Monday Night Marketing News

Check out the goodwill efforts by U-Haul:

Automotive

Despite Sponsorship Cuts, Ford Sticks With Keith

by Karl Greenberg

Kevin Schebil, manager of Ford truck communications, says the automaker has a presence at each of Keith’s 40 to 60 shows a year. “But times have changed and we need to do things smarter; everyone’s running off of a tight budget,” he says. “At the end of last year, given everything going on in the auto industry, we looked at all sponsorships, including Keith. But that sponsorship is at the core of who our consumer is so we decided to figure out how to do it better.” … Read the whole story > >

Retail

Toy Purchases: Little Room For Impulse Buys

by Sarah Mahoney

“A lot of purchases happen for a gift-giving occasion like Christmas and birthdays, and parents do put thought into planning what they’re going to buy because they really want to make their children happy,” says Anita Frazier, NPD’s industry analyst for toys and games. “The economy is no doubt playing into it as well because when money gets tight, you definitely want to get it right and not buy the wrong thing.” … Read the whole story > >

Restaurants

New Popeyes Commercials Introduce Wings

by Karlene Lukovitz

The campaign includes 15- and 30-second TV spots and a 60-second radio spot featuring “Annie the Chicken Queen,” a fictional Popeyes chef with a down-home, straight-talking manner who became the chain’s spokesperson in late March. The new commercials, which will run through September on key national cable networks, have English and Spanish versions. … Read the whole story > >

Mobile

N.Y. Toy Store Mobilizes A Scavenger Hunt

by Karl Greenberg

The small New York firm is using a digital idea that is big in Japan to get people engaged in a lighthearted way with the Kidrobot brand: QR codes. The codes are central to Kidrobot’s five-day scavenger-hunt in New York City called “Dunny Hunt.” The effort, highlighting Kidrobot’s 2009 Dunny Series of toys, requires participants to use their smartphones to scan QR codes on Kidrobot promotional items hidden around town. … Read the whole story > >

Media

Peacock Struts ‘Colorful’ Campaign

by Wayne Friedman

NBC will be adding a subtle two-word marketing tweak to its fall promo efforts: More Colorful. The aim is to broaden the appeal of its longtime rainbow-colored NBC peacock icon and all that it represents. … Read the whole story > >

U-Haul Offers Free Storage To Wildfire Refugees

Papa Murphy’s Sweeps Builds Loyalty Club

Timberland Steps Out Of The Woods, Hits Fifth Avenue

Marketing Guru’s on Twitter

Donna Scott wrote this for Collective Wisdom.

You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScLoHo

12 Social Media Marketing Gurus to Follow on Twitter

If you’re a blogger, entrepreneur or just someone who’s looking to build your following with social media, there are a lot of web resources available to you to help you beat the competition. You’ll find news articles and blog posts devoted to social media marketing, but if you really want to find out the best secrets to building your brand and attracting online attention, why not head to social media sites themselves? The real experts share their tips on Twitter, and by following these 12 social media marketing gurus, you’ll receive a constant, daily stream of advice.

1. @GuyKawasaki: Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop, a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine, a former Apple fellow and the author of nine books. Follow Guy’s stream for insightful tips for using Twitter and the Internet as strategic marketing tools.

2. @Mashable: Mashable founder Pete Cashmore is on top of all kinds of technology trends and frequently shares links and tips that help out everyday entrepreneurs, designers, writers and other freelancers who depend on social media for business.

3. @Engagingbrand: Anna Framery is a UK-based social media expert who tweets news stories about social media companies as well as social networking techniques of the pros.

4. @CarlosHernandez: Carlos Hernandez is helping baby boomers get used to social media. He shares lots of practical advice for networking, hacking social media sites so that they work best for your needs, and more.

5. @mediaphyter: The mediaphyter is really Jennifer Leggio, social business blogger for ZDNet.

6. @Scobleizer: Robert Scoble tweets from California about social media and Twitter in particular.

7. @chrisbrogan: Follow Chris Brogan if you want to see an example of effective Twitter networking.

8. @dwestjr: Daulton West, Jr.’s feed is supremely devoted to sharing Facebook, Twitter and other social media tips to boost your business.

9. @ev: This feed comes from the CEO of Twitter.

10. @ChadALevitt: This young sales 2.0 author and social media guru has tips for tweaking your business and marketing plan to keep up with the techie revolution.

