Shades of Mediocrity

A bad day to be a blogger

Finally ran across something frightening enough to make me break my silence. I'd love to provide a link to it, but it doesn't seem to be on the web. That's lucky for Parking and Transportation Services, because this is the most embarassingly, spectacularly dorky bit of marketing I've seen in quite some time.

What is it (I'm sure you're now dying to know)? It's a cute little piece of promotional literature that arrived in my snail-mailbox the other day, with the catchy title "A Blogger's Diary at the U." The purpose? To inform new U students of the myriad transportation options available to them as they begin their college journeys. Doc Dregs and I were fortunate enough to receive two copies of this gem, since we're both registered for classes this fall.

The title is enough of an eye-roller that I nearly chucked both of the pretty, four-color cards straight into the trash, but for some reason, I was compelled to open it and read what followed. The idea is that a new student blogger makes daily entries detailing his/her first week at the U -- with emphasis on all of the great means of transportation available on and around campus! The whole thing is both funny and painful to read; here are some choice excerpts:

Monday 9:05 p.m. My first day of classes at the U of M. Crazy, I tell ya! I had to ride the CAMPUS SHUTTLE buses to get from one class to the next. Not like high school at all! ... I tried to get over to St. Paul, but the East Bank circulator only circles that campus. I won't make that mistake again. ):-(

Wednesday 10:59 p.m. Dreary depressing rainy day. Bleh. It took some getting used to, but I experimented with the GOPHER WAY indoor tunnels and skyways. "Follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road..." well, I guess it's more of a maroon and gold route. LOL! ... One thing I noticed were all the videocameras in the tunnels. I wonder who watches those. :-I

Thursday 6:12 p.m. Cool news! I've made a friend in my Spanish class. We both kinda suck at oral exams. :-P -- oh well. We even live close to each other, so we plan to study together for our first test next week. Joe thought we should try to CARPOOL to campus ...

And so on, as the "blogger" discovers riding his BIKE, where to park if he has to DRIVE, and what a U-PASS is for. The whole thing is just so far beyond dorky that I almost wonder if it's that way on purpose. In this age of post-post-post-irony, surely no one at PTS could really think that incoming students would find this little piece of infomarketing genuinely cool or appealing? I fear that it isn't so, though -- the entire tone is just too earnest. There aren't any clever little nudges, winks, or kitschy insertions to demonstrate that the writers/marketers know how uncool their approach is. I'm certainly not down with college-student culture (I wasn't even when I was in college), but even I'm not far enough out of it to miss how embarassingly lame is this attempt to be current and hip.

Anyway, it's a small thing, and I'm sure that most students will probably do just what I started out to do -- toss it in the circular file. Still, I have to wonder what the marketing people over at PTS were thinking. If anyone from PTS happens to have stumbled upon this, I apologize for mocking your product (which actually is chock-full of useful information), but seriously -- why this? And more importantly, as long as you're going to pretend you're a "student blogger," why not plug UThink?

Posted by Stacie at August 17, 2005 11:04 PM | TrackBack