Maybe part of the problem is that monolithic US corporations choose to keep large amounts of profit for their executives and choose to pay monkey pay to their counter jockies rather than see those people as a major interface with the public and invest in them. Service jobs in the US are some of the only jobs that aren’t going to get outsourced and yet they’re the butt of the joke of entire movies. When was the last time you went to a fast food restaurant and thought, “What nice service.” And yet when all you sell is a pretty crappy pizza, maybe you should consider for a moment whether good service is an important element of your business model. You know when the last time was that I did think, “What nice service.” Apple. And nearly every time I’ve dealt with them. Not only do I think an Apple store employee (well-trained, carefully picked, paid decently with benefits) would know better than to pull a stunt like this, I don’t think they would want to. I know several people that work for Apple and they would never jeopardize jobs they genuinely like. Of course, Apple’s not a great example, since they’re doing so poorly of late. Even then, their success couldn’t have anything to do with their customer service.

I would put money on what Domino’s knee-jerk reaction to this event will be, asking “How do we use technology to become the big brother of our employees, whom we clearly cannot trust?” That’s great, pay them squat, and then oppress them so that they love you so much more. Consider how well that’s worked out for Wal-mart. How many resources will they now have to waste just trying to get their employees to like them again? Companies are going to have to become aware that their brands are increasingly vulnerable to brand sabotage by employee access to wildly loud new communication mediums, and that the best medicine will be to make employees happy. And in case these dolts in suits forgot their management 101 theory, happy employees will make a better product and/or service for you. If you don’t want idiots like the above working for you, pay decent wages and give good employees incentive to hang around.

Instead, suits like Sharon Allen, chairman of the board of Deloitte, says things like this: “While policies are important, you have to create a solid values-based culture… that encourages employees to make good decisions about how they act inside the company and externally.” I couldn’t synthesize my concurrence more! Ugh. I’m beginning to think that MBA stands for Masters in Bogus Antispeak. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. In plain English: treat your employees with dignity. This is basic, basic stuff that corporations have been able to neglect for a long time because without unions, service employees haven’t really had an opportunity to fight back. The playing field is leveling though and if Domino’s is afraid of what their employees do on accident, just wait and see what happens when their craptastic attitude toward employees actually ticks off a media savvy one.

1. Opera makes you use their domain name

2. Opera sets condition on what you can and can’t share; among those things:

   upload, transfer or otherwise make available files, images, code, materials, or other information or content that is obscene, vulgar, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws or third-party rights, hereunder but not limited to third-party intellectual property rights.

   In other words: anything we don’t like.

3. You have to use their software and their software is closed source.

4. Also, Opera marketing makes claims to be peer-to-peer, that is, direct from your computer to your friend’s computer, but… you have to go through their proxy servers. Oh well.

If you care about this sort of thing, I strongly encourage you to read Messina’s full in-depth piece. It’s worth it. For me, this is just yet another example of marketing bullshit, and by bullshit, I mean the technical term. Marketing of this kind isn’t really lying inasmuch as it is bullshit. Lying would imply that the lie-teller was aware of the truth and is conniving to keep you from it. Bullshit is a total disregard for the truth or falsehood of any claim. Opera is “reinventing the web.” Bullshit. First of all, no one’s going to revolutionize the web until something comes along that is something other than the web. And second, why is reinventing something a claim worth making? We have an old expression: “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” The web is the wheel. Do something new. Stop reinventing what works perfectly well.

Seriously, advertising, you’re, like, everywhere. I myself even engaged in a bit of billboard liberation when a Comedy Central (my favorite channel, btw) ad started talking to me at the urinal. Something snapped and I dug the electronic voice box out of the ad and through it in the toilet. Enough! Advertising jumps around in banner ads more than a five-year-old after a 20oz coke. And I really think that’s largely due to the fact that ads are just a fading fad. When the whole world’s information is at folks fingertips and you’re trying to get a message to them, what’s the use in irritating them?

It strikes me that advertising got spoiled during the good ol’ days of linear media where every fifteen minutes on the (free) radio or the free (television) it got to yack at us. But when media goes nonlinear like the web, you just can’t afford to be that obnoxious. Advertising needs to get its class back, like The Deck or like BMW films. Class, advertising! Class! You can talk to people without shouting, you can persuade people without lying. But in the long run, business is still going to have to get back to basics and start trafficking in real information; not shinola.

I’ll update as soon as I can find a video on the web to link to, but on the snailvision networks there are all these advertisements running for the new Blackberry with a lot of sidewalk bystanders examining the machine and saying “Wow!” and “I’m thinking I shouldn’t have bought my iPhone,” without once showing the “real” audience the interface to the machine. When advertising claims that, “We refuse to show the interface on the grounds that it is too cool,” they have just completely ignored the aforementioned trends. New media these days is tactile and distributed. Apple is “advertising” that more than any other company.¹ Exactly what is RIM afraid of? Also-ran shouldn’t be nearly so bad as duck-n-cover as an advertising strategy. But when advertising, these days, is the only thing differentiating realistically commoditized products, it’s pretty important to make sure that you are “cool” as opposed to better; better that you should influence your consumers than convince them. Inductive logic is a breeze when compared to deduction.