For Immediate Release:
Dateline: Tenafly,
NJ
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
A morning household emergency that the TV host couldn't seem to solve and what did she do? Of course, she called Oprah, the woman who knows all, hears most of it and, of course, in her best faux-therapist voice, doles out her sage advice. What did Oprah do after the harried host's call? Nothing.
"I, of course, called Oprah," the host told her audience, "but it went straight to voice mail, so I, uh, left a message for her." I am, of course, paraphrasing here because I couldn't jot down her rat-tat-tat delivery fast enough. The long wait began. No call. But don't fear, people because this host is hoodwinking you; she just left Oprah in the backstage Green Room. The uberwealthy Ms. O was waiting to enter on cue to hawk her latest TV series for her cable channel. Yup, Oprah has to get out there and beat the drum for her channel because she's learned the Lesson of Hershey.
Don't know about Hersey's famous marketing foul-up? It's a tale told in countless marketing and advertising courses. Hershey, that famous candy company, thought they had the candy market all sewed up until Nestle came along with a candy bar and began buying lots of ad space for their product.
Sales of Hershey plummeted and Hershey learned a valuable lesson and they began advertising frantically. To promote your brand, always, and I do mean always, learn their lesson and the one also offered by Gore Vidal; "Never say no to an opportunity to be on TV or (here's where Gore differed with Hershey) to have sex." I do not believe the latter would have fallen on eagerly-awaiting ears at the Pennsylvania home office.
We never did hear about the morning dilemma at the host's home (maybe it was what to give the kids for dinner), but we did hear Ms. O offer her ranch (or is it a farm?) in Hawaii to the frantic woman. Oh, now she was in hog heaven! Hawaii and all she had to do was wax wonderfully on the coming TV series? Certainly a lot easier than trying to make dumber-than-dumb "research" findings sound astounding as she had just tried to do no more than 10 minutes ago. Where do they get all that wonderful research? Must keep people working on it night and day.
Would they talk about the plight of the girls in schools in Africa (where Ms. O has a girls' school) or the kids in Oklahoma who no longer had schools and had to go to funerals instead of preparing for summer vacation? Nope. What about the extremely small infant found in a toilet pipe in China? No words of wisdom for them either. It was Hawaii and the TV series or nothing. This was, after all, fluffy morning TV and that's not about real news.
Yes, this is what happens when you have to watch a huge flat-screen TV while waiting for your appointment in a doctor's office. Oh, if only I had the mute button in my hand.
Fired Up: A shrink's musings
|