I have been ripped off for the last time.  I’ve had incandescent light bulbs last exponentially longer than Bright Effects fluorescents.  I’ve done what I can to save the world from its eminent demise from “man made” global warming one light bulb at a time.  But I’ve had it now.  I’ve wasted so much money on spirally fluorescent bulbs that burn out faster than the flame of middle schoolers in love.

I want to save energy costs.  My electric bill is outrageous. In an effort to cut my costs (since encouraging the family to turn off lights when they leave a room doesn’t work), I’ve been buying fluorescents. My basement has at least 20 can lights that use the large 65 watt flood bulbs, and practically every day when I come home from work, I find all those lights on and nobody home. My solution has been to use Bright Effects fluorescent bulbs which are supposed to last up to seven years and save me a ton of money on my energy usage. You know the pitch. I pay more for the bulb up front and save more over time.

Well, every Bright Effects bulb I’ve ever bought has not lasted a year. I’ve owned my current house for almost five years, and some of the incandescent bulbs in my basement that came with the house are still going strong. So as you can imagine, I’m a little ticked.

Am I the only one?

I’m glad to save energy. I want to do my part to protect this earth that God gave us, but even more so, I want to protect my wallet. I have not given up on fluorescent bulbs, but I know that I will never buy a Bright Effects product again. I’m giving Sylvania and GE a shot, but I’ve had my experiences with faulty Sylvania bulbs too. So if anyone out there has had better luck with fluorescents, let me know your secret.

If you have an ad that features a star and you have to print their name and then say they are a “star”, doesn’t defeat the purpose?  Why spend a ton of money for a “star” who has so little recognition and name status that you have to tell your audience that he’s a “star”?

I often see a Safe Auto Insurance billboard featuring a picture of Michael Redd.  It says by his picture that he’s “Michael Redd Basketball Star”.  Being a basketball fan, I know who Michael Redd is, but I would never recognize him by his picture.  I would bet that the majority of the US population has no idea who Michael Redd is.  I know he played college ball for a Big Ten team and that he is or was on the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA, but that would be the extent of my Michael Redd knowledge.

So did Safe Auto waste their money by hiring Michael Redd as a spokesman?  My guess is that they did not.  Why?  Because their target audience does know who Michael Redd is.  I have to figure that Safe Auto, or their advertising firm, tested and checked Q scores and found that their target market was familiar with Redd.

Sure, from a practical standpoint, it’s ridiculous to pay a star who is not really one.  That is a waste of money.  But to pay someone who, while not a true star of the Brangelina stratosphere, is a star in a specific community may be very profitable.

In Safe Auto’s case, why pay for Kobe Bryant when you can get a much less expensive Michael Redd and have a similar impact?  It makes sense.

While I had a good laugh at the Michael Redd billboard at first, the more I thought about it, the more I could appreciate it.  The target market was addressed by showing Redd’s image and name.  The rest of us who are just curious about who this Michael Redd is and why he’s on a billboard are provided the answer with the description “Basketball Star”.

Is Redd a star in the truest sense?  Possibly.  While he’s not a megastar like Kobe or LeBron or Shaq who transcend their sport, he’s enough of a star to generate face or name recognizability.  In fact, the more I see his billboard, the more it is ingrained in my mind that Redd is a star.  However, not a star for basketball.  In my mind, he’ll be a “Safe Auto Billboard Star”.

I’m a big fan of coupons.  I stock pile them.  I keep coupons just in case I might go someplace I’ve never been to before on the remote chance that I just happen to apparate there and need that coupon. 

I really hate coupons too.  I hate the two for one coupons the most when it comes to restaurants.  I don’t need to eat two sandwiches.  My wife would never eat the same sandwich as me.  And it’s a little awkward to invite a friend to lunch and tell them you’ll buy if they’re willing to eat the same sandwich.

To get cute, retailers have labeled this two for one coupon the BOGO (Buy One Get One Free).  It’s bad enough that the coupon irritates me, but they have to be all clever by branding the “bad” deal.  To me, BOGO stands for “we just suckered you into eating at our shop because you thought you were getting a deal, but you didn’t really because you otherwise never would have come in here and spent your money in the first place.”  I know it’s long and doesn’t really go with BOGO,  but I didn’t want to put the effort in to something really clever.

While I think most BOGO coupons are a real turn off, I guess there are some coupons that could be worse.  Actually, there are some business that probably shouldn’t offer coupons at all.

For example, when exactly do you present your coupon at the funeral home?

I can only imagine haggling over the price of burying a loved one while they lay there assuming room temperature?  What if the funeral home offered BOGO?  You can hear Grampa in his best English, Monty Python accent saying in the background, “I’m not dead yet.”

And what if the casket had that “As Seen on TV” sticker on the side?  How about a free set of Ginsu Knives?  But wait!  For only three easy payments of 19.99 we’ll throw in this beautiful urn!  Of course, you’re asking, “If we’re using a casket why would we need an urn?”  And they offer to give you fake ashes as a keepsake for your mantle…

I’ve never seen it, but I’ll bet QVC does a special episode offering a bargain price on caskets.  I can just imagine the hostess climbing in the box to show how comfortable and roomy it is.  I thought I’d seen it all when I saw that Costco was selling caskets.  As I left the store, it was positioned right next to the car they were offering for sale.  Not a good pair for BOGO.

How about BOGO for plastic surgery.  It exists.  Buy a nip, get a tuck.  BOGO breast augmentation.  Actually, this makes some sense.  If you’re doing one, you might as well finish the project and do the second.

