’

I don’t think most mothers-of-seven would decide that forming a male strip act and taking it on tour was a top priority.

Dreams are dreams, okay, and we all have some secret ambitions we’d like to fulfil. But this must be classed as one out of the box.

Male strippers are certainly in vogue. Due to the overwhelming financial (though hardly artistic) success of a play on the subject of male strippers, our local professional theatre is now presenting A Sequel.

We’re warned in the ads that some scenes ‘may offend, intimidate or excite audience members.’ We’re told in the review that people who’d find it difficult going to see a proper strip show can feel more relaxed about going to see a play on the subject.

The puzzle is why do people want to go and see other people strip at all?

For years we’ve heard the cry, ‘It’s degrading for women to strip.’ How come it isn’t for men? Or are we back to that piece of  nonsense proposed by the video censors: men are less easily demeaned than women?

Perhaps because men are the ‘oppressors’ and have all the ‘power,’ (fat chance!) they’re taking the opportunity to oppress their victims still further – by stripping in front of them.

The Listener presented a cover story about a male and a female stripper. The man said something significant: He felt he still had to keep one part of himself for himself – that is, he never exposes himself completely. But why expose himself at all?

I know work is difficult to get, and I can see that certain unemployed members of the community might decide that this was the road to success, but what’s the cost in the long term?

A certain newspaper now has columns advertising – euphemistically – Adult Entertainment. Strippers appear increasingly amongst the ads for ‘escorts,’ a number of which I’m sure really mean ‘prostitutes.’

There are two unsavoury aspects to all this. First, the ads sometimes appear alongside the church notices, a matter of ‘inappropriate juxtaposition.’ No doubt someone will point out that Jesus spent a good deal of His time ministering to prostitutes; therefore the neighbourliness of the ads is appropriate. However, I don’t think Jesus expected that prostitutes, once they’d seen His light, would continue in their occupation.

Secondly, classified ads must ‘conform to the newspaper’s standards.’ Am I wrong in thinking those standards have broadened their broadmindedness more than a little?

That’s the classifieds. Amongst the entertainment ads is one for a certain lady now touring the country. She’s been a centrefold in Penthouse, Hustler, and so on. She’s an X-rated star of porn movies. Need I say more?

I thought, as a nation, we were already pretty much obsessed by that subject rhyming with ‘vex.’ The trouble with obsessions is that they’re never satisfied.

In the murkier depths of our beings, we’d possibly all find lascivious corners that would leer at what ought to be other people’s privacy. (I mean, of course, something quite different to normal married privacies.) But what value is there in yielding to these murky depths?

When it comes to certain words rhyming with ‘vex’ and ‘trip,’ are we made to be creatures that wallow, or creatures that soar?

**********

Update, 20.03.20

Interesting that this was written four years before The Full Monty appeared. Certainly this is an entertaining and well-made movie, though there always seemed to me to be a disconnect between putting on a strip show (and once only) and the idea that these men had lost their sense of human value. The argument didn’t quite work. Where would they go after the show was put on? Hardly into full-time strip work, you’d think? And would it be likely to give them employment in another profession?

Promoting your product

I've been spending a lot of time in the last year promoting my three e-books. It's a tough task but it has to be done. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's a chore. You meet interesting people online in the process, and there's always plenty of advice as to how to do it better - too much, perhaps.

But one thing is certain, if you're not a big name and not already a big seller, you're going to have to be patient and let the sales trickle in bit by bit.

I was thinking about this while walking the dog this afternoon. I came across a sign on the roadside which had blown over (not the one in the picture; that's just an example, and doesn't look as if it would blow over easily). It was advertising firewood and so on. I wondered if it would have been anymore effective even if it had been standing up.

Firstly, it was right on the corner of the road that the customer was expected to go up. No warning further down the road, nothing. Just the one sign.

Now this isn't a road where motorists are doing any great speed, but even at 50 kmph, it takes a bit of doing on the motorist's to read the sign, understand it, think about whether he really wants that product, think about whether he really wants to stop or if he's got better things to do; it takes him time to realise the sign relates to the road they're just about to pass, to discuss it all with his wife, to find a way of turning around and then going to investigate. Even if he thinks about all this and decides to come back later, it's possible he'll forget, or find something else more urgent needing to be done.

