The Despair Inc. Blog

Our third Caption Contest is at end. 2,000,000 votes were cast against thousands of caption submissions. And after 6 were declared semi-finalists, the voter quickly elevated one design above all others. The design that mocks my very own profession. Dangit!

This time around, the 1st Prize winner of the contest is Mr. Collin Boots of South Dakota- who barely made the submission window in time. For his entirely unfair and mean-spirited denigration of my livelihood, he’ll receive a check for $500 and a wonderful selection of gorgeous products from the Despair catalog!

(Unless it were to, say, get lost in the mail and- in spite of all my hyping- to never be delivered, in which case it would turn into an ongoing problem for our Customer Service department to resolve. The sort of problem I would never even bother to trouble myself with, since MY work of (ahem)”making it look good” was already accomplished… But of course, that WON’T happen- because in spite of what all you cruel and judgmental anti-marketing bigots think, not all of us marketing folk live to over-promise and undeliver and leave support nightmares for the customer service or engineers to resolve!)

Anyway…Collin Boots isn’t the only winner today. As with other Caption Contests, we’re letting all of YOU have a chance to win something, too! From now until Monday night, you can pick up a FREE desktopper of “MARKETING“, simply by adding it to your cart and placing an order for $19.95 worth of other stuff at our website. If you really want to hurt me and take advantage of the fact that I HAVE to give this away- even if it makes me and my people look like amoral reprobates who will lie just for the sheer joy of exploiting the trust of our marks- I mean, the customers!

Now that our 3rd Caption Contest is over, we’d like to again thank all participants- particularly those of you who followed the whole thing from start to finish… Submitting entries, voting on them, then picking a final winner. This process only works because a great many of you are willing to dedicate yourselves to it. Having long been a proponent of some more participatory forms of customer engagement, it makes me particularly happy to see so many people giving this a go! So thanks to all who played along- it’s appreciated!

Remember, you’ve got a week to help yourself to a free “MARKETING” desktopper. Don’t wait until the last minute or you’ll miss out!

The Back To School Lithograph Sale is Back!

Hey folks! I’m on vacation in Colorado week- and I was so rushed to get to the airport that I forgot to copy my graphics and font files on my laptop before I left. So please forgive me for using a generic Despair website graphic (above) as my banner. (I know- it’s probably hard for many of you to believe that I, a legendary paragon of organization and efficiency, might have a moment of weakness. But really, don’t let my illustrious history of error-free Wailing Lists fool you… Every once in a blue moon, even I make a mistake. Or two. )

Anyway, please forgive me for a particularly sloppy issue of The Wailing List. The key thing you need to know is that Despair’s once-a-year Back To School Lithograph Sale is back- which means ALL LITHOGRAPHS are $9.95 or less! Incredibly, for reasons I have not yet been able to find out, the web team hasn’t yet disabled the Retirement Party discounts on some of those 24×30 Lithographs. So that means there are even still some (now-discontinued-and-supposed-to-be-removed-from-the-site) posters still available for $6.95 and even a few still available for $2 (limit one per order only). So- at least as of midnight, Colorado time, you can still get several posters for cheaper-than-ever prices. At least until the bonehead in the web department catches his mistake and removes those discontinued products from the site. (Hi J.B.- sorry to rat you out but for real, you screwed up big time. Next time- PAY ATTENTION TO THE EXPIRATION DATE OF OUR PROMOTIONS AND YOU WON’T END UP BEING RATTED OUT IN FRONT OF 150,000 people!)

So- that’s this week’s big promo. I was supposed to get it out Wednesday but I didn’t. But I hope some of y’all will jump on it so we’ll get a big sales response and I’ll look like I’m so good at my job that I don’t even have to hit my own deadlines on time and yet I can still bring the response rate action. Put simply, if you love me, you’ll buy a lot of posters ASAP.

(Since I lack an arsenal of gorgeous graphics with which to manipulate you into an impulse purchase, I’m resorting to something closer to emotional blackmail. Please play along with me here, otherwise I might get the feeling that maybe you only like me, you know, as a friend…)

Oh, by the way, in other news, Despair launched another new Demotivator this week. Introducing Bailouts. Normally, I’d include a sexy-looking picture of the design in my Wailing List, but alas, I have none handy. So you’ll have to visit the link above to check it out!

That’s it for this week! I’m off to climb a mountain!

PERFECT FOR: AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan GM, Chrysler, & GMAC Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Several hundred other recipients of taxpayer welfare Disaffected college students WISH this was about them. And in a way it is. Since they’re the ones who are going to be paying these bills for the rest of their lives.

Introducing “Accomplishments“- a brand-new Demotivator from Despair.com.

(This announcement is brought to your without any lengthy digressions so that I can win a bet. Thank you for your understanding. Please tweet about the design if you like it. That is all.)

Summertime is here- and that can only mean one thing- it is bloody SEARING in TEXAS! In fact, it’s so dang HOT here we are practically CRAZY FROM THE HEAT! Can I get a witness?! Thank you, Dave!

Just how CRAZY are we really? What if I were to tell you that Despair is selling some of our best-loved Demotivator Lithographs for only $2! No, I’m not kidding! We’re saying goodbye to some old favorites- classics like “Pessimism” and “Agony”, and newer beauties like “Dreams” and “Give Up”- and many, many more! And if you act fast, you’ll have a chance to pick up several of those babies for $2- that’s 90% off the retail price!

