Bee’s Musings

If you’re into marketing - which, of course, I am - the <a href=”http://www.bzzagent.com//p/8460322192/brandicjohnson”>Church of the Customer</a> Blog is a good place to stop by on a regular basis. Their regular writers have spent years learning about customer evangelism, so if you spend a few minutes with them, you’re likely to learn quite a bit.

“It’s way more profitable to encourage each of your existing customers to spend $3 than it is to get a stranger to spend $300.” - Seth Godin

If only more marketers remembered that and used it when planning their campaigns.

What a great idea… A company in Tokyo is allowing employees to take paid time off to deal with the end of a relationship. Most people jsut call them sick days, or personal days, but I think most people have been guilty of doing this.

Read more about heartache leave - and a couple of other new days they should give us: WalletPop

If you’ve ever worked in Corporate America, known someone who worked in Corporate America, or watched a television show that featured someone who worked in Corporate America, chances are that you’ve heard some of the key words that float around, driving us to distraction. Now, Tom Stern from Fast Company has posted some of the most notorious phrases that should be banished from conference rooms, conference calls, and hallways around the nation.

Some of them are:
“Think outside the box” - One of the respondents had a great response that made me think. “What box? How can I think outside the box, when I’ve never even seen this box!?”
“Win-Win Situation” - Sure… we all like to win. But isn’t the rule we learn in this game of life that in order for someone to win, someone’s going to lose? Sure, maybe they don’t lose as much as they could, but its a loss, nonetheless.
“Mission Critical” - I don’t know when most of the industries that we work on became “critical”… but yes, keeping that report from being stuck in analysis paralysis is definitely mission critical.

Read more from Fast Company.

I don’t like fluorescent lights very much. I find that by the end of the day with them I have an unfortunate and unhappy headache. Plus since my office has 1 pane of window, I get some natural light which I much prefer over the fluorescents. So, when I moved into this office, I unscrewed the lightbulbs. (The thing you have to keep in mind here is that my office doesn’t just have a nice convenient light switch to use whenever my office is too dark. All of the offices in my suite, including the hallways are on the same switch. So every morning, on it goes.)

I’ve also kept the blinds to my window open. The windows were recently cleaned and I prefer an unadulterated view of the traffic at the intersection that’s outside my window. Some days I even get to watch firetrucks go by! (I’m too far away to see the firemen, however…) Since my window faces south, I don’t have to worry about blinding morning or afternoon sun. Just nice gentle
rays of sunshine to brighten my day.

When I got to work this morning, one of the florescent bulbs had been turned back on in my office, and my blinds were shut. My first impulse was to kick off my shoes and climb up on my desk and unscrew the damn thing. But, I decided to give it a chance. I also took it as a good reason to rearrange my office a bit. I moved my standing files off of my desk, and moved the bookshelf away from the window that looks into the hallway. I now get some more lovely florescent lighting, and I get to see who walks by. I’m a little excited to see what some of my friendly coworkers do now that they can make faces at me through a window too.

New day… new opportunity. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Dear Dirty Dishes,

You’ve been in the company sink for the last week, at least. You’re not getting washed. I don’t know who placed you there, perhaps in a hurry to get to a meeting, with good intentions to come back and wash you. Sadly, those intentions were not followed-through on, and there you sit, in your old-food slime.

I can’t bring myself to wash you. The most I do is run fresh water on you as I wash my own dishes, which live in my office. I wish that someone who placed you there would remember you, and come back and wash you. Preferably before you start growing mold or bugs. I admit, you gross me out a little. Something about the dirty dishes being there for days…weeks… the forgotten food particles slowly processing and changing into unrecognizable forms. It makes my stomach turn.

This isn’t the first time you’ve appeared. Do you know small glass baking pan? It was in the sink for 2+ weeks before I finally broke down and threw it away. I don’t want to give you that fate.

So dear, dear, dirty dishes. I sincerely hope that when I come back on Monday you’ll be cleaned and put away. If not… well… I may just have to avoid the company sinks for a while.

Sincerely,
B.

10 Ways to find creative new ideas - especially when you’re under the gun. (From Marketing Profs)
Read more

I made my first trip to NYC this week. I wasn’t there long enough to see much of anything, just my hotel, and the 8 blocks between my hotel and the office. It was definitely an eye-opening experience, both in terms of how the newly merged company works, and about NYC.

I stayed in Manhattan - the Chelsea area, I guess you’d say. On 24th between 7th and 8th. I listened to some shoe salesman when he said “You’re not going to go schlepping around Manhattan in those, are you?” So I wore these cute, comfortable heels. Cute, comfortable heels that transformed my little toe into a giant blister. Honestly, the blister was almost as big as the toe itself. On the second day, you’d better believe I schlepped around Manhattan in my tried and true Chacos.

The thing that I didn’t expect about NYC, but should have, was simply how dirty the city was. Nicola told me that every day is trash day - and she certainly was right. Every 30 feet there were stacks of trashbags on the sidewalk. I never did see a trash truck out collecting them though. She pointed at one stack and said “In that garbage, there are probably 5-10 infectious diseases.” I pulled the Purell out of my purse right that second.

I’m sure there are beautiful parts of NYC. Interesting things that I didn’t see. Parts that actually look like scenes from Sex in the City. I’m sure I’d have more fun if I were there with a friend or two, seeing the sites, and taking pictures. But for the 2-3 days that I was there, I was just more than happy to get home.

I spent most of this week in Scottsdale, Arizona at a sales meeting. Now I typically don’t look forward to those types of things, because I’m not on the sales staff, and I find myself tuning out as they talk about print marketshare. (OK, maybe not print marketshare. I think marketshare is interesting - I used to work with that a lot… but you get the point.)

Instead of dreading this trip, I tried to go into it with an open-mind, looking at the value I could get out of it. And that value was building relationships with my co-workers from around the country. Its so much easier to support people when you actually *know* them. When you know that their daughter’s birthday is 2 days after your own, or how they met their wife. We’re all just people, and the more I can help each of them succeed individually, the more our company will succeed as a whole.

Other things I learned in Scottsdale:

So, I had a random, small happy moment today. I logged into my Google documents (where all kinds of things are stored, from my personal to-read lists and quote collections to our online inventory spreadsheet for work), and discovered that Google Docs got a facelift!

Since I use Google Docs a fair amount, their changes were nice. Now, instead of using “tags” I can organize my documents and spreadsheets into folders. It makes a lot more sense to a PC user like me. Even the icons are cuter.

Thanks Google, for a little happy moment in my day.

Read more at the Official Google Docs & Spreadsheet Blog.