The Bottom Line Vine

Ahh, it’s that special time of year again when we are blessed with bad Christmas sweaters, fruit cake, useless office gifts, 24/7 Christmas music and drunken office party antics. To help you, and your career survive this this festive season, I’ve put together a Holiday Survival Guide. Over the next few days I’ll be covering everything you need to know handle the holidays like an office hero.

Any press is good press right? Wrong! Making a complete spectacle out of yourself or your brand will get you attention, but is it the kind of attention you want. A well executed marketing stunt can put your company on the map… an ill-conceived one can result in embarrassment, trips to the unemployment office and even angry mobs.

Here are 10 of the most outrageous marketing stunts. 5 were killer campaigns that resulted in big wins for their respective companies and 5 were disastrous duds that left their marketing department saying “Whoops,’ or worse…

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Just about every one is well aquatinted with the words "Financial Crisis,"  yet despite round the clock news coverage and endless punditry, many of the people I talk with don’t fully grasp how this all happened. 

Here is a great guide I found over at Mint for those who still feel lost in the sea of economic jargon.  It’s not perfect… It over simplifies some factors and leaves others completely out but all in all this is a rather accurate and detailed account, laid out in an easy to digest chart…

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Phone based meetings just aren’t the same as physical meetings.  You lose that connection you make by looking the other person in the eye.  You lose the ability to read the other persons body language and facial expressions, and you lack the visual ability to visually demonstrate or explain something. 

Face to face meetings were not always practical depending on your budget, the nature of the meeting and obviously the distance involved, but now with current Internet connection speeds and video technologies, a virtual face to face is not only possible but it’s also practical. 

If you have half a million dollars to drop on you video conferencing you can consider Cisco’s TelePrescense… but if you don’t, don’t dismay, there are a number of tools that can help you meet, communicate and collaborate in a virtual face to face video chat…

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… or to the ER nurse.

Best case scenario, you and your business won’t ever run into a hard-to-work with customer, and you won’t ever make a mistake and you won’t ever fail to deliver on time no matter the circumstances. But as we all know, things happen. Things can range from harsh weather, a decimal point in the wrong place, an unmet deadline, to more serious problems such as an accidental breech in confidentiality, a major illness or even death in your company, or any number of reasons why you have an dissatisfied customer despite your best efforts.

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During a credit crunch you may find it hard to get new leases or to drum up the money for a large IT expenditure, but a slow economy may also work in your favor allowing you to get the equipment you need at a huge savings by buying refurbished.

When times are tough many companies cut surplus equipment. Some companies go under all together and their equipment gets liquidated. What that means is a good supply of good second hand equipment.

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From a Business Week editorial by Newt Gingrich…

“It’s time to declare the end of adolescence. As a social institution, it’s been a failure… Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation that has produced one of the most destructive social arrangements in human history: consigning 13-year-old males to learning from 15-year-old males.”

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This is a great example of leveraging mission critical enhanced value added dynamics to resynergize backwards overflow, penetrate proprietary emerging markets and to re-contextualize commoditized strategic platform based marketing jargon…

mmmm… Ribs

2 minute checkback

You’ve closed the deal. Your business has confirmation of payment and your products or services are now your customers’. Sure, it is nice to have profit after hard work, but then what? After the sale, check back with them to detect a level of satisfaction. Their satisfaction is directly correlated to their loyalty to you and your product. After that, it might be a good time to test the ‘referral waters’ and see if it is about the right time to connect with them.

The 2 Minute Checkback: Restaurant servers use this technique to improve their customer service- and their tips - by checking back with their customers within 2 minutes after the meal is served.

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