I’ve never seen them do THAT before! But we’re trying to clear up space in the warehouse to make room for our revolutionary Fall lineup! And this is how we do it!

We’re also getting rid of the last few hundred of our 2008 model Pessimist’s Mugs (both screen-printed and etched!). And you can pick your first one up for $2! (Or $3 if you want the etched mug!) They’re almost- but not quite- as gorgeous as our 2009 upgrade versions- but at those prices, WHO CARES WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE?! And at those rates, expect these to be gone in a manner of minutes!

But wait- we’re not only permanently retiring 19 of our beloved 24″x30″ lithographs, and not only liquidating some perfectly fine 2nd generation Pessimist’s Mugs, we’re also offering AMAZING discounts on a wide variety of soon-to-be-retired DespairWear Tees!

We’re offering 50% on some gorgeous designs- including several 6-8 color Demotivator Tees! Mistakes, Wishes, Consistency, Burnout & Worth! All available for $9.95! (Only While supplies last!)

And there are a LOT more than just those tees- in fact, there are 24 additional shirts available for $9.95- including (I can’t believe they are doing this!!!) the few Executive Edition Frowny Tees we have left in stock. Those things COST US over $35 to make! But we’re getting rid of the 20 or so Small and Mediums that we still have in stock for 9.95! (Attention little ladies- those are sized for you! They are SO soft and cozy it’s like wrapping yourself in the velvety fur of some impossibly cuddly endangered species! But it costs less than a pack of Sham-Wows! That’s no SHAM- but it’s making me wanna say “WOW”!)

Do NOT miss out on your last chance to own some true Despair classics before they go away forever! Seriously- I can’t emphasize this strongly enough even if I use some idiotic font size for emphasis again… THESE ARE THE STEEPEST DISCOUNTS DESPAIR HAS EVER OFFERED! And if you choose to sit this one out because you’re hoping for, oh, I don’t know, a 95% sale at some point down the road, then your head is going to transmogrify into a giant lollipop and you’ll find yourself nearly deafened by a particularly humiliating punchline, all while the at home audience laughs hysterically at you for being a CHUMP!  Don’t Chumpatize Yourselves! And don’t sit there thinking, “Oh, why bother? This’ll probably take 6 weeks to ship like my Blackout order did- and by the time I get it, I’ll probably regret ordering it in the first place… Wowzy wowzy woo woo!” Why shouldn’t you? Because all of these Retirement Party items are in-stock and able to ship NOW! That means they’ll leave the warehouse within 24-48 hours of your order placement and be there before the Buyer’s Remorse really takes hold and makes you regret that you even ordered! Wicked!

Now stop reading this stupid e-mail and start shopping before all the good stuff is gone! Good luck!

I’m two-days late on this issue of the Wailing List. So this one is presented to you completely Tangent-Free!

And yet, somehow, I just know I’m going to get complaints from sticklers who complain, “If you really wanted this to be tangent free, you wouldn’t have started out with the extraneous bit about how you’re two days late, moron!”

Of course, the majority of you would’ve taken it at face value and not said a word about the open, since you’ve learned to discern the difference between the Spirit and Letter of the Ad Copy. But now that I’ve wasted additional ad copy attempting to categorize my readers into at least two different groups- hardly a matter germane to the real subject at hand- even the most tolerant and understanding of readers are probably beginning to wince in irritation, rightly wondering whether or not I’m ever going to get around to talking about the new John Doe Tee. Or if instead this supposedly Tangent-Free! e-mail is going to descend further into recursion…

Truthfully, if I had a little more time, I probably would invest it in some kind of fractal joke that keeps digressing into errata, then pretends it’s going to right itself, only to loop back into the larger gag about tangents and thus retest your patience anew. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s this; there’s a fine line between amusement and annoyance. And little is more tiresome than a would-be comedian unaware that he’s crossed it. I know that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. That guy drives ME nuts. Almost as much as people who correct my grammar- and inevitably, that’s coming. Because I used a semi-colon a half-dozen sentences ago, and I’m not sure that I used it correctly, though I know exactly what my intent was when I used it, and I think the non-sticker subset of you that I discussed back in paragraph 2 would read it and discern the intent, the “voice” if you will, and say nothing in complaint. At least not about my possible semi-colon misuse…

Okay, there- I’ve said it. I’m done. And I know this pointless, circuitous bit of performance art has probably enraged all-but-the-most-dedicated-of-readers and will surely imperil the sales prospects of The John Doe Tee. And I’m sorry if that’s the case, because when I wrote that opening line, I really did intend for this to be a three-sentence email… And now look what happened.

Are we still friends? Please don’t give up on me, just because I sometimes frustrate you nearly to violence. I know at this point, if I were standing right there in reach, more than a few of you would be tempted to bludgeon me to death and leave me in a shallow grave. (Frankly, I felt the same way towards Neal Stephenson when trying to get through that never-ending Alan Turing bicycle-chain tangent in Cryptonomicon (not that I’m comparing myself with him- because the man is a bloody-genius and I’m just a marketing droid who sometimes can’t stop talking.)).

If I give you a coupon code, will you forgive me? Please? Some of you, at least? Well, alright then, I’ll do it. Just use the coupon code tangent and you’ll get $5 off your next order. Really. It’s good for a week.

I need to pee.