I know all this because I've often not stopped when going through the orchard area in Roxburgh. At 100 kmph it's even harder to make all these decisions.

At the very least there needs to be two or three signs further down the road at considerable intervals (and yes, I understand that's all a cost to the seller), each one pointing to the road that's coming up, and giving the driver plenty of time to consider whether he wants to make the effort of stopping and buying the product.

Without those warning signs, however, it's unlikely anyone will stop, unless they're absolutely desperate for what's on sale.

Now compare this to an author trying to sell his/her book on line. If I post a tweet, or a facebook comment once, and don't bother again, all I've done is announce to a few possible followers that I have a product. Big deal. If they happen to know me, happen to have read my previous books and enjoyed them, then it's vaguely possible they may suddenly decide on the spur of the moment to purchase the latest one.

It's more likely they'll pay no attention at all. In a digital sense, they'll keep driving.

However, if I post tweets at regular but not annoying intervals, and make them different, enticing, and interesting (that is, not just sales blurbs, but like real tweets or comments) then over the course of time, interest will be aroused, and the reader/follower may think: I remember that from a week or two ago. I might be interested.

They may still switch off and go to the next more interesting tweet or pretty picture. But after seeing these tweets/comments several times, couched in creative ways, they may start to say: Yes, I will look into this. They may click on the link, investigate further, check out the sample. They may even buy.

But notice what a long process this is.

This is why advertisers keep on hammering away at us on TV, in the newspapers, online. They know that the first time we won't pay any attention. We might like the ad, if it's clever, but as for the product, we may find we have no use for it, or it doesn't appeal just at that point. But over successive weeks, months and so on, the product starts to click in our memories, and we slowly change our view. We may resist forever - some ads make me resist, though obviously the advertisers don't realise that. Equally, we may finally think: now's the time.

Perseverance, creativity, continual exposure. All keys to telling the world that we authors have got something they'd like to read. Just this week, a person who has their own online app and with whom I've had a lot of contact via email about what he's selling, suddenly announced he'd bought my book. I think the only way he'd have known about it is because it's on the bottom of my emails. And has been for months.

Absurdity

I came across this wonderful extract this morning...delights my heart!

Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisers, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will improve your lung capacity, as if no human being in America any longer believes any other human being, but trusts only the recommendations of animals.

Odd Thomas

in Dean Koontz' Deeply Odd

Promoting Grimhilda!

I've been working hard on promoting my ebook, Grimhilda!, but it takes a lot of time, of course. Still, the great advantage of ebooks is that you don't have piles of unsold stock lying around eating up your income.

At present the book is restricted to Kindle, but from the 20th April will be available much more widely. I'm hoping this will make a difference in its sales. I've been working with a company called Wheelers, too. They supply ebooks to libraries around NZ, and possibly Australia. (I think they supply to Australia, but trying to find where I saw that is proving a little difficult.) They've been very friendly and helpful, and respond quickly to emails. Grimhilda! is now in their capable hands and hopefully will begin to make her way around some of the NZ libraries from mid-April onwards.

I won't restrict my next book to Kindle - it's restricted to them for the first three months, if you choose that option, an option that's supposed to make it more visible, but obviously hasn't. Some advice I got from elsewhere has suggested that even though Kindle appears to be top-dog in the ebook world, it isn't, in fact, and there are a wide number of other opportunities out there. I'm preparing Grimhilda! for Smashwords too, at the moment, so it's all go.

I've hammered away at promoting on Twitter and Facebook, and have had some interest there...and a few sales. It's slow, but then Grimhilda! is competing against thousands upon thousands of other titles around the world, so she's got her work cut out.

Sales here in Dunedin have been rather sluggish, which surprised me considering that the musical version was presented here, and had good feedback. Several people have told me they'll get a copy, but it's easy to say that and then forget. Perhaps I should purchase a number of large vinyl banners and get the City Council to hang them from their banner poles around the city. Might be a slightly expensive option, considering the skimpiness of my advertising budget!

The other thing that's held up promotion has been the writing of my other book, on my experience of having a prostate operation. It's difficult to write and promote at the same time, something I've always had a problem with. I'm better at writing than promoting, although I do the latter because I have to, and a great deal of the promotion for the musical version of Grimhilda! fell into in my hands. A steep learning curve, as the cliche goes.

