Mystery Solved

It quite possibly is as old as the Earth itself.  Men have spent lifetimes dedicated to solving the eternal question.  Thousands, neigh, Millions of dollars have been spent in research to find the truth.  Countless lifes have been lost or ruined all in pursuit of one great quest. 

Is it pronounced “Pets Mart” or “Pet Smart”?

Ok, so maybe not as many  people or resources have been dedicated to this mystery as I suggest, but I know that everyone I ever asked did not know the answer.  And for the few who acted like they did – their reasoning quickly crumbled under closer investigation.

On the front of their stores,on training certificates, even on their “Pet Perks” frequent shopper card they have the same logo and it is spelled “PETsMART”.  For years it has been this ambiguous red logo not giving any clue as to whether the “s” belongs to “PET” or if it might belong to “MART”  It has even teased me with the idea that maybe it is it’s own word.  Sort of like a young woman making a statement that she doesn’t need either “PET” or “MART’ to make it in the world.  She is strong!  She is independent!

This ambiguity though was a great marketing ploy in my opinion.  The play on words was ingenious and helped to convey two very positive messages.  “PetsMart” let you know that this was the “WalMart for Pets”  Anything your pet needed could be found under one roof and for a reasonable price.  Yeah, maybe this super pet chain paid minimum wage, gave no health benefits to its employees and stifled any talk of union while driving the independent and locally owned pet shops out of business, but look at the cute puppies!  Anyone who works there should be happy to get to work around animals all day as they are all probably members of PETA and their life (in their opinion) is not as important as those of the animals.

On the other hand if the “s” belonged with the “Mart” you now had “PetSmart” giving shoppers a sense of assurance that they were doing the smart thing for their pet and their wallet.  There were a saavy consumer worthy of shopping at not just PetSmart but also Syms.

Yesterday I received in the mail a promotional CD advertising a new Pet Hotel.  You might think that just the thought of free TV, Room Service and fresh towels daily for Fluffy might be enough to cause one’s heart to skip a beat (or is that indigestion?) – but this isn’t what took my breath away.  It was the new PETSMART logo.  No more small “s”.  The “s” had grown up and now stood as tall as all of the other letters!  What a day for “s’s” everywhere!

But wait I thought what does this mean to the name?  All one word “PETSMART”.  That doesn’t work!  Wait…there is something else different……the logo…..it is not all red anymore….it is red AND blue!  In fact they have made the first few letters red and the last few blue.  They have made the “S” pick sides!

It is blue.  It now forms the word “SMART” preceded by the word “PET”.  No longer is it a Mart for Pets.  It is the Smart place for you and your pet.

I quickly went to their website to make sure this wasn’t some bored creative person trying to spice things up.  No there it was in Red and Blue.  PET SMART.

So on one hand millions of people can now sleep at night no longing wondering the correct pronunciation.  Yet on the other hand, another corporation has fallen to the MBA’s of the world. Foregoing practical sense and familiarity and relying upon market research and focus groups who are only really interested in the free donuts to unnecessarily try and change thier image and convey a positive message:

from Retail Wire, Pet Retailer Emphasizes Smart over Mart, by George Anderson, 8/25/05:

Ken Hall, Petsmart’s chief marketing officer, wants shoppers to know that the company offers much more than just supplies. The company may have started out that way, said Mr. Hall, but today services such as grooming, day camp, obedience training and PetsHotel boarding have expanded the chain’s scope of operations.

“Today, customers want more. They’re much more interested in their pets. They think of their pets as children,” said Petsmart’s CMO.

“Things like training and grooming have become much more important,” he said. “Those parts of our business have seen great growth.”

YAWN!, Mr. Hall. That is all I have to say.  Ok, maybe not.  You have stripped one of the most unique marketing tools PETsMART had.  A name that people knew and that made them think.  Even if it was to think about something so stupid as whether it was “Pets Mart” or “Pet Smart” 

Oh, and Mr. Hall thsi was new logo appeared just over a year ago and I just noticed it.  Good thing it has had such a terrific impact.  Now, that’s marketing!

Besides, now what am I going to joke about with my kids when we take Fluffy to the PetsHotel?  The Free TV?  She doesn’t watch TV.  Just give her a good book…on marketing.

 

Does the “N” Word have an Equivalent?, Part I

If you are a regular of my Blog, then you will recall a few posts I have had under the title “When “Ocho” is a “No No”  If you haven’t read them  – go do it now. 

Interestingly enough I actually started this post BEFORE the whole “Ocho Incident”.  This has just taken some time for me to complete because it is such a sensitive subject I have wanted to be clear on my message and get it right.  What I have found is there may be no “right” on this topic. 

