Appropriate

I was at a convention recently.  One of those pop culture conventions that caters to the younger crowd and as is my wont I tend to wander round the dealer’s room for hours at a time discovering new things and resisting the urge to buy everything.

Anyways I was near the center and I came upon a small tent display for a large name insurance company.  They were offering the usual little knickknacks that they give away at conventions (fridge magnets, paperweights, pens, etc) and they were trying to get names and email addresses.  A few rows over another company was advertising high-end bedding.

This made me wonder who came up with this?  I mean I understand the advertising concept of “go where there’s a crowd”, but I mean really?  Hawking bedding and insurance at a pop culture convention inhabited mainly by kids, teens, and twentysomethings?  What type of resources (as in $) are they throwing into this effort and what sort of return are they realistically expecting to get from this?

Of course this isn’t the only example I saw of this type of thing. Over the memorial day weekend there were of course several sporting events including some major races and many of these events have corporate sponsorship but at least there the expected audience is more generalized and it’s more likely that you will get some return on your investment.

This idea of just showing up at these conventions and trying to plug yourself in no matter what really doesn’t make any sense to me.

At the very least I would hope that these companies might try to come up with some themes, giveaways, or some sort of tie in to the convention that might somehow appeal to the expected audience.  Something so they won’t seem so out-of-place.