Tag Archives: pr

Companies That Don’t Understand Social Networking

Business, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

We’ve all heard the story of a major company that totally blew its social networking strategy by doing something really stupid, like tweeting something inappropriate, thinking it would drive business but ended up driving it away instead. But there’s something even worse, at least in my opinion, and that’s a company that wants to engage in social networking but doesn’t understand what engaging in it means. An example is a company that advertises that it has all sorts of hip connections on social networking sites, but then turns around and blocks all of those sites from everyone of its employees. This wouldn’t be so bad if the company didn’t keep sending out notices to employees about how they are now on Facebook, starting up on Google Plus, and then asking employees to participate as well. And when that employee attempts to do so, they get a blocked message, indicating that the job considers that site to be an illegal site for viewing at work.

One of my favorite sorts of erroneous activities involves the housing complex where I live. They put up a bunch of signs around the complex, saying: “Add and Follow us on Facebook for current news and activities!” Four months ago, I attempted to add them on Facebook; they haven’t accepted. Yet, each day I see their signs on the bulletin board at home, just begging me to add them to my Facebook profile.

These are companies that don’t get the whole social networking thing. If you want to engage in social networking, you have to actually engage in social networking. You don’t just get a presence and then expect the masses to come flocking to you, but then decide you don’t want to spend the energy actually working with the environment. The work thing is a no brainer because you’re never going to have a real social networking presence as long as the majority of your staff can’t promote it. If the only Facebook presence you have is a Human Resources person who gets paid to have to maintain the connection, you’ve failed in all things social networking. Basically, it’s a plea to join their network but then a follow up statement to say that your employees aren’t allowed to communicate with the masses you just asked to join. Sure, it keeps people from doing something to embarrass you, but what these companies don’t understand is that social networking is about people, not about people interacting with a company’s icon. That’s why Google is destroying any business presence with Google Plus; at least they understand what a social network should be about. Although, I admit, I suspect they’ll backtrack on that once they realize that Facebook will take advantage of their absence.

Personally, my belief is that any company that avoids letting its employees engage in social networking is doomed to be considered old hat. Any company, like my housing complex, that considers social networking one-way only (we speak, you listen), then they’re doomed to fail as well.

Unfortunately, social networking is one of those animals that takes many years for people to truly understand. And as I’m pointing out, sometimes they never do.

Technology Companies Still Don’t Understand Their Business IS Customers

Business, Technology, , , , , , ,

Sprint PCS is ramping up its engines to try to gain new customers because their managers realize they’re just not cutting it as the third biggest cell phone company. If you looked at them on paper, they’d have everything to sell, such as the only big cell phone service that still offers an unlimited data plan (unless grandfathered in), a great all in one wireless satellite service (Clear Wire), and they’re generally cheaper. So why aren’t they defeating everyone else?

Well, let’s look at that for a moment. I had Sprint, and I currently still have Clear as my additional service. When I had Sprint as a cell phone, the first thing I noticed is that I rarely could get a solid signal. And if I did, I’d lose it. When I went in to complain, the response wasn’t “Oh, we’ll look into that” but “They’re aware of it, and we’re waiting to hear something new”. In other words, they knew they had problems and they did absolutely nothing to fix it. I had Sprint for six months before I gave up on it. When I gave up on it, of course they wanted to charge me they’re punishment fee, even though I was dropping the service because it never worked. A smart company would have said: “You’re right. It’s our fault, so we’ll pick up the charge.” That way, I might look back at Sprint with a sense of “Hey, they at least treated me with respect.” But that’s not how I left.

As for Clear, I like it, but it’s a generally shitty service for the price that I pay. I was using it at home and at work. At work, I would sometimes lose signal for a week (and no tech person on their end could fix it, other than the classic: “Have you tried restarting your computer?”). I still have it, and I paid for the modem straight out (which means there should be no fee whenever I do disconnect), but I’ll bet you every dollar the United States doesn’t have to pay its bills that they’ll try to tack on a disconnect fee, even though the disconnect fee is supposed to pay for the “great discount” I would have gotten on the equipment, which I paid full price for because they didn’t have a deal, and I really didn’t feel like renting their shit.

