Thoughts Become Things
Submitted by Linus Wilson, Assistant Professor Of Finance, University of Louisiana At Lafayette
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| Madoff Profits To JPM.pdf | 67.16 KB |
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
Friday Amusement: Office Pranks
It’s Friday! Hells yeah! TGIF.
Have you had a long week? Do you need something to laugh about in your cubicle? If you’re in a prankster mood, here are some classic office pranks and some things you can do to rile up office zombies.
jo3designs masters the art of office pranks. See number 11.
- Staple your reports in the wrong corner
- Swap the regular and decaf coffee – This is EVIL!
- Play with the auto-correct on your co-workers computer. Configure the word “and” to change to “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere”
- Put tape over the mouse optics
- Cut your fingernails or toe nails
- Unplug a co-worker’s monitor
- Talk to sick employees while wearing a dust mask
- Turn your earphones up all the way
- Turn your speakerphone up all the way
- Burn popcorn in the microwave
- When your co-worker is out of down, cover their office in foil, plastic wrap or post-its (and then send us the picture!)
- “Forget” to put your tuna sandwich in the fridge
- Leave your tuna sandwich in the fridge
- Empty the paper out of the main printer/copier
- Empty the ink or toner out of the main printer/copier
- Hang up the phone before they say, “good bye”
- Slurp hot coffee during meetings
- Chew ice during meetings
- Walk around the office barefooted
- Empty out a co-workers office on a Friday afternoon
- Glue their mouse to the desk
- Turn down or turn up the contrast on their monitor
- Use goofy event sounds for your programs
- Send flowers from one co-worker to another
- Leave hole punches all over
- Leave your lunch garbage in other people’s cans
- After each sip give a refreshing, “Ahhh”
- Set a password on someone’s screensaver
- Carry on a conversation with someone two cubes down
- Smirk when a co-worker walks by
- Eat half of someone’s lunch
- Swap co-worker’s chairs
- Take all the ice out of the community freezer
- Hit all the floor buttons when you leave the elevator
- Make hissing sounds into the phone and insist you have a bad connection
- Flip the left and right mouse button defaults
- Take out the ball in the mouse
- Tell a long story without a point
- Tell a co-worker you liked their hair better last week
- Bring Cheetos for food days
- Drag your feet when you walk down the halls
- Exclaim your co-worker didn’t wash his hands when leaving the restroom
- Set your mobile phone to an obnoxious ring tone
- Forward chain letters and other spam to co-workers
- Express your political views at length
- Whisper loudly
- Drink the last cup of coffee without making a new pot- Raise your hand if you’re GUILTY!
- Answer your mobile during meetings
- Stand over someone while they are on the phone
- Sneak up behind someone
- Mess with the thermostat
- Recycle other people’s print jobs
- Be overly nice to people
- Leave fingerprints on the copier glass
- Type loudly
- Give everyone a nickname from a TV show- “Intern”
- Peer over the cube and wait for a co-worker to look up and notice
- Use the intercom and page yourself
- Hide the sugar and creamer
- Type emails in uppercase and excessive punctuation
Some steps compiled from here and here .
We accept no responsibility for encouraging you to have fun on Fridays. We would love to hear your cube farm adventures. And, on a more serious note, if you need this post to add some sort of value, be self-aware of your actions. It’s good to be mindful of how your actions affect your co-workers. But, have some fun too
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This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 6:01 am by Jennifer Robinson and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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This is laughable. I’m so glad I don’t work/live in a cubicle but this would definitely make life more fun in a cube.
Posted via web from Joseph’s posterous
We got owned today. I think my team needs to read the rules. I am the biggest loser of the day. Apparently there are only 6 innings now or until 1 hour in length.
I fouled out to lose the game for us.
fml
photo credit: Laughing Squid
Better keep your job if you have one.
The most recent BLS State unemployment data is out. State by state unemployment increased by 1.0% on average (unweighted) from June to July.
