It’s not that I’m against change, but I don’t like changing stuff just for the sake of changing it.
And it’s official: the Miami Dolphins have changed their logo, which for my money was one of the most enduring, and endearing, left in sports today. They went from this:
…to THIS:
Posted in miscellaneous, money, sports
Tagged culture, image overhaul, Logo, marketing, Mascot, Miami Dolphins, money, NHL, sports, true sports fan
…I thought it’d be appropriate to re-post this.
Everyone keeps saying that we buy more and more online, and that the bricks-and-mortar stores are suffering. Well, someone neglected to tell that to the people in my city. I live near a large shopping district and a mall, and the only way to get more folks in here on the weekends is if we airdropped them in like relief packages.
So, whether you’re venturing out to just purchase one present or all of them, you should probably read this first. It’s some good information to have freshly tucked away, before you and your MasterCard leave the house. The merchants have been waiting all year to see you, …and they’re intent on having you spend some cash during your stay.
Here’s hoping you enjoy the ‘hustle-and-bustle’ of the stores (that sounds more festive than ‘crazed mobs‘, don’t you think?), and be sure to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!
–JTR
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(***Originally posted 6/23/2012)
….you may wish to check out Kathryn Blaze Carlson’s excellent article in the National Post from earlier this month. It touches on something that we all know in our hearts, but we usually feel we’re smart enough to avoid: Marketing.
The marketers are everywhere: Google, the supermarket, where we buy gas…….we can’t escape ’em. To deal with being constantly saturated by marketing, we simply believe we’re so savvy that we can see through all of the marketer’s ploys.
Yeah, right. Guess again.
From Canada’s National Post:
From TheWeek.com:
When you think of the surveillance state, you usually think of snoopy alphabet-soup government agencies like the FBI, IRS, DEA, NSA, or TSA, or cyber-snoops at Facebook or Google, says Natasha Singer in The New York Times. But there’s a company you’ve probably never heard of that “peers deeper into American life,” and probably knows more about you than any of those groups: Little Rock–based Acxiom Corp. Jeffrey Chester at the Center for Digital Democracy has dubbed Acxiom “Big Brother in Arkansas,” while Gizmodo‘s Jamie Condliffe calls it the “faceless organization that knows everything about you.”
So basically this is a data-mining corporation, or database marketer. In business since 1969, they have progressed from usage of the telephone book to legal plundering of the internet, amassing a portfolio which includes over 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S. alone.
“So what?”, you say. For one thing, they might know much more about you than you may realize. Of course, perhaps you don’t mind that in addition to the normal info like age, race, sex, marital status, and education level, they also have your:
— and on and on.
Armed with all this and more, they go to work.
(Acxiom) uses it to pigeonhole people into one of 70 very specific socioeconomic clusters in an attempt to predict how they’ll act, what they’ll buy, and how companies can persuade them to buy their products. It gathers its data trove from public records, surveys you’ve filled out, your online behavior, and other “disparate sources of information”, then sells it to banks, retailers, and other buyers.
And don’t forget about Uncle Sam. Seriously, what are the odds that they DON’T want more info on all of us? Which ultimately means that the list of people who don’t have all of my personal information is getting smaller than the list of those who do.
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A little while after being freaked out by that article, I had just about untangled myself from the fetal position when I happened upon this piece from the Daily Mail:
Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public. The fear kicked off in 2007 when reports of bizarre flying objects hovering above anti-war protests sparked accusations that the U.S. government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies.
….the US Air Force unveiled insect-sized spies ‘as tiny as bumblebees’ that could not be detected and would be able to fly into buildings to ‘photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.’ Around the same time the Air Force also unveiled what it called ‘lethal mini-drones’ based on Leonardo da Vinci’s blueprints for his Ornithopter flying machine, and claimed they would be ready for roll out by 2015.
Ya’ know, living off the grid in a cabin in Montana keeps looking better and better to me.