So, Sprint is now having trouble gaining new customers. You might think word of mouth might be their biggest problem. The woman who works in the next cubicle over from me has had nothing but nightmares with Sprint phones and service. I was on the shuttle bus going home from work last night, and two women started a chorus of how much Sprint sucks as they discussed their lousy phone service.

Now, this could be just in Grand Rapids, but I’m suspecting that if they’re screwing it up here, they’re probably screwing it up in a lot more places. Big companies are a lot like that. I’ve hated Comcast practically every city where I’ve had them, and I’ve had them in Grand Rapids, Stockton and a few other places that aren’t coming to my Alzheimerish mind right now.

Netflix is another one of those companies that doesn’t seem to get it. Oh, they think they do, and they’re all meta-like, acting like they’re on top of things with their knowledge of psychology and how people will eventually get over their price hikes, but rather than first telling their customers that the price of new content requires more money to pay for it, they just upped the price and pretty much told everyone to either live with it or leave, and then did this sanctimonious crap about how they’re the best deal in town so either live with it or stare at the walls in silence because they won’t have Netflix to watch instead.

This is NOT the way to treat your customers, especially the ones who stuck by you all of these years when you were growing and struggling to grow. Right now, I’m royally pissed at Netflix, and when September comes around I will cancel their services completely. Not drop down to the streaming only, or the disks only, but dump them completely like a cheating girlfriend who was never really good in bed in the first place. Okay, that’s a bit vulgar. How about: Like an ice cream flavor that doesn’t taste as good as…ah, never mind. Go with the first, vulgar one. It works well enough.

It’s almost as if major companies are less concerned about public relations and more concerned with handling damage control. And if your company’s focus is always how to minimize your negativity from customers, then something’s seriously wrong with your business model. My advice there is fire all of your executives, hire a bunch of kids who have watched a lot of Elmo on Sesame Street, and start over.

The Real Reason No One Can Beat the Ipad 2: Everyone Else is a Moron

Business, Economics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , ,

Believe it or not, this isn’t a rant against the Ipad 2, or even for it. It’s a rant against everyone who keeps trying to “beat” the Ipad with their crappy knock offs. Let me explain.

The Xoom. Okay, this should be the best thing since sliced bread to beat the Ipad. It’s an Android tablet. But what’s the first thing they do? They overprice it. Where they could have sold a gazillion of them, they decided they had to make as much money on each one, so now it’s just a slight alternative, which most people will look at and say, “well, no thanks. An Ipad is still a bit cheaper and a better product.” And it is.

Then there came Samsung. Their Galaxy tab seemed like it would be the thing to really do it. It even advertised at a pretty nice competing price. But what does Samsung do? Rather than just let the thing speak for itself, they do the next worst thing. They speak for it, and pretend it’s speaking for itself. What am I talking about? Samsung decided that they would post a lot of on the street interviews about their tablet, but they’re not really on the street people who are who they claim to be. They’re ALL actors, paid by Samsung to say exactly what Samsung wants you to hear.

Now, everyone is laughing at Samsung, and the Galaxy tab is a joke on itself. Great job, Samsung. And I was actually pulling for you until this crap.

Bah, Samsung!

Finally, Pornography Will Have a Presence on the Internet

Business, Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes, after years and years of nothing but clean, wholesome information, pictures and overt religiousness, the Internet is FINALLY going to be able to show pornography. Up until now, as we all know, there’s been a huge dearth of porn-related information on the World Wide Web, but thankfully forward-thinking individuals have figured out how to bring us smut, sex and all things of the prurient interests. It seems that the .com addresses have made it so difficult for pornography to make it way to the mainstream, so entrepreneurs designed what’s called the .xxx address to showcase specifically porn-related information.

In all seriousness, what’s interesting is the current debate over whether or not the inclusion of this address for online pornography will just provide an ability for companies and nations to just block the .xxx site completely, which will lead to x-rated content being pushed right back to the .com and whatever other addresses they can think of to circumvent the censors of various governments and private individuals.

However, what’s also significant to point out is that those who advocate pornography on the Internet are also quick to mention that by adopting the .xxx address feature, this will allow adult websites to operate in an area where they can circumvent a lot of the negativity that also tends to migrate aongside pornography sites, like trojans (be nice…you know what I mean), pop-ups and a lot of other illegal activity.

