The Chopped Leaf aka Steal Your Money Food Place

Come on…we all know them. Those food places that steal your money. I’m sure almost every place in Canada steals your money when you buy food. I still can’t get over how the same products in one country are one fifth of the price of that same product in another country. When I refer to this, I am largely referring to produce. 

These places are nicely decorated, serve you your salad in an over the top bowl, play hard to listen to music, and are usually empty. Exactly like The Chopped Leaf. WAIT, I know why they’re empty, because they only need 3 customers to make a million dollars!!!

  
Now, people will say, “why do you eat there if you don’t like it or it’s overpriced?” It’s not that I don’t like it-I do. Plus, what’s my alternative? McDobald’s? This is why obesity is an epidemic. 
It just floors me how when I lived in Mexico I could buy just over a pint of raspberries for about $1.50 Canadian. Here, I can buy exactly a pint for about $6.00. I get it, we have to import them and blah blah blah but guess what? It’s all just PROFIT. 

My issue with profit in the food industry is, when is it too much or too far that it makes it difficult for individuals to maintain a healthy lifestyle? To me, there needs to be some type of regulation because the fresh foods industry has no code of ethics I guess. 
One of the shittiest parts is that the mark up on some of this stuff is 200,300,400%. Like, wouldn’t you be okay with 250 percent mark up instead of 300 percent, mister big business? 

I understand that prices are market influenced to an extent and subject to economic conditions as well BUT maybe if we could all afford fresh fruits and vegetables, we would be just that much healthier, and happier and in turn our economic conditions would be just that much better. 

PS-by the time all of the produce gets here from Mexico and the United States it’s probably lost a lot of nutritional value. Moral: go to Mexico eat, eat the INCREDIBLY fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafood, enjoy the beaches and be 10 times happier and healthier. I speak from experience when I say, it rules. 

Mary-kate VS. Ashley

Wow! You know.. that is just unreal. They look completely different, and I totally see how the iPhone 6 is not aesthetically pleasing, it would slip out of your hand, and has sharp edges. Now, when I look at the iPhone 6s..that is a masterpiece. It is so cutting edge, and just..innovative! Apple does it again.

As a marketing grad (I can say that now), this is purely good outstanding, and raise deserving marketing. I’ll be honest, there are some upgrades, like always. We’ve got a better camera, and some better speeds, but let’s be real..they could put an EVEN BETTER camera and make speeds even faster. It’s all a game! The marketing game. Okay..so they made some features bigger and better, oh but let’s not forget the 3D touch (that is super cool though). HOWEVER, not only does the phone look essentially the same, it is heavier, thicker, and the battery life is WORSE…YES, I said worse. I’m sorry, but Apple is moving backwards, and they beat their iPhone 6 launch weekend.  In the article, you will notice that it speaks of the adoption rate of the “S” series of phones Apple produces. Historically, the “S” series are adopted at a lower rate than the 5 or 6 series. Why is that? How is it that Apple might be the best unintentional (or maybe intentional) marketing company in the world, and their “S” series phones have a lower adoption rate than non “S” series? Is this calculated by Apple?

When you think about it, it’s genius. Apple really only needs to come out with non “S” series phones (i.e.: iphone, iphone 4, iphone 5, iphone 6 etc.) BUT they probably sat around an itable (I promise you I had an idea like that throughout my education), and someone from the marketing department, naturally, said, “hey, to make more money…we should introduce the number series that we have planned, but in-between each of those we should introduce an “S” series model, make the target market believe that it has some serious additional benefits, and increase sales! In reality, the logistics, and production of the phones will be almost the same, causing very little engineering and increased manufacturing costs to us! Oh, and the “S” will signify “suckers” as in, we got you again suckers!”.

On the flip side, it could be that Apple’s target market has caught on to the “S” series pattern, and have decided to wait for the iphone 7, which will hopefully have a battery life that progresses as opposed to regresses.

The point is, Apple is beyond wonderful at marketing. This product is not groundbreaking or even totally innovative, but Apple has still found a way to emotionally and rationally appeal to their audience to break the launch sales for the iphone 6s. In totality, Apple and their products and services, are extremely innovative, and have given to the world, some very groundbreaking technologies.