11. @charleneli: Charlene is the founder of the Altimeter Group, and she has advice for business leaders who want to learn how to use social media.

12. @SocialMediaWonk: Drew Selman is a self-proclaimed social media evangelist.

This post was contributed by Donna Scott, who writes about the online bachelor’s degree. She welcomes your feedback at DonnaScott9929 @yahoo.com

Gender Differences and the Economy

As a guy who is married, I know the influence that women have on the rest of us.

As an advertising/marketing/sales person who has studied and taught marketing and sales concepts, I know the influence women have on the rest of us.

Speaking in generalities, men have a tendency to go out and conquer; women tend to protect and care for.

That explains the following report from AdAge.com:

Survey: Women More Pessimistic Than Men on the Economy

Gloom Among Chief Purchasers Bodes Ill for Consumer Spending

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: August 27, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — For a majority of women, the glass is still half empty — and for marketers that could be tough to swallow.

Even though they have arguably fared better in the recession, women are more pessimistic about the economy than men, according to a 300-person survey by Performics, part of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center. While men appear to have improved their outlook on the economy, women have not.

The unit’s “2009 Online Buyer Economic Trend Study” reported that 53% of women said their situation is worse than a year ago. By contrast, only 38% of men said they are worse off than a year ago. In April, when Performics posed those same questions, 53% of both genders said they were worse off.

Women More Pessimistic Than Men About Economy

The trend is interesting, considering unemployment among women is more than two percentage points lower than it is for men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Men, by many accounts, have born the brunt of the job cuts.

But the divergence is more eye-opening when you consider the rule of thumb that women are responsible for more than 80% of household spending. And that “chief purchaser” role may actually be contributing to the pessimism.

Reduced household budgets
“In this down economy, household financial situations are negatively impacted by lower incomes, no raises, no bonuses and, in some cases, unemployment,” Michael Kahn, senior VP-marketing at Performics, said in an e-mail interview. “Given that women are the primary purchaser in many — if not most — households, they may bear the brunt of having to watch dollars more carefully and make a reduced household budget work. This applies not only for a two-income household but a single-income household as well.”

What’s more, 73% of women said the recession has fundamentally changed the way they think about saving and spending money vs. 57% of men.

But there might also be another explanation, said Marti Barletta, the author of “Marketing to Women” and CEO of TrendSight Group. She said she’s not surprised to see women are more pessimistic, because they just tend to be so.

Women’s overall pessimism likely signals that consumer spending isn’t going to return yet. And if women remain gloomy, the implications go beyond marketing. Ms. Barletta said women, thanks to their purchasing power, are a group the government needs to worry about as well, because they hold the key to consumer spending.

“If we can’t get women to feel more hopeful and confident about the future, it’s going to have significant implications,” she said.

The right messaging
From a messaging perspective, she said marketers should address women “not as pessimists but as rationalists.”

“The optimistic message [from marketers], all the ‘You deserve it’ stuff, is completely wrong right now,” she said. “What is right is saying, ‘You’re smart. You can handle this. You can make the right decisions, and here’s how we can help.'”

Mr. Kahn also said marketers should “reinforce value and use budget-friendly messaging in [the] marketing mix.” They should “focus on the ‘essential’ aspects of a product as appropriate. He also suggested advertisers “utilize ad copy and visuals that reinforce the basic needs a product fulfills.”

According to the survey results, 55% of women expect to spend less in the next 60 days, vs. 37% of men. And 41% of women expect to spend less on household essentials in that time period, up from 34% in April.

The study also noted regional differences in spending expectations and attitudes: The Southwest was by far the most optimistic region, with 32% of respondents reporting that they are better off than a year ago. That was followed by Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, at 16%, the Southeast at 14%, the Midwest at 9% and the West at 7%.

Sweet Spots

from Skip Anderson:

The Sweet Spot of Selling

Salespeople will have the most opportunity to influence decisions with those who are “on the fence.” These are the prospects that could go either way and either become a buyer or not become a buyer.

Many salespeople waste time and energy on prospects who are at either end of the “likely to buy / not likely to buy” spectrum instead of those in the center (what I call the “sweet spot”). But this is a strategic sales error for most sales situations. Fence-sitters are the prospects that give a salesperson an opportunity for a high performance sales career. A weaker salesperson will focus on the hard-to-sell types, or the buy-for-sure types. But this is a miscalculation that has limited sales results for many.

