Best Practices Not Included

Paper or........

It was bound to happen eventually, but Kudos to Whole Foods for being a leader on this one.  Today Whole Foods announced that they will be eliminating the use of plastic bags in all of their 270 stores.  The company has committed to reaching this goal by April 22, which I might add is Earth Day for all of you keeping score at home.  It's been interesting to watch consumer perceptions change in recent years.  I'm only 22 years old, but I can positively remember an older time when this move would have been called a mistake by analysts and the general public would have been laughing.  Other domestic retailers will surely follow this trend as many retailers in Australia and China have also made commitments to stop using plastic.  Because of concerns over environmental impact, governments will without a doubt continue to crack down and eliminate plastics when it's feasible.  For this reason, Whole Foods efforts will continue to yield the organization competitive advantages in the retail sector.  Ingrained in Whole Foods core values has been caring  for the environment and localized community.  The company has said they will continue to offer 100%  recycled paper grocery bags.  However, I have to believe the company is hoping shoppers will bring their own reusable bags.  One thing is for sure, while these are only small steps towards a more eco-friendly society, we will continue to see major cultural attitude shifts when it comes to the environment and how we interact and co-exist with the planet at large.

Company or Cult?

Alright, I'll be the first to admit that as much as I love Apple, I'm getting pretty sick of hearing people talk about the iPhone. So what am I going to do? I think I'll talk some more about the iPhone. I was going to refrain but over the last week, it has just been unbelievable how all things iPhone completely penetrated my life. Not sure if everyone else had similair experiences? Maybe I was just seeking out the hype? But, what we all witnessed is only further evidence at how powerful a tool marketing can be. That said, there is no other company on the planet that could even come close to pulling off what Apple's been able to do with everything iPhone marketing in the campaign's entireity. Apple set the bar pretty high with it's message regarding the iPhone. Steve Jobs was vocal about how he believed the device will change the entire phone industry. That's an incredible claim, and while this change will certainly not take place over night, we will begin to see some significant changes in the telecom industry regardless of Apple's entrance into this highly competitive market.

Prior to launch, there was a lot of speculation at how things would go down. We all knew it would be memorable and that's what sets Apple apart from every other technology company. It's the culture! For the most part, Apple delivers on experience! As much as this product has been hyped, being touted as the "Jesus phone" among other hubris claims, the reviews have come in and the concensous seems to be that Apple, if not delivering on all things promised, has come extremely close.

Aside from the success that Apple's achieved with it's launch, it's also important to note some of the failures. I heard about the compatibility issues with 64 bit Vista that frusterated a few folks. Even though Vista has been a collosal failure, especially compatibility wise, Apple should of had this under control. But all in all, this was minute compared to the stories about the horrible customer experience at AT&T. This should have been predicted. Maybe it was? Apparently, AT&T was forcing people that wanted to buy an iPhone to also purchase accessories. They were bundling it together and would not let people buy solely the iPhone like you could over at any Apple store. Mistake, Mistake, Mistake. AT&T is probably still wondering why all the lines were in front of Apple stores and not Cingular ones. More info about this can be found over at Gizmodo. It's stuff like this that still has me wondering why Apple went exclusive with AT&T? Obviously, AT&T probably offered them the most money, but at the same time AT&T will only hurt Apple's proven track record damaging the brand along the way.

Lastly, check out this video from the iPhone launch at 6pm right outside the Palo Alto Apple store. This kind of loyalty is one that any company would only dream to having. Indeed, we lived through what might have been the biggest product launch in history.

Spring Break!

I havn't posted in a while but finals are finally over as I just put the wrap on another quarter of school. I'm currently back at home spending the next few days with my parents on the Peninsula. It's nice to be on break and taking it easy. Many of my friends are traveling to the warmer and drier parts of the globe and I must say that I am a little jealous that the Sun is not here to soak up in Washington. I came across some Spring break statistics today. According to Media Central, Inc. regardless of age, 97 percent of college students are likely to drink over spring break. In addition, this same source reports that while on Spring break, males drink an average of 18 drinks per day, while females drink 10 per day. Further, The American Medical Association (AMA) reports that 50 percent of males and 40 percent of females drink until they vomit or pass out at least once during their vacation. Wow. I'd like to be able  to say that this is surprising to me but I'm afraid I would have expected it. Just in the last 10 years, Spring break has become a marketing phenomenon. I wish I had some stats on how much money college students spend during the Spring break season (if some one has any email me), but I can confidently say that total Spring break expenditures of college students have grown significantly in the past decade.  None the less, as I'm sitting here typing and thinking about all the people I know who are out and becoming a statistic, I know we've all heard this before but, I hope everyone is drinking responsibly, making smart decisions and most importantly having a good time.