I decided to put this out there, unfinished, and solicit thoughts, comments form you…..

I had a an interesting conversation via Instant Messenger the other night with my 18 year old daughter.  She is a freshman at a large university in the south and while she certainly hasn’t lived a sheltered life, she has been surprised at some of the “experiences” she has had there already.

I am not referring to drinking or the parties or even the way people act at SEC football games although the latter was eye opening for her and the former, I hope, was not something she has gotten *too* involved in.

No, I am talking about people’s attitudes toward race. 

The town we live in – the same town she grew up in –  is not very diverse even though we live within commuting distance of two moderate sized metropolitan cities.  Even so, I believe my kids have had many experiences with people who do not look like them or do not talk like them or who believe differently than they do so as not to see people’s differences as a bad thing.  Instead, I believe my wife and I have raised them to understand that these differences between people,  be it color, religion, Coke drinker v. Pepsi drinker, or whatever, are what make us all interesting and worth getting to know.  While my children are certainly not “color blind” they do not let a difference like that stop them from being humans.

But, sadly, this is not the case where my daughter goes to school.  There are still people who openly use the “N” word.  Inter-racial dating is heavily frowned upon. Minorities even practice “segregation by choice.”  Again, my daughter is no more naive than any young adult (her college room mate is black and one her best friends and prom date this year is black) but given her attitudes toward race it is shocking to her to see these things are practiced so openly.

As my IM session with my daughter continued I started asking her questions about her room mate.  A young girl from a small town in the south who was randomly put together with my daughter. All we knew about her when we took our daughter to school, was her name, where she was from, that she was salutatorian of her high school class, planning to major in chemistry and that she was black (our daughter had found a picture of her on the Internet.)

Since my daughter had mentioned how shocked she was that people used the “N” word so commonly, I asked her if she had considered asking her room mate what she thought of the word. We have all heard one black person call another this word but in reality how do black people really feel about the word?  What does it mean to a black person? And, how is it different if a non-black uses it in the same way as a black person does?

This led to my then suggesting she ask her what slang for white people do black people consider to be truly offensive in the same way that white people view the “N” word?  As I thought about what it might be (honky, cracker, red neck, whitey, bubba, ice mutant, casper) nothing really came to mind that really equaled the offensiveness of the “N” word.

So why is this? 

Top 10 Questions About Home Schooling

Top 10 Questions About Home Schooling 

 1.  Do the kid’s bring their lunch or can they buy?

 2.  Once you graduate and move out is every time you come back “Homecoming Weekend”?

  3.  Can the Mailman be your school mascot or does it have to be one of your pets? 

  4.  Does mold growing on a half eaten Pop Tart under your bed count as a science project? 

  5.  If you live in a trailer, and you drive it to visit a museum, is this really a field trip since you never really left your school?

  6.  What happens when you miss the bus in the morning?

  7.  How do you hold Parent-Teacher conferences and what if you don’t agree with the Teacher about your child? 

  8.  Does your teacher grade on the curve?

  9.  Will you recognize many people at your 10 year reunion?

10.  Why do the visual aids for Sex Education look ‘used’? 

The “Bricks” Are What Matter

The following was written a week before I started this blog. It is an excerpt from an email that I sent one night to a group of old friends.   I speak to my daughter, ok it is more like IM with my daughter quite often and I am amazed at how grown up she is .  I have found myself going back and needing to read this to remind myself that yes, she is grown up but that is a good thing, and that no matter how grown up she gets, she will always be my little girl made up of the bricks that we made together.

I am sure many of you have come to realize over the years as I have, it is not the entire “house” that matters.  It is the individual “bricks of life” that collectively build the “house” that matter.

I guess I am getting somewhat sentimental this evening because in 5 hours my wife and I and our eldest daughter will be getting in our van and driving 8 hours to the South to drop her off at school.  And while this is not our first child we will be taking to school, I still have this sense of loss mixed with joy that I have never felt before.  It could be that she is the oldest girl. Or it could be that she will be so far away and we know we won’t see her for at least 3 months.  Maybe I am just realizing that with her and her older brother gone we have lost our younger children’s chauffeurs and our own personal errand runners.

When her brother left last year, it was a momentous occasion but it didn’t have this feel.  It might have been because his school is in Baltimore and less than an hour away.  Or it may have been almost a let down given that he was a 15 year cancer survivor and when your child is stricken with an illness like that you start to think about all the different milestones they may not reach. Then as they beat the disease and start to reach each milestone like first grade, first hit in baseball, first date, etc. they’re great but, well, they’re just events in life that could never live up the expectations or significance you have put on them.