We only have limited time and resources. Therefore, we have to spend our influence time on those that are most likely to reap sales results. The “very likely to buy” crowd will take care of themselves and usually require minimal energy and resources from a sales representative. The “not likely to buy” group can suck the life out of a sales career.

Do you want to be influential with your prospects? Spend your time and energy in the sweet spot of selling.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, and the financial, real estate, and insurance markets.

Classic Ad of the Week

If it was Jello, it wouldn’t snap.

11 Marketing Blunders

From 60 second online University:

11 Marketing Blunders You Can Avoid

By Joel Sussman

President, Optimal Marketing Communications

Readers: Joel Sussman offers some marketing insight and some practical advice for businesses both large and small. We’d love to hear back from you – what marketing blunders have you made that others should avoid?

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Marketing blunders can cost a business thousands (if not millions) of dollars — or they can sometimes just be responsible for a minor setback; but one thing’s for sure about marketing blunders: most of them are preventable. Here are eleven of some of the most common marketing blunders that are committed:

Marketing blunder #1: Using an untested advertising message or concept on an expensive print, broadcast, or pay-per-click campaign.

Marketing blunder #2: Trying to sell your products and services to everyone and their brother, rather than directing your marketing message to a targeted audience.

Marketing blunder #3: One of the most pervasive marketing blunders in the business world is being too passive. In ads, that translates into not having any ‘calls to action.’ In direct sales, that means not asking for the sale. If your sales letters, flyers, brochures, and ads are producing no results, the reason might be that they’re boring, poorly laid out, or offer the prospect no solid reason to take action. Some sales letters and ads don’t even tell the prospect specifically what they should do to respond to the offer: call, visit, log-in, or whatever.

Marketing blunder #4: Another common marketing blunder is not staying competitive. If your competition is doing TV advertising or newspaper advertising or coupon distribution, then you might want to seriously consider whether those forms of marketing would benefit your business. Whether it would realistically fit into your budget is, of course, another question which must be carefully weighed….

Marketing blunder #5: A marketing error which is rampant throughout the business community is attempting to create an effective ad, brochure, or web site by yourself. Unless you’re an experienced copywriter and/or graphic designer, you’re setting yourself up for failure by attempting a DYI approach. The possibilities for committed a major marketing blunder are immense. In the vast majority of cases, you’ll save yourself disappointment, wasted money, and lost opportunities by hiring a competent marketing professional.

Marketing blunder #6: An all-too-frequent marketing blunder that will condemn a small business to mediocrity or failure is not taking the time to develop what’s called a ‘unique selling proposition.’ If you don’t offer customers and prospects one or more distinctive reasons to choose your company over the competition, you can be sure they won’t feel compelled to try your products and services.

Marketing blunders #7: One of the biggest marketing mistakes businesses of all sizes make is to focus their marketing message on what a magnificent company they are, how many awards they’ve won, and how much they’ve grown over the past few years. While that’s all well and good, and there’s certainly a place and time to brag a little bit — the reality of the situation is that customers are really only interested in one thing: “How is this product or service going to make my life better?” (What’s in it for ME?) The reason they’re considering your product or service is because they want you to solve a problem, make their life easier, improve their quality of living, make their lives more secure and safer, help bring more admiration or love into their experience, or increase their enjoyment of life. If you can help them imagine or visualize the benefits that may accompany the use of your product or service, then your powers of persuasion will have multiplied exponentially.

As sales and advertising pioneer Elmer Wheeler once said, “Sell the sizzle, NOT the steak”. In other words, help your prospects imagine the enjoyment they’ll experience or the benefits of your product or service that they’ll receive, rather than just telling them about the dimensions, weight, color, size, functions, or other features.

Marketing blunders #8: The ‘dot com bust’ of several years ago seems like ancient history, but those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. One of the great marketing blunders of our generation, as illustrated by the series of dot-com failures at the turn of the millennium, was the practice of spending obscene amounts of money on advertising and unrestrained growth, despite that fact that it violated the principles of traditional business wisdom. Slow, steady, gradual growth is a strategy that has lifted many a small business to the top of the heap.

Marketing blunders #9: Ignoring the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle can be a fatal marketing blunder for small businesses. Being visible can mean anything from making sure that your web site can be found on the search engines (through SEO) to emailing a well written press release to the appropriate media to help keep your business name before the public.

