KENNEDY’S BARBER CLUB®: OUR TEAM IS BETTER THAN THEIR TEAM

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

When you come into a Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club® for our luxurious Signature Straight Razor Shave™, you’ll always find a friendly experienced barber ready to give you the full relaxing treatment and the best possible service.

But The Intel Corporation seems determined to improve an already-awesome thing. If you’ve seen one of their latest commercials from their “Sponsors of Tomorrow” campaign, you’ll know that their vision for the future of the barbershop business somewhat surprisingly doesn’t include the barber. You can view the spot online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6nOlgNJfHo.

How do you like the Knicks this year?

In the commercial, you see lasers scan a very wary man’s face (an actor portraying robotics engineer Louis LeGrand) – and then a robotic arm wielding a formidable-looking straight razor execute a perfect shave of the one side of his face. The faux Louis breathes a sigh of relief – until he learns they’re about to do it all over again

There are several problems we have with this Future Shave scenario. First of all, since our electronic nose hair clippers rarely function correctly, are we really supposed to trust a mechanical arm to not remove an ear or two along with our whiskers? Second of all, who is actually named Louis LeGrand? Surely, he must be a distant cousin to Pepe Le Pew.

Finally, what is a barbershop without the barber? Yes, there are certainly many opportunities to boost the profit margins at our barbershop franchises by simply following in the footsteps of most American corporations and not actually employing people. And yes, the barbershop of 2020 could resemble a coin-operated car wash, where you sit in the middle of a cubicle and whirring mechanical shears and blades come at you from all sides (tourniquets provided on the house, of course).

But frankly, you can’t shoot the breeze with a robotic arm. You can’t talk sports, politics, movies or TV with a piece of metal, no matter how hi-tech it is. We’ve actually experimented by attempting to talk to a variety of household appliances, and only the vacuum cleaner seemed in the least responsive (we swear the power light blinked twice for “yes” and once for “no” – but we could just have had too much coffee that morning).

The final blow to the whole Robo-Barber scenario came when we discovered the Ultimate Truth about the Intel commercial – that the robotic arm was, in fact, NOT a robotic arm, it was a glorified puppet. And if there’s one thing worse than being shaved by robots, it would have to be by puppets. Imagine having a relaxing straight razor shave and turning around to see Fozzie Bear hacking away at your face. The indignity. The indignity.

So please allow our highly-skilled, licensed, flesh-and-blood barbers to handle all your tonsorial needs at a Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club® location near you (you can find the nearest one at our website at http://www.kennedysbarberclub.com). We guarantee no robotic arms and no puppets. Marionettes, however, are under consideration.

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