Humor: Bitten by the Millenium Bug

Get out the bug spray. The infestation of millennium marketing is irritating, at best. And we still have one year to go.

BY TODD BARRETT, MBA '95

Illustration by Gary Baseman

I HAVE MY OWN LITTLE Y2K PROBLEM: THE NEW millennium is starting to bug me. Or rather--and more specifically--all this millennium marketing is starting to bug me.
       As we approach 1999, companies are scrambling for the new era's imprimatur. There's an "Official Airline of the Millennium," an "Official Light Bulb of the New Millennium," even an "Official Hole-in-One-Prize Company of the Millennium." (That there might be an unofficial one nearly boggles the mind.) Has the mere passage of a year ever sparked such marketing excess? I had thought millennial madness was confined to two camps: those booking extravagant tour packages to toast the new age at the Pyramids, and those hunkering down in bomb shelters with the twin treasures of the paranoid--freeze-dried meats and gold bullion. But scads of marketing execs have glommed onto the event with all the giddy lunacy of Times Square celebrators. At last count, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has processed more than 1,000 applications for "official" millennium products and services and more than 2,500 applications with the number 2000. And, naturally, as The Big Event approaches, more and more companies are looking to get in on the craze; the number of applications through the first six months of 1998 nearly matched the number for all of 1997.
       In moments of weakness, I must confess to seeing a modicum of reason behind some of these campaigns. They are, after all, tremendously cost-efficient. How long does it take some marketing slickster to come up with a millennial slogan? A minute or two? Not bad for a slogan that's going to last a thousand years. Major corporations pay millions of dollars to sponsor sporting events that may last a couple of hours, tops. (Let's see the bean-counters in the finance department come up with a Thousand-Year Plan.) And as silly as the slogan "The Official Sponsor of Rapid Tooling and Prototyping Stereolithography in the Millennium" may be, you try coming up with a catchy tag line for "prototyping stereolithography."
       But then my sympathy quickly runs out. "Official"? Says who? As it turns out, no one. "There is no U.S. organization similar to an Olympic organizing committee or a bicentennial commission to oversee millennium activities or marketing," says John Locher, founder and publisher of Everything 2000, a Web site keeping track of the madness. "This significant milestone is being self-governed by capitalism, activism, and trademarks." In other words, uh-oh. It's wide open to anyone with a trademark attorney and something to sell--which is how we come by "The Official Personal Injury Law Firm of the New Millennium." (Memo to the partners: One of the definitions of "millennium" is "a hoped-for period of joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice," which would seem to preclude the existence of any personal injury law firm, much less an official one.)
       And just what are these slogans trying to sell anyway? Maybe modernity. But come around the year, oh, 2510, will anyone care what brand was the "Air Freshener for the Millennium"? Maybe endurance, like the "Toothbrush for the New Millennium"? I don't know about you, but I hope that in the next thousand years human-kind can come up with a better dental hygiene device than the toothbrush. Maybe these marketing mavens are just looking to get in on all the great parties. That may explain the "Official Champagne"--but the "Official Ballast of the Millennium"? Shouldn't someone tell these sloganeers that they may be violating marketing's cardinal rule--unless you make fire extinguishers or lifeboats, never risk being associated with a calamity. If software's binary blips go batty at the new millennium's dawn, sponsoring the era may be like backing the Hindenburg (and those freeze-dried meats are going to be tasting just fine, thank you).
       Do all these slogans mark the end of the world? No, but as we segue into the sunset of the Second Millennium, perhaps marketers the world over can make it their New Year's resolution to start the Third Millennium right: Up with creativity, down with cliches. Which just might work as "The Official Theme of the New Millennium."