Father's Day e-mail advertisement

For me it wasn’t the photo itself or what it portrayed. It is a neat photo and looks great and it could be any one of us. BUT when a railroad enthuisiast based magazine shows/promotes those type of ideas while telling everyone to be safe, stay off the ROW they show that photo which contradicts what they tell us. That is what I had the problem with. Practice what you preach.

you are totally correct,I will call my dad today and tell him that he was wrong to take me for walks on the tracks,Now maybe the super cool railroaders will want to be my friend. I think I will just stick with RC cola as my beveridge of choice. you dont drink coke because of a track walking commercial,but pepsi had a child molester doing thier ads in the 80’s (micheal Jackson) I think that is a little worse.

The thing here is that we do have a lot of confused little puppies out here. Why confuse them even more? What happened to consistancy here?

This is what happens when you have marketing guys going off half cocked with an idea.

I checked the times on the two communications in question. The offending ad was time stamped 10:23 and the apology 3:17. I’m impressed with Kalmbach; I didn’t realize that kind of swift action to correct a mistake was possible in today’s corporate world.

How times change! I e-mailed the ad to my father. He confirmed that the picture might have been his father and himself around 1950. As an aside, he is not enough of a raifan to realize the track structure in the picture was still a long way in the future.

For you squeemish little hall monitors;
It is a sad state of affairs that you have to tell us what and what not is good for us. It is a shame that fewer and fewer people these days don’t have enough common sense to know the difference between a romanticised advertisement and facing off with a real train!

I think that it was a very innocent photo, we are getting a little to PC here and it appears that it was done to calm the nerves of the company lawyers

Kathi, from your words I am not sure any significant number complained, if anyone at all. Your message seems more like a pre-emptive strike.

You folks took the correct route in addressing this right away before Those Who Feel They Need to Make a Big Deal of This could make a big deal of this. Your actions are what any competant media trainer would have advised in a damage control situation. Kudos.

That said, what would be the big deal? Is it an advertisement advocating fathers take their sons for walks on active rail lines? Absolutely not. If something as inert as this particular stock photograph sends someone a message it’s OK to walk on the tracks with their kid in tow, then that person is a big stupid.

Sheesh. It’s obvious it might “offend” a certain minority – Those Who Actively Seek to be Offended So They Can Make a Big Deal of Things That Don’t Involve Them.

Kalmbach’s reputation and its many years of contributions to the rail industry and its followers come out of this without a scratch, IMHO. Carry on.

PZ

I remember taking pix trackside as a kid with my dad. I also saw quite a few pix of dads with their sons at the trackside taking pix of passing trains—

Mind, with the nervous lawyer—it’d be dad/son in bright orange clothing --so as to be seen-- standing 200’ away from barricaded track using telephoto lens. And even then—[:-^]

This has nothing to do with cute pictures and nervous lawyers. This had to do with responsible citizenship and practicing what you preach. As railfans, going onto railroad property and doing unsafe acts is not responsible citizenship nor safe; it gives railfans and railfanning a bad name. So, we, as railfans,and Kalmbach Publications as being our media representatives (thus leader), preach and tout safety and “responsible citizenship”. This picture, as cute as it is, is the complete opposite of both, depicting tresspassing and an unsafe act, If we want to be railfans and have railroads and railroaders accept us as serious and responsible and not as a threat to their operations and safety (and ours), we must not tresspass nor commit unsafe acts nor should our media representative/leader use something contrictory for promotion or otherwise…

A notice on some ads I’ve seen for a specific type of sports car had underneath that the car was being driven by a professional driver and not to try this at home. We’ve become so “professionalized” that the average person appears incapable of using what is supposed to be a brain.

All one can say about this was that the marketing guys here will learn from this and take a few minutes to assess the photos they use a little more carefully-----sheeesh guys. A photo of a father/son at, say, a rail crossing with their cameras at the ready to take a photo of the local doing some switching would be just as good without getting the monitors wrapped around the axles about it----but then again----from what I’ve seen----[:-^]

What the management has done is to be consistent with an internal policy. If they routinely direct their moderators to delete messages bearing videos and imagery of questionable and unsafe behaviour, and then show much the same thing in one of their own marketing devices, it speaks of arbitrariness, inequity, and hypocrisy.

Of course, there is the exposure to litigation if someone were to attempt to link the activity shown with a real-time weekend outing with a child that ends in disaster. So, yes, it was timely, pre-emptive, and correct. Anything less would have been unethical and unacceptable.

-Crandell

Boy…opinions from all angles.

Suppose that’s good.

Fans with opinions on both sides are speaking.

My first thought in seeing it…Why suggest {via photo}, it seems to be ok to spend fun time together walking along an active RR track…and between the rails yet. Not the thing to do by anyone.

And you did what needed done–

Hopefully, marketing will get the point and rework some things so that they give themselves a little more time to do the ads right in the first place so that one is not needing to fix/repair afterward. Get people on the same page-----[swg]

However, the image is romanticized. According to the dictionary, something that is romanticized is fanciful, impractical, unrealistic, fictitous, or fabulous. An image of this style is not intended to suggest that it is ok to spend quality time walking down the center of the railroad tracks.

Also, from my most recent English class, 1798 to 1832 marked the Romantic Age of English literature. This literature was meant to, among other things, appeal to the imagination and to a person’s emotions. This same idea can apply to other things as well. In this case, the photo might appeal to some people’s emotions by bringing back fond memories of time spent with dad. There’s at least a chance that these good memories will pack the punch needed to get people to purchase one year of TRAINS Magazine for $29.95.

Of course, there are too many people in the world today who would take a look at the photo and take it to mean that the best way to spend an afternoon with dad is to walk down the train tracks. It’s too bad that these people have to spoil things for the rest of us.

Look at this photo of a BNSF freight in Orange County California going between San Diego and Barstow.
Tell me that these people do not walk on or over the tracks and everyone is trespassing.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=278375&nseq=9

Brad B

People smoke. Does that make it right? People kill. Does that make every instance right? People do all sorts of silly things, often routinely, always getting away with it…but is it always right?

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