Some notable states June unemployment rates and June-July rate of change:
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
–
Joseph Rodgers
Craft Beer Evangelist
901-494-4800 Mobile
501-708-2739 Office
Diamond Bear Brewing Co.
323C Cross Street
Little Rock, AR 72201
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
This is optimistic. Thank goodness for fiat money system and fractional reserve banking.
Posted via web from Joseph’s posterous
I had to share, not like I am actually going to DL this. It’s the principle.
-jr 
Goodbye, Pirate Bay. Hello, Pirate Bay. A couple of days ago we wrote about a very special torrent, which contained a copy of the entire Pirate Bay with most of the torrents in its database. Now, someone has put it to use: you can find a fully functional copy of the Pirate Bay over at btarena.net.
The new site is not exactly the same as the old one, and some of The Pirate Bay’s functions, such as links to related content, are missing, but who cares? It works, and the torrents are there, so users can keep visiting the new site almost as if nothing has changed.
Of course, whether the new site will remain as popular as the original Pirate Bay (new torrents will be tracked via tracker.btarena.org) remains to be seen, but the simple fact has once again been proven: you can turn one torrent tracker off, but new ones will always appear and take over. The entertainment industry would do well if they stopped bothering with lawsuits towards individual services and started working on being competitive in light of new marketplace rules, brought forth by the internet.
Tags: bittorrent, copy, the pirate bay
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
Marketing researchers of note, Forrester and McKinsey & Company, recently conducted studies on the nature of consumerism today. Their results are important because they point to a shift away from the classic “consumer purchasing funnel”.
This classic marketing theory holds that consumers develop awareness of branded products thanks to numerous, traditional advertising impressions. Familiarity leads to eventual purchasing consideration for a limited choice of brands. When entering a retail environment, consumers center their attention on those few choices, and purchase one. Throughout the process, the funnel obviously keeps narrowing. With consistent delivery on the brand promise, loyalty develops over time.
However, new research demonstrates consumer purchasing patterns no longer fit this model. So could the wrong marketing emphasis be one of the reasons, along with a soft economy, for real shifts in consumer spending and overall loyalty? Given the data, it’s likely.
According to the latest consumer research, there’s a new paradigm. Constant exposure via traditional and interactive media continues to create brand awareness. When consumers make the decision to purchase a product, they evaluate their choices by conducting Internet research. They participate in word of mouth exchanges, seeking information from social media contacts.
This is a crucial juncture for brands in the pre-purchasing process; the reason they must have a strong online presence. Marketers need to invest dollars on independent web sites–not only their own–that they’ve identified as the places consumers are seeking information about products like theirs, and buying them. Ditto for interactive media sites-–online and mobile—since these core constituencies will endorse and spread the word about their products.
Due to a virtual explosion of social media outlets as well as new brands, consumers are actually not narrowing their options now. Rather, they are expanding their possible list of choices. Thus, the narrowing consumer funnel model is now obsolete.
Marketing in the New Paradigm.
Armed with this information, why would product companies execute the usual old budget cuts when consumer spending slows down? If the consumer has fundamentally changed, doesn’t this call for a serious restructuring of marketing focus, initiatives, spending?
Consumers are no longer passive, so spending the lion’s share of the marketing budget on TV, radio, newspaper and magazine ads—simply isn’t efficient. Yet, when the economy sours, marketers pull back and retrench to “tried and true” traditional outlets. They cut new media spending. They cut customer service personnel. They hold off on new product packaging. These might seem like natural decisions, but do they make sense?
Many companies have dabbled in interactive media in a limited way; not always meaningfully or for long, so they have little ROI data on their marketing efforts. As a result, they’re likely to be cut down or cut out. This is a mistake. While one-way communication still delivers impressions, today’s consumer is empowered by information gleaned from the Internet, mobile devices and conversations on social media sites. They pursue online connections to family, friends and blogging communities. These new media influencers have increased in importance since the last economic downturn. So, logically speaking, does it make sense to make deep budget cuts here?
