Lost in Translation

Over the course of the last 5, 10, maybe even twenty years, there's been a lot of talk about the demise of the ad industry. With the exception of doors being shuttered and the Infinity Desk™ being ripped from the rebar-reinforced walls of the Barbarian Group, there's been very little in the way of physical evidence to support those claims.

Until now.

As I often do during my late afternoon walks around Culver City, I find things I never knew existed. Equally as often, I will post these pictures in my long running series, borne from a reluctance to write (for free), the Thursday Photo Funnies. 

Last week, for instance, I came across the Blue Door on Venice Blvd. Never saw it in my 30+ years of living here.

You have to look close to find the appropriately named, tiny theater for Culver City's eclectic and undiscovered artists. It's wedged between a nameless Halal Chicken restaurant and a defunct mom and pop auto parts store. I think. 

Truth is, I rarely venture to the north side of Venice Blvd. 

Recently I came across the note (Exhibit A,  pictured above) closer to the tonier sections of my fair little town. If you read the note you can see it was addressed to a marketing staffer at the very tony Erewhon Market. 

I've been inside the local Stepfordian Erewhon, home of the $9 Naval Orange and the $23 shot of artisanly grown lemongrass and thrice fermented blowfish brains, said to increase virility as well as Wordle solving skills. But I have never purchased anything there, opting for the less expensive though equally pretentious --in a hippy dippy way -- goods at the Trader Joes across the street.   

Perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a rice bowl, but it appears the carefully crafted note with its  stunning caligraphy, that this appreciative missive was written post presentation. Written by a man who travelled across the Pacific in order to woo the 20 something marketing professionals at Erewhon. 

From its location -- I found it in the shrubbery just outside the Culver Studios -- it seems they were not impressed.

More importantly, the casual disposal of this note seems to indicate just how far the notion of a "branding strategy" and its impact on retail sales has fallen. Thank you bean counters, data miners and the wizards of performance marketing. 

Mission accomplished.

I know what you're thinking, you got all that from a discarded Thank You note? 

Yes, yes I did. 

And you can dive further into this starchy rabbit hole at the premier of my one act play, Dearth of a Rice Salesman, soon appearing at the Blue Door Theater in downtown Culver City.