New Year’s Reservations

It’s the start of the new year, and time for everyone to make those resolutions that may or may not be broken. I’ve always ended up on the negative side of that conjunction, so I gave up making resolutions entirely a few years back.

Being a cynic at heart, I instead like to spend a few days in early January regretting things that didn’t go so well over the previous year. In the monthly magazine world, however, life generally runs about 30 days ahead of the calendar, so the retrospection came a little earlier this time around.

Here are a few of my regrets from the infamous Y2K.

I most deeply regret that I did not win Grab.com’s $1 billion giveaway, which would have made 2001 a very happy year indeed. I regret even more that I will now be reminded of this sad fact at least six times daily, when the e-mail newsletters I senselessly agreed to receive while entering arrive in my in-box. (Call it conditioning: Mom always bought a few subscriptions from Publishers Clearing House at the outset of each prize period “just in case” it actually did help; my father bought so many plants from the Michigan Bulb Co. he could have reforested Manhattan.)

I’m assuming I didn’t win the sweeps, which concluded after PROMO went to press. That leads me to my next regret, over the fact that my lack of luck did not turn in 2000. I entered a fair number of sweepstakes and games, probably more than in my first 33 years combined. (How better to understand the effect of promotion marketing than by getting down in the trenches, right?)

All I have to show for it is a Snapple bottle cap entitling me to a free plastic sippy cup, which would have cost me the price of a certified letter to redeem. My confidence is so shot now, I don’t even expect to score one of the Grinch dolls Nabisco promised to its first million entrants last November.

I regret that I am still not a member of any frequent-flier programs. I really tried on this one, folks, believe me. I became a preferred guest at a few places, even joined a rental-car club. But either the airlines or the corporate travel agents would ultimately misplace the paperwork. The entire world now collects miles. I haven’t felt like this much of an outcast since I innocently told the guys on my high-school basketball team that I liked Broadway musicals. But there’s always this year.

I regret that the promotion industry doesn’t have a research group comparable to Competitive Media Reporting, or that the SEC doesn’t require companies to report promotion expenditures, or that there isn’t even a simple way for companies to really figure out those numbers accurately. Oh, the fun PROMO would have with that. Maybe in the future, when marketing isn’t classified as “advertising” and “other” and all disciplines are judged equally, one of those will be possible.

I regret that I never got to see the Tamiflu truck in action last winter before it began winning industry awards. I’ll have a chance to catch it over the next few months – provided a flu epidemic does break out in the region, something I certainly won’t wish on the tri-state area. If it does, however, I hope the experience won’t be akin to watching Titanic after it won all those Oscars. Do you think the people at Roche and Momentum would let me spend a day on the inside?

I regret that it still is so often difficult to ascertain from brand marketers which promotion shops and marketing services companies they employ. Ad agencies get recognized in press releases, for heaven’s sake. Can’t the folks in p.r. be informed who’s running the mobile tour? Maybe this year.

I regret that people in this industry move around so much. Just when you think you’ve got a good contact at a top brand marketer, you find his voicemail being rerouted to p.r. I won’t even attempt to be hopeful about this one changing.

I truly regret that I do not tell the hardworking people I work with how much I appreciate and admire them. This year.

Finally, I regret that I did not finish painting the house before my wife gave birth to our first child. This is another assumption on my part. At press time, I had not finished painting, and the latest word from the stork was that the little bundle would be arriving a tad earlier than expected.

No matter. Something tells me that the arrival will make everything else this year seem much less regrettable.

My sincerest wishes for a healthy, happy, and profitable New Year to all who make this industry great.