Let’s not forget that consumers also converse directly with companies via customer service online, via phone and email. Here is an often under-mined opportunity to interface directly with consumers; a golden opportunity to rectify problems, address issues quickly and satisfactorily, tweak product features and find out what consumers respond to best when purchasing category products. So should customer service be the recipient of deep budget cuts?
Lastly, with brand loyalty flagging as consumers scour retail shelves before making their final purchase decisions, how can deep budget cuts on packaging be justified?
Instead: why not work smarter and get more from fewer resources? Cutting back on traditional marketing to some degree and reallocating resources on social media, Internet web sites and customer service makes sense. Reallocating resources on packaging is vital since final purchase decisions are made at the retail shelf. Aligning marketing communications among all of these consumer-facing initiatives is priority #1.
Packaging for the New Paradigm.
The current diminishment in loyalty as consumers are open to more choices can work to the benefit of a brand, or to its detriment. Smart marketers will use this knowledge to address their presence at retail. Packaging has actually gained in importance in the marketing mix as consumers closely scrutinize more products on the retail shelf before purchasing. Given this, it’s a wise idea to conduct an assessment of current packaging and make needed changes.
Packaging has to deliver more than ever in the current economic and competitive environment. If it doesn’t decisively refer back to the brand, doesn’t quickly and simply communicate its value and preferability to consumers, doesn’t definitively leverage the brand and product’s key assets, it fails to win the consumer’s vote to purchase the product. It’s vitally important to make sure one simple, overriding message resonates on packaging. Why? According to research, the average consumer scans the retail shelf in 20 seconds or less.
So what is the most important thing to communicate in that span of time? Tapping into consumers’ compelling reasons to choose one brand over the rest in a category, by honing in on consumer statements and conversations, WOM and interactive media comments, meaningful insights can be gleaned. How about leveraging that most relevant thing—that one overriding message—consumers themselves care most about as the lead package communication?
Ultimately, packaging has the power to affect consumer purchasing behavior if utilized correctly. If packaging isn’t a huge asset in selling the product and brand on the retail shelf, it simply isn’t being maximized as a marketing tool. Now, while consumers are clearly open to more brands than ever, there’s a chance to win more business now and potentially more brand loyalty when the economy improves.
So here are the questions that must be answered now: How can marketing initiatives be used to get closer to consumers and better understand what their needs are? How can two-way communications be used to increase brands’ relevance to the consumer? How can aligned messaging be utilized for all consumer-facing marketing initiatives? Lastly, how can all of this help produce the most compelling packaging in the category?
Ted Mininni is president of Design Force, Inc., the leading brand design consultancy to consumer product companies with Enjoyment Brands™. Design Force helps their clients market brands that deliver positive, gratifying experiences to consumers. Their expertise lies in emotionally connecting consumers to brands by creating compelling visual brand experiences, which motivate purchase decisions.
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
Implementing this immediately.
When I wrote a few weeks ago about making your email so good it can’t be stopped, a few readers wrote to ask for more specifics.
It’s an understandable request, given the percentage of permission-based messages that are being thrown away by email service providers.
So beyond providing killer content, what can we do to give our messages the best shot of getting through?
Remember, the success of any email marketing program depends on genuinely compelling content. You want your readers to dig through spam filters, complain to their email providers, and do anything they can to make sure they’re getting your content.
Most email newsletters are pitchfests, which makes them no fun to read. Make sure yours is nicely loaded with cookie content, so readers begin to be trained to open everything you send.
If you don’t build this trust and credibility with great content, the rest of the techniques won’t work very well. But there are a few practical things you can do to give your messages the best possible fighting chance.
The autoresponder feature of your email provider lets you create defined sequences to send to your readers. The millionth subscriber has the same experience that the first did.
This means that no matter how busy you get or what disasters you might be coping with this week, your new email subscribers are always well taken care of.
A great autoresponder builds a strong foundation for your relationship with your new subscriber. The old cliché is true: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The warm, friendly feelings you’ll establish with your first 10 or 15 messages will carry over throughout your relationship.