Anyway, that's where things are at present.  No doubt there'll be more news in due course!

Junk mail jobs

I guess there are printing companies that have gone out of business around the country, though with one exception I'm hard-pressed to think of any, but there must be some printing companies out there still doing good business, because day after day my letter-box is full of advertising material, all of it in colour, and some of it quite substantial. 

The printers probably don't in the least bit care that most of the junk mail that arrives in our house goes straight in the recycling bin. My wife glances through some of it, when she can be bothered, but for the most part it comes in one door of the house and goes out the other. I guess advertisers wouldn't feel so happy about this, but if they continue to use such an antiquated and costly system of advertising then I suppose that's their lookout. 

But the printing companies must be rubbing their hands with glee. Not for them any scruples about the fact that all this paper and ink is mostly tossed in the rubbish, or that it's hardly useful for anything else (I've occasionally used it as internal wrapping paper in a parcel). For them it's all income, regular and well-paid. 

Yes, we could put up a sign saying, No Junk Mail, but what would be the point? It wouldn't stop the endless flow of stuff being delivered around the neighbourhood. I suppose there's a certain economic on-flow from it all: the people who deliver the junk mail, for a pittance; the paper and ink suppliers, the marketing teams who put the things together, and of course the printers, as I've already mentioned. Each of these would fall over without junk mail. So you might say the true value of junk mail isn't advertising but keeping people in jobs. 

Getting sidetracked

While I was thinking about the matter of wholesale printing just now, I though how strange it is that while books are increasingly appearing in digital form, junk mail is just increasing, full stop. I guess there's a digital equivalent of junk mail - it appears in borders and columns and banners on our web pages, for starters, and is surprisingly easy to ignore.  But the curious thing I can't quite get my head around is why junk mail on paper should be increasing.  Is it because the long-established form of advertising is at a crisis point, and when crises arrive, the lemmings often start heading off in the wrong direction - like over the cliff.  The equivalent in junk mail terms is that instead of there being less junk mail there's more than ever.

At a tangent, for a moment, it must be pointed out that lemmings are much maligned in terms of being a species that jumps over cliffs.  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I had the thought that it was a myth that lemmings commit mass suicide, and a bit of quick checking on the Net confirms that, on the whole, it is.  Many lemmings live too far away from the sea, for one thing, to go hiving off committing hari-kari as a group.  Those that do live near water are perfectly capable of surviving in it - they're very good swimmers, apparently.  The reason they swarm to a region that's not their home area, is because food becomes scarce when there's a large increase in the population; the tribe splits and numbers of them go somewhere else to live.  Makes sense.

Seemingly the Walt Disney 'documentary' White Wilderness in which lemmings were seen diving off cliffs, and which may be an important source of much misinformation about lemmings, was faked.  White Wilderness was one of the Disney True-Life Adventure series, which, rather than showing reality, often misdirected viewers by mocking up scenes that had more effect than the real thing would have.  (We see the same thing in reality TV these days.) The trivia section of imdb.com on this film, states: This picture was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings. They were imported from Manitoba for use in the film, and were purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. The Arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and filmed from various angles to produce a "migration" sequence; afterwords, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water. The entire sequence was faked using a handful of lemmings deceptively photographed to create the illusion of a large herd of migrating creatures. 

Now I don't know who wrote this, so it can't necessarily be taken as gospel, but you can find more information about it on the Wikipedia article,where there's some background to the discovery that something underhanded had taken place in the filming.  Further information about it can be found on the Wikipedia article on Lemmings, in which we learn that Disney and co weren't the only ones perpetuating the myth of lemming mass suicide.

This is all a bit of a sidetrack from printing and junk mail, but like so many of my blog posts, one thing leads to another and often the 'another' is a bit more interesting.  How many other nature documentaries are faked in some way?  How often is the urbane voice of David Attenborough telling us something that in fact isn't what we're seeing at all?  (See the paragraph about Attenborough towards the end of this article.)  I watched a nature film not long ago in which the narrator (it wasn't DA, for a change) insisted that some particular thing happened because evolution had decided that it should; and if it isn't evolution doing some mythical decision-making, then it's the species itself deciding that life as it is isn't good for the long haul and somehow making its physical features change. The fact that this isn't science at all but speculation is never mentioned: we all know that Evolution is the answer to everything so just throw it in whenever you want it to be the convenient explanation.

