If there’s one thing we’ve always preached on the mighty Mortarblog, it’s this: Be brave. Be honest. Be nice. (OK, that’s three things. We’re bad at rules. You should know that by now. Hush.) And we dearly love to point out examples of these qualities. So allow us to stand up and applaud the stones on Mazda’s brand team – it takes a ton-and-a-half of those to hand the keys to your brand to Sir-Doctor Stephen T. Colbert, DFA. “Did he just call it an Oldsmoblile? Did he just say “Mazda, It’s What’s For Dinner?” But that doesn’t follow the Brand Guidelines!”
You’re right, Imaginary Brand Manager’s Brain, it doesn’t. But – hey, put that tequila down – your customers don’t follow them, either. Because your customers are people. And they love it when you treat them like people.
We can’t believe we have to tell you this, it appears we do.
When a disaster like the Boston Marathon bombing occurs, how you respond is a measure – the measure – of your character. From where we’re sitting, it appears that you have time to compile, review, edit and upload video from the scene, but you don’t have time to turn off the @&#^ing preroll commercials!? Seriously?
What’s going on? Is this a giant, unexpected solar eclipse? Were the Mayans right after all? Oh. No. Wait. It’s just Eat24’s giant cojones, blocking out the sun. Taking the D.I.Y. ethos to new heights, they just decided to show up at SXSW with a giant bag of weed and a camera and oh, hey, is that Snoop Lion? Yes. Yes it is.
Snoop gets familiar with the Eat24 App. And guess who is now the Official Sponsor of Snoop’s (quite likely prodigious) Munchies? It’s perhaps the greatest product demonstration since the old Master Lock ad from the 1970’s. Well done.
Man. This medicine of ours is kinda bitter. Has an 80-proof kick, though. So, remember all those posts where we said, “have a sense of humor about yourself?” Yeah, that was great and all until we encountered AgencyWank Tumblr, “a collection of the wankiest slogans and text on ad/marketing agency websites,” and found ourselves on there not once but twice! Hoist on our own petard! Curses! But then we noticed six times the normal visits to our site, plus reblogs spreading the Mortar virus gospel throughout the land, and we remember, it could be worse.
“You gonna tell us who’s a good boy, or should we take a little ride downtown?”
Just when we were about to take over the abandoned amusement park! We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids. Well, at least we got to say “hoist on our own petard.”