Marketing blunders #10: Since loyal, repeat customers are one of the cornerstones of a profitable, growing business, then why do many business owners ignore or forget about their existing or past customers? In the rush to find new clients and to continually sign up new accounts, do you ever find yourself looking past the low-hanging fruit? Not asking for referrals from satisfied customers or developing a referral incentive program could be standing in the way of more sales, higher profits, and increased revenue.

Marketing blunder #11: The road to small business failure is paved with a negative attitude and a closed mind! Just because a marketing method didn’t work in the past doesn’t mean you can’t pinpoint what went wrong and give it another try. Sometimes changing the headline of an ad or including a testimonial of a satisfied customer or hiring a professional copywriter to devise a harder hitting message can make the difference between success and failure. Before giving up on a marketing idea, ask yourself “What can we do differently to make this work?”

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©Joel Sussman; reprinted with permission. Click for more marketing strategies from Joel Sussman.

The Trust Factor

From Drews blog a couple days ago:

Are you making or breaking trust in your marketing? (Vanessa Hall)

Posted: 28 Aug 2009 06:27 AM PDT

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet a thought leader who shares her insights every day. So without further ado…Vanessa Hall. Again. Enjoy!

Vanessa has made a special offer for readers of this blog: Download the 7 truths every marketing and branding person needs to know ebook by clicking here.

In marketing your products and services you have the power to make or break trust. The reality is you are doing most of it inadvertently.

Imagine if you could actually build trust deliberately with your target market? Here are 7 key things that you need to know about trust:

1. Marketing is a maker or breaker of trust

Trust is fundamentally our ability to rely on people, organisations, products and/or services to deliver an outcome to us.

Marketing creates Expectations in the minds of the market, taps into their Needs, and makes a heap of Promises both implicitly and explicitly. It’s on these three things, what I call ENPs®, that your customers trust. It’s what they rely on.

Meet ENPs and you have their trust. Break them and you lose their trust.

2. Their Expectations of you may have nothing to do with you.

Expectations come from lots of different places. While you can use your marketing to create Expectations, if you are in an industry that gets hammered in the media (eg Banking), they already have Expectations of you that have nothing to do with you and everything to do with what other people tell them.

3. You must know your market’s needs

Your market has basic Needs for survival, for safety and security, for love and belonging, for esteem and respect, and for creativity and freedom. Good old Maslow1 is hard to go by when we look at Needs, and marketers are aware of these.

Most people are driven by one core Need in most of their buying and relationship decisions across the board.

Know what your market’s Needs are, and meet them.

4. Your implicit Promises will catch you out

You make a lot of Promises in your marketing. Promises can be explicit or implicit. The explicit ones are usually the ones that everyone knows about, and that your organisation will, most times, back you up on.

But the implicit, suggested ones, like ‘everyone smiles in our store’ (because on the ad everyone looks friendly and happy), are the ones that catch you out.

When your customers or potential customers don’t experience what was implied to them, they don’t even bother complaining, but they don’t buy, either!

5. You cannot do it alone

Too many times I’ve seen great marketing and branding fall flat because the rest of the organisation didn’t back it up. ‘We put weeks into that campaign. We had a significant increase in enquiries, but *&%$# customer service let us down.’

You have to all work together. The customer doesn’t care who in the organisation was to blame. You’ve just broken their trust.

Work with sales, back office, customer service, whoever needs to deliver on the ENPs you’ve just put out to the market.

6. ENPs = ROI

Meet the Expectations and Needs of your market, and keep the Promises you make to them and you WILL improve your ROI. It IS as simple as that!

7. You must have trust if you’re going to extend your brand

Seriously, don’t even bother trying to create a brand extension if you have not secured the trust of your market. When your customers truly trust you, they’ll buy it without too much convincing (as long as you still meet their ENPs). You don’t have to spend as much on your marketing if you have their trust.

Trust is powerful, but it’s also fragile. Get it right, and enjoy the results!

Vanessa Hall is one of the world’s leading experts on trust. Her practical models for trust are gaining global acclaim. She’s as passionate as they come, loves speaking and writing about trust, but most of all, loves watching the amazing results her work has on organisations, individuals and communities around the world.

The truth about trust in business – How to enrich the bottom line, improve retention and build valuable relationships for success is available now in the US.

Closing, Part 2

from Craig Garber:

If you make your living by selling, this may be the most
important piece of information you read this year.

Recently I mentioned how if you’re selling results,
solutions, and end benefits — instead of “all the things
you do” — your customers will hear you loud and clear and
they’ll want what you’re offering.

