Humor

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HEADLINE: “When Business Names Go Too Far”


(WALL STREET/MADISON AVENUE) Due to the disturbing nature of some names for businesses and product brand names, the government is considering curbing titles of businesses for their potential impact on the public at large. Not unexpectedly, resistance is strong from free speech arguments to complaints of interfering with free enterprise.

“It’s at the core of our way of life – free speech and free commerce,” said Dirk Knutson, head of “Buy Our Product Or We Will Visit You At Night With A Baseball Bat, Chum, Unlimited” a firm that makes commercial laundry soap. “The government’s got no business getting into our business.”

“It’s just a matter of time before they (the government) start telling us what to name our kids,” added Steve Close, president and CEO of “Take A Tree Shredder To Your Pet, Inc.”

“This has nothing to do with free speech or free enterprise,” counters Andrew Pittman, advocate for Consumer Alert Agency. “For example, Vile Products of America, the label of their product is just an unbroken stream of cuss words. I don’t even know what the product is purported to be. So, I went to their website and got the shock my life.”

These so-called “Shock Companies” are banking on the idea of anti-social sentiment to make their products or services attractive to the public. Door to door life insurance salesman Daniel Grossman is a recent convert to this tactic. “It used to be I’d have to figure out whether to use the hard sell or the soft sell, the logical or the sentimental approach whenever I’d come into a home. All that’s out the window now. I just barge into the house and insult everyone and everything and the next thing I know they’re signing up for the Platinum Premium Plan. I don’t understand it, but it works.”

“I don’t understand it either,” says James Monahan, Professor of Sociology at Catskills University. “Possibly, we have a generation that lived its formative years in a constant bombardment of negative input from friends, siblings, parents and media heroes. Rejection of this nature becomes the only reaffirming stimulus this now grown generation responds to, and so as a marketing or business abuse and rejection becomes a formidable tool.”

The marketing firm of “Eat Poison and Die Horribly”, one of the leading companies to use abusive marketing campaigns for its clients was contacted to comment on Professor Monahan’s postulation. “There’s nothing (deleted) wrong about (deleted), (deleted),(deleted). It’s your (deleted) (deleted) types that (deleted) can’t (deleted) think for themselves that (deleted), deserve to (deleted), (deleted), (deleted), (deleted), (deleted), (deleted). (Deleted). And that goes for you , too (deleted).”

In light of these findings and the public response to negative reinforcement marketing, political analysts are turning their eye to past campaign strategies that have included barrages of “Negative Campaign Ads” and have speculated whether or not these ads designed to demonize the opponent have, in fact, done the exact opposite. “When we look at negative reinforcement and how the public has responded in the retail and business sector,” political analyst John Keith adds, “one wonders who might have been elected had not the negative ads been run.”

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