My first job in Marketing, I worked for Juno Online Services. While I was there, I worked with a man named Bob Cherins, a white haired marketing man from Livingston, NJ with a mission: ugly sells. "Better that, make it double ugly." Bob was in marketing, speaking to creatives who rolled in at 11am four days a week. We’d need a day off to replenish our creativity. His double ugly mantra meant sometimes to grab a pair of eyes, you have to break some rules. You can’t follow clean modern lines; you need to break through ’em. It was about the time when everyone encouraged everyone else to "think outside the box." Be the box; hack around the box. I was quite content with my own red box.
To double ugly it is to beat ’em over the head with obvious. Just look at the chicken cartoon, with the little ol’ chicken lady who bops Fog Horn on the head with a rolling pin, to drag him away, unconscious, to marry her. The rest of the hens just clucked in the barn. It doesn’t get more obvious than a rolling pin.
"If something is free," Bob lectured, "say it often. It’s not like we’re ashamed of it." So be ugly at every opportunity. Sell. Sell. I see it all over the streets of Manhattan, and I’m not talking billboards. Everyone is out there selling themselves. Some people even do it in a leopard print.
It’s autumn in New York, so they blanket themselves in trend. They drip broaches, hug in fur, and drape a peasant blouse over their spray-tanned shoulders for good measure. They scream, I’m fashionable in a very ugly way; I’m about to get ugly.
It’s my birthday party tonight. I’m celebrating not quite being 30. I’m not ashamed of it, so I’ll repeat it. POP BURGER 10:30PM, 9th AVENUE and 15th Street. Please come. I feel like you guys are my buddies cause you know gobs about me. I’ll be the redhead, cause I’m good at that.
Oh, and in case you missed it, I’ll hit you on the head with it… I want to find a boy to lick. Oh, and just try to tell me it will happen when I stop looking for it. Buy me a drink, say it to my face, and stand back.