Years ago, when I was first designing web sites, back in the days when there weren’t a lot of web sites yet created, the first group that moved onto the World Wide Web was the adult industry. A few of my early clients were tied to that industry, ironically enough attracted to my work that I had done designing a few church sites (the porn people came from those churches, seeing the advantages of this new technology). Ever since those days, there has been a tendency for unsavory types of tag alongside the adult community (not necessarily because they were part of it), and it has been very difficult to separate such folk from those who were just interested in providing adult content without the illegal activities as well (the gangsterism, not the illegal stuff that is deemed bad because of moral beliefs).

Personally, I don’t see the .xxx feature being all that productive, as that industry is constantly mired in bad behavior from the lazy criminal elements that see it as easy money. Believe it or not, there are two groups of individuals who make up that industry, and quite often the good people who are just interested in providing material for consenting adults get overwhelmed by the illicit behaviors of those who are out to separate people from their money at any cost. Unfortunately, that unsavory element is the one that always provides a bad name for those who are not like that, and no matter what the good people do, they’re always tainted by the crap pulled by those who have no qualms about cheating, stealing and doing whatever it takes to make a fast buck.

It’s Amazing How Many Products Have High Fructose Corn Syrup in Them

Economics, Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
She's pretty and she's eating it, so it has to be healthy, right?

I recently changed my eating habits completely, cutting out any variation of high fructose corn syrup from my diet. Now, this isn’t a post to argue the merits or deficiencies of HFCS but just to point out how hard it is to cut it out if you decide that’s something you want to do.

Some years ago, Bill Maher had an interview with two legislators and some actor/commedian (or whatever the other person was), and they were talking about high fructose corn syrup. Maher was on his kick about how bad the stuff is for you, and the two legislators (one congressman and one senator, both from opposite parties) couldn’t bring themselves to critique it AT ALL. It was so obvious that both of them were so beholden to the corn lobby that nothing that was said during this interview even gave them the ability to say anything bad about it. Maher would talk about how it was contributing massively to obesity, and both of them responded with talking points about how great farmers are. It was surreal and almost too hard to even believe.

Fastforward a couple of years, and I’ve actually been trying to cut it out of my diet completely. First thing I did was go through my refrigerator and cupboards, looking for everything that had it in it. The obvious stuff, like candy, chips and all that kind of stuff, were easy to spot. Then I found it in stuff like Spaghetti O’s. So those went into the trash can, too. Went through the fridge and found it in strawberry jelly. Found it in pudding. Then I found it in Heinz ketchup. Swish; it went into the trash can as well.

The freezer found a few items that found their way to the trash can as well. Discovered marshmellow treats had it in it. Lost those.

The next day, I went out for groceries, and wow, it was in everything. Had to buy a different type of ketchup as Heinz had nothing but HFCS in all of the choices I could find. Ended up with Hunts Ketchup instead. Jelly was a nightmare to find something without HFCS in it. Every choice I looked at had it in it, unless I bought diet, and that then meant buying a product with aspartame (another argument completely). Then I actually found a brand that advertised that it had none in it. It used actual sugar.

Frozen foods were a problem. One of my favorite sets of frozen meals is made by Boston Market. Discovered their frozen food contains HFCS. Couldn’t buy any of my favorite dishes. Ran down the aisle and found a few other items I used to like to buy. Couldn’t buy those either. Ended up buying nothing in the frozen food aisle. Figured I’d have to start living on sandwiches.

As for sandwiches, discovered that a LOT of bread contains HFCS in it. So, finally found a brand called Aunt Sallie’s or something like that. Almost didn’t buy it because I once dated a girl named Sally who was kind of crazy. When we broke up, she sent me an itemized bill for $300, saying I owed her that much for everything she ever bought during our relationship, so I paid it and figured it was a bargain to actually get rid of her before she came back at me with a knife. Did I mention she was crazy? Anyway, bought a loaf of bread of the crazy ex-girlfriend’s brand that advertised no HFCS in it. Tasted like dirt. So a few days later had to go back to the store and buy another type of wheat bread from the same company (and threw the previous loaf of bread in the trash as there was no way I’d ever eat through that loaf of dirty-tasting bread). Fortunately, the second choice of bread I bought was much better tasting (and had no HFCS in it).