But what about “closing” the deal? For many people, closing
is one of the toughest things to do, and in print, it’s
even harder to close than in person.

So let me give you some insight here, because a lot of your
closing skills has to do with how you look at closing, to
begin with.

First, in order to understand where I’m going with this,
let’s take a look at “closing,” away from your business.
Let’s look at some other types of closing, in real-life
scenarios.

For instance, let’s say a man’s out on a date with a woman
he’s very attracted to. It can even be his wife, if you
want. Anyway, chances are outstanding, from the time he
sits down at the dinner table to the time he looks over at
the waiter and says, “Check, please…” for the lion’s
share of that time, this fellow’s going to be thinking
about one thing, and one thing only: having sex with that
woman.

In fact, in many situations, it won’t just be the lion’s
share of the time, it may be almost 100% of the time.

If you’re a woman, I realize hearing this might come as a
shock to you, but trust me, as sure as the sun rises in the
east and sets in the west… this too, is 100% accurate.

See, for the guy, having relations is akin to “closing the
deal,” as it relates to this dinner. And rest assured,
this absolutely does NOT mean this guy’s a bad person. He
can be a very loving husband or boyfriend, who’s an
incredibly supportive partner. That’s just the way it is,
for guys. And, it’s why women are more complex and
smarter.

But don’t get all caught up in the morality of things here.
I want you to understand how to close a deal, so stay with
me on this.

O.K.?

Good.

Now let’s take another, completely different situation. An
attentive 11th grade student is sitting in his biology
class, and the teacher wants to get him to do some homework
that evening, so he’ll be prepared for his upcoming quiz
the following day.

In this situation, getting the student to do his homework,
is the teachers “close.”

Right?

So here we are, with two completely different situations,
two completely different “closes.”

And now let me explain where I’m going with all this stuff.

Appreciate there’s no way the guy out on the date is going
to get lucky by rambling on about nothing all night long,
and then right after dessert comes, he suddenly turns
around to his beautiful date and says:

“Honey… but wait, there’s more! If you act right now,
you’ll get to make hot monkey love with me in exactly
forty-five minutes. And… because we’ve had such a
wonderful time together, I PROMISE to last more than 11
seconds tonight. But… like I said, you MUST act right
now to get in on this deal!”

Similarly, there’s no way the biology teacher is going to
get ANYONE to do any homework, if she walks into class and
says, “Students, for the next 45 minutes I’m going to
lecture you on Darwin’s theory. Most of the material we
will be learning is completely irrelevant and I want you to
know, you probably won’t ever even think about even one
thing I say in today’s class, ever again. Then, tonight I
want you to read 75 pages of related text in your biology
textbook. This, too, is irrelevant.”

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Are you starting to understand why people have such a big
problem with closing?

You see, good sales closings and good sales closes don’t
stand alone. They’re very intertwined with your entire
sales pitch. In fact, good sales closing is based on a few
specific things:

First, it’s based on consent. I don’t care how good a sales
person you are, you’re not going to get anyone to do
anything they don’t WANT to do. In case you haven’t
noticed, people are stubborn, and they’re REALLY stubborn
when it comes to their money. So if closing — on
anything, doesn’t matter what you’re selling — is more
important to you than it is to your prospect… forget it,
you’re done. No dice, and no deal.

Second, closing isn’t a mutually exclusive thing you do once
and get it over with, like a vasectomy, or… like visiting
your mother-in-law.

A good closer doesn’t wait until the end of the deal to
close. In fact, a good closer is closing throughout his
sales pitch, and he’s doing it in such a way his prospect
doesn’t even know he’s being closed. And that’s because a
good closer genuinely cares about what he’s doing, and he
cares that his buyers are getting value. So he closes by
focusing on the value and the pride of ownership in his
work — not, “getting the money.”

And lastly, a good close is set up right from the get-go,
with lots of planning and forethought involved.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to actually do each of these
things in print. And don’t worry, it’s a LOT easier than
you think.

What’s hard is NOT using these strategies and doing what
you’re doing now. When you do it the way you’re doing it
now, you get the same results the guy who was out on the
date gets… or, the results the gruff teacher gets — you
wind up very frustrated and absolutely nothing goes your
way.

