The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix""
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
The Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Champagne Brand
Beer Marketing Budget
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Amtrak: Third World Country On Wheels. Ahhh, the "fly-over states." How much comfort we ad types take in referring to our domestic marketplace in those terms. Those of us on the left and right coasts never seem to get enough of pumping ourselves up at the expense of those who dwell East of Mulholland and West of Riverside Drives. Well that ain't moi. I know what side of the country my bread is buttered on. The middle side. So whenever I have to go from sea to shining sea, I make it a point not to "fly over". Quite the contrary. I roll through. On Amtrak. |
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I stopped counting once I passed the million mile mark. Now I've been riding the rails since the days of the Super Chief and the Broadway Ltd., but this trip was a nightmare. Aside from the fact that I spent three days going and three days coming back just to attend a two hour meeting, for me the chance |
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I can't find a job anywhere. I really think I would be great in advertising. Where should I look next? - Kathy Z., Norfolk I hear Denny's is hiring. – hw |
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to visit with America up close is always worth the extra effort to travel by rail. When you travel by train you have the opportunity to witness what is important to the masses. I always come armed with a battery of general questions. Questions to ask the people I meet in the bar cars and lounges, over drinks or rolling poker games. Questions to ask over breakfast, dinner and lunch in the dining car. Questions to ask the conductors and brakemen that change every 200 miles. Questions to ask the car attendants, waiters and lounge car stewards who are generally based out of Los Angeles, Chicago or New York. Every trip I pick a different topic to try to gain some insight. This trip's topic was "relationships between young people and their parents." I wanted to find out when kids began to slip away from their parental bonds and express their independence. Believe me, in six days I filled up a box full of microcassette tapes. One more opportunity to take the pulse of our nation, I figured. I had no idea what would await me this time out. As the Chinese say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Or trying to find a place to park. Amtrak is strapped for cash. Government subsidies are in constant threat of being pulled. Solution: build condos where the parking lots used to be. And their customers, loaded down with a sherpa's nightmare in baggage? Fuck 'em. Let them park in the next zip code over. Put a two story flight of stairs between them and their half mile trek to the station to get their tickets. And the quarter mile journey back the way they came to trainside. Welcome to the American answer to the bullet train: the bullet in the head, train. O.K. I am now sitting in my cozy roomette, awaiting my 6:45 pm departure. 7:30 pm. Still awaiting. 8:10 pm. All the power on the train goes out. Word from the head end: one of the three locomotives has died. A really warm feeling when you are about to assault the very face of the Rockies in the dead of winter. Suddenly, visions of the Donner party crept into my consciousness. 8:44 pm we finally lurched out of Union Station. Two hours late. Now here's the deal. Amtrak owns the trains. But the various railroads own the rails. They give Amtrak a specific window of time to get their raggedy ass trains across their railroad from point A to point B. When Amtrak misses that window, its crack streamliners like the Southwest Chief are shunted to siding tracks and forced to wait while the railroad's hotshot container trains blast past at 90 mph. Two hours late soon becomes four hours late. Then six hours late. "Pigs before people" is how a famous travel writer (whose name slips my mind) once put it. What's the dif, being six hours late over a three day journey? One small detail. I have to change trains in Chicago. My connection leaves three hours after my scheduled ON-TIME arrival. Oops. So now it's the next day. I've had a bunch of conversations with passengers and their kids. The painted deserts of New Mexico are laced with snow. I can't get a cell phone signal. There is no wireless node on the train, so I've got no web connection. I am cut off from the world. Not to mention my office, where the material for the meeting I was traveling to was still being produced by my partner. So much for every technological breakthrough in the past 20 years. Progress? Amtrak don't need no stinkin' progress. This ain't no travelogue, so I'll skip the part about spectacular views through Raton Pass in the Colorado Rockies or breathtaking sunsets in "Big Sky" country. I'll cut straight to the First Class Lounge in Chicago's Union Station. "Excuse me. Do you have a Wi-Fi connection?" Puzzled look on Amtrak Agent's face. "Wi-Fi?" Chicago Union Station. Crossroads of the Americas. No wireless connection anywhere. Anywhere. I hear the question being asked dozens and dozens of times by hapless travelers carring their road warrior laptops under their arms. "What?" was their expression of disbelief, over and over again. Welcome to "First Class" Amtrak style. I did make my connection. That's because it was two hours late leaving Chicago. I will breeze through the ordeal of getting a rental car in Washington's Union Station. Or the fact that something as basic as scrambled eggs or pancakes were non-existant in the dining car on the return Washington, D.C.-Chicago leg. I'll go straight for the main miss-event. The announcement over the P.A. System just east of Kansas City that the rest rooms in our sleeping car would be out of service until further notice. A notice that went un-noticed by my fellow passengers until the car had to be "quarantined" for toxic poop fumes and shut down in Albuquerque. That's when the riot started. If you want to get an American really ticked off, just tell her that she has to travel coach after paying for a first class bedroom on a crack passenger train. Now multiply that by 53. I for one had plunked down $1800 for the privilege of having this tale to tell. I was traveling solo. Imagine the chagrin of a family of four traveling on a vacation they had been saving up for, perhaps as many as three years in a row. The peeps were pissed. Of course, those who bitched the loudest were told by the Amtrak station agent at Albuquerque that they would be arrested if they didn't calm down. That's when the cell phones came out and the lawyers were dialed. Right after that, a number of passengers complained of severe headaches and shortness of breath. so much for Amtrak customer service. Can you say "lawsuit" boys and girls? To make a long story mercifully short, I was given a bunk in the crew dormitory car and told I was lucky to have it. No mattress, sheets or blankets provided. Temps in the low 30s. I arrived back in Los Angeles all the worst for wear and vowing to end my 28-year love affair with rail travel before I had to shoot somebody. All I can say is that if you are considering crossing the country by train...don't. At least not in this country. Stay tuned.
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