Tricky Dick, Spamazon, and 10 Other Media Failures of 2011

Now that just about everyone else is done publishing their annual feel-good "Best Of" lists, it's time for Dead Tree Edition to remind us what a crappy year we just stumbled through.  Here’s a look back at some of the media world’s unsung losers and overlooked failures of 2011:

Spamazon: Amazon, once known for its uncanny ability to send emails promoting just the right products to the right person (See An Amazon Approach to Selling Magazine Subscriptions), decided to enter the deal-of-the-day business. But it turns out the big web retailer is better at algorithms than maps: Several readers report being deluged with irrelevant offers, including ones for car washes, hair salons, and the like that are more than two hours from where they live. By the time Amazon realizes the damage it has done, I’ll bet millions of us customers will have relegated its missives to our spam folders.

Georgia: Forbes recently announced the launch of its 20th “local language edition”, Forbes Georgia. Yat's raht, them good ol’ boys in Jawjuh fahnly had to abandon WDCHYDIUN (We Don't Care How You Do It Up North) as a business strategy and realized they need someone to explain the ways of Wall Street and other Yankee business practices to them in their own language. (What? There’s a country called Georgia? Sheee-it, I thought Georgia rejoined the Union just a few years after the War Against Northern Aggression.)

Huffing & Puffington with Cardboard Porn

Now that the left-leaning Huffington Post’s “green” site is talking about our “cardboard porn” item, perhaps those "adult services" operators need to make their come-on more politically correct. How about:
“Hey there, sexy guy, or gal, or guy who wants to be a gal, or vice-versa, how'd you like to go one on one with one of our hot, horny unionized young women, or young men, or women who used to be men, or whatever, for some real solar-powered conversation. We've got something that will get your free-range, cruelty-free meat steaming – or for you vegans, that will get your organic falafel really cooking."
Speaking of corrugated and being environmentally conscious, here’s a green idea: When you’re cleaning up the cardboard from all of those holiday gifts this year, don’t recycle it. Don't think “Corrugated Recycles,”think “Corrugated Reuses” or, at least for a few months, “Corrugated Stores.” Recycling operations all over the country are storing their scrap corrugated or even landfilling it because they can’t sell it.
The recycling crisis has gotten so bad that RecycleBills – run by a North Carolina poet and recycling manager who looks like a member of ZZ Top, only friendlier – is compiling a free listing of outfits that actually buy post-consumer recyclables. So if you know of one, be sure to send the info to RecycleBill@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, I’ll note that the reindeer – er, caribou – are outsmarting us humans with the double entendres. Northern hardwood – wish I’d thought of that one. And speaking of reindeer, did you hear that biologists have declared that Rudolph and his sleigh mates are actually females – or maybe castrated males? That has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged focus of Dead Tree Edition – production and distribution of publications – but it’ll be a great conversation starter at Christmas parties (or, for you HuffPo folks, at winter-solstice bongfests).

Rudolph the Cross-Dressing Reindeer?

Hey, big boy, can I recycle your cardboard?

Warning: Adult content. Contains suggestive language

and veiled references to unnatural acts with corrugated boxes.

I got word today that those naughty folks in the box industry had come up with a way to perk up interest in recycling: Sex.

Hmm, slip some Viagra into drooping prices for recycled cardboard? Offer "special favors" to those who use waste paper so that it doesn't end up getting landfilled?

Turns out it was a mistake. The official "Corrugated Recycles" logo used to include the number to a toll-free information line, (800) 879-9777. Call that number now and you're greeted with "Hey there, sexy guy" and offered a chance to go "one on one with hot, horny girls ready to talk to you."

The toll-free number was phased out last year and "unfortunately has been purchased by an adult services organization," says an announcement from the spoil-sports at the Fibre Box Association. Some companies are still using it, and the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) was still displaying it today it in a list of industry resources.

"To avoid issues with your customers and their supply chain partners and printing plate providers, we would suggest you prioritize removing this referral from all printing dies," says the announcement. "Please also remove this phone number from all documents, websites and any other form of communication in which this number may appear." The organization provides a new logo (with a URL but no phone number) and tips for scraping the phone number off of printing plates.

Still, with recycled fiber starting to pile up because of low prices, maybe we could use the help of that "adult services organization" to arouse interest in buying waste paper. I can hear one of those breathy operators purring to a paper-company executive, "Hey, big spender, how would you like to go one on one with a couple of truckloads of post-consumer office paper? No flocculation, I promise."

Based on what I know of paper executives, that would definitely get their attention -- more so than Candace the Caribou.

Dec. 13 Update: TAPPI removed the phone number from its Web site yesterday. Good thinking, since it was on a page of paper-related resources for students and teachers. But Google the phone number and you'll find plenty of sites that still list it. Also, U.S. News & World Report's Web site is inviting folks to submit double-entendre comments about this article. Let me throw out a few paper-making terms to stimulate your creativity: stiffness, bulk, wet-end chemistry, couch (pronounced "koosh"), and beaters.

Losing the Name Game

What idiot is in charge of picking the brand names for publication papers?

We noted yesterday the passing of the AbiBow Eco Gloss brand name that was created by the moniker-challenged AbitibiBowater. (Repeat either the brand name or the company name 10 times very quickly.)

SAPPI has supposedly given up on its Belgrade brand name. There is no truth to the rumor that it had considered coming out with a series of other brands named after the world’s bleakest places, such as Mogadishu Matte, Chernobyl Chrome, and Auschwitz Satin.

Catalyst had a pretty good LWC name in Pacifica Gloss, but then the Freudians in the marketing department changed it to Electracote. To become gender neutral, will Catalyst call its new coated #4 product Oedipuscote?

Myllykoski has tried to get hip to the Me Generation by naming everything MY something – MY GOLD, MY PLUS, MY SYMMETRY, MY BRITE, and so on. MY GOD, enough is enough!

Even the environmentalists pestering some paper companies have trouble with names. Remember Candace the Caribou (right), the character ForestEthics created to protest that logging in Canada’s boreal forest was destroying caribou habitat? The effort was targeted at American consumers, who responded, “What’s a caribou?” Answer: the Canadian word for reindeer.

Now if Greenpeace had created Rudolph the Homeless Reindeer and shown him pushing a shopping cart full of stuff, maybe we would have gotten the message.