I’m still making the mistake of buying aspartame products, and even though I’m debating just turning to water products only, I haven’t made that sacrifice yet. It’s not about trying to lose weight, as my weight is fine, but just getting rid of specific things that are harming my body. I’m just not ready to lose my continuous supply of diet Dr Pepper.

So, that’s been my adventure in getting rid of HFCS products. It turned out to be a lot tougher than I imagined. At work, I used to eat french fries with my meals, but unfortunately the only ketchup available is Heinz, which definitely has HFCS, so I’ve switched to a BBQ potato chip that, according to the ingredients, doesn’t seem as harmful as what I have been eating. The real unfortunate thing is that I can no longer eat at any random fast food place because it’s really hard to tell what exactly is in the products they sell. I went to a couple of their web sites, and even though they claim to give their nutritional information, some of their reporting appears inconclusive, lacking in full disclosure and dubious at best. Therefore, I have to pretty much prepare everything I eat these days in order to not be fooled into purchasing and eating more harmful HFCS crap that they use because it’s much cheaper (and they don’t care one iota about their customers, no matter how much PR they use to pretend they do).

So, that’s my story, and hopefully I’ll live to tell more.

My Blueprint for Fixing the American Political System

Politics, , , , ,

One of the problems inherent in trying to fix the American political system is figuring out what’s wrong with it that needs fixing in the first place. Often, these arguments get bogged down in partisan politics that end up with someone claiming that getting rid of the other side, or something equally as ludicrous, is the solution. I’m not going to argue any of that nonsense. Instead, I would like to tackle this subject as objectively and as usefully as one can.

First, the political system in the United States is not broken. There. I said it. Which might make you think that this discussion should be over, and then we can all get back to our Dancing With the Stars and Lindsay Lohan meltdown watching. But no, there’s more that needs to be said here.

I’ll repeat: The political system in the United States is not broken. It works just as it was designed. This should not be surprising to anyone who understands politics. Political systems are designed to work in a certain way, and even the most corrupt systems are designed correctly. It’s what’s done with them that matters the most. And that’s where the problem with our system comes in.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The US system was not designed to work with this many people. It was the perfect system when we designed it because our government was really small. So was our population. But both have grown over the last two hundred years and some change so that our ability to do a lot of the things it was intended to do has diminished. When we first started, a member of Congress represented about 30,000 people. Today, a member of Congress represents about 703,0001 people. There have been no indications that anyone in government has any intentions of increasing the number of representatives, nor in addressing this particular issue. The main reason for this is because if more representatives were added, it would cut down on the power that current representatives yield. Asking a politician to give up power is like asking a child to give up his or her toys. It’s not going to happen.

And that’s where our problem starts. No one in government is willing to do anything about changing the problems, and I mean most problems, not just the first one listed here, because it would threaten their current bases of power.

So, let’s look at a few ideas I have for how we could make changes to make our system work, and then after I go through and tell you why it won’t happen, I’ll then address how we can actually make it happen, something no one seems to ever want to discuss. Unfortunately, most of these issues tend to get bogged down in the first two thoughts (what needs to be done and why no one will do it) and rarely do we entertain the actual process of how we can actually make it happen.

So, here we go.

1. Term limits. The biggest problem we have in government is the corruption of those who have the most power. The way to end the corruption is to remove people from the ability to overuse that power, especially for their own benefits. Term limits do just that. Why don’t we go there? Well, politicians who don’t want to lose power are very good at convincing people that the system stops working if their expertise is not involved. Yet, if a politician dies, a politician replaces that politician almost overnight. That argument has no merit whatsoever. What they’re really telling you is that they need you to believe they are expendible, but they’re not. Get rid of the incentive to pay off someone who is going to be in power for decades, and you end the ability for that person to become entrenched in a power base.

But that’s only a small start.

2. Lottery elections. Remove the elective influence of lobbyists, and you end their power forever. A lottery is a system where anyone can be chosen for a job. Politicians love to try to convince people that you need to have skill to be a politician. You don’t. Anyone can be one. That’s why the qualifications are so low. When we started this whole government, we put people into power who had very little political experience. Political experience is gained quickly once in office. Once you remove the throngs of politicians from the political mess, you no longer need experts capable of navigating through the mess because the mess disappears when the “other” politicians aren’t there to have to be cajoled to do what needs to be done. You don’t need an expert to maneuver through a series of amateurs if there are no longer political experts to have to worry about. Term limits eliminates the experts. Lottery elections make it so anyone can serve in government.

