Nothing to do with marketing here. Just another demonstration of how “top management” can make sweeping decisions about things they barely understand. But more importantly, it demonstrates the sad state of affairs that our society in general, and the education system in particular; have fallen to.

The whole idea here is to “save” the students from becoming prey to teachers who might be criminals. Whatever it is, certain suppositions are disturbing:

- parents don’t know/care what their kids are doing
- teachers are not supposed to be friends with the students

The Lamar County school board approved “… a new school district policy in southern Mississippi prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites such as MySpace”

I guess we will all feel safe if teachers hate the students, students hate the teachers, and everyone scores straight A’s because there is an excellent teaching methodology in place. Yeah, right.

This is just a short post because I just read a really nice post over at Yvonne’s blog titled “You Can Get Hurt Running With The Bulls - No Kidding“. Of course, the title had something to do with the small business person, and of course, it was good advise; and most certainly, it was not boring to read!

Most small businesses run with no regard to contingency plans, safety margins and heck, some don’t even have a business plan. Actually, I am one of those really guilty party here…

I just found this really interesting site that talks about diet pills and nothing but diet pills.

Anyone who is interested in COPYWRITING should really take a look at this site. OK, if you are looking for a slimmer you, you can go too. Duh.

The site is fascinating for me because you have a page that contains a short write up of ten different diet pills. Yet, each is written with the following key points:

1. Each first line is a unique selling proposition
2. There is a statement of fact and a promise (mostly)
3. Each short write up contains all the salient points that you need to know including the invitation to purchase
4. There are clear links where you can get more information (does not apply to offline copywriting, critical for online copywriting)

I subscribe to the adage that we never stop learning. And this is really a nice learning experience.

It is strange. When we were in school, we skipped as many lectures as we could. Now, I spend 15 mins listening to one and actually liked it.

This post: How Starbucks Uses Psychological Triggers To Influence Customers - Video contains an excellent video of a lecture by Bryant Simon on how Starbucks has used various psychological triggers to successfully market their brand. Excellent stuff.

If you are not smiling after watching this, you don’t love marketing. Go sell cars. :)

Every morning, while everyone is still fast asleep, comfortable, warm and in bliss - the cock crows. Grumbling people get out of bed and go about their chores. Why?

You see, when the cock crows, everyone knows the sun is going to rise. Then, if the cock does not crow, or worse, there are no cocks where you live (get your head on straight); will the sun rise?

Sometimes in marketing, isn’t this how it seems to be? You see, we marketers have all these creative ideas, cool slogans and dazzling logos; our marketing {crowing} is irressitible. We hypnotise them with our witty copy, compel them with our TV commercials and of course, endorsements - who can resist when a movie star tells you which soap to buy?

So, it is not surprising, that just as there are some dumb cocks (no pun intended) who think that they are the ones who bring the sun up each day; we marketers sometimes feel that nothing succeeds without our brilliant marketing. It’s exciting stuff, this marketing.

What I want to say here, is that success requires teamwork. Any company that thinks that it can succeed with excellent technology alone, or products, or low cost, or great marketing - are delusional. So, we need great marketers; but these must complement a group of great engineers/cooks/designers…. you get the picture.

One final word on this. A smart aleck farmer hated cocks, so he assigned that crowing job to the ducks. I don’t know how successful it was, his farm is still dark, probably not awake yet.