A few weeks ago, the proprietor of T-Shirt Hell announced that they were closing down, hosted a sale, and accredited the shutting down of the popular anti-PC t-shirt site to an increase in misunderstandings of the offensive humor and an increase in negative feedback. It seemed strange to me that they’d go 8 years in business and just NOW get fed up with the haters.

Of course, I’m not shocked in the least that it turned out to be a hoax – a sneaky way of drumming up some publicity for the site, generating sales in a tough economy when people are probably not as likely to spend their money on novelty t-shirts – unless threatened that  they’d be gone forever.  My reason for blogging about it isn’t so much that it’s noteworthy or shocking, but more so that I had no reaction beyond a quick “meh…figures”.

This begs the question: can marketers be shocked anymore?  If this had been overly clever, I’d have to at least given them credit for successfully executing a good campaign in a down economy.  Marketers tend to have “seen it all” in terms of schemes and campaigns and tricks to lure in consumers to buy their products.  It seems to me that seeing a really clever campaign that I’d have to give props to seems fewer and far between.  It’s also more abundant when my husband points something out and I just shrug my shoulders because I’m not impressed as a marketer.

So, can you be shocked by marketing and advertising anymore as a marketer, or are you too jaded by the nature of your profession to really be taken in by marketing on a consumer level?

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