Sometimes I think to myself “what were they thinking when they did that?”

This week’s Marketing Darwin award winner goes to the “dancing painter”.  (I cant even tell you the name of the company because the young man waving the sign was dancing and gyrating so much, that one could not make out the sign. I was in a hurry and could not stop but hope to return today snap a photo.)

I live the the Denver metro area and a “thing” which has become popular is companies hiring someone to stand on the corner and hold a sign, wave to traffic, in hopes that someone will stop in and see their RETAIL establishment. OK, maybe entertaining and cute but it’s horrible marketing.

I am not sure of the name of the chain of tax services who got the wheel rolling with this concept, but they would go the extra step of dressing the waving sign holder in a Statue of Liberty costume. Now you see on many corners a person standing or in this case dancing on the corner dressed in all kinds of garb, trying to get attention.

Here is why the dancing painter wins the award saved for those companies spending money and working their way to extinction.

Dancing on the corner, while cute, and possibly mildly entertaining, is a false interrupt. It may get the attention of a few people but  it does not hit the reticular activator of those who need their house painted. Since the young man was gyrating so much, I could not even read the same of the painting company. Sort of defeats the purpose.

Let’s pile on the rest of contributing factors that make this a winner:

1. False interrupt – if I am looking for a painter, am I searching the corners of the intersections in my town for a resource? Nope.
2. Does a dancing spokesperson teach me how to buy from this company? Hardly.
3. Not sustainable -If by some miracle this did get my attention, I have no way of reestablishing the connection to this company. Since they are not a local retail operation located next to the where the young man was dancing, I cant just pop in.
4. No follow on education – If i needed to know more, I can  rest assured the young man dancing knows nothing about painting, so stopping and asking him questions gets me no where.
5. No differentiation – the dancing, while unique, does not teach me the consumer why this painting company is better than the rest. No education of benefit or value.
6. Hardly scalable. Yes, unemployment is high but it’s unlikely that you could hire enough dancing sign wavers to grow the business at predictive pace.

I sure hope I can find this company again as it would be nice to help them realize this form of marketing could be one of the worst spends in marketing history.

Goes to show you, there is a marketing sucker born every day.