Don’t reach out. Don’t touch.

The 70s was a tacky decade, folks. Polyester, wide lapels, plastic shoes, chest rugs, disco inferno, Farrah Fawcett’s hair, Watergate. I could go on. And there’s this: reaching out. This benighted decade was book-ended by it. Opening in 1970 with Diana Ross’ totally icky Reach Out and Touch, and closing in ’79 with AT&T’s even ickier – if such a thing is possible – not to mention utterly cynical, Reach out and touch ad campaign.

If you’re too young to remember all this crap, trust me – the 70s were dreadful. And here’s the bad news. They might be coming back. At least bits and pieces seem to be. E.g., there’s entirely too much reaching out going on these days. And it’s giving me the creeps.

Increasingly, in business situations, I’m being asked to reach out as opposed to call, email, speak to, or get in touch with. I’m assuming you are too.

For example, the out-of office email auto-reply: I’ll be out of the office next week. If you need assistance during that time, reach out to VP of Sales Billy Bob Mullins, or my assistant, Mildred.

Or the website advice: If you’d like more information about any of our great new homecare product offerings, reach out to the sales associate nearest you to arrange a free, in-home demonstration. (Listing of potential reach-out-ees follows.)

Yecch!

So why am I griping about this? Well, the act of reaching out implies some sort of emotional involvement that’s inappropriate to the situation in which I’m being asked to reach. I don’t know about you, but I get in touch with sales associates. I reach out to friends who are bereaved, or to wayward children. Or to my shrink when I’m fritzing out – like I might be if I’m advised one more time to reach out to someone I’ve never met and never will.

Even our tacky 70’s friends Diana Ross and the folks at AT&T got it better, if not exactly right. If one can ignore the crass commercialism of the song and the ad campaign – all AT&T wanted to do was get people to run up gigantic phone bills back when calling outside your area cost extra  – the context of each was correct. We reach out to people who need emotional connection.

We do not reach out to sales managers named Billy Bob. Or at least I don’t.

So what’s the marketing concept buried in this admittedly grumpy tirade?

I could go in all sorts of directions on this one, but here’s a biggie – concept inflation. Used cars become pre-owned vehicles. A storm becomes a rain event. Sending an emotional-content-free email becomes reaching out.

When the act of emailing someone becomes reaching out, what happens when reaching out is really what’s called for? Reach out and snuggle? Reach out and kiss? Gosh! Where does that stop?

Which brings up an annoying sub-category of this trend – title inflation. Now that every clerical person in the land is an assistant, and everybody who works at Walmart is an associate, and every other person in the entire workforce appears to be a vice president, how long will it be before assistants and associates are VPs and all the VPs are … what? Concept inflation – like most other kinds – is a slippery slope. Even if it’s sloping upward.

And the marketing point: Everybody knows the email to Billy Bob is just an email, and the checkout lady at Walmart is an employee, that bozo you just deal with on the phone isn’t really a VP of anything. What does this do for corporate credibility? Not much.

In marketing, care is required to not get carried away with claims, titles, superlatives and the like. To paraphrase, yet again, one of my favorite presidents, you can’t go on fooling all the people all the time. Eventually they’ll notice the claims you make are bogus and it’s a whole lot harder to get your credibility back, than to not lose it in the first place.

Okay, enough of this! Time for a couple o’ belts.

You’ll notice that, in the spirit of things, I used the term belt as opposed to the highfalutin cocktail. No concept inflation for this guy!

And yet, running counter to my diatribe, I’m going to risk a superlative here. I’m featuring the best cocktail I ever made up. Never mind that I’ve only made up about three totally new ones in my entire life, this is the best of the bunch.

I call it Act III in honor of the stage at which many of us aging hippies find ourselves. Done, or getting done, with the big career, heading into the third third of life and toward the last roundup – a good 20+ years from now, we hope, but still within sight –  and still hell-bent on having a good time.

This is another cocktail using Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, as promised. It’s a delicious hot weather refresher, not overwhelmingly alcoholic – yes, you can have two without getting knee-walking drunk – and attractive to look at. Actually it looks a bit like Hawaiian Punch … but it’s not.

Ordinarily I resist recipes with more than three ingredients, but this one is easy to measure and mix, and it’s worth it. So bear with me.

Act III

Equal parts

• Gin
• Campari
• Domaine de Canton
• Lime juice (as always, fresh)

Stir the ingredients with ice and strain into a rocks or a highball glass with fresh ice.

For those who garnish, a sprig of mint or a lime wedge work nicely.