Thursday, September 10, 2015

New Service?

Waterbury, Connecticut

The other day a friend sent me a note with a link to an online publishing service whose "business model" confused us both. It seems to consist of getting "publishers" to pay $26 or $35 per month to upload their publications to an online facility where millions of readers will be able to access them—for free. Say what? Paying money to have your content accessible to an audience who doesn't pay for it is called, "advertising."

For some reason it made me think of this shot from a few weeks ago. As near as I can tell, this is a place where you can walk in without an appointment and for ONLY $35 dollars they will not cut your hair. Won't color it, either. They will blow dry it, however. It isn't clear from the copy on the sandwich board or the window treatments who is responsible for getting your hair wet in the first place. Perhaps a rainy day takes care of it, but I don't know about clear weather.

OK, having recently turned 66, I may be several steps behind the cutting edge of advertising and marketing, but in both of these cases I find myself sort of scratching my head and thinking, "how do they get people to pay for that?"

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