After a month off from school we now must slowly become re-accustomed to the daily grind of going to class, coming home and doing more school work, passing out, and doing it all over in a few hours. On a more positive note, just remember that as we move further and further away from our relaxing Winter Break, we also move closer and closer to Summer time living. So with that being said, welcome back to Temple University for the Spring semester of the year 2012. Remember to study hard but also to take time to enjoy the city with your friends!
Finals are just around the corner and there are only 2 days of actual classes left. Check out the original music video from the Swedish band Europe which came out in 1986.. its pretty ridiculous and will probably give you a good laugh. Above all though, get pumped up because this semester is almost over…its the final countdown!
So you want to be smart in the business world? They say a company is only as smart as their competition so what happens when people get creative with getting the edge? Well this is the result of some clever corporate trickery:
1. When Security Pacific Bank merged with Bank of America many Security Pacific branches were closed. First Interstate Bank rented trucks and parked them in the lots of the branches that were closing. Then First Interstate employees in those trucks then helped people open new accounts as there were leaving the banks.
2. In 1986 British Airways ran a promotion to give away 5,200 seats for travel on June 10th. Virgin Atlantic Airways ran ads that said, “ It has always been Virgin’s policy to encourage you to fly to London for as little as possible. So on June 10 we encourage you to fly British Airways.” The British Airways promotion generated a lot of news coverage, but most of (more…)
We all know the saying…”The holiday season is all about giving”. Well there are a few ways in which you can give a little more while shopping for your family and friends during the holiday frenzy. There are two resources that you can use to shop online which will add extra LOVE to your gift purchases.
Your first option is called iGive. When you find your way to the iGive website it is easy to sign up. All that you do is simply put in some information and choose a cause in which you would like to benefit and add the “button” to the top of your browser. Once that is complete you are finished and when you make purchases at participating online vendors (the list consists of at least 900) a donation will be made to your cause. Last year since 1997 over 5 million dollars has been raised through iGive!
The second option you have is called GoodShop. GoodShop is an affiliate of GoodSearch which is powered by Yahoo. This program is (more…)
Black Friday has become the busiest shopping day of the year since the 1960′s. We all know and love this holiday, it’s the day after we just finished stuffing our faces with turkey. As the food coma starts to wear off we all climb out of our warm beds at around 3am to start fighting through traffic to get the best deals on our favorite holiday gift items. This year they tried a new tactic, opening at midnight and staying open all night and into the day. All I have to say is, poor mall employees. So now instead of sleeping some of that turkey off we can just jump into the car and spend spend spend. That is what life is about anyways, right?
This past weekend, “Black Friday” sales were $11.4 billion, up 7 percent, or nearly $1 billion from the same day last year, according to a report by ShopperTrak, which gathers data from 25,000 outlets across the country. It was the largest amount ever spent on that day.
U.S. retailers racked up a record $52.4 billion in sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4 percent jump from a year ago, the National Retail Federation said Sunday. It also forecast a 2.8 percent increase in sales for the November-to-December holiday season, down from the 5.2 percent increase in the same period last year.
But “Black Friday” has been a blessing and a curse: In recent years, it’s become so popular that it’s known for its big crowds, long lines, and even disorder and violence among some shoppers.
“Black Friday has become a victim of its own success,” says Adamson, the branding expert. “It has been successful to the point where it has created the opportunity that if you don’t want to deal with the madness, come out on Tuesday or some other day.”
“Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 when a retail trade group noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving when people returned to their work computers and shopped. While more people now have Internet access at home, retailers still offer discounts and (more…)
Companies love word of mouth advertising. It is by far the best and most efficient way to spread the good news about products and services. But what happens when someone is dissatisfied? Now we may all say, one bad customer experience isn’t the end of world. But what if it was? It’s well known that people talk more about the experiences they’ve had with companies that are negative than positive. Negative experiences as a customer tend to leave a bad taste in the back of our mouths that we are itching to let loose and gab to the world about. No matter how many satisfactory previous encounters we may have had with a restaurant or retail store, one incident will forever alter our opinion on that establishment.
Not only is this well known among business students but it was actually studied. The Nocebo Effect, very similar to the placebo effect which is what happens when people are given sugar pills instead of real test medication and start to think and feel like they are experiencing a negative side effect when in fact they are just imagining it. The implication for brands and marketers is similar: if people have reason to expect problems with your product or service, perhaps due to the complaints of other customers in social media, they may experience or report those same problems – even when they don’t exist! The implication for brands and marketers (more…)
Haters, we know them well and probably have been one at some point against some company. These aren’t just people who are upset about an experience they have had with the company; they are the people who actively try to spread the negative word about your business just to make a point. Most likely these people will turn to social media to try and kick you down a few pegs by blasting out negative messages to influence their peers and colleagues. Here are are 5 reasons why a little hate can go a long way!
Haters expose vulnerability. No business is perfect and haters sometimes have valid points. It requires an open mind to be able to focus on the heart of a complaint and (more…)
If you have checked your facebook account recently you may have noticed some graphic pictures and videos when you sign on. These grotesque images have became Facebook’s new threat. According to reuters.com, Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites are easy targets for such acts because they pull in a lot of content from outside sources. Facebook has became well aware of such incidents and claim that improving their systems is a top priority for the company. But such acts may drive people away from the site. I know some of my friends have expressed their disguist for these acts. Will this acts persuade people to switch to other social media outlets?
While surfing through articles I came across some hilarious examples of what not to do. So learn from the mistakes of others and before settling on an ad campaign and even if you are working for a business that is small and only on American soil, take into account that once that company grows they may want to expand internationally. It’s always good to be resourceful and think ahead before you are kicking yourself all the way back to the drawing board.
1. Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was
read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
2. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
3. Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into Germany
only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure.
4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the
label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read.
5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called “Cue”, the name of a notorious pornographic magazine.
6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish
market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the (more…)
Everyone knows that the internet is now one of the biggest resources that companies have at their fingertips. Websites are a direct link between consumers and their favorite companies. When it comes to retailers, their website is another way to sell products. With that being said, more and more companies are finding that the head of the companies e-commerce department is a beyond valuable person. For example, in 2010, Kohl’s 18.4 billion dollars however only a slim 717 million dollars were from online sales. If they can increase the presence of the website while still maintaining the relevancy of the brick-and-mortar stores then the sales should see a huge increase.
These executives of e-commerce need to be able to create and manage complex websites and handle increasingly difficult inventory management. The more important a position becomes the salary obviously goes up. Just ten years ago heads of e-commerce made anywhere between 50K to 100K. Today however their salaries range from (more…)
Finals are just around the corner and there are only 2 days of actual classes left. Check out the original music video from the Swedish band Europe which came out in 1986.. its pretty ridiculous and will probably give you a good laugh. Above all though, get pumped up because this semester is almost over…its the final countdown!
