Super Lame Ads

Seriously, those were the commercials that businesses spent millions of dollars on to air during the Super Bowl? Many people watch the Super Bowl specifically for the commercials. They could care less about the game. Honestly, this year I was actually more excited to see the commercials as opposed to the game for the simple fact I HATE the Patriots and could care less about the Giants. What I saw Sunday night was the opposite of what I was expecting. The Giants upset the undefeated Patriots in a very exciting and entertaining game. Meanwhile those commercials I was waiting to see were very disappointing. Did the writer's strike affect these commercials?

There were a few clever, original commercials that aired. The Sobe Life Water ad with the lizards dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was probably the highlight for me. Not necessarily laugh out loud (or LOL for you computer folk) funny, but very creative and original. And thank goodness they kept Michael Jackson from appearing in the commercial. The cars.com commercials were kinda funny and of course Budweiser had their usual feel good ads mixed in with their comedic ones. Nothing that really blew me away though. We had to wait until the second half for the E-Trade baby commercials. Cute, adorable and funny, but I think would have been more of a success if they had aired one in each quarter as opposed to just the third and fourth. Pretty much the rest of the commercials were just flat out lame. What a waste of ad money. This goes back to my last blog about businesses making stupid decisions with their money.

So all in all I would say that the commercials this year were probably the worst I have seen in years. Maybe ever! It wasn't all bad though as I was entertained very much by the thing that was the most important of all, the game. In a back and forth, up and down game, the hated Patriots (I only hate the Cowboys more) were upset 17-14 and their perfect little season came to an end. Congratulations to the New York Giants for their monumental and historic victory. And it was also great to see their coach, Bill Belichick, leave the field with time on the clock showing the world how much of a sore loser he really is. Keep it classy, Billy! I guess in the end cheaters never do prosper. Spygate came back and bit you right in the ass!

Patriots still suck...and so do the Cowboys! (had to throw that in there)

2009...the 49ers make their return to the Super Bowl!!!

Corporate Stupidity

People always wonder why some businesses fail when they should be succeeding. I'll tell you why. Most of the time it's a lack of basic common sense and horribly wrong decision making. Instead of hiring people to do the work, businesses would rather hire computers to do it. In many cases computers and machines can do the work faster and more efficiently, but in other cases you need a real human being to do the work. Computers and machines can only do so much. And when a computer or machine breaks down, who has to fix it? A real person. Quite the irony if you ask me.

Another mind boggling issue is how businesses choose to invest their money. Another benefit about having computers and machines do the work is that you don't have to give raises, health benefits or vacation time. Of course you do have to pay for computer upgrades and have to fix broken down machines from time to time, which can also get pricey at times. Sometimes corporations have an umbrella of businesses that they run. Of course not all of those businesses are going to succeed. When you have businesses that are lagging and losing money, what do you do with them? Well of course you take away money from your most successful businesses and keep pumping it in to those lagging, failing businesses. That doesn't make much sense to me.

If you have business "A" that is making record breaking amounts of money for your company and business "B" is lagging or losing money, why should profits made from all the hard work by the people from business "A " go to help business "B"? That doesn't seem fair to me. It makes all the hard work and effort that the workers of business "A" did seem in vain. Why take away from all the work that they did because business "B" isn't as good? I think if business "B" can't hold it's own then the company should just cut its losses and move on. If not that, then try a new strategy or different approach on the way you do things.

Big business and conglomarates are destroying the world. Everyday people and blue collar workers are the ones who eventually suffer. These big corporations got to be big and successful, but early on they too were a small and growing company. They obviously made a lot of right decisions early on, but after some point it seems like a lot of businesses lost their basic decision making sense. Now all of their decisions are based on how much money they can make at any cost. Jobs are eliminated because of computers and wages. Quality of service goes down because you don't have real people around all the time to do things. When there are real people they are usually underpaid and inexperienced. You don't want to keep somebody that's been working with you for 10 years because they are starting to make too much money. No, businesses would rather hire someone they know they can pay a lot less to do a lot more. The local appeal is lost because a lot of these companies move their headquarters away from the city it started in and now all the business decisions are made from a corporate office 500 miles away. None of that matters to them any more. Bottom line is, how much money can we make and how fast can we make it? Even if it means making the worst business decisions EVER!

Word.