How True Is This!

Joseph Jaffe is in the process of writing his second book titled "Join The Conversation". It should be out sometime in September. Jaffe decided to have a cover design contest for his book. You can also join the conversation and pick your favorite cover. This is the cover I voted for. Right now I'm the only one who's voted for it. You can see the results here. But I voted for this cover because it has significance in the place I'm currently at. How true is this! Being in the business school, and the marketing program more specifically, it used to amuse me but now I'm getting nothing short of pissed off at how disconnected some teachers are with reality. Lets be honest, some of these teachers  in the business school have never had real jobs and it reflects in their curriculum. Why are they still talking at us with their theories, models and principles; or trying to shove everything into a metric or something linear. Is this education? No, it's definetly not. True education just like new marketing is conversation. Some teachers try to create conversation but they fail misserably and it's cause they are asking the wrong questions about the wrong content. Every quarter I keep think it will get better but there always seems to be a few classes that are just a joke. For example, no one cares about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the ABC Model of Attributes, 5 Factor Theory of Personality or the infamous 4 P's of marketing. We all know there is no application to any of this. What if my employer asked me to develop a marketing strategy or campaign? What am I going to do, busted out my college text books and apply some of the stuff in there? I'd get laughed at and probably fired for incompetence. Teachers need to speak from real world experience and talk about current issues. I didn't decide to major in business or more specifically marketing because I wanted to learn about history. Last time I checked that's why colleges have history departments. Institutions need to be forward thinking and if teachers can't incorporate this philosophy into their classes and/or can't speak from true business experience because they've had very little or none at all, then they shouldn't be teaching. A PhD means nothing and it's one fucking shame that WWU's business school, to make itself look more "qualified" from an evaluation stand point, laid off almost all of its professors who only had MBA's and not PhD's. In addition, weren't most of these professors teaching here in the first place not because they had the most advanced degreee but because they had a lot of real world experience? Education within the institution as we know it needs to change. I've learned more about marketing from the free resources in reading blogs and listening to podcasts then from the "education" my parents have thus far been paying thousands of dollars to WWU for. Final thought: with the internet as developed as it is and our ability to connect with others who have very narrow and focused interests, from a learning standpoint, do we really need the institution anymore? It used to make total sense in bringing the human and informational resources together from geographically dispersed area's; but the college in its present state, if it hasn't already outlived its usefulness, in time, it surely will.

Campaign For Real Beauty

I'm sure many people have been exposed to Dove's "Real Beauty" Campaign. I think this is a very interesting marketing campaign. It started following the results of a worldwide study showing that out of 3,300 female respondents, only 2% of these women could comfortably describe themselves as beautiful. We've known for years that the fashion and cosmetic industry have masked models in pounds of makeup and tediously using photoshop, they've created an unattainable representation of what beauty is. For those of you who havn't seen this video, it's a little shocking! It caught me off guard; I had no idea that makeup artists and editors went through that much trouble conjuring up these models just to create an advertisement. I think the reality is that our perception of beauty is warped if the images we are modeling ourselves after are this fabricated. Just like the study that preluded this campaign, why is it that we are so unhappy with our physical appearances? Dove has definetly capitalized on that point and as a result people seem to be connecting with this campaign. Part of the campaign also included billboards with pictures of "real" women wearing white underwear. The billboards had phone numbers in which people could call in and express their 'fab' or 'fat' opinions as to the "beauty" of the models. In addition, the results were posted real time on the billboards. 'Fat' eventually won. It amazes me how powerful of a tool marketing is, especially when you think about some of the discrepancies that were occurring in not only in Dove's product line but in the advertisements with the "Real Beauties" themselves (i.e. anti aging and cellulite lotions). It was risky for Dove to try and overcoming that kind of diametric, but the success of the campaign is evidence that as consumers, the joke's not on us anymore.