Ameritech

Chairman Jimmy once said, “Communication is unlikely, if you get what I’m saying.” Being in the communications business, I’ve come to appreciate the profound truth and transcendant wisdom of that simple statement. That is, if I’m actually catching his drift.

To be in the communication business, particularly the telecommunication business, is fraught with obstacles, barriers, land mines. When you’re in the business of providing the ability to communicate, certain obligations obtain, which many telecommunications companies don’t seem to realize or recognize. One of those responsibilities is to effectively communicate -- one to one, or in an advertising context -- with your own customers. Another is to ensure that your employees are capable of communicating effectively with one another.
Take Ameriyech. Please. Here’s a company attempting to provide a variety of communication services to millions of people in several Midwestern states. Yet they are often entirely incapable of talking amongst themselves. Their advertising, starting with their taglines, is often vague, disingenuous, overblown -- not exactly ideal traits of effective communication.

We’re All Connected. Well, not all of us. In fact, recently, as I moved from one house to another, I wasn’t connected. Ameriblecchh rendered me in communicado, and despite the well-meaning efforts of the 22, that’s right, 22 hapless employees who wound up attending to my personal communicatastrophe at one point or another, it took them three full weeks to reconnect me. There were all sorts of reasons why it took so long. But no good reasons.
One root cause was my inability to communicate with Ameriwreck, due to the fact that you seldom get the last name or direct number of the person with whom you’re talking. Thus, it’s virtually impossible to ever talk to them again. Another root cause: no one working on my problem ever seemed to communicate the situation to the next person working on my problem. As a result of these two failings, every day was a new day, with a new person for me to explain the whole mess to, and a new repair person to approach the problem fresh, unburdened by the knowledge and insight yesterday’s repair guy could have imparted.

Your Link To Better Communication. Even if Ameridreck had deleted “Better” from that tagline, it would be an overpromise. I know, I know. No doubt a few of you are protesting that, in all fairness, most people enjoy relatively flawless communication capabilities most of the time, thanks to Ameriwretch. Isn’t that all one should expect from the local telecommunications company?

Well, given how dependent we’ve become on these services, I don’t think so. About the only time the electric, gas or water companies fail to provide their commodities is when nature calls. I don’t know about you, but I find myself on hold, waiting to complain to an Amerijerk representative several times a year, and it seldom has to do with nature calling. It has to do with me calling. Or not.

Your Link To A Better Life. Whose life are they talking about? Ameridefect’s CEO? Maybe if Amerivex didn’t spend millions of dollars every year raising our expectations far above its ability to deliver, via taglines like this one, I could be more forgiving. But I doubt it. Especially when the better life I envision doesn’t contain 3-week long lapses in telephone service.

In a World of Technology, People Make the Difference. Lately, you’ll notice, Amerifeh! has wised up. No more overblown promises, no sir. They’ve learned that some vacuous platitude which could mean pretty much anything, and therefore nothing, makes for a less troublesome tagline. I haven’t yet figured a way to throw that line back in their faces when I’m having one of my little chats with Stacy or Lawrence or Tamika. (Oh yeah!? Well I thought in a world of technology, people made the difference but I guess not. Hah! Take that) . Whereas, “Your Link To A Better Life” was tailor-made to lance them with, (i.e. “Oh yeah, well Link this!”, or “Seems like it’s the missing link to me!”, or “What I could use right now is my link to a better knife!”)

As effective styles of commercial communication go, I’ve long been a fan of forthright advertising. If you’re not sure what I mean by forthright advertising, that’s only because it’s so rare, you may never have come across any of it. I’m talking about the Stan Bergian kind of ad which makes fun of the product’s limitations, the company’s fallibilities or acknowledges the relative triviality of the company’s product in the context of an actual person’s life. Perhaps Amerischmeckle could try a dose of forthrightness in modifying its current tagline. Here’s a suggestion: In A World Of Technology, People Do the Best they Can But You Gotta Understand, There’s An Awful Lot Of Wires And Switches And Things All Jumbled Up Out There And Sometimes We Get Really, Really Confused, So Please Be Patient With Us. If you get what I’m saying.