And that’s the important part. Serving in government should be a service, not an occupation.

3. More representatives. That should be a no brainer. As long as you don’t have people protecting power bases, you send more people to government to represent you better. Right now, my congressman has no clue about me, nor does he care. Nor will he care, even if I try to get him to care. I’m not already powerful, nor am I rich. Therefore, I am unimportant to him. That needs to change, but it won’t as long as we continue doing the things we’re doing. Being a representative should be like jury service, except it lasts for a few years. If you can’t afford to leave your occupation for a few years, you can take your name out of the election hat. Simple as that. Except, unlike juries, people tend to want to serve in government (which is why we have elections right now), so we’d probably actually have a lot more people willing to put their name in the hat. Well, let’s fix juries as the same time. If you want to serve in government, you also have to serve on juries. You don’t get out of one if you want to serve on the other. Might make the country a bit more interesting.

4. Change our system of government to that of proportional representation. Our winner take all system doesn’t work with so many people right now. We need proportional representation. We’re one of the only democracies, or representative democracies that doesn’t have PR. I find it pretty funny that when the US goes to a foreign country and helps them establish a new government (like we did with many Eastern European countries after the fall of communism, and during the Cold War itself after World War II), we almost always install a PR system, not our own. Why is this? Well, because ours is too complicated, and as diplomats have argued over the years, a winner take all system like ours is too easy to lead to corruption and dictatorship, or a dictatoral oligarchy (Aristotle’s aristocracy that has turned corrupt).

An interesting story, but when New Guinea was switching from a winner take all system to a PR system, they were suffering from horrific apathy of voting. After the switch, numbers that were in the 20 percentile, went up to the 90 percentile of voting participation. It dropped back down to the 80s and 70s, but that’s still well over twice the percentage we get in the US.

Okay, so what are the problems of converting to these simple little ways? Well, the people already in power today won’t do it. The two political parties say they represent the rest of us, but the second you threaten them with a potential loss of power, they argue that they are the true representatives and won’t even discuss it. PR is not even on their radar. Nor is lottery voting. If it threatens their power, they aren’t interested.

That’s why it will never happen by trying to install change from within.

This means you have several options for the future.

1. The first option is business as usual where nothing changes. People will continue to have less control over their political lives and will constantly be voting for the lesser of two evils. The only change that will ever take place is if some demagogue comes along and rallies the country to move in his or her direction. This is the kind of thing that has led to Hitlers and Mussolinis. Not really the best directions. It should be said that when you move towards a dictatorship, only two have ever really been considered enlightened and beneficial towards the people. One ended when the leader gave up government freely and went back to plowing his farm. The other never ended and led to dynasties that lasted nearly a thousand years, and the benefits were really only received by the aristocratic class anyway.

Without the dictatorship, things will continue to move forward as they are, and eventually the system will collapse through economic ruin. But if we’re lucky, it won’t happen in our lifetimes.

2. The second option is revolution which causes an immediate, violent change. I’m not a real advocate of this direction, although some revolutions, like the Velvet Revolution, were not very violent, but there’s no way to know how that’s going to happen until you let things run their course, and once a mob goes on its own, no one has control of it to keep it civil. So, you get whatever happens.

3. This is the option I think is probably the best, and that’s change through government. We have two ways of changing the Constitution, because in order to do anything of this magnitude, that’s what’s going to have to happen. One way is a constitutional amendment, but that requires getting those in power to actually change things. Probably not going to happen.

The other way is a constitutional convention, which is a huge gathering where everything is put on the table. With a huge grass roots movement that gains enough steam to call for one of these, the changes can happen. But this would be the only way to do it.

Unfortunately, there are two obvious problems. One, is that you don’t know that you’d have enough of a following to create the change you want, and the second is tied to the first in that a constitutional convention is a dangerous vehicle that might change things far more than you originally intended. We’ve only ever had one constitutional convention in this country, and that managed to completely change the government as we knew it (we used to be under the Articles of Confederation…the constitutional convention created our current system of government). So, you could be opening up a whole big can of worms.

But as things are right now, perhaps a new can of worms is exactly what is needed. To let things go on as they are is foolish.

But I suspect that’s exactly what we’ll do.

1(source: Reporternews.com)