Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

What to do w/all those old light bulbs?

I opened a storage cabinet in my garage recently and realized I had a dilemma.

Now that I have swapped just about all of the incandescent light bulbs in my home for compact flourescents, I now have a box full of slightly used but still functional Thomas Edison-type 60 and 100 Watt bulbs. The question is what should I do with these?

If I throw them out, I'm taking something that's useful and putting it in a landfill unnecessarily too soon.
If I give them to someone else, I'm adding to the problem of too many incandescents using too much energy and global warming.
If I donate them (e.g., to Goodwill), I'm perhaps helping someone who couldn't afford a CF. Yet if $ is tight, wouldn't it be better to get them CFs to start with that last longer and don't contribute to our global warming crisis?

None of these look like great solutions. So there they sit, a box full of working light bulbs. Potentially useful, potentially harmful. But not bothering anyone as they gather dust on the shelf...

The End of Online Greeting Cards?

Maybe you thought those animated, singing/dancing e-greeting cards were cute. Maybe you thought they were silly or a total waste of time. Whether you liked them or not, it looks like they may become the victim of the latest phishing/spam scheme.

In addition to cheap mortgages, great deals on Viagra/Cialis and Canadian prescription drugs, and banks I've never heard of needing me to confirm my account information with them, the latest spam to fill my junk folder is fake egreeting cards. Some of these purport to be from American Greetings or Hallmark, just like all the bank emails that are supposedly from Bank of America or First Third Bank (which has to be the strangest name for a bank I've ever heard--are you really First or Third? Make up your mind). Some of them wanted to offer me 4th of July greetings. All of them were fake.

The result: my spam filter is being trained to spot any and all egreeting card messages, collect them and trash them. Which means any legitimate egreetings--for birthdays, holidays, a thank you, or just saying hi--will also be trashed. Unless someone in the legitimate egreeting card business finds a good, dependable way to stand out from the junk.

Stay tuned to see what happens. Just don't wait for me to send you an online card with an update...

From Yucky to Yummy: A great marketing tool

Stopping in to Walgreens to pick up a prescription today, I noticed something new on the counter...the Yucky Medicine wheel. This is one of those devices that you turn to find out information about each of probably 50 or more medications listed on the outside of the wheel. In this case, as you turn the wheel, it displays the Yuckiness Factor for each liquid medication in terms of taste.

The three choices in taste ratings (complete with emoticon-type icons) are:

• Yucky tasting
• More yucky
• Most yuckiest

For each medication, there is a second round of displays that indicates what additional flavorings are available to be added to the medication to make it more palatable (i.e., some are available in cherry and lemon, others in strawberry or pineapple, etc.).

Now we all know that there is no such thing as a good tasting liquid medicine--blechh! The folks @ Walgreens and the flavoring company have embraced this fact and turned it into a marketing tool. Instead of official-sounding, rational taste rankings like mild or moderately offensive, they go right to yucky and more yucky. Who can argue with that?

The goal is to convince patients and their parents to spend a few dollars extra to have a pleasant tasting flavoring added to their liquid medicine. (Medicinal flavorings are usually not covered by medical insurance, but paid for out of pocket.) What's a couple of dollars when you face the choice of feeding your child 10 days of most yuckiest medicine, three times a day?

BTW, the pharmacist told me that many adults take liquid medicines and they too try to avoid the yucky factor. So this marketing tactic works for adults as well as kids.

Great marketing, Walgreens. Makes you almost want to raise a medicine  stopper and say cheers! Well, ALMOST.

Let's Blame EVERYONE Else, Shall We?

The death of St. Louis Cardinals Pitcher Josh Hancock in an alcohol-related traffic accident last month really was a tragedy. But the lawsuits filed by his family afterwards have taken this beyond the ridiculous to the absurd.

Yesterday it was reported in SI.Com that Hancock's father, on behalf of Hancock's estate, has chosen to sue the restaurant/bar that continued to serve Hancock alcohol for over 3.5 hours. OK, that seems somewhat understandable--bars have a legal responsibility to not serve inebriated patrons.

But that's only the beginning. The lawsuit also names the towing company whose flatbed truck Hancock plowed into, the tow truck driver, and the poor hapless motorist who was unlucky enough to be working with the tow truck, after having stalled out because he was cut off by another vehicle.

This is IN SPITE of the fact that Hancock's blood alcohol was twice the legal limit, he was speeding, he was using a cell phone during the accident,  he was not wearing a seatbelt, and marijuana was found in the vehicle.

I'm sort of surprised the lawsuit didn't include cell phone manufacturers, the transportation department for the state of Missouri  for building such a poorly designed freeway, and perhaps the Columbian drug cartel for their role in providing illegal recreational drugs. But I'm sure all these parties--and more--can be added later. (And what about the estate of Abner Doubleday for inventing baseball, without which none of this would have happened?)