But this with my daughter leaving feels different.  She had always been in her brother’s shadow having to spend most of her second year with her two grandmothers’ while we cared for him.  Then later he was this child that no matter how much we tried to down play it for our own sanity and the sake of our other children was treated like a ”miracle” kid by teachers and others.  But she persevered and carved out her own niche as a leader in school, an accomplished dancer and twirler and the type of person who just made everyone feel comfortable and wanted to be around. All the while not fighting being “Ben’s little sister” but being proud of it and making a name for herself.

So what is it that feels wrong?  When your children reach high school you know that you will lose some touch with them.  They become more independent and you see less and less of them as their social calendars fill up and their time at the dinner table decreases.  As independent as she may have become over the past three years, I realize that this move to South Carolina is the next step in her growing up, making a name for herself and conquering a new frontier.  When I think of it in these terms I am touched with a sense of pride and a pang of sorrow, because I realize that this is what we as parents have worked so hard to prepare our kids to do.  So what I must be feeling is not a sense of loss of my daughter but a sense of loss of my role as a parent.

This is all a good test for me because we have two younger ones who will be in middle school this year and one day leaving home.  We always called our kids ”the two older ones and the two little ones”.  Well the two older ones have moved out and we have the two younger ones to work on now.  We are going to make sure the kiln is nice and hot and starting baking some bricks.

Aren’t they lucky?

When “Ocho” Is A “No No”, Part II

UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.  That is the only way I can describe what has transpired in the past week around this.

For those who did not read “When “Ocho” Is A “No No”, and are too lazy to go back and read it, briefly here is what happened.  My son’s football team has a phenomenal football player who wears #8 and is Hispanic.  A coach on the opposing team at my son’s game last week had put in a defensive play/formation, which they called “Ocho”.  There were several cheap and late hits taken by our #8 during the game from players of the other team.  I raised my concerns that the opposing coaches choice of using “ocho” as key word sent the wrong message to the kids on thier team which led to their “unsportsmanlike” play.  When we left off I had anticipated that the Commissioner of the League would be contacted by now….

Our coach did talk with our #8 to get his perception on the other team using the term “ocho” to indicate a play clearly aimed at stopping him.  He said yes, he noticed it  and that his family noticed it too.  While it upset him and his family, they were not going to make a Federal case of it.  I told you this kid is a class act.

Our coach then told the Program Director of our league who said he would bring it up to the Commissioner of the League at the next meeting which was scheduled for this past Thursday.

On Friday evening I heard from our coach that our PD had not brought it up at the meeting.  I couldn’t believe it.  (Actually I could, as our PD has shown he has no backbone on previous issues and is more interested in being part of the “Boy’s Club” than doing his job the right way.)

I decided it was appropriate for me, as a parent, to go directly to the League Commissioner and make him aware of what had taken place in the game.  Unfortunately, the only number listed for the Commissioner was his work number and it being Saturday I was only able to reach his voice mail.  I left him a brief message, not mentioning anything about the “ocho incident” as I now refer to it but just saying I was parent of a player who had concerns regarding some things that took place at my son’s game last week and would appreciate it if he would call me.

Following this I felt it only fair to contact our PD so as to give him a head’s up that I had reached out to the Commissioner and that I intended to pursue this issue directly.  When I did this he said that the meeting had run long on Thursday and that he had not had a chance to bring it up.   Spineless.

I told him that I was disturbed that he had not felt it important enough to make sure it was raised regardless of how many other things were on the agenda.  

You will not beleivehow he responded!  All I can say is that our PD is a self centered and ignorant individual.  He was/is more concerned about how my going to the League Commissioner will make him look than whether a coach used a racial term aimed at one of our kids.

He was offended that I had gone to the League Commissioner and felt I had not shown him, as the PD, the proper respect by waiting.

I have two things to say. 

1) “Waiting for what?  The coach to do it again? Waiting for you to get around to it?  If you have some great insight as to the way this should be brought up you need to let me in on it.  You didn’t follow through on how you said you would first bring it up nor did you communicate back that you wanted to handle it in a differnet way.  And your offended?

2) You’re offended?  I am offended that you did not act on this issue quickly.   It has shown a lack of respect for one of our players, his family and any other person who was at the game as well as any other person or team who might face this opposing coach in the future and face similar treatment – both verbal and physical.

It has been over 24 hours and he has not responded.

And you know what is most amazing to me?  I am so mad about this and concerned that one of our league’s Directors isn’t taking a charge of racism more seriously that I am about to quit because I don’t want to be affiliated with it. 

 Something is seriously wrong with our society.

Stay tuned for When “Ocho” is a “No No”, Part III.

UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.