See, I'm getting sidetracked again...onto a hobby horse.

Photo courtesy of Sunday Mercury Net, where there's an interesting and positive article about lemmings.

Old age and Tom Hussey

On the Sunday TV programme tonight they discussed dementia and Alzheimers, and some innovative approaches to dealing with the issue.  In one sequence they showed how the music from a man's early years had a profound effect on him in his state of dementia.  He became articulate and animated, whereas normally he was virtually dumb and sat in one position most of the time.  Another woman with some form of dementia who had been a concert pianist could still play without difficulty the pieces she'd learned years ago.  Music is a powerful force in the human mind. 

I've known for years how much easier it is to remember text that I've set to music.  The musical line somehow gives the words a structure that they adhere to more readily than if they're left just sitting with mnemonics to link them. 

But I wasn't going to talk about music, particularly.  In the programme they included several pictures by a photographer called Tom Hussey.  The pictures each had an old person in front of a mirror, and in the mirror was a version of themselves as a young person.  Sometimes another figure was included in the main scene.  These are wonderfully evocative photos, and the announcer mentioned the photographer's name and said his site was worth visiting.  It surely is.  There are portraits, photos of kids, action photos, groups, and photos taken to show a more creative element.  Much of the photography has what you might call a 'commercial' edge, in the sense of them looking like photos that could easily appear in a high class magazine as part of the advertising.  So it's no surprise to read in his biography that that's his main line of business. But plainly he takes photo for the pleasure of it as well.  There are also several short films, some of them made for ads, and some like mini-documentaries.

Check out the site and enjoy!

Just a little overview

While commenting on Facebook this morning, I thought that it would be interesting to list the number of different skills that have been employed since I began to work on the musical, Grimhilda!   It hasn't been quite a matter of everything and the kitchen sink, (as in Sienna Sinks stainless steel sinks) but it's felt close to that at times.


Of course, the first skill was writing the thing, in collaboration with my friend, Cherianne Parks (she contributed many of the crazier ideas, and is very strong on structure and plotting).

Then the was the writing of the music, first in a piano/vocal score, and then gradually this was orchestrated.   None of these skills, so far, were new to me.

Next, and these aren't in any particular order, I had to discover how to apply for funding and how to fill in applications forms to funders.  I was greatly helped in this by Sally-Anne Howes, who's done it before and made editorial comments and did the budgetting side of it.  As a result we got some $6000 of funding!

Then there was my involvement in the auditions.  I didn't make the final decisions on casting, but was involved in the process with the director and music director.   When we didn't have a complete cast as a result, in collaboration with the D and MD, I began the search through every means I could think of to find the additional actors we needed.  So you might say I acquired some casting skills...

Then there was advertising.  Initially I was doing this in a kind of ad hoc way, and then somehow it became my job altogether.   It's been interesting, and I've met some great and friendly and helpful people.   And been overwhelmed, as always, by the willingness of people to get involved.

I also recorded two selections of music and put these on SoundCloud, along with some of the instrumental music - courtesy of the Sibelius program.   And last weekend, I went through and checked (and corrected) the instrumental parts, and printed them out, and, with my wife's assistance, taped all the individual pages together into a concertina format, so the musicians don't have pages flying everywhere during the performances.  That was a much bigger job than I anticipated.   And then we'd no sooner done that than we had to add in a number of bars because the Director wanted a bit of dancing in one place.  Such is his prerogative, but it's surprising how much extra work that was.  It's much easier to cut stuff than add stuff!

And then there's what you might call my 'producing' role: finding things, and people to do stuff, and making decisions that something is far too expensive to go with and trying to find a better and more economic option.   Surprisingly the economic options are often because other groups in town, or people, are willing to be generous to a degree that continues to amaze me.  This week has shown me just how generous people can be - we were even offered a keyboard for the celesta part in the score after I advertised on Twitter.  Someone retweeted the original tweet, and within five minutes, I was on the phone to a resident saying he not only had a keyboard he was willing to lend (to a complete stranger!) but was willing to drop it off to the theatre.   Wow!

I've just been having coffee and liaising with the MD and the man who's going to look after the mics for us.  He's even willing to go chasing up additional items we need to get this part of the show to work properly.  Again, Wow!   (And he's been willing to come to rehearsals and see how things run and what needs to be done.)

