Bad Marketing

I've mentioned before about my old job, the one I had before law school. I've neglected to tell you my favorite story about working there. Bear with me; this might be long, but it's absolutely worth it. (Also, I'm trying to distract myself from worrying about tomorrow.)

One of my numerous job positions there was as a Marketing Specialist. (Nice title, right?) In that role, I worked on putting together the obvious marketing techniques, and also more specialized pieces of information. My company was in the business of consultancy, but it also produced very specialized software.

In its infinite wisdom, the company hired a CMO (chief marketing officer). Now, I had no problem with that, because I had (and still have) no marketing training. I viewed it as a role I learned from my psychology degree (seriously, I had that much hubris). By the time the company hired the CMO, I had moved to a position in HR. Still, since I was the most involved in marketing, the powers that be told the CMO to talk to me if there was anything he needed.

This man was a complete, utter douche. Just the last person you'd ever want to deal with. He was way too cocky, way too self-assured. When he introduced himself to me, and told me his ideas, he left me with this parting comment. "Anything I learned about marketing I learned by doing!" Now, I listened to his ideas, and managed not to laugh. And fortunately for me, I didn't reply as I wanted to. "It shows."

Fast forward a couple of months. The company was developing a pretty damn awesome, essentially quick-fire software for easy rendering and analysis of designs.

My friend and I were walking down the hallway, when we passed by douche's office. Outside his door, he had posted an idea for the name of this software.


Wait for it...


Wait for it...

ANAL.

I shit you not. I laughed so hard I slid down the wall and had everyone else in that hallway looking outside their doors at me. Douche then poked his head outside and saw me.

"What?" he said. I just pointed and laughed at the sign. He said, "Well, it analyzes designs..." That just made me laugh harder. Better yet, he NEVER understood why that was funny.

It's still funny. Oh, and the company picked a different name. Thank God.