Why do you wear a logo?

My Grandpa was a great man, he didn’t talk very much , but when he did he made sense, one time he said to me:

“Why do you want to wear a companies logo on your chest and walk around advertising that company.  If a company wanted me to wear their name I would want them to pay me for it”

That was an interesting question. Grandpa always had interesting questions, and stories. I think he only talked about once a week or so, and the stories and questions he would come up with were obviously well thought out.

So why do people flock to the store and pick up things with Nike on them, or Adidas? I mean they make great shoes, but why do these people decide to plaster themselves in logos? What does a Nike swoosh on a hat have anything to do with buying a decent sports shoe?

Do you become a member of the tribe of Nike ?  Are you a special member in the club of Adidas ?

What exactly does it mean to be a member of a shoe company club?

Do the Adidas guys get invited to all the good soccer (football) games or something?

What does a Nike kind of guy do exactly? Does he think about jumping up and down like Michael Jorden, and then tell himself “Just Do It! ” then actually jumps up and down? Does he run a lot?

What about the American Eagle guy? Will he one day gain the knowledge of flight after so many years of draping eagles over his body?

Will the Abercrombie and Finch guy one day be aloud on the official A & F sailboat where he will take the helm as captain after promoting the brand on his chest for so many years?

Do Polo guys play polo?

The Red bull tribe i hear likes to jump off bridges and stuff.

Apparently from what I have read, men especialy purchase things with labels on them, for two reasons.

1) Men are afraid of fashion, and know that buying a logo item will at least let him be accepted by people “in the club”.

2) Men like to belong to some sort of tribe or group, and logos make them feel this way.

Anyhow, I am a member of the No Logo club myself. I am not willing to advertise for companies, and the worst thing is they charge you a premium price to do it.

Join the No Logo club, we save money by not advertising, and live a better life with what we have saved. We also usualy look better.

Lets face it guys, what we really want is women, and they don’t usualy buy logos, and likely don’t appreciate the 60% premium you pay to wear them on your back.

Whats the price? – Rant

I have been looking all day for a promotional pen manufacturer that will ship to me for a reasonable price, I find tons of pens, but no pricing.  I have wasted about three hours on this and am just giving up for now. So I thought I would rant a bit about having price tags on stuff.

In my career in sales, I have sold inexpensive items such as $5 portable radios, and $3 headphones,  I have also sold $100,000 Cadillac , and top end home theatre systems sometimes costing more than $60 000,

I have seen all kinds of sleaze and greed in my time, and the worst of it is when you put a high commission salesperson with a product with no price tag.

Often a $70 item suddenly becomes $300, or a $500 suddenly becomes $2000, and believe it or not people don’t know any better and actually buy these things.  Sure they usually know the price of the main item, but not all the little extras they try and sell you after. The guy ripping them off will lower the price until they buy anyhow, or “switch products” to get in their price range,  and judge how much they will sell it for by how much trust they feel they have from the customer.

Anyhow, here I am trying to buy pens online, and there are no prices, whats the secret? Do you expect me to draw you a bank cheque? I’m sorry I cant buy for “secret prices” how do you even put a secret price on the pay slip for me to sign?

If everything has price tags my days and everyone else’s will just be that more efficient, and the guys that rip you off not only wont be able to rip people off anymore, but when they go shopping themselves they wont get ripped off either.

There should be a law that all items without a price tags  are free.

The Man and his stupid copywrite laws.

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OK, I know we have to protect the logos and hard creative work done by others, but I am faced with a situation currently on both my personal and business side that is making me wonder exactly what the logic is of these silly decisions.

First off the music industry.

I happen to love music, I am a big fan of all kinds of music and have a large CD collection of over 2000 CDs, as well as DVD videos of many of my favorite bands.

I used to be able to see all these bands on MTV and enjoy their videos and music, as well as listen to them in my car as I drove. This is my problem. I can’t hear the music of my favorite bands anymore, not legally anyhow. Radio stations back home have these programming directors that may or not play it. It seems at least in Canada these days we just don’t get the DJs that play whole albums anymore, it’s no longer up to them, I hear the US is the same way these days, not sure about the rest of the world.

The programing directors at the radio stations now decide based on the highest profitability of the radio station which songs will be played, instead of the music loving DJs of old, that just played what they wanted. The same thing has happened to MTV, its all about profit now, which is fine for them I guess, but I may not like what is popular and now I cant hear the music I like.

So what do I do? If I want to hear, or “try out” some music, I do what most people do,  search the Internet for what I want to her. Very recently I searched for some songs from Nickleback. Even though they are one of the biggest rock bands in the world today, and I happen to like them. I search and I search but I cant find the official video. Ones that were put up by fans yesterday are gone today due to copy write laws.