So let me encourage restauranteers and retailers to start creating valuable coupons.  Don’t just try to make a sale or make me temporarily feel like I received a deal.  That deal feeling fades pretty quickly (kind of like that feeling when you see a movie and the further removed you are from it, the more you realize it was crap).  Don’t make me feel like a BOGO BOZO later.  Make me a deal, and I’ll comeback.  Give a great value and truly value me, and I’ll value you.  If restauranteers and retailers did that, I’d actually come back even without a coupon sometimes.

I’ve been fiddling around with some potential cover designs for The Starving Artist’s Diet.  Here are a couple prototypes.  I’d love to get your feedback, so post a comment here, write on my Facebook fan page, or post something to Twitter (@jackodile & @StrvgRtistsDiet).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Not that I really want to focus on yesterday’s Super Bowl because my team lost, but having made so many previous posts on the topic, I feel obligated.

Yesterday, the better team won.  Ouch.  That hurts to say, but it’s true.  I felt that the teams were very evenly matched, and when you look back on it, which I’d prefer not to do, the final outcome really hinged on three or four plays, and for the most part, those plays went the Saints’ way.

Having made a pregame case as to why the Colts would win, here is what a friend wrote to me after the game:
“As I was saying…Better defense and a well-balanced offense is superior to a team that depends heavily on their QB, who somehow decided to turn in desperation to his anemic running game, which could only do so much in a game of this magnitude. Your thoughts?”
Here was my long winded response:
“Actually, the Colts out rushed the Saints. Both teams are extremely reliant on the pass (Brees 32 completions… tied for most in SB history) which in the modern form of the NFL is the only true way to succeed. As for the defense, both had great moments (Colts goal line stand) and challenging ones (Colts soft secondary). The Colts ultimately lost because of a stalled second quarter (Garcon dropped 3rd down pass) and a bad pass/great interception in the fourth. Until the interception in the fourth, the game was essentially equal.
“Unfortunately, someone has to lose and it was the Colts this year. I will refrain from making excuses since I didn’t play the game. All I could do was yell at the TV. The other great thing is that my team was in the Super Bowl this year. They were there in ‘07, and I’m pretty confident they will be knocking on the door next year and possibly for a few years after that. Most fans can’t say that. So I will enjoy the fact that the Colts went back to the Super Bowl and now enjoy an offseason where I will get a few more things done on Sundays.”
I’m disappointed that the Colts lost.  Probably not as much as those who spent a few thousand dollars to go to Miami and see the game live… although they got to go to Miami, while I shoveled snow here in Indy.  Ultimately, I’m just trying to enjoy the fact that my favorite NFL team is so good.  They’ve gone to the playoffs for eight straight seasons and had seven consecutive regular seasons with twelve or more wins.  This will not last forever.  Things can change quickly.  One day the Colts will not win twelve games in the regular season and they will not make the playoffs.  So while it hurts to see my team lose the big game, I’d rather feel this pain than the pain of my team being one and fifteen at the end of the season.

Now I’ll take some time to recouperate over the offseason and get some other work done. 

Congratulations to the Saints and Go Colts!

Oh, and one other thing, was it just me, or did pretty much all of the commercials stink this year?

The Super Bowl is almost here and my sports related posts will soon come to a close, but considering that I live in Indy and the Colts are in the Super Bowl, I have a few more football posts left in me.

Tonight I was watching the news and I saw Queen Latifah say that she was rooting for the Saints because they were the Cinderella team.  Since when?  If I remember correctly, the Saints only lost three games this season.  They dominated almost every team they played with a high flying offense and pounding defense.  Brett Farve was hit so hard two weeks ago I think they knocked his dentures out.

A Cinderella team is one that is not on equal footing with all the other teams, but for some reason is still competing and winning.  We see it every year in college basketball during March Madness.  A Cinderella is George Mason going to the Final Four, or NC State winning the whole thing.  The Cardinals of last year’s Super Bowl were more of a Cinderella team than the Saints.  I wonder if Queen Latifah was cheering for them.

Nothing about the Saints this season says “Cinderella”.  Sure the franchise has been a disaster for generations, but that does not make them a Cinderella.  Actually, for the past two or three years, the Saints have turned their franchise around, which is directly related to Drew Brees and Sean Payton.

In fact, the Saints remind me of the Colts before Peyton Manning showed up followed by Tony Dungy (Bill Polian had a big hand in there too).  The Colts were awful for so many years.  The only reason they were able to draft Manning was because they were flat out horrendous.  And they weren’t just bad for one or two seasons.  It spanned decades.

I get the fact that the Saints are the darlings of America right now.  It’s a great story.  A loser of a team for generations finally makes it to the Super Bowl.  The city is still rebuilding from Katrina.  And they’ve never won a Championship.  I would have been cheering for the Saints if the Colts had not made it.  I’m a huge Purdue fan, so I always want Brees to be a dominant QB in the NFL.  So it makes sense that the majority want to see the Saints win.

But let’s not kid ourselves.  The Saints are a high powered team that rolled through the season.  They are no Cinderella.  They’re an elite team.  One that is better than every other team in the NFC.  They are on equal footing with the Colts and should make the Super Bowl a spectacular event.

With that said, I still feel pretty confident that the Colts will win.  Maybe it’s destiny, but I think Peyton is on his way to three of four Super Bowl rings.  So my prediction for this one is Colts 35 and Saint 27.