As I was preparing my Mary’s free range turkey for the oven I saw this notice on the wrapper:

"Even the most experienced cooks get worried when it comes time to prepare the holiday turkey. To ease your worries, call Mary at 1-888-666-8244."

Then there’s the Butterball Turkey hotline, whose motherly agents have been featured on every national news broadcast I’ve seen in the last two days. How much would that advertising have cost?

I’m not worried about cooking my turkey, but I’m tempted to call these hotlines anyway just to thank them. These companies are thinking like their customer and executing a marketing campaign at a time and place that it will be really appreciated. Maybe it’s just the holiday mood or that I’m still recovering from the political ads of a few weeks ago, but it makes me kind of sentimental to know that a surrogate mom is just a phone call away.