Newport, RI Liquor Store Turns #OccupyWallStreet Into A Marketing Ploy

If there’s one thing that the #OccupyWallStreet crowd has demonstrated, through their words and actions over the last few weeks, it’s that they HATE businesses (with the possibly exceptions of drug peddlers and liberal media outlets). In fact, one of their main gripes is that it’s so hard to live in the modern world without some of your money trickling down into one major corporation or another.

About 200 miles northeast of the Wall Street occupation, Bridge Liquors, a Newport, RI liquor store, has an ironic take on the #OccupyWallStreet/Boston/LA/The Hood, etc. movement. Today, they launched #OccupyBridgeLiquors, a marketing campaign where they encourage people to use FourSquare to “check-in” at the store to get discounts and specials.

It just goes to show that nothing will adapt to a changing world and make the most of a situation than those damn corporations! Against this constant innovation, what’s a hippie to do but smell smell bad and smoke some more dope?

Of course, this isn’t the first time this has happened. As the Baby Boomers aged, the protest songs of the 60s were used in commercials to sell them stuff their older, more productive selves could then afford to enjoy.

#OccupyWallStreet Needs An Elevator Pitch That Isn’t #GiveUsEverythingForNothing

In the last decade or so, the elevator pitch has become more and more important, regardless of whether you were large corporation, a salesman looking for a new client or a political movement about to take on Washington.

After the Enron debacle, many companies couldn’t find investors unless they could concisely say what the company did in a few sentences.

For salesmen, the “elevator pitch”, has been a staple of their arsenal since companies started using elevators. Once again, the ability to concisely answer “Why am I talking to you?” Of course, the elevator pitch isn’t just for salesmen. Apple engineers are rumored to have needed one, just in case they ran into Steve Jobs and needed to justify their existence.

As for political movements, the message must be even simpler. Only a sentence will do. “We are here to…(end a war, stop a pipeline, end abortion, kill the unborn or whatever).” The Tea Party was pretty textbook for a movement with a simple aim. They stood for reduced spending and smaller government. A vast array of individuals could speak to why they were at a protest and it would be an expansion on that simple theme.

The Left has suffered from a “Tea Party Envy” ever since the GOP’s 2010 election results were so long, hard and throbbing and Obama’s approval ratings started to do an impression of an Alcapulco cliff diver.

So despite this simple precept for movements, the Far Left has never been able to distill its dozens of demands into a coherent message, which is why their demands haven’t evolved much since their 1990s anti-globalization protests/riots. If you come across a reasonably well trained Alinskyite, they might be able to use such terms as “social justice”, which are just undefined macros for a government whose scope and power was unlimited, except in matters of national defense.

Now, the Left as a whole can be forgiven for thinking that a simple message is passé. After all, their two greatest successes, the election of Barack Obama and the health care bill, were left largely undefined. At the time, a friendly press corps filled the emptiness as needed. Today, however, that press corps has decided to do its job with such headlines as “Occupy Wall Street Protests Spread Across the Country With No Unified Message”.

After almost three years of the Obama administration, the American people won’t get fooled again. The gaps left by #OccupyWallStreet is being filled by right-wing bloggers poking fun at either the vaccuousness of their demands or the hypocrisy of their champions.

Of course, the problem that #OccupyWallStreet is really facing is that they can’t think of another way to say “We want everything for nothing”.