I’ll show you tomorrow, exactly what I mean.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Right Now, Accept TWO FREE Copies Of The Most
Cutting-Edge Offline Direct Response Marketing Newsletter,
Along With These 18 FREE Audio CD’s, DVD’s, And Live Swipe
File Sales Letters… Worth Over $3,632 Dollars at
http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

***

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three free chapters of my newest book at
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higher conversions… proven marketing strategies, no
nonsense. Now get two issues free at
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Give to Get

From Mediapost yesterday:

Support The Lesser-Known Youth Causes

There is no doubt that today’s brands need to think about giving back to the community, and there is no better way to do this than by aligning your brand and employees with a worthy cause. Research conducted by Youth Pulse Insights tells us that slightly more than two out of five (41%) college students think that brands “definitely should” support causes.

Brands looking to build a cause-marketing stance should proceed with caution, however. Tying yourself to a cause involves more than swinging a hammer for a week with Habitat for Humanity or echoing the words of Bono as he brings awareness to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. You have to look within your organization to find out what your people care about and which opportunities fit best in relation to your industry. After all, what good is your involvement unless you actually have the power to affect it in a meaningful way?

Though certainly not an exhaustive list, here are some organizations you may not have heard of that involve youth and Gen Y and are doing some very remarkable things that you could be supporting:

The Campus Kitchens Project This group partners with high schools, colleges, and universities to share on-campus kitchen space, recover food from cafeterias, and engage students as volunteers who prepare and deliver meals to the community to those who need it most. This charity’s kitchens are in 20 schools around the country — big schools and small schools, rural and urban, colleges and high schools. Its goal is to have many Campus Kitchens around the country feeding the hungry and the needy.

National Runaway Switchboard This organization says between 1.6 and 2.8 million youth run away per year. Many are running from abusive and destructive home environments. The mission of this group is to help keep America’s runaway and at-risk youth safe and off the streets. The 1-800-RUNAWAY hotline handles an astounding 100,000 calls each year and provides solution-focused interventions, confidential and caring support, and 24-hour help for at-risk youth and their families.

National Students of AMF This organization supports students of deceased or “ailing mothers, fathers,” or loved ones. This organization, with a network of 24 campus chapters, is the only one dedicated to supporting college students coping with the terminal illness or death of a loved one and empowering all college students to help each other deal with the grief and challenges associated with fighting a terminal illness.

National Student Partnerships (Now called LIFT) This organization is dedicated to combating poverty throughout U.S. communities by getting college students involved. Trained student advocates work side by side with low-income people in the community to address immediate daily needs unique to their situation and chart a sustainable path out of poverty. Check out the organization’s website for a great video that explains who they are and where they are heading.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students? AFSP is the leading national organization dedicated exclusively to understanding and preventing suicide through research, education and advocacy. AFSP has developed a film called “The Truth about Suicide: Real Stories of Depression in College” as a commitment to support colleges and universities in implementing suicide prevention services on campus. The film aims to present a recognizable picture of depression and other problems associated with suicide among college students and other young adults.

UniversalGiving UniversalGiving helps college students travel over their spring break or summer vacation to more than 70 countries across the world to volunteer. Students and student groups can choose from 290 different customized opportunities for giving, such as Education & Literacy or Health & Human Services. This program puts resources in places where there is a tremendous need while providing college kids with valuable hands-on experience helping others, building self-confidence and increasing awareness of humanitarian needs across the globe.

Comparing

One day I’ll write about comparing yourself to your competitors and the right/wrong way to do it.

In the meantime, I share with you yet another bit of wisdom this week from Seth Godin:

“We don’t compare ourselves to other airport restaurants”

Atlanta brags about having the busiest airport in the world. Like most municipal facilities, they don’t brag about having the best, the most pleasant, the most engaging or the most remarkable airport in the world.

That’s a shame, because airports are great opportunities to create value. Lots of curious, alert people with money to spend and connections to make. Yet the lowest-common-denominator is served, relentlessly. If you like fried meat, plenty to choose from. You’d think that rather than cater to the center of the curve 100 times at 100 concessions, they’d pay attention to some of the outliers now and then…

Imagine my delight, then, when I stumbled upon One Flew South, located at Terminal E. Perhaps because it’s at the end of the line, the economic and turnover pressure is less. Regardless, it’s better than we have been taught we should deserve. Jerry the general manager explained why in the simple quote that leads this post off. He’s busy comparing the place to other restaurants, not to other airports. (If you go, say hi to Carolyn at the bar. Tell her I sent you and she’ll take care of you.)

Who (or what) are you comparing yourself to?