It's one thing to turn to the justice system for relief when one has been wronged, but in this case it appears that the one individual who was at fault, Hancock, suffered the ultimate consequence for a series of really bad judgments. It's a free country and adults should take responsibility for their actions. Nowhere has it been reported that someone put a gun to Hancock's head and forced him to consume large amounts of alcohol, drive, speed, be distracted and use illicit drugs--all without buckling his seat belt.

Rather than blame everyone else, when something goes wrong, let's put the blame where it belongs--with the person whose actions led to the series of events in question. Seems pretty sensible to me.

Marketing Leadership: Five Steps to Move Forward

Two weeks ago, I asked where is the marketing leadership? I firmly believe that global marketing leadership can be driven by us here in Silicon Valley. Check out the SVAMA Marketing Thought Blog for five steps to move the process forward...

Where is the Marketing Leadership?

We sit here in Silicon Valley in the hotbed of innovation and technology. The same fertile environment that in previous years spawned Fairchild semiconductors, Sun workstations and the Netscape browser has in its most recent incarnation given us iPods, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Second Life, among others.

But where is the marketing leadership?


See this full post on the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) Marketing Thought Blog...

Enough Already!

The events at Virginia Tech this week really are a tragedy. Thirty two innocent people died for no good reason and the loss to their families and friends can't be underestimated.

Unfortunately, the media has fixated on this story, including of course the graphic video sent by the gunman in between shootings. Like moths drawn to fire or passersby at an accident scene, the American public seems to be drawn to all the macabre angles of this story. But there's reporting the news and then there's fueling a media obsession.

What has happened in the last 3 days is exactly what the gunman wanted--to gain a platform for airing his views and raising his issues, strange as they may be. His bizarre, rambling video diatribe has generated more attention than he could ever imagine. Already there has been at least one copycat incident: a man in Yuba City, CA has made threats that he will make Va Tech look like nothing and that he is trying to commit suicide by police.

Enough is enough. This is a psychotic murderer--a domestic terrorist suicide bomber who used bullets instead of explosives. When spectators disrupt sporting events, they are carted away and arrested--but their image is NEVER shown on TV. They are denied the platform and publicity they crave.

This man did more than disrupt a weekend game: he permanently cut short 32 lives and disrupted hundreds upon hundreds of more.

Enough is enough. Let's help the families grieve and heal. Let's stop promoting their murderer.

Remembering Jackie Robinson--for more than one reason

Today is the 60th anniversary of the historic game when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, changing the world of sports forever.

However, those of us who live with diabetes in our families have another reason to remember Jackie. He was a type 1 diabetic who died of a heart attack at age 53, nearly blind because of diabetic retinapathy, and suffering from other diabetic complications. This is not something that is usually mentioned when people speak of Jackie Robinson, but he was also one of the first people with type 1 diabetes to play major league baseball.

So for many reasons, Jackie Robinson is a hero and a role model. Here's hoping for the day when both of the issues he handled with honor and grace--racial discrimination and diabetes--are eliminated from the face of the earth.

Food Makers in the Dog House

Today's focus is on the pet food industry—in the spotlight due to the recent finding of tainted dog and cat food, resulting in renal failure and a yet unknown number of pet deaths.

There are so many places to pin blame and shame here it’s almost hard to list them all: The Chinese wheat gluten supplier who provided the tainted raw material, the Canadian food supplier who didn’t ensure the quality and safety of their products, the FDA for not adequately performing its oversight of the pet food industry.

But let’s not forget the pet food suppliers themselves, who it appears are actually marketers rather than manufacturers of pet food. What’s become apparent as a result of this situation is that whether you buy the low-cost economy pet food at Wal-Mart or the high-end specially formulated food from Eukanuba/IAMS, the actual food ingredients all come from the same supplier with the same main ingredient.

What’s wrong with this picture?  While all pet food manufacturers will now need to prove to the public that their pet food is safe to eat, the premium manufacturers will also have to prove to pet owners like me why I should continue to pay top dollar for their products when they are basically identical to what’s sold in Wal-Mart, Safeway or under private label. If the ingredients are the same, then what’s different? The packaging? This is a great example of how apparently identical products have been successfully positioned at various price points without the consumer understanding how similar the products themselves actually are.

We talk about products being only part of a total solution that includes service, customer experience, image/branding and competitive environment. However, the bottom line is that there needs to be enough differentiation in the total solution to justify selling different versions at different price points.

Sellers, you are all forewarned: Hell hath no fury like millions of pet owners scorned.

That really WAS easy!

I placed a small order online with Staples yesterday. Expected delivery in 3-5 business days. It showed up on my doorstep today, less than 24 hours from when I placed it. This was free shipping, too--not any kind of expedited extra-charge delivery.

There are a couple of key points here:

• Great customer service really does make you stand out from the pack
• Set expectations lower, then when you exceed them you look great. (If they'd told me it would be here in 24 hours, I'd have been skeptical and disappointed if they were late).