Not So Global

I know that there is nothing worse than listening to people who weren't born in the States moan about the fact that the US isn't aware that anything exists outside its own borders.

Well, I admit that this is a slight exaggeration, but when it comes to getting international service from a cell phone company, it might as well be true.

I am going to Europe for a couple of weeks - bon voyage everyone! - and I wanted to get international email service on my Blackberry. Personally, I think it should be automatically available, but that is just me.

So I went to the customer service center - a nightmare in itself - only to be told that they couldn't add the feature for me, I had to go to the special 'INTERNATIONAL' division. So having waited a lifetime to get to customer service, I had to wait another lifetime - I am practicing to be a cat with nine lives - to reach someone in the international division.

When I finally got through, I told them what I wanted and they said that they couldn't start the service on my departure date - why not for goodness sake? - they had to start it immediately, charging me almost double for the days that I was still going to be in the States.

When I asked what I had to do to only pay for the days I was away, the customer service rep. told me to call back when I was about to leave.

So.......I was about to hang up in frustration, when the woman I was talking to asked me if she had resolved my problem. Huh? "Well....no" I replied.

This seemed to catch her off guard because she had obviously been told to ask that question no matter what the circumstances and to expect a standard 'yes' as a response.

I guess I threw her off kilter, but she certainly ruined my day so I guess we are even!

Lost in Translation?

I am hoping that there are a few other women out there who are seriously scratching their heads over this commercial for Bayer birth control pills.

Having worked in an advertising agency for many years, I actually have no trouble imagining how this idea was cooked up. A bunch of young, keen creatives are sitting around a table scratching their own heads about how to come up with an idea for a clutter busting commercial that will carry the message that Bayer is a solid, corporate citizen despite some of the bad publicity around its birth control products like Yaz.

So they land on this concept of 'things are not always how they appear' but instead of letting Bayer communicate the message in the serious tone that it deserves, they have a bunch of blindfolded women touching a rhinoceros and trying to guess what it is.

Not only is the idea totally irrelevant and disconnected from the back the half of the commercial that suddenly wisks us to a Bayer laboratory, and consequently leaving us wondering 'where are we now?', but the tone is completely inappropriate for the message they are trying to convey.

Unfortunately for Bayer, the end result is that the viewer, who may or may not have had the mental space previously to wonder about Bayer's ethics, is certainly wondering about them now.

Fixing The Wobbly Parts

I have been fascinated by the swimwear that started to appear about two years ago that claimed to make you look 10 lbs thinner. In actual fact, it does make one's torso tighter and trimmer, so from that perspective it does do what it claims to do.

So, if I was an apple shape, I would be totally happy right now, having had this swimwear successfully reduce me from a large Macintosh to a small Fuji.

Unfortunately, I am not a Macintosh apple, I am a Barlett Pear.

That means that although I work quite hard at keeping in shape, what excess baggage I do carry around, sits contentedly at the top of my thighs. So you can imagine what I look like when I put on a piece of this Longitude Swimwear. Totally trim and beautiful through the torso and hips, with a couple of small protuberances laughing gleefully at me from the top of my thighs.

However, I have to admit that Longitude has done its best. After all, to resolve all the shape problems that women have to face, we would have to return to the bathing wear of the 1920's in which we were covered from shoulder to mid-calf, and I am not sure that even I am ready for that.

Come to think of it, if I did 100 laps of the pool a day, rather than my regular 50, I might not even be concerned about which parts of me can be artificially reduced by wearing super tight swimwear.

Double Disaster

OK, so I have been away for a while, but if anything could shake the Frustrated Female out of the bushes, it is KFC's Double D sandwich.

As a woman and a mom, I know that I am not alone in trying to keep my daughter on a positive path to a healthy lifestyle. She is a beautiful girl who is a little on the portly side, so I am constantly walking that fine line between wanting to help her make healthy food choices and not wanting to give her a complex about her weight.

So it is of no small matter to me when a company as large as KFC - and my daughter loves it by the way - instead of introducing a healthier option to their incredibly greasy chicken, goes the other way and launches the Double D. For any of you that haven't encountered this gastronomic delight, it is basically two large pieces of fried chicken that have replaced a regular bun, sandwiching a combination of bacon, mayonnaise and a number of other delights in between them. Alone, it contains more salt than it is recommended the average person consumes in a day, and almost 40% of the calories.

