When it comes to customer service, everyone talks a good game. But Amazon delivered — even when the Post office didn’t. Brief recap: An Amazon customer’s purchases were shipped, but lost en route by the Post Office. Amazon not only replaced the packages, but upgraded the shipping to one day delivery so it would arrive …
Clash of the Branding Titans
In this corner… Apple’s iPhone. High-status. Prestige. Pricey. And in this corner… Wal-Mart. Low price leader. Low status. Place to buy commodities and cheap bargains. If the gossip is true and Apple starts selling iPhones in Wal-Mart stores, possibly (but not likely) for $99, what happens next? What happens when these two powerful brands meet? …
Hubris trips BLEEPING Blagojevich
It had to happen. Illinois’ vacant Senate seat is now up for bid on eBay — just as it was in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office. Of course, the bleeping bigmouth may be too bleeping busy to handle the transaction himself. As one of the funnier auction listings warns, “Please be advised I will be away …
Writing is easy. Unless, of course, someone has to read it.
An Australian study has found that txtngs fstr till sum1 trys 2 rd it. Um, I think they mean that using abbreviations and shorthand makes it much faster to write text messages — but twice as long for the poor recipient to read and understand them. Writing can be a lot of fun. That’s why …
Have I got a car (or two) for you
How bad is the auto business? So bad that a dealer in Europe is offering two-for-one: Buy one car, get a second one free. How can he afford it? Distributors in southern Europe have been so desperate to get cars off their lots that they were selling them at huge discounts. From a marketing standpoint, …
The most powerful form of advertising…
The most powerful form of advertising is being exceptional, says a technologist quoted in Sunday’s NY Times. He’s talking about Google, of course, by far the most innovative and exceptional company of the past decade. Columnist David Carr’s love letter to the search giant rhapsodizes about the quality and ease of use of company’s many …
Are you annoying people when you speak?
We all do it. We spout shopworn cliches and mindless crutch phrases that make our victims listeners roll their eyes and grind their teeth. Cliches are just as bad in the written word, of course. But at least a reader can turn the page and skip over them. But when you’re in a business meeting …