I work in the Kleenex industry

I was reminded today of how it feels to be Kleenex. You know, the brand name that everyone uses to describe facial tissue. There are other brands in this category of course. Google is quickly becoming one. When telling someone to perform a web search, how many times do we say "just Google it?"

When reading a story about Papa John's selling 23 cent pizzas in Cleveland, I scanned down through the comments. Most of them were benign, saying how great or horrible the pizza was. But a good 25% of them pointed out what great 'free advertising' or 'advertising gimmick' this was for Papa John's. Many cited how the lost revenue from the pizzas would be made up by the free advertising.

Someone show me the advertising that Papa John's is getting from this.

I see a crap-load of publicity, but not a single ad. And that's when I started to feel like my industry was like the branded snot rags. People make use of what we do every day. They count on us, depend on us, expect us to be there. And then they call what we do, 'advertising.' (sigh)

Oh well, back to Googling...