Are You Somebody's Billboard? Charge Them, or Burn the T-shirt.

Consumers are the mob. Oh, we are all consumers of course, high and low, but if you're an elitist, you're convinced that somehow you're above the retail consumption fray. You are wrong, but you are still convinced.

Today I'm focused on a tiny, maybe insignificant example of consumer foolishness, but one that represents billions of dollars, making it a matter of keen interest to American capitalists like, well, me.

If you want me to wear your advertising, don't expect to charge me money for your T-shirt or hat or sweat pants. Either give me the damn things free, or if they're really ugly, pay me to wear them. NO, wait. If they've got your logo on them, pay me to wear them even if they ARE attractive. Screw you.

You get great benefits from my wearing your logos, trademarks and slogans. If I walk around all day wearing your advertising, you get lots of what the marketing suits like to call "impressions" -- aka, free eyeballs on your brands. If you want me to be your freaking billboard, you pay me for the privilege. Be glad I only want a free shirt most of the time. My price could be a whole lot higher depending on where I'm going to be seen. But don't expect to charge me $20 for a shirt with your ad on it. There are very few brands I'll hawk for nothing, and you're almost certainly not one of them.

I play keyboards in a good band. Now I know why people like Paul Shafer on Letterman cover the nameplates on their keyboards. Because the keyboard company was too cheap (and short-sighted) to offer a free keyboard (which costs much less than one ad with the same reach and duration) for the advertising they would get by having god knows how many thousand eyeball "impressions per day" on their brand name at each performance I do for a couple of years.

Here's a sidebar which, like many sidebars, is likely more to the point than the headliner:

A friend of mine once passed along a lesson which I have never forgot. About to meet with executives to make a deal which would earn him an unquestionably serious salary, a friend and advisor in the industry recommended he approach the upcoming job interview this way: "It will cost them less to pay your annual salary than they waste on ONE mistake on every project they currently do."

You won't be surprised, I imagine, that that summation is a perfect haiku mantra for me when approaching any project large or small which is proposed to me.

So, at the very least -- compensate me to advertise your product. Don't expect me to buy your stuff if it is defaced with your logo splashed across it. When I pay good money to own something, I clean the stickers and tags off, first thing.

If I do select your product from among the competing offerings, duct tape is cheap, and I'll cover your logo until and unless you figure out who should be charging whom to display your company trademarks.

By the way, it's time for me to mention this little factoid:

Often times in the past I have mistakenly assumed I was thinking and acting in a unique or counter-culture way -- only to find a newspaper article in the next few weeks announcing that MY ENTIRE GENERATION IS TRENDING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS I HAVE BEEN GOING OF LATE.

So -- deride my observations at your peril, and a lot of luck to you.