22 July 2005

Aetrex Worldwide Targets Baby Boomers

The Mature Market picked up this press release about Phil Simms being hired as corporate spokesperson for Aetrex.

Baby Boomers are wary of spokespeople - but I guess if you have to have one, Phil Simms isn't a bad choice for sports-related footwear and such. He's innocuous enough. Of course, if they are really targeting Baby Boomers 'worldwide' it's a good bet that few people outside of the United States will know (or care) who Phil Simms is…

Then I visited the Aetrex Web Site. What a pile of confusing, vacuous, over-hyped, over-branded nonsense. It's almost as overblown as the preceding sentence of mine. I wore out a pair of virtual sneakers just trying to get to an actual product of theirs, having to slog through all sorts of silliness.

They even have something called a Brand Statement - whatever that is.

Here's my favorite piece of self-defeating hogwash on their web site: "The word Aetrex is a derivation of ae-treks, meaning One Journey."

....... What??? I've never heard of the word/phrase 'ae-treks' - and neither has Google. The word 'ae' does mean 'one' (it's of Scottish origin) - and (juicy irony here) the word 'trek' means to make a slow or arduous journey.

Let's get real: the word aetrex is not a derivation of anything. It's a made-up word. Made up from scratch. Which is fine. I love made-up words. I make them up sometimes. And Aetrex is as good a name as any for a sports shoe company...

But please — don't give me a bunch of jive about etymological origins — because if you do, the only conclusion I will come to is that these shoes and orthopedic accessories are for slow, arduous walking — not for the active lifestyle Phil Simms is pushing.

And as I've said, it certainly was quite a lonesome, exhausting aetrek for me to track down anything relevant on their web site. I should've brought along someone to talk to.

But at least Aetrex is wise enough to target Baby Boomers. Good for them. And it will be good for them, even if they're not doing it as well as they could.

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