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This is why I left everything behind to immigrate to this country…23 years ago, with $2,000 in cash and 5 days of prepaid hotel.

After 9/11 and 8 years of Bush I felt like a foreigner - stuck in this country…

I now feel the same energy that drove me here in the first place - as people all over the world do.

http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/show/

A new study found that if you have a UK Birmingham accent, you are likely to be perceived as less intelligent than if you have a Yorkshire accent - in fact a Birmingham accent will make you sound more stupid than silence.

A friend of mine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on making his online service a few tenth of a second faster.

What’s the connection? Are people with certain accents really more stupid than others? Do people using online services really care about improvements that range in the tenths of seconds response time?

No - it’s the hidden or unconscious associations that lead to perceptions that make all the difference. In the case of Birmingham, people associate the city with crime, unemployment and other negative things - leading to the perception that people with a Birmingham accent must be less intelligent than others, including silence. In the case of speed of online offerings, people associate that with ease-of-use. If you enter a query and the results come back in a jiffy, you will perceive that service as really easy-to-use.

So do you know what your customers are unconsciously associating with some of your product or company attributes?

It could make or brake your offerings…

I am watching CNN’s Glen Beck slam the New York times on the McCain story. During the news segment he interviewed some guy who used to be the spokesman for US Congress representatives who said the New York Times had become like bloggers - “who sit in their basement on a dial-up line and spread rumors.”

Is this really news?  Is this what people want to hear at 7pm from a TV news organization? What does this tell us about how people consume news and how they make decisions in this country?

[/rant]

Where do you think this green building was built?

(via PSFK)

And where do you think this Marilyn Monroe building was built?

(also via PSFK)

The first one is Singapore, the second is Bejing…

Does this make you think that the center of gravity in world innovation may be shifting West?

If only we would spend more money on educating our kids instead of creating pockets of hatred and terrorism around the world, maybe we would have a chance to still be around the center of gravity for innovation in the next generation. But the way it is moving now, it looks like the brightest will migrate West, as many of us have done in past generations…

What is your list of overused or abused concepts in marketing for this past year? Here is mine:

• Conversations - most marketers do not know what a conversation is, let alone carry one. Many things are conversations, but I do not believe that marketing can be conversational.
• Engagement - after many years of thoughtful research, the ARF, the ANA, and the AAAA came together to define engagement as “Turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.” WOW - I wonder how they justified this to their paying members?
• Transparency - another good one. Of course we want everything to be transparent - but how did this all of a sudden become a new requirement?
• Authenticity - what does that really mean anyway. I want my Coke to be a Coke…the same Coke that I grew up with. How will “authenticity” enhance that?
• Attention - nothing new here either. In 1918, an article published in Modern Man declared: “Psychologists tell us that the mind is under a continual bombardment of ideas, all of which are trying to make an impression on it. The prospect, therefore, does not sit around with his mind a blank, calmly waiting for someone or something to capture his attention without a struggle. The salesman enters a field already well occupied and must fight for the undivided attention that is a successful sale.”

On to a new year - when marketing will hopefully be able to grab people’s attention and perhaps even engage them by becoming an authentic and transparent conversation!

Argh…forget it…

Enjoy the Holidays! I am off skiing…

For me it’s Facebook…not really into Myspace
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(via Branding Blog)

I just ran across this link on Reddit.

“Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying…his creation…or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost…shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior. ”

Better get rid of “God is not great,” “The God Delusion,” and “letter to a christian nation.”

That is the profile of a Myers Briggs’ ENTP personality according to Xero Magazine.

Quite a funny description of the personality types if you ever took the test

Glenn Beck is subbing for Paula Zahn on CNN this week. In the first 13 minutes of tonight’s broadcast he must have said 10 or more times that he is a “proud conservative” (whatever that means) - commenting on what’s “right” in the American Justice system and on the “moral values” of middle eastern religions.

Who the heck at CNN thought that it would be a good idea to have an outspoken “conservative” to be a prime time news host?

Ah…maybe Harris was right - too many people in this country believe in “rapture” and that is what is selling ads.

At the end of the day, it is a sad story for democracies across the world to have people who should be limited to doing op-ed pieces and special programs present the daily news on major networks like CNN.

Maybe it’s time to go back online for relatively “unbiased” news sources…if those still exist.

It is so funny to see how Google Maps provides directions to my home town…

Click on the map or this link to get the directions (http://tinyurl.com/2bz25m)

I especially like step #13 - Swim across the Atlantic Ocean