SkyTrain, Molson, and Kirstie Alley: Reasons to Laugh at the News

I read the news today – oh, boy. Lots of funny failures. But are they really? The news, which tries to be profound, can often be stupid – especially when it gets caught up in clever marketing or business campaigns. Stories of failure particularly grab newshounds because they fit the black/white news narrative of triumph or tragedy. And, of course, there's always an element of glee in showing how stupid people can be.

SkyTrain, Molson, and Kirstie Alley: Reasons to Laugh at the News
Are SkyTrain, Molson, and Kirstie Alley as dumb as they seem? You decide.

I read the news today – oh, boy. Lots of funny failures. But are they really?

The news, which tries to be profound, can often be stupid – especially when it gets caught up in clever marketing or business campaigns.

Stories of failure particularly grab newshounds because they fit the black/white news narrative of triumph or tragedy. And, of course, there’s always an element of glee in showing how stupid people can be.

Here’s a random collection of apparent failures from just one day in the news. Are they as dumb as they seem? You decide.
 

SkyTrain

Seems that Skytrain was too cheap to set up more than one park and ride facility for its new Cambie line, so, after only two days of operation, commuters in Richmond are already parking in mall lots, and the malls are having them towed. Fail!!

One could ask how Translink expected all those new suburban commuters to get to the nearest Skytrain station or where they were going to leave their cars. Was this stupid or was Skytrain cleverly offloading its responsibilities (and costs) on the residents and businesses near Skytrain stations and then ensuring that car-crazy scofflaws who refused to take the bus to the stations were warned about the consequences. Funny we never heard about any of this before the line was built. Is that how Translink counted the 200,000 cars it says it’s taking off the roads?  
 

Molson

Molson Coors is pulling down some B.C. billboards that advertised its beer as “colder than most people from Toronto,” following a bunch of complaints in Toronto whipped up by the Toronto Star. Fail!!

The point of marketing is to catch people’s attention and the people whose attention you want to grab live near or pass by the billboards’ location. This is not Toronto, so why did Molson Coors cave? Because it lives in Toronto, and listens to what its neighbours think? Or because it garnered more free publicity for what is pretty generic and boring beer from the controversy than it could ever gain by throwing up a bunch of expensive billboards? Who started that anti-billboard campaign in Toronto anyway? 
 

Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley has majorly bulked up following her turfing from the marketing campaign for the weight loss group Jenny Craig. Apparently she was getting too fat and is now fatter than ever. Fail!!

Columnists and celebrity watchers are either moaning about what this means to women’s self-worth in our thin-obsessed society, or are gleefully experiencing full Schadenfreude about poor Kirstie’s plight. 

But wait a minute.  Marketing spokespeople have a pretty short shelf life these days, and mass marketing weight-loss companies, (which all sell the same generic system – burn off more calories than you take in) are among the worst offenders ( i.e., isn’t Kirstie’s replacement, Valerie Bertinelli, now being edged out by new former fatty, Phylicia Rashad?)

And isn’t Kirstie, who hasn’t had an acting gig in years and years, now going to be marketing her own weight-loss plan? Connect the dots. Kirstie’s business these days is being fat and then formerly fat, so is she cleverly raising much publicity for her new product line? For all we know, this new Kirstie slimming system might just be licensed out by Jenny Craig as another line of business.