July 13, 2012

Clever Marketing or Chauvinistic Mayor

Gallus and Black Forest have a completely different meaning in Scotland when the words are strung together than when they refer to the Mayor of a German town.


However, in the real world, Triberg is a town in the Black Forest area of Germany and their Mayor is called Gallus Strobel. He is in the news cause he has set out separate parking areas for men and women.....

When you open a can of worms, you can't close the tin immediately, you have to let some wriggle away first.

His idea is wider parking spaces for women in areas that are better lit. Spaces for men are closer to concrete pillars and can only be reversed into. Now, depending on how this was marketed, this could be a great idea. However, he followed it up by saying that men were better at parking than women.

"In the new car park we found that two place were not rectangular, at an angle to the road and placed between walls and pillars; that makes parking difficult so we decided to allocate them to men," the 58 year-old mayor told Germany's Spiegel magazine.

Here's the bit where Mayor Strobel has tried to put the lid back on the worm can by adding, "there were great women drivers, and all women were welcome to try and park in the men-only spaces."


As a marketing ploy, this has worked brilliantly as now I know that Triberg is a town in the Black Forest and Gallus Strobel is the Mayor. I also know that being of the weaker sex, I can park my huge Audi A6 Quattro in a nice well lit area and not concern myself about my lack of driving skill.

What I will concern myself with though is that while nice Mayor Strobel has catered for women who lack driving skill he has completely ignored the requirements of the guys who can't even drive a hot nail into a snowball. But who am I to argue? If someone wants to give me a nice big parking spot while some dude wants to show off his hand/eye coordination in an area half the size, I'll happily watch the entertainment.

Oh well! You can't keep everyone happy I suppose.








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