 

Thanks, Apple!

 

P.S.- if you have a second please check out the blog post just prior to this one for my GoFundMe page              (who knew school could be so expensive?)

 

References

Smith, C. (2015, October 2). IPhone 6s adoption seen as lower than the iPhone 6 – but what does that really mean? Retrieved January 28, 2016, from http://bgr.com/2015/10/02/iphone-6s-iphone-6-sales-2/

[Iphone 6 vs. iphone 6s comparison]. (2015, September/October). Retrieved January 28, 2016, from http://www.mobile-t-mobile.com/mobile-network/iphone-6-vs-ipone-6s.html

Education, education, education

Basically, you can read the entirety of this on the GoFundMe page, but in a nutshell: school was a little bit very expensive for me, and 99% of it was paid for via student loans. I am super grateful for my education, and I am so happy I did all of it, even the program I finished and didn’t love. I am also super grateful for any additional help, so thank you in advance!GoFundMe here 🙂

 

I am super, super grateful for any help! Thank you, dankie, shukran, muchisimas gracias, merci, grazie, arigato, tack, and sukria!

New blog post coming tomorrow

Resume Maker

I make resumes from Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. For inquiries, email welcometomarbucks@gmail.com 

Producing the Today programme

steviefm

Around this time last year I wrote an article about my then job, which was managing the social media and website for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Not long after publishing it, I was given the chance to to move off the online team and become a producer on the actual radio show. I thought now might be a good time to write an updated blog entry about what this job involves and give some examples of what I’ve been doing for the past year for anyone who might be interested in hearing more about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the show.

First of all, just to quash from the gate any suspicion that I landed this dream job by being some kind of ruthlessly ambitious careerist, let me say that this is a role that I never envisioned myself doing. Not because I didn’t want to, quite the opposite, but because working for a programme…

View original post 3,201 more words

Letter to a Young Transperson

Is it Level?

Dear Me in Past Tense,

There you are, kneeling by the cardboard Barbie house dad made between jobs. You there, picking up the washrag upholstered furniture, aspiring to the talent to make a miniature couch out of packing foam, there are a few things I should tell you.

The first one you already know. That girl sitting next to you pulling the homemade plaid pants off of Barbie in favor of the cowboy dress is not only your sister, but your absolute best friend. You will be tempted to think you are in danger of losing her, but you shouldn’t. She is permanent.

The rest isn’t so clear.  It won’t ever be.  It doesn’t have to be.

You will feel like you are playing by a set of rules no one explained to you – sort of like kindergarten, when you couldn’t make the right handed scissors cut paper. You will correct yourself…

View original post 413 more words

#notories

http://youtu.be/ssfu08ihyyQ watch this if you want to see how Alberta should be looked after.☺️ Jim Prentice PC Party 👋 you do NOT have my vote, and probably many others in my generation.👀👀 uh oh

Earthquakes

The groundswell can be energized. Energizing can be fun.

Note first, that when you want to energize, think about energizing your most enthusiastic customers (the base). What energizing can do is get your base super pumped up about your brand that every time they utter a word about using the brand or doing anything with your brand, it’ll be so good that others will want to listen and maybe even continue to share that (self-spreading). Again, the idea of people talking to people as opposed to a firm talking to people (believability).

Remember, people>media when it comes to believability.

In terms of ROI, one way to figure out how much an energized customer might be worth would be to find out how much of your business comes from word of mouth. Then, determine the value of one customer. Then divide the earlier by the latter and you can figure out roughly how much each promoter’s positive word of mouth is worth.

Teach me how to energize teach me teach me how to energize..

Ratings and reviews-good for retail companies because of direct customer contact.

Create a community-but if the community is already there (like LEGO) don’t try to replicate it!! It is about people’s need to connect not your need to control (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. K145).

Participate in and energize in online communities created by your brand enthusiasts (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. 145).

Remember, how you energize will depend on how you want relationships to change. Communities can be very involved and those involved in promoting can become very integral to your operations: different than using ratings and reviews.