Why on earth do these big bands no longer want their videos to be played. OK I know Nickleback and most other large bands have official stations on YouTube, and on their official website, however they don’t display all the videos, and I cant hear all the songs. Often the Websites are not as easy to use as Google and YouTube . If the songs I want are there somewhere, I cant be bothered to find them, after five minutes I just give up forever.

Basically to make a long story short, I used to listen to the music and then buy it. Now I can no longer listen to the music, so of course I am not going to spend my $20 to see if they have any talent left.

Music Company, Epic Fail.

Second of all Mickey Mouse

OK do we all know who Mickey is? I would say yes but barely, Disney is so famous with their protecting of copy write laws, I swear I am afraid just mentioning them here will end me up in court.

Now I loved Disney as a kid, and loved going to their movies, I made sure I saw every one ever made until about 10 years ago. Then I just kind of forgot about them. Though I sill watch their films with my son from time to time.

Anyhow here I am in Asia, and people tend to ignore copy write laws here, everyone is free to print a mickey mouse shirt, and sell it on a street corner for 5 dollars, people buy them cheap and wear them. On my ninety minute walk today I was met with his cute little face no less that four times. They have little mickey logos on polo shirts, he is on bags and hats etc. People like him, he advertises Disney, and they are doing it for free.

Back home no one wears mickey, its not that he isn’t cute, but the local Disney store from where I lived was about a 45 minute drive, and the shirts are $30 each. Why bother ?

I forget all about Mickey back home, good job copy write lawyers.

Epic Fail Disney (wonder if I will get sued now)

Third of all beer t-shirts.

OK lots of people love beer, and lots of people travel and would love to have a beer shirt from places they have been. But beer companies want to be the only ones selling their shirts. The shirts on most of the official beer company sites are quite expensive, say about $30 plus shipping. So I would assume generally the people don’t buy them.

I used to sell a particular beer shirt on my website and was forced to take it down. I had outranked their official site on the Google Searches and I guess they didn’t like that. By the way I had surfed there official clothing site four times or so and had found it very difficult to find the actual shirts, it was painful to look for them through all the graphics, not to mention I had checked there Internet traffic numbers and they just didn’t get that many people. Basically a really bad site with lots of good graphics.

Why on earth don’t they want people to run around with their beer logos on their chest? I mean they spend millions if not billions on beer ads, billboards and event sponsorship. When did these guys decide that free advertising was a bad thing?

Beer Company, Epic Fail

This is a common pattern in current international big business, they so busy protecting their copy writes they have forgotten all about maximizing profits. They don’t even realize they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Way to go big business, when I go get my beer tonight I will forget to get one from your company, I wont have a new CD to listen to as I drink it, and my son wont be bugging me to watch a Disney film or go to Disneyland tomorrow. I hope you have somehow made enough profit elsewhere to make up for a world that is no longer craving your items, and that you somehow survive  in the future as more and more people forget you exist.

” The Man ” and what he means to me.

OK first off I like to joke about “The Man” he is not real, and I am not an anarchist. I love my beautiful peaceful home of Vancouver Canada, and understand there are certain bureaucratic duties that the govt does to maintain how great it is, so I am not bucking the system, it needs tweaking but that might be a very delicate tasks handled by mathematicians, and scientists. Stuff over my head, however.

There is a Bureaucratic force in this world, that makes things a bit harder for the average guy to get up the financial ladder of life. AKA “The Man”

Lets say you have a brilliant idea one day, now all ideas have to come from somewhere, i mean there are very few completely out of the blue. The Wheel was probably inspired by something rolling for example a rock, etc etc etc.

OK, so this idea, you think of the funniest picture ever, this is not like you, you manage to sketch it down on a piece of paper, and put it on your table, and every time you walk past it you look at it and say…hmm yep that’s funny.

You show it to your friends and they laugh, and your family, you think OK I have something here, you get a T-Shirt made and put it for sale. It is selling.

OK now here is the problem, the image you drew was very similar to another very famous logo that has been copyrighted etc, by “The Man. ” Now “The Man” didn’t create their logo, some guy that used to work for some company in another country created it after studying other famous logos in marketing and art classes.

OK so you created the worlds funniest shirt, and its so funny you could live off its income.

One day the image gets very popular, and out of the blue some big lawyer firm contacts you (We will just Call the firm “The Man”.)

“The Man” says, hey I own that image, and any images like it, you cant sell it.

This happens every day, in fact there are thousands if not millions of people searching everywhere, in stores, on the Internet, in advertisements, bill boards, TV, everywhere for anything they fear will damage “The Man”.

So your choices are going to court against a huge massive company that will probably have 4 super expensive lawyers at the table, and there would be a huge chance it would bankrupt you at one point or another. Or stop selling your T-Shirt.

“The Man” Is keeping you Down
“The Man” Just took his huge corporate thumb and squished you like an ant.
Blame it on “The Man” etc etc.

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