My list of helpful people is growing - and I'll keep it for future reference!

Meanwhile, Cherianne has also played multiple roles: props person (collecting them and organising for them to be built where necessary); overseeing the making of the costumes and liaising with the scenic designer; ongoing script consultant and much more which she could tell you about better than I can.  And of course, she'll be Stage Manager during the show's run.

I'm sure there are other jobs I've been involved with (such as putting together the promo at the Library yesterday) but they're all beginning to merge...maybe I'll update this as the other jobs come to mind!

Things seen at the speed of sound

The ‘colour sculptures’ in following video were created by stretching a balloon over a speaker to form a membrane. A few drops of paint were then placed in the centre of the balloon and a single sharp note was played through the speaker, causing the paint to erupt for just a fraction of a second. Just a few centimetres high, the sculptures are ordinarily invisible to the human eye. However, when filmed in HD with macro lenses at 5,400 frames per second, the physical sound wave is captured in intricate detail.

This video, and still photo advertising, is part of an advertising campaign for the PIXMA colour printer in the UK. [Thanks to Duncan McLeod of the Inspiration Room for pointing me towards this - he's also 'unearthed' of a number of other videos we've put on this blog.]

Pick of the Week

The viral advertisement above was directed by Ned Wenlock of New Zealand based production company HoverLion and at this date (18 Aug 2010) is being featured as a 'Pick of the Week' on internationally renowned Shots advertising website.

Just love the combination of laid-back narration and amusing visuals.

The flashest drive

Last year my two colleagues came back from the major biennial meeting of the Presbyterian Church each with promotional flash drive - and one spare, which was handed onto me. Apart from the promotional factor (some advertising that would appear at the beginning if you weren't quick enough to forestall it) it was the best flash drive I'd had up to that point. The advertising, which consisted of a short video, didn't seem to take up any 'space' on the disk, so obviously the drive area was separate to this. In other words, it wasn't just four gig of memory (or whatever the space was) but that and more. Not only was there plenty of space but it worked like a dream.

Until I put it through the washing machine. Well, that didn't actually stop it working, but the suspicion was that the water must have damaged it in some way, and eventually the data on it would get corrupted. I've been loathe to throw it away - in fact, I'm going to check it some time soon just to see if it still functions (it's now a few months since it went through the wash).


The photos of unusual flash drives are from Flickr.com - the homemade Subaru is by Rebecca and Bernhard and the green frog by Scott Beale (aka Laughing Squid - appropriately!)

Twittering teens - not!

A 15-year-old intern? Apparently the global financial services firm Morgan Stanley has one. Who says that teenagers aren't much interested in Twitter. They'll try it, like they try everything else, but then they give it away. Texting to it costs, and they're rather text their friends instead.

This young feller, Matthew Robson, has made headlines by commenting on what's in and what's out in the social network/media world. TV is definitely over. Radio with ads is out. Streaming radio without ads is in. Downloading movies to the computer is pretty ho-hum because of the lack of quality (and if it's anything like my experience, the annoyance of having it stop and start a good deal) and the possibility of viruses.

In fact, anything with ads - especially intrusive ads -is out. Well and truly. So much for the advertising world.

Of course there are plenty of other people in the world besides teenagers, and Twitter is obviously making a big impact via people who aren't teenagers. When we think that only teenagers' opinions count (as obviously the financial world did after Matthew's pronouncements) then we're living in la-la land.

Yes, of course, teenagers are the next generation, and what they think will eventually count for something. Maybe just not yet.

Advertising and silver

Since 2001, Swiss-based not-for-profit organisation ACT Responsible (Advertising Community Together), has been collecting global advertising that 'promotes responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility' in a bid to highlight how the creativity of advertising professionals can be used to address the world's problems.

Among its 2,500 ads from more than 40 countries and 140 award-winning agencies is a striking collection of adverts that focus on environmental and social issues: from deforestation to recycling and conserving water to climate change.

