A recent radio spot for Ford Taurus focuses on safety.

It says that just as you wear a bicycle helmet to ride your bike safely, you need a car built for safety — like Taurus — to drive safely.

In the spot, when a child wants to ride his bike sans helmet, the father tells him: “Put on that helmet or no video games!”

This spot was clearly not written by a parent.

Because a parent would know that the appropriate punishment for not wearing a helmet would be to take away the bicycle — not the XBox.

Consequences must be relevant to the behavior.

My point?

The Taurus spot rings false to me because of this error.

As a result, it distracted me from the sales message about cars, and caused the advertiser to lose some credibility in my eyes.

Am I the only one who has this reaction and too much of a nitpiker?

Or do you agree that any inaccuracies or inconsistencies in copy distract the prospect from the sales message and diminish the advertiser’s credibility?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told: “Why is your copy so long? … People are too busy to read today … They won’t read all that copy … Use bullets, pictures, and white space.”

The late Bill Jayme, one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century (he wrote the classic “Do you close the bathroom door even when you’re the only one home?” for Psychology Today), disagrees.

“Pay little heed to talk about America becoming illiterate,” wrote Jayme.

“First off, unless you are selling reading courses, today’s illiterates are’t your market.

“Second, if cockroaches, fruitcakes, and opera can survive, so will the written word.”

But Jayme wrote this years ago, pre-Internet.

Do you agree that his advice still holds today … and that the ‘people don’t read’ crowd doesn’t know their anus from their elbow?

Or do you think reading is dead … and long copy doesn’t work as well as it used to any more?

A recent radio commercial for Lexus says, “What do people think when they see you driving a Lexus? For one thing, they see you as successful.”

But do they really?

Almost everybody leases their cars today. So you don’t need a lot of money to drive Lexus, BMW, or Mercedes.

One selling point of luxury brands has always been the notion that other people will think more of you when they see you buying and using the brand.

But does this still hold today?

Anybody who has read The Millionaire Next Door Knows that most millionaires don’t drive status cars.

FW, a wealthy client who made his fortune in equipment leasing, drove a nice-looking Oldsmobile, which he loved — even though he could have driven a BMW.

Do you think you are really fooling anyone by driving around in your leased luxury car?

We drive a Nissan Maximia and Toyota Sienna mini-van — both bought new and paid for with cash.

To me, zero debt is a lot more impressive than big monthly lease, mortgage, and loan payments.

Should Lexus rewrite its copy to reflect today’s market perception? Or are they still right on target with their assumptions about status?

I’m a fan of David Ogilvy. Rosser Reeves. James Webb Young.

But Jerry Della Femina? Not so much.

Della Femina was interviewed by the NY Post (8/27/07, pp. 38-39) for an article on the differences in the ad agency business of the 1960s vs. today.

Laments Della Femina: “It went from being a business of fun to being a business of money, and that changes everything.”

Pity Della Femina’s poor clients, whose ad agency — Della Femina — thought its mission was to have fun with the client’s money, and not turn it into more money.

Adds Della Femina, explaining how he and his colleagues could have the proverbial 3-martini lunch every day and then go back to work: “The only thing that made it possible was that the people you were dealing with were as drunk as you are.”

I’m sure Della Femina clients would have loved knowing that Jerry and his staff were bombed when working on all those costly ad campaigns.

I have fun every day as a freelance copywriter — more fun than anyone has a right to have at work and still call it “work.”

But having fun is a side effect of loving what I do and (I think) doing it at a reasonable level of competence.

My objective, however, is always to make the client’s marketing make more money.

That’s what he’s paying me for. Not to have a party.

An editorial on a news program said that Michael Vick, pleading guilty to promoting dog fighting, should be banned from the NFL for life.

But it also said the REASON the NFL should take this action is that it should not promote or condone violence.

Huh?

Professional football IS violence: 300-pound giants trying to flatten one another into a pancake.

I agree that dog fighting is sick (I love dogs but would feel this way regardless).

For his crime, I think Vick — a sick and despicable creature — should be given the maximum punishment allowable under the law.

But after that, he should be allowed to earn a living in his chosen profession.

(If he makes you sick, boycott his football games. If we all do that, his team may let him go — that’s their call.)

But do you see a logical disconnect in the NFL taking an overall anti-violence stance? (Maybe the NRA could join them.)

The point?

What you say — in an ad, press conference, article, letter, speech, sales meeting, or at a cocktail party — has to be logically consistent.

The minute you take a stance that is in logical conflict with reality (e.g., vegetarians for meat; a subprime lender foreclosing on its mortgage owners portraying a kindly father image in its TV spots), you confuse your audience, lose credibility, and destroy the persuasiveness of your argument.

There are a TON of promoters online today selling how-to programs in both “how to write copy” and “how to make six figures as a freelance copywriter” — two different but related topics.

Which ones have you found that are the “real deal” — great content, clear instruction, and a guru who is a genuine expert.

Which ones have you tried that did not work — and were so bad you’d advise others to stay away from?

A woman on a talk radio show admitted to stealing sugar packets from her local Starbucks.

But she expressed no shame.

Indeed, she felt the theft was justified by the outrageous prices Starbucks charges for a cup of coffee, calling her pilfering a “condiment subsidy.”

What does this have to do with Internet piracy?

People’s willingness to steal online and violate copyright is determined by two primary factors:

1. How easy it is to steal the material.

2. How much you are charging for your content or software in relation to its value.

If it’s difficult and inexpensive to steal the material, they’ll just buy a legal copy.

For instance, few people avoid purchasing a dictionary by photocopying the pages, because it’s a pain in the neck, inconvenient, and expensive to do so.

If the consumer feels your product is a rip-off, they will be more inclined to pirate it. Example: an outrageously priced new version of a software package in which the upgrade merely eliminates defects that should never have been in the old version in the first place.

People will download a song illegally even when they can do so legally at a reasonable price simply because it is so easy.

Reader, do YOU every violate copyright and steal material online for any of the above reasons or for any other reasons?

Do you agree that to do so is stealing and robbing the creator of the profit from intellectual property she created?

According to a Forrester Research Report, only 11% of IT decision-makers surveyed said blogging delivers substantial business value.

That means nearly 9 out of 10 of those surveyed find little or no value in blogging.

Does this new finding finally put to rest the myth, perpetuated mainly by evangelists and consultants on the blogosphere, that blogging is the most important marketing tool since sliced bread?

Or are blogging gurus still going to try to sell corporate and marcom management on the silly notion that every business needs a blog?