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

Tony Wanless

| August 19, 2009

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

Image by: starpulse.com

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.

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That was such a cheap shot

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2009-08-24 10:31.

That was such a cheap shot at Kirstie Alley. She is a good example of why diets don't work in the long run. Yes, she temporarily lost a few pounds, but then she gained them all back and more. Initial weight loss is easy, it's the long-term maintenance of it that is hard, particularly if the initial diet had an extreme limit on calories. Yes, it works in the short term, but then your body slowly starts a "famine response" leading to a rapid gain of only fat.

never underestimate the

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2009-08-24 10:09.

never underestimate the value of failure. -- Cher

Hey, good response! Turn the

Submitted by Tony Wanless on Fri, 2009-08-21 12:03.

Hey, good response! Turn the game around. Clever. It's not reporting. It's a blog, which is opinion delivered in just a few hundred words. You sound like a journo or a pr person, so you should know the difference between a report and a column. Pardon me if I couldn't get in every one of the 100,000 words or whatever was blasted out (by you?) about the Canada Line. But here is a response anyway. 1. Canada Line, Skytrain. It's all Translink isn't it? And that's the term most used by everybody to describe it. picky picky. 2. In its media barrage running up to and during the opening of the new Canada Line, Translink has repeatedly claimed that the line would replace 200,000 car trips. Okay, that isn't taking a car "off the road" permanently, but it does temporarily. 3. What was the underlying message in the "report" about people parking in mall lots? That Translink hadn't bothered with park and rides. So it was presented in the story as a version of a fail. I say it isn't. So, what did you think of the Kirstie item? Tony

I agree there is not enough

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2009-08-21 12:01.

I agree there is not enough parking at the skytrain stations in the burbs. For example, at Lougheed Mall Station or Production Way there is NO parking. So....take the 30 min bus ride to the station or say to hell with it and drive directly to downtown in 30 min.

Fail! yes you! On the basis

Submitted by Doc (not verified) on Fri, 2009-08-21 11:00.

Fail! yes you! On the basis of inaccurate and unsubstantiated reporting. #1, Canada Line is not Skytrain. They are 2 different systems. A detail perhaps, but it's your headline! #2, when did TransLink ever say that they are removing 200,000 cars from the roads? It would be crazy if they had said so, physically impossible, but I've never heard them say it. What is your source? #3, how many cars are really parking at Richmond malls? The news report claimed that "a couple" were towed. Does that really make a $2-billion City-building system a "failure"?