What I think is striking about these ads, apart from their messages, is the way in which they show how modern art (with Salvador Dali as one of the prime movers in this case) has been thoroughly accepted by advertisement viewers. Every one of these ads takes an idea and gives it a surreal twist, often in a humorous way. I suspect Dali would have delighted in the being able to photoshop; it would have given him stimulation even beyond his normal super-charged brain. (Talking of photoshop - in the play, When We Are Married, that I did back in May, there was a line spoken to my character: Why don't you take that little photo shop down in Blackpool again? I always wanted to laugh at this point, but the audience never seemed to get the unintended pun.

More on Advertising on Blogs

I now write for several different sites that pay bloggers to include posts in their blogs with some advertising in them. I’ve discussed the issues of this before, so won’t be going into it again, except to say that someone contacted me a few weeks ago on the subject and said that there were other ways to make money on the Net. I’m going to get back to her in due course - in fact should get back to her sooner than in due course - but in the meantime, I’m just making a note here about another site where you can get blog for money called Smorty. I thought I’d done this before on one of my blogs, but can’t find any post coming up when I do a search.
Anyway, Smorty’s claim to fame, perhaps, is that it’s a site that’s been going quite well for a few months, but has very few opportunities on it. Four, in fact! And I’ve used them all up.
This seems to happen with these sites, sometimes. They start off with a whiz and a bang, and then suddenly there are just no more opportunities available. Can’t quite figure it out, but it happens. There are at least two other similar sites that I’ve been involved with.
Anyway, if someone wants to do pay per posts and would like four opportunities, Smorty is the place to go!

The Write Advertising

Ever thought about what you might put on a pen if you had the chance to do it for free? You know the sort of thing I mean: advertising pens, the kind that get given away by firms in the hope that you’ll remember them every time you do some writing. Remember them instead of the competition, who’s also given you a free pen.
But if you were given a 1000 pens that you could your own individual message on, what might you say? Jesus Loves Me? Mike Crowl Blogs Way Too Much? Everyone Deserves a Sabbatical?
I’m sure you can come up with some other ideas – let me know…it’s some time since anyone commented on anything in here! (boo hoo)
Looking through my HitTail results, it’s possible you could use one of the following enigmatic phrases: How Tall is Denzil Washington? Branson, Music Capital of the World. I’m an In-Law. The Endless Itching of Athletes’ Foot.
Just while I’m on the subject of HitTail search results, here’s one that’s really off-the-wall, and a little scary: All sort of home kitchen crowl insect.
When will people learn that Crowl isn’t the spelling of Crawl?

Marketing without Money

When I ran OC Books, one of the biggest issues I used to find with direct marketing, was getting the suppliers to back you up with stock. Because we often advertised books that were a little off the mainstream of Christian publishing, the suppliers shook in their shoes – or so it seemed – at the thought of holding more than a few copies of the titles we wanted to promote. Yet they knew that almost invariably, if I ordered books for our email direct marketing, we would usually do quite well with them.
Who can blame them? And who am I to preach on marketing, direct, indirect or out in left field?
While I was managing the shop I sometimes felt as though I’d read every book on marketing there is to read. I hadn’t, of course, since books on marketing are like weeds: the more you read them, the more there are to read. But I did learn a few things over the years, and put a lot of the things I learnt into practice. The actual approaches worked; it was just having enough money to take the approaches that was the issue.
We tried everything: different signage, giving away things, radio advertising (a real fizzer – for us, anyway – and expensive). Of course we tried direct marketing, which turned into email marketing as time went on, and that was pretty successful overall. We just needed more customers – and getting those was always the biggest issue, since there were several other Christian bookshops similar to ours that were fighting for the same few people.
We got ourselves in the newspapers several times, for free…and I still shudder at some of the pictures the reporters published alongside their articles. It seemed as though we were fated to have awful pictures sitting next to the text. There was one in particular which embarrasses me to this day, of a couple leaning over the counter, she wearing some long pink knitted thing that became the sole source of attention in the photo. The fact that the interior of our shop was in the background was neither here nor there.
I even contemplated tv advertising once, since Channel 9 here in Dunedin was offering it at a reasonable rate. And I do mean reasonable. I’d never considered telly ads before, but this was certainly tempting. But I was rather put off (apart from, as usual, having too little cash to spare) by the awful ad they did for the University Bookshop, which seemed to have nothing to do with books, had a strange sexual component, and must have been aimed at weirdo bookreaders. And anyway, did I really want an ad for OC Books appearing in the ad breaks for Cow TV?