It’s important to fight out a few things. Determine if you want to energize the groundswell, refer to your social technographics profile of your customers, determine what your customers problem is, align your strategy with your customers profile, don’t start unless you’re in it for the long term. Those are all important because they’ll help you determine if 1) energizing is for you 2) how and what type of energizing would be appropriate which will ultimately help you succeed (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. 148).

This is a screenshot of the infamous LUGNET Lego online community forum discussed in this chapter.

References

Li, C. & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Harvard Business School Publishing: Boston, Massachusetts.

Everybody’s favourite 7 letter t word..

This blog post will be dedicated to, yup you guessed it, Twitter. Specifically, we will look at Twitter in the groundswell.

Probably one of the simplest tools to use, but potentially one of the most powerful. Twitter can help to serve numerous objectives; listening to twitter, talking to twitter, energizing with twitter, supporting with twitter, and embracing with twitter. Basically, anything you can do with your best friend you can do with twitter. Twitter. Does. Everything. Just kidding, it doesn’t do everything.

Really though, twitter can be used to deal with customer complaints (and turn a potentially ugly PR issue into a smiling customer, free of complaints) but it can be used for a number of other reasons. Twitter can be used to provide support to other twitterers that might otherwise have to make a lengthy phone call. It can be used to energize twitterers who like and/or use your products and/or services by amplifying their voices on Twitter, whether it be by something small like re-tweeting them or something big like sending them access to product because their journey aligns with the companies vision (Dunkin’ Donuts did this).

Thinking again of the NBA example,
it can be seen that the NBA does have their own twitter, as do most of each individual NBA league teams. The NBA used their twitter to give updates on teams, individual players (fashion choices, volunteer work, etc.), re-tweet other accounts displaying NBA events or players doing noteworthy tasks.

The NBA does a good job of utilizing twitter. Does anyone remember the Donald Sterling nightmare? Quick briefing: he was the racist Los Angeles Clippers owner who was exposed for the racist he is. Note: was the owner. Still is racist.
Anyway, the NBA used twitter to help communicate the final verdict for Mr.Sterling, and you can look at the picture below to see how twitter reacted to good ol’ Donald’s lifetime ban.

Best friends, boyfriends, brothers and sisters..we all have our support systems

Just like we have support systems, the groundswell has its support systems too. They are very lovely. They go by the names wikis and support forums. Of course, support has existed for firms before wikis and support forums, and that support, the older more mature support, goes by the name call centres or technical support.

Now, firms are realizing the positive effects of supporting the groundswell with tools like wikis and support forums. Why? Why is this better than the older more mature cousin approach? Because. Because these groundswell support approaches open the opportunity to save money, but more importantly, it lets people help people. Simple. People are more inclined to accept help from other people: real, live people. Also, it is much faster and more efficient for an individual to look at a Linksys support forum, especially during the Christmas season when call volumes are high, and to top it off an earthquake strikes in Asia (where Linksys has call centre operations) and takes down phone lines. You might be able to see how this might help a firm. With its support forum Linksys turned potentially angry consumers into happy consumers by directing them to a support forum. That was a real life example.

Of course, there is various criteria to determine if groundswell support, of all kinds, are appropriate for your firm. Remember: wikis are harder to execute than support forums. Wikis need people, content, policy for the wiki (but not too many because people might be intimidated to contribute), and patience.

Thinking back to the earlier example of the NBA, and looking at if a wiki or support forum would be of any good to them, a person might think that a support forum might be useful (and in fact is actually used) to help NBA fans with issues like purchasing NBA LEAGUE PASSES, cancelling subscriptions, and which smart TV models support the NBA LEAGUE PASS. We can see how the NBA possibly saw a benefit in using support forums to help NBA fans. However, one recommendation, the support forum provided by the NBA (as there are other individual forums out there) does not allow a dialogue. It registers issues and the NBA formulates and posts a response. This response can then be rated as helpful or not but it is missing dialogue.

References

Li, C. & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Harvard Business School Publishing: Boston, Massachusetts.