A little story for you today.

This summer passed (yes, it has passed), I hired a dog trainer to help me get a better handle on my adorable, rambunctious pit bull. During one of my training sessions with said trainer, he told me a brief little story about a conversation he had with one of his clients.

The client, perhaps a bit flabbergasted about how much the trainer was charging, said something along the lines of "I can't believe I had to hire someone to help me with my dog." Either that, or the client had asked a friend who had successfully trained his dog to help and the guy couldn't handle the dog.

The trainer's response stuck with me.

Trainer: Can you come by this weekend to take a look at my water heater? It's broken.

Dog Owner: Why would I do that? I'm not a plumber.

Trainer: Exactly.

He then went on to explain to me:

I am a professional. I am an expert. My area of expertise is training a dog. Why would you ask a friend who is not an expert to do an expert's job? I wouldn't ask somebody who, what is it you do? (I'm a writer) Yeah, I wouldn't ask you to come take a look at my pipes if they backed up. That's not your expertise. So why would you have someone who is not an expert come do something they don't know how to do? If my pipes break, I call a plumber. And I pay that plumber for his skill, his knowledge. Yeah, I'm not the cheapest trainer out there. But I've been doing this for a long time, and that acquired knowledge and experience of dealing with these dogs is what you pay for.

I am going to use that explanation for the rest of my life.

Manhattan Mini Storage

For anyone who lives outside of New York City and hasn't visited in the last few years, there is a storage space company known as Manhattan Mini Storage that runs an out-of-home campaign (subway, building facades, billboards, etc.) with increasingly clever headlines and an extremely simple layout. I recall a few years ago, when I first noticed the ads, I was less than impressed. Lame visuals of people in their apartments with lamer headlines. All of that has changed.

The advertising's progression has been slow. It began with the following:

To this:

And now this:

In my opinion, this is a rather drastic improvement over the last few years, from typical and expected (and perhaps a rip of McDonald's "dollar menu-aires" campaign) to rather relevant and funny to a much more targeted audience. At the moment, I don't need to store any of my possessions, but if and when I do, they will be the first one I check out. Which is the whole point of this kind of messaging, which I think works for them. I haven't checked the data regarding increases in rentals, but they seem to be continually increasing their presence, which leads me to believe they are doing well for themselves. And as a copywriter, I would love to be able to write this kind of stuff on a regular basis. So kudos to them for having the fortitude to be a bit edgy and provocative, but also for doing it well.