This is a trick I learned from Product Launch Formula founder Jeff Walker, and it creates a really nice rapport with your list.
Early in your autoresponder sequence (I usually put it at message two), include a cheerful, warm, individual-sounding message. Something informal, like, “Hey, really good to see you here, hope you enjoy the content.”
You’re not trying to fool anyone that this was an individually typed message for that recipient, but you are trying to create the same feeling of personal relationship. Invite questions, comments, and feedback at this point, and let them know that you’d love to hear from them.
I typically create this message as text only, rather than HTML. This is also a good spot to use technique #3.
No matter how good your email provider is, some messages end up in spam filters. The best defense against that is to convince your readers to add you to their list of “safe senders” or their “white list.” And the best way to do that is simply to ask them.
I send a text message in one of my sequences right before a message with a few red flags in the content. (The message has the audacity to talk about making money. Shocking, I know.)
The message explains that the next email in the sequence is a little more likely to get trapped in a spam filter, so this would be a great time to add me to their safe senders list.
Some readers immediately white list me, which is great. Others don’t, then the message is caught in a filter the next day and they see that adding me to their approved senders list would be a good idea.
Obviously, it’s smart to get yourself onto the white list as soon as you can, so you’ll want to bring the subject up early on.
But if you do have a message you can’t reasonably lower the spam score on, this technique can give you a good reason to ask a second time.
Make sure you’ve got a real human being monitoring any replies to your email marketing, and that that person is giving thoughtful, personal replies to each message they get.
It’s also smart to use an individual person’s name in the “From” field, rather than the name of a company. Anything you can do to capitalize on the intimate nature of email just makes sense.
When I started adding the words, “Just click reply to ask me a question, your message will come directly to my personal in-box,” I noticed that more people felt comfortable doing just that. And not only do questions and feedback build nice rapport, they’re also a fantastic window into what your customers want and need.
Most good email providers will let you know if your content has certain hot buttons that are likely to be flagged as spam. Some of them are obvious, like pharmaceutical brand names.
Others are annoying, because they tend to be the words and phrases that have the most selling power. For example, links that say click here can make your content look a little spammier to the filters, precisely because savvy marketers know that explicit calls to click here get better results.
This is one good reason to put a long sales message onto a landing page, rather than an individual email message. The last thing you want to do is to use less persuasive language just to keep a spam filter happy.
Always remember that you’re writing for people, not filters. When you make your readers happy and deliver the content they need and want, no spam filter can stop you.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
I like this read and you should too. I wish I had a marketing plan but right now it seems like there is no budget for that. On a side note my employer got me a new website to market through. Now time to get to writing.
Marketing plans are to 21st century marketing what the F-22 is to 21st century warfare: Cool and shiny-looking, but pricey and unhelpful.
Your carefully-prepared 12-month marketing plan will fail. Here’s why:
Instead of a plan, try a playbook. Playbooks give you steps to take in different situations: “If X happens, we’ll go to Y.” Write a playbook that accounts for checking data, re-evaluating results and going where consumers take you, instead of plunking down $400,000 on a monstrosity of a web site and then ending up stuck on a one-way road to the unemployment line.
For design, focus groups suck
15 Principles of Internet Marketing
Integrated marketing to clever monkeys
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
Apple is currently talking about makin album artwork more interactive via iTunes and Apple’s mobile devices How about an iTunes plugin that will integrate these features through a plugin? People could post, legally post, songs and get cash through an affiliate program? I know I am not the first person to think of this but it makes sense. Facebook Connect integration with Apple accounts could be interesting. Apple account integration into Safari? If Apple bought FB that would foster direct development between the iLife and FB.
This will never happen.Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
Should ObamaCare pass, I hereby propose a name for the new “government insurance program,” which I’m sure will be as actuarially sound as Social Security: “Freddie Med.” I’m also sure that Freddie Med will be as successful in improving medical care as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were in improving the US housing market, not to mention the entire macroeconomy.
Posted via email from Joseph’s posterous
