by NANCY GONGLIKWANYEOHEEEEEEEH, Alternate Reality News Service Technology Writer
Gerard Hattenbox was concentrating on knocking three bottles off a stand with a ball (it’s not as easy as it looks!) at the Canadian National Exhibition when his nine year-old son Calico asked, “Dad, what’s a tampon?”
“Ask your mother when we get home,” Hattenbox replied. He was into his wind-up when it hit him that his eight year-old son had just asked him about a feminine hygiene product. He had never spoken to his only child about such things. In fact, he wasn’t sure he knew what they were himself. After letting the ball go, he turned to the boy and asked, “Where did you hear about…those…women’s things?”
Calico Hattenbox pointed at the sky, where miniature drones had abandoned images of dragons strafing villages with their fiery breath and fish swimming in a polluted lake and had created an image of a pink box and the message, “Frampax – the tampon of champions.”
If the Hattenbox’ exit from the fair had been any faster, you would have thought they were being escorted by The Flash. It was so fast, Gerard Hattenbox missed the fact that he had not only knocked over the three bottles he had been aiming for, but all of the other bottles in the booth. It was so fast, he didn’t register the fact that the young woman running the game was holding the key to the booth out for him.
“Yeeeeeeaaaaaah,” Kurt “Duck!” Drumbella, CEO of Up In the Air Promotions (“Want to wow a crowd? The solution is Up in the Air!”), which produced the drone show, allowed, “In hindsight, an ad for tampons over a fair where there would be a lot of children wasn’t our best idea. In our defence, inserting advertisements into drone shows is a relatively new industry, and there are bound to be some…hiccups…”
Hiccups? Gerard Hattenbox looked like he had swallowed a rhino!
“Hiccups…gagging – it’s a continuum, really…” Drumbella stated.
Drumbella has pioneered the monetization of drone entertainment. His first major client was the Tetsua Tea Company, which asked him to insert an ad for its line of “water-infused teas” in a half-time show at a University of Toronto Blues football game. Some of the fans threw beer bottles at the drones, damaging $37,000 worth of equipment and delaying the start of the third quarter (to clean the wreckage off the field) for over half an hour.
“Yeeeeeeaaaaaah,” Drumbella, stated, “We had the right product category, but maybe misjudged the audience. Still, you have to say that we were in the right ballpark.”
Actually, I don’t have to say anything of the kind. Please leave the humour to the professionals.
“Yeeeeeeaaaaaah,” Drumbella said. “Sorry.”
Up in the Air’s next promotion took place over the Art Gallery of Ontario, which was hosting an exhibition called “Matisse’s Pieces.” For some reason, between images of the famous impressionist, post-impressionist, neo-impressionist and general crank’s works, the company inserted an ad for Momma Leone’s Deoderant (“Makes You Smell Like You Were Back in the Old Country!”).
“Yeeeeeeaaaaaah,” Drumbella, however reluctantly, accepted that this was a mistake. “I’m gonna admit right up front that I don’t understand the art crowd. I mean, we’re trying our best to match products to events, but the pool of businesses willing to advertise with a company pioneering a new communications space is small, so the connections won’t always be optimal…”
When I asked him who the sales rep for Up in the Air was, Dumbrella got a far-away look in his eye and dreamily responded: “Sales rep? I would kill to have a sales rep! Do you know anybody who might be interested in selling ads for UpA? Would you be interested in selling ads for UpA?”
I thanked him for the impromptu job offer, but assured him that I had several jobs lined up for when I was fired from the Alternate Reality News Service. [I heard that! Brenda Brundtland-Govanni, Editrix-in-Chief.] Which may be sooner than I had expected, but that’s not relevant here.
I asked Drumbella what the rationale for inserting commercials into drone light shows was. “Yeeeeeeaaaaaah, drone light shows don’t pay for themselves, you know.” After a moment’s thought, he continued, “Okay, yeah, actually, they do – the venue covers all the costs, plus ten per cent. Still, if you have a problem with somebody making a profit, take it up with Adam…something – you know the economist guy Adam – whatever his name is! What do I look like – a university professor. Well, I got news for you, pal – I’m allergic to tweed!”