—–
In the last few weeks we’ve covered other similar stories, which made me just as uneasy. As a result, I really shouldn’t be surprised that there is a faceless company out there aggregating a huge dossier on me in order to accurately predict my behavior, any more than I should be shocked that the wasp or hornet buzzing near my patio may actually be a lethal electronic drone spy.
I just have one question that makes my scalp start to itch:
What if these two companies start working together?
Posted in freedom
Tagged cyber snoops, family, government, Life, marketing, opinion, politics, technology
….you may wish to check out Kathryn Blaze Carlson’s excellent article in the National Post from earlier this month. It touches on something that we all know in our hearts, but we usually feel we’re smart enough to avoid: Marketing.
The marketers are everywhere: Google, the supermarket, where we buy gas…….we can’t escape ’em. To deal with being constantly saturated by marketing, we simply believe we’re so savvy that we can see through all of the marketer’s ploys.
Yeah, right. Guess again.
From Canada’s National Post:
Robb Engen weaves back and forth through the maze, following his wife in what he calls “zombie mode.” He submits to her and the labyrinthine Calgary retail outlet, wandering along as she adds this and that to their shopping cart. By the time they finally reach the exit, the Alberta couple has almost always bought more than they had planned.
“We go there with a list and with the intention to leave with what we planned on buying, but something about that store makes it so you can’t help but leave with a few extra things,” Mr. Engen said.
The 32-year-old father and personal finance blogger is, of course, describing a typical visit to IKEA, the iconic Swedish retailer that attracts 734 million shoppers annually and which has just announced plans for its largest North American store in Montreal. At 464,694 square feet, the store will knock the Berlin IKEA from its ranking as the fifth-largest in the world.
By the time customers wind through 54 “inspirational room settings,” three full home settings, the so-called market hall, and a restaurant that seats 600, they will have shopped for 1.5 kilometres. Most will have spent an entire Saturday afternoon zig-zagging back and forth and up and down, all for the privilege of passing a gazillion items they had no intention of buying but suddenly realize they must have.
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So shoppers might think they buy a particular item because they decided on their own that they want it, but they also buy because stores use tactics that make it almost impossible for them not to: From the oversized shopping carts proven to make us spend more, to the escalators that take us deeper into a store only to force us across the entire retail floor to go back up or down, to the pie crusts in the grocery store fruit section that inspire us to bake on a whim, to the placement of staple foods toward the back of a supermarket so we have to pass everything else on the way.
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But IKEA, with its maze that winds shoppers first through a series of inspirational room settings and then through the market hall, is the retailer that stands out in its almost backward and yet highly successful approach. When Mr. Engen said there is “something about that store,” he was right.
(**Click the map below to ENLARGE**)
According to one expert, the flow of the store disorients customers, it coaxes them past every household item imaginable [unless they access the shortcuts], it tempts them to put items in their cart “just in case I want it” for fear of having to try to find it again later, and it gives them license to impulse-buy.
“By the time you get [to the market hall] you’ve already gone backwards and forwards on yourself through the showrooms, past every [inspirational] setting, and you’ve probably spent half-an-hour,” said Alan Penn, a University College London professor who, together with a former graduate student, used the school’s virtual reality centre to study how shoppers navigate and buy at IKEA. “Only then are you allowed to start buying, and I think you feel licensed to sort of treat yourself.”
Carlson’s article is more in-depth than just the sampling included here, and covers other retailers Abercrombie & Fitch (and why you either love or hate it), and Costco. She also discusses how music and scents are connected to your moods and your purchasing habits.
Very well written, and certainly worth a few minutes.
AND: It just might save you $$$$ this weekend when, armed with this new knowledge, you manage to NOT buy that new duvet, some framed prints of fruit, or a ceramic monkey, despite thinking how nice they would look in your house.
Hey, you laugh now, but when you’re in the store later today, …you’ll be thanking me.
Two Heads are Better Than One 