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Letters
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Business New Haven
5/1/2000
By: BNH
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It's a No-Brainer
On March 20, Business New Haven profiled Bob Kaufman of Bob's Discount Furniture. It confounds me that with so many other noble advertisers and marketers, you chose super-schlock as your lead front-page article.
His advertising, his personality and his furniture all take our industry back to the Dark Ages. Proud of the fact (according to his ads) that he can take advantage of furniture manufacturers and take advantage of low wages in other, less prosperous countries in order to deliver his pitiful loss-leaders to the public, the guy and his message represent the nadir of communications.
I'm certain he'll become a billionaire. His style personifies the soulless psyche of American retail. And the begging media suck up to it for the $5 million he throws out to them.
I noticed too in the article that ad agencies you had interviewed either had no response or uttered the usual banalities; what are they afraid of - libel? Or do they want to pitch his account?
Why don't you profile some of the veterans of retail in New Haven County - the nobility who have spent their lives here (and have them on the line - like Bernie Backer, Barrie Ltd., the Yale-Co-op, Carrol Cut-Rate or (furniture) Wayside, Furniture Barn, et al.?
Kaufman's mantra, “It's all about saving money,”
is not what it's all about. Whatever “it” is in his mentality, “it” is still about dignity, professionalism, humanity - everything that he has studiously eliminated from his commercials.
In the future, I hope to read about someone
worthwhile.
- Russ Madison
President
Lone Wolf Advertising
Woodbridge
The editor replies: Two points require clarification: 1) Bob's Discount Furniture has never advertised in Business New Haven; and 2) we have written - in some case multiple times - about Wayside, Backer's, Barrie, Yale Co-op and some others Mr. Madison cites.
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