Yearly Archives: 2006

Two Loose Screws

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Screws Last night I completely disassembled and reassembled my laptop computer. I’ve been having some struggles with Best Buy’s Geek Squad. The condensed version is that it involved restoring my system twice and reinstalling all my software, losing a bunch of email and eventually, after a misdiagnosis, a new hard drive. Quite maddening.

I had just one more complaint. My laptop’s fan makes a clicking noise like a tiny diesel engine in need of better fuel or a tune-up. The geek-boy listened for 4 seconds and pronounced the fan just fine. I protested, "You can’t hear it in this noisy store. I sit with this laptop all day in a tiny Wizard Cave beneath my front porch in Nebraska. I assure you it makes exactly the noise I’m describing."

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Rex's Buffalo Wings

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Rex Williams got burned. His eyes, nose, mouth and stomach were seared by some spicