If Vonnegut was our spokesman...
Ray Allegrezza, Editor in Chief -- Furniture Today, April 23, 2007
In between writing incredibly insightful novels such as "Cat's Cradle," "Slaughterhouse Five" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," Kurt Vonnegut was a copywriter for various advertising agencies and large corporations. As someone who grew up reading his work, I've wondered how Vonnegut might have approached being a spokesman for the furniture industry. With his recent passing at age 84, I'll never get a chance to ask him.
Even so, I can tell you this: There would never have been any no-no-no campaigns from this guy, nor would there have been cheesy commercials featuring screaming clowns, scantily clad women and the like.
If you've read Vonnegut's works, you know he was a dreamer, a visionary and, perhaps most of all, a persistent questioner of the status quo, qualities that would have made him a perfect spokesman for our industry. Consider this memorable quote: "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."
Can you even remotely imagine Vonnegut recommending that we take product parity to the next level, or suggest that we celebrate the growing phenomena of me-too product?
Another quote that convinces me he would have been the right man for the job is this: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
Embedded in Vonnegut's metaphysical themes and often caustic wit was the challenge to do better. In shining a light on the fallacies of our society, he forced us to look at them and prompted us to consider that there was a better way, a higher ground.
As an industry seemingly stuck in the mud, we need someone like a Vonnegut to remind us what we could and should be: an industry that enhances the consumer's life, in part, by helping them enhance their home.
I worry that we may be getting way too long on sizzle and seriously short on substance. I'd like to see us better understand the consumer's wants and needs before we try to sell her whatever we have on the floor.
Kurt probably would have agreed. After all, as he said, "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."
Thanks, Kurt, for the challenge to do better and for the invitation to consider the view from the edge.
