creativity/machine

This is the second time I’ve seen this ad, the first time was on a traffic light pole near my house. I have always been intrigued by the stories behind the ads and notices people put up in public places. I remember one at UQ that was scrawled in big felt pen lettering and said something like “Kate. From UQ. Met in Sweden. I have been looking for you, please call…” which I just found so poignant somehow, sitting there all crumpled, flapping in the breeze, obviously having been rained on one too many times. Another one I saw at my local fish and chip shop said “Lost whippersnipper. Reward.” I wondered how on earth you lose a whippersnipper? What if the guy was cleaning up the grass at the edge of the driveway when his wife suddenly went into labour, so he bundled her into the ute and hightailed it to the hospital, leaving the gardening tool to be snatched up by some other ute-driving passerby? I’ve often toyed with the idea of calling the numbers to find out whether the backstory is as interesting as what I make up in my head.

So today I did just that - I just rang the shoe guy and he sounded really sweet, and didn’t think there was anything at all odd about his way of reaching the buying public. He says he had no luck with the classifieds in the local paper or the one posted up on the traffic signal, but has been getting a lot of interest from the letterbox drop. If you doubted that mobile phones are the best candidate for ubiquitous technology, just look at the contact number, and then think about the mode of distribution for his marketing material - the process of *hand*writing hundreds of these and putting them in letterboxes, rather than putting an ad on ebay, or online classifieds.

Anyway, some of the shoes are apparently just about brand new, including some big brand names like Colorado.
And he still has five pairs. $10. Perfect condition.