How Companies Should (NOT) Respond to Potential Customers III.

The more I learn about the Applebee’s receipt fiasco, the more I’m reminded of a scene in Eyes Wide Shut when Bill (Tom Cruise) and Alice (Nicole Kidman) talk about the difference between men’s and women’s sexual desire to which Alice tells Bill, “If you men only knew…” I thought I knew the details about the … Read more

Never Say, "I Was Just Going to Say…"

2013.01.30 Don't Say I Was Just Going to Say
You’ve experienced this a hundred times. Two people start to speak at the same time. They both stop. She says, “You go.” He says, “Well, I was just going to say…”
That’s apology language when apology isn’t necessary.
The other person gave you a gift. In a moment when both of you put your excitement for the conversation on the table, she gave you a turn. She’s not waiting to talk. She’s not angry that

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What Is Your Petri Dish?

2013.01.16 What's Your Petri Dish
A petri dish is a small container used by scientists, usually biologists, to discover and explore cultured cells, plants, and so on. It’s usually, but not always, 100mm in diameter and 15mm in height. In 1887, it played a key role in discovering penicillin. While petri dishes come in different sizes and other variables scientists do great work with them. They’re only so big; they’re only so small. It’s a 100mm x 15mm constraint where the world is changed. A petri dish is

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Chuck Knows Church Is Awesome.

2013.01.15 Chuck Knows Church
One of the stumbling blocks to persons unfamiliar with church trying church is, well, being unfamiliar with church. It’s hard to feel at ease when there’s a bunch of stuff one doesn’t understand. There are a lot of reasons why people claim themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” a way of saying there’s at least something appealing about faith but an institution organized around faith is a turn-off.
I get that. I’ve been there.
I also think that, aside from many of the ethical and moral issues these people may have with religious institutions, there’s another reason that’s not often explored as much: for someone who hasn’t been in a church in a long time or ever or with much regularity or beyond Christmas and Easter, knowing what’s going on and why can be a frustrating stumbling block that can leave one feeling

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How Companies Should Respond II: Government Edition

Last week I wrote about Minute Maid’s clever, Ghostbusters reference-laden response to my request to bring back Ecto-Cooler. Seems like it’s not only corporations who are giving out clever responses. So is the government. In December, a petition of a required 25,000+ names went forward to the White House to ask them to build a … Read more

How Companies Should Respond to Potential Customers.

I love Ghotsbusters. So much so, I even liked it on Facebook. You may have wondered, like me, exactly who is in charge of the posts from products, movies, etc. that we “like” on Facebook. Certainly, some are run by the product companies and film studios but sometimes it seems like a handful of fans. … Read more

Ever bought a CD at Amazon? It's in Your Cloud Now, and For Free.

2013.01.10 Ever Bought a CD at Amazon It's in Your Cloud Now
Now this is cool.
Today Amazon announced AutoRip, a new, although inevitable, feature of their Cloud. Whenever you buy a CD it’s content is now automatically ripped to your Amazon Cloud Player. For free. Oh, and it’s not CDs you buy at Amazon as of today. It’s any CD you’ve bought at Amazon since 1999. Fifteen years’ worth of music purchases, now all automatically in your cloud for free. No more spending time putting the CD into the computer, labeling tracks, hoping the rip goes through okay, loading the songs onto your portable device, etc. No more of that, ever. Amazon has just paid your opportunity cost in exchange for your purchase; it’s like opportunity “cash back.”
Music and movies have taken opposite purchasing paths. With movies, physical media is still the big seller and digital copies of the film for download or streaming are

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Certain Music in Certain Spaces.

2013.01.09 Certain Music in Certain Spaces
Today at work I put on Jar of Flies by Alice in Chains and didn’t think much of it; it was automatic. A co-worker asked me what I was listening to and while she liked the sound she joked that it probably wasn’t listening to it to determine whether it would make a good fit for that evening’s presentation. I explained, surprising myself, that this record tends to be the one I listen to at work the most. Then I got to thinking why exactly that is and how really, I’ve had the habit of listening to certain music in certain spaces for several years now. Thoughts below and some music videos after that at the bottom of the post.
I don’t have much music on my office PC but Jar of Flies is there and I play it a lot. Maybe it’s because I didn’t put much other music on the PC so there was less competition. Or perhaps it’s because Alice in Chains

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