Because I work in the field of marketing I am very, very critical of the legion of idiots that work in my industry. I don't know how they get - or keep - their jobs, but somehow they do and they continue to demonstrate their stupidity on a massive scale each day.
This will be the first of many rants against my foolish colleagues.
It's coming up on tax time, so we're seeing a lot of ads from H&R Block for their income tax preparation software. I think it's very interesting that they aren't promoting their famous, but flawed, tax service - but they are going head-to-head with Intuit and the industry-leading TurboTax.
In their poorly produced television commercial they have a poor guy sitting at a table in front of his computer and it turns out he and his wife are being audited by the IRS. His horribly bitchy wife makes some comment about needing professional help and then sarcastically points out that their income tax was prepared by "a box." She snottily suggests her husband ask the box for help, which he does. She then makes some snide comment about the box not being able to help and continues to rip on her husband about how stupid he was to let their taxes be done by - a box.
Then the commercial cuts to - a box! The H&R TaxCut software box. It looks exactly like the box they just criticized so thoroughly, except it's an H&R box instead of whatever they were ragging on - certainly NOT a TurboTax box.
This is just stupid. You don't criticize the competition for coming in a box and then show your product's box!
The H&R people are so close to what they are doing that they mistakenly think everyone out there is going to perceive the differences in these two boxes. But they, like so many marketers and advertisers, are just talking to themselves. They make an inferior product with no real point of differentiation and have no clue what to do about it other than spend lots and lots of money on ineffective television advertising.
H&R Block is not long for this world. I say good riddance.
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