Today I have two must-watch videos for you. If you haven't seen these videos, you must watch them now. Really.
1. The first is a TV ad for Red House Furniture in North Caroline. This is unlike any furniture store advertising I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them (I used to work in the furniture industry).
I definitely have some thoughts about it, but I'd much rather hear your comments (maybe I'll comment at a later date). Watch the vid, then click on comments below to weigh in. What do you think?
2. Here is a video from a talk given by Seth Godin a few years ago (via the marvelous Seth Godin's Blog. Every single person who works in an organization should watch this video titled "This Is Broken." I'm not kidding. It's great stuff. It's twenty minutes long. Watch it now.
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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training,
a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip
is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more.
I have no idea what was supposed to be so special about that Red House ad. Or why you thought we 'must watch' it. Those two salesdudes sing pretty good tho!
Posted by: misterfricative | 23 April 2009 at 09:27 PM
mister f,
I've never seen a tv commercial that has such racial content to it. Perhaps I'm showing my naivete here and you have. If you have, please enlighten me.
Thanks,
Skip
Posted by: Skip | 23 April 2009 at 10:07 PM
Hi Skip,
Thanks for replying.
I haven't lived in the US for quite a while and it's been, oh, I dunno, maybe 25 years since I last saw a TV spot for a retail furniture warehouse. Back then it was mostly pitched at young couples with poor or no credit, and the racial side was covered with critical parts of the pitch being repeated in Spanish (this was in CA). So although the racial element in this redhouse ad is obviously pretty front and center, it doesn't strike me as very remarkable. Hard to imagine something like this in SC before MLK - but almost equally hard not to imagine something like this today. And as the guys who made it say in their youtube info block:... oh FFS not only do the cursor keys not work here, I can't do cut and paste into this box either -- you'll have to find it and read it yourself: it's the paragraph about SNL etc pushing the envelope way further than this.
Anyway, by those standards, this video is hardly iconoclastic. And meanwhile, I guess it's kinda nice that they can (finally?) do this and it *isn't* any kind of big deal.
Posted by: misterfricative | 24 April 2009 at 02:05 AM
Thanks for your contribution, mister f.
Skip
Posted by: Skip | 24 April 2009 at 05:20 AM
UR welcome.
And btw the Seth Godin video was mostly very good. Now that one really is a 'must see'!
Posted by: misterfricative | 24 April 2009 at 08:44 AM
Its really informative for business developer. And I appriciate your work or collects these kind of videos like business videos. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Posted by: business videos | 02 May 2009 at 02:17 AM
I love the Red House Furniture ad. I imagine they must experience racial tensions a lot in whatever region this store is located in, if they felt compelled to make a video of this nature.
I was just watching Ben Dunlap's Ted talk about Sandor Teszler, and how he dealt with racial tensions when he opened his company during segregation.
It's is one of our greatest mistakes, believing that if we pretend a problem doesn't exist, it either doesn't or will go away eventually. Using cultural identity as a tool for dividing people, by stirring up old demons and pointing fingers, is equally damaging to our society.
However, acknowledging the existence of racism and making a mockery of it seems a perfectly brilliant way to expose it for what it really it- a product of utter stupidity. So, Teszler refused to acknowledge anyone's questions about race in his company because he saw it as a stupid thing to be concerned about. These guys are taking a different approach, but with the same end in mind.
Posted by: Reni | 13 August 2012 at 03:39 PM
Martin Luther King Jr gave his "I have a dream" speech in 1963. However, 50 years later there is still racial inequality and the tension it brings on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Therefore I think that it is great if anyone is encouraging racial harmony. In fact, I think that it is very subtle and its message is "our furniture fits everyone because we are all one humanity"
Posted by: Phil | 17 February 2013 at 05:25 PM