So far, I have managed to keep the Double D off my daughter's radar screen, but if KFC is going to convince me that it is a restaurant and a brand that I should keep in my repetoire and have warm, fuzzy feelings about, it is definitely on the wrong track. Especially since women account for over 60% of all fast food visits - either with or without their kids.

A Lovely Commercial

The Frustrated Female is definitely more oriented towards pointing out what marketers do wrong, but I also really enjoy making note of the good things as well. I have already been a big fan of Tide's Loads of Hope program because it is cause marketing at its best. It gives disaster victim's back some of their self respect and pride by giving them clean clothes. Tide is doing what it does best; washing clothes.

I feel the same way but even more so about this Dawn commercial - also a Procter and Gamble brand. Dawn is being used in this commercial to wash the oil off small animals like penguins and otters who have been caught in oil spills. It is beautiful to watch and it doesn't leave one feeling desperately cynical about the role that Dawn is playing. Like the Tide concept before it, Dawn isn't making huge claims about the brand saving the world and preventing oil spills in the first place - although that would be nice too. Instead it is simply and beautifully showing us that it plays a significant role in helping clean up the mess afterward and rescue some of the animals that get caught in these disasters.

I find myself really liking Dawn for doing this - and yes it does tell me that it is an effective and yet gentle product at the same time - but the message is communicated so well and so indirectly that I am more receptive to it anyway.

Well done Dawn Team!

A Hot Car & The Hot Girl

I have shared this commercial for the Lexus IS Convertible, and although not every woman I have spoken to finds it as offensive as I do, I don't think any of us are inclined to 'hop into' one of them any time soon.

I know that the men who run automotive companies are deaf to the idea that women influence over 80% of all car purchases and that some of us actually earn more than our spouses which allows us to buy the convertible rather than them. Outrageous, I know. Nor am I saying as a result of this information, that the roles should have been reversed so that two hunky guys were running along beside the car and a woman was driving it - although come to think of it, that might have resulted in me liking the spot more.

What I do think, is that this commercial misses the mark. I guess it might appeal to young men - and perhaps Lexus would shoot back that this was the intent in the first place - but unfortunately, the rest of us have to watch it as well. The way I interpreted it was that the lucky guy was driving along in his cool convertible and comes across a couple of beautiful young women who are running alongside the car, just waiting to be 'picked' or 'picked up' by the driver. He decides that the first one isn't cute enough for his taste, so he drives on and chooses the second one instead. I don't know too many women who fantasize about running along the road, waiting to be picked by a guy who decides that they are cute enough to jump into his car.

I am sure that this is not exactly what Lexus wanted to say with their commercial. The problem is that even if they meant something different, it is way too open to be negatively interpreted by the hapless viewer who doesn't have the benefit of a campaign set-up from the advertising agency's account director.

Thoughts anyone?

Selling Cell Phones with Sex

The commercial I have included here for everyone's viewing pleasure is the first of two absolutely appalling T-Mobile commercials with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Firstly, let me say that I like Catherine Zeta-Jones. She has always impressed me as a good actress but also as being a level-headed, intelligent person who rose above some of the really mindless Hollywood women. So to start with I am somewhat amazed that she would even agree to do a series of commercials for a cell phone company - it seems like a real come down.

However, be that as it may, I am very disappointed that she would chose to do a series of commercials in which she so blatantly is there as a sex object. The one above has a series of professors going door to door to find out about people's cell phone habits. After the doors are all slammed in their faces and they are exposed to other, random humiliations, T-Mobile decides to send in Catherine Zeta Jones instead. She rings a guy's door bell and asks in a sex kittenish voice whether he would like a mobile makeover.

It is all so desperately stereotyped and the viewer is left imagining what the lucky guy whose door bell she rang is going to get to do with her once she enters his home. Apart from the stereotyping, the advertisers who created this campaign have to have been men, because it is a total turn off to any women who happen to be watching.

The second commercial that I saw has Catherine Zeta Jones talking to a couple in their living room. She has positioned herself for maximum sex appeal on the sofa, while the husband drools all over her and the wife looks on being a good sport about the whole thing. The final line in the commercial is the husband saying to Catherine 'I am married - well technically speaking.' Most self-respecting wives would have thrown their husbands out on the sidewalk after a humiliating remark of that type, but clearly the guys who wrote this thought that it would be funny to position Catherine Zeta Jones as the quasi mistress in this little set up. Apart from anything else, I imagine that most viewers find the whole scenario so distracting that they can't remember a word that was said about the actual cell phones.