I see only five problems in it and a sixth in the subhead:

1) It’s illiterate. “… your teen …” refers to one person while “… them …” is plural. You can write around this sort of thing quite easily. Since the photo shows a girl you could change “them” to “her” and nobody would mind except old school purists who know that the neutral objective form of the third person singular in English is “him.” (The French have no problem with this. Is it possible that we’ve become more politically nitpicky than the French?) You could change “teen” to “teens”. You could recast the sentence with no pronouns. But I’d be tempted to change the concept of the ad to show a Mom with a son or daughter (or both) and use their names.

2) The headline is in the form of a command. It’s a bad idea to order people around.

3) It’s vague: keys to what? which card? Didn’t Amex long ago establish that “the card” is the American Express card?

4) No clear benefit to the reader.

5) The headline is unnecessary. The subhead does a much better job all by its lonesome.

6) The asterisk at the end of the subhead is annoying. People get suspicious when they see asterisks.

Otherwise it’s a great.

Pajamagram’s DR commercial says it’s the only gift guaranteed to get them to take their clothes off at Christmas. Oddly, Saint Luke neglected to mention “getting them to take their clothes off” as a Christmas goal.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

          Keep your clothes on and have a wonderfully Merry Christmas

The McClatchy papers gave this book a nice review and I previewed it at Barnes & Noble. It seems to be an engaging, easy read. It starts with an interesting history of snail mail, going ‘way back to dried mud tablets and quickly works its way up to our troubled times. It’s filled with personal anecdotes, especially concerning the poor souls who are addicted to email and now, I imagine, to Twitter, Facebook and something called Texting. I’ll let you know how it works out.

For every great customer service story there seem to be at least two downers.  Just recently …
This year I bought four or five Christmas presents from Hammacher Schlemmer. Two were backordered – one has since been sent and the other is pending. They sent the batteries for the pending order anyway.
I’ve been subscribing to The New York Post ever since we left Manhattan in the nick of time 5 1/2 years ago – two copies every day. I paid the Post for the current quarter six weeks ago. My bank tells me the Post cashed the check but I get a dunning phone call and, later, a dunning letter anyway despite two conversations with the subscription department. 
The products are fine, the prices are right, the upfront marketing is great but everything falls apart when the service lets you down.

For a while I thought the best line was the Geek Squad’s “To serve and install” but The Salvation Army’s “Doing the Most Good” is marginally better.

          They’re both great and certainly miles ahead of forgettable banalities such as … the window people … the label people … the whatever people or NAME OF STATE/CITY HERE’s leading/trusted/#1/hometown supplier of WHATEVER. 
          To serve and install and Doing the Most Good say a lot about their respective  organizations while conveying key benefits instead of mere features.

By now you’ve seen the Heineken walk-in fridge commercial.

The spot opens with a woman leading three girlfriends on a tour of her new house. They wind up at a humongous walk-in closet. The girls scream their delight for a few seconds then stop, puzzled, as louder but equally girlish screaming emanates from elsewhere in the house. An echo, perhaps?

No such luck. It’s the women’s husbands! The boys are standing in a giant walk-in beer fridge, screaming in ecstasy and about to pee their pants as they channel their wives, pressing their palms against their chests and/or faces – an appropriate, if unintended, reference to Munch’s Scream painting. One exuberant screamer flaps his arms at the elbows, clapping in short strokes like that toy bear with cymbals on his paws. It’s not just idiotic, it’s repulsive.

The commercial insults every adult on the planet but that wouldn’t be a problem if it was funny. Put Dick Butkus in the spot and it might be funny. This one’s not funny because the couples are status conscious trendoids straight from central casting; the men look like the kind of guys who scream their delight and the women look like The Real Housewives of Rotterdam.

The tagline on the Dutch version is “Serving the planet” although why it’s in English I can’t imagine. Maybe they thought the audience needed another “What the f—?” moment. The US tag is “Give yourself a good name.” I’m guessing the copywriter was kidding.

If this is global marketing, to hell with it.

The Dutch spot is here: Click Here

Bavaria, a German brewery, has a nifty spin on the Heineken screamer spot. Roughly the same set up, except in German. A Russell Crowe lookalike sits alone on a sofa as the touring ladies walk behind him. A few seconds later he hears the menfolk screaming. He walks toward the ruckus, sees what’s going on and closes the doors of the giant beer fridge with the screamers inside.

Then he walks to a normal fridge, takes out a bottle of Bavaria and returns to the living room to join the ladies, the real ladies, back on the sofa.

The Bavaria spot is here:

Click Here

In a November 4 Guts, we wondered how so many great beer brands managed to get themselves killed. Heineken’s off to a great start.

A lot of companies advertise on the Cable News Network but I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the captive audiences in airports. CNN itself advertises on Fox News and, now, in The New York Post, another Murdoch outlet.

On Monday, December 7 CNN paid for four outside right half-page vertical ads in a row – pages 21,23,25,27 – in the Post. Each ad has a one word headline.

The star of the first ad is an unsmiling Christiane Amanpour, looking a lot like Mick Jagger. Her word is TRUTH.

Page 23 features an unsmiling Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt’s kid, with a deer in the headlights expression. His word is NEWS.

The third ad shows an unsmiling guy who’s probably one of those intrepid field reporters and he looks like he has a bad case of GIRD. I have no idea who he is but his word is FACTS. Other than the one word headlines, the only other elements on each of the first three ads are CNN’s logo and their slogan.

The final ad shows a big bold number 1 along with the word FIRST and a list of all the things at which CNN is #1. “23 million TV/Web Integrators”, for example. No explanation of what a TV/Web Integrator might be. Way down at the bottom are 10 lines of unreadable reverse mice type, presumably backup for all the first claims.

To summarize, CNN bought four half pages to convey this message: TRUTH NEWS FACTS FIRST.

The old courtroom swearing in question comes to mind:“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” CNN might tell the truth sometimes but rarely the whole truth and almost always with something added to the truth: progressive opinion, nonsense, a smirk.

Last time I looked, Fox News was kicking the crap out of CNN in prime time with more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.

Have you seen the DRTV commercial for the buffalo nickel coated with 31 milligrams of pure gold? It normally sells for $50, but you can buy it for just $19.95. Wow!
31 milligrams is 31/1000th of a gram. There are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce. Gold, at the moment, is $1,213 a troy ounce, or about $39 a gram. 31 milligrams of gold is worth $1.21.
That means if you leap at the offer on TV, you get a nickel and $1.21, $1.26 for your $19.95 plus s & h. I wonder what a wooden nickel is worth today.
Anyway, call now, operators are standing by and chuckling.

Direct Marketers need their target audiences to have disposable income. People get their disposable income from their jobs, when they have jobs. Right now, about 15,000,000 Americans who need jobs don’t have them.

Most of the morons responsible for the disappearance of jobs got together recently in Washington to schmooze us into a worse mess.

And they’re inviting some wonderful people to help: unions like the SEIU and single issue activists – the same kind of people who just finished destroying jobs, homes, farms and communities in California’s Central Valley to save a smelt.

Here’s some advice for our leaders: you have no idea how to create or save jobs – you’ve never even had a real job. The solution to the economy, jobs and the national debt is simple: get the hell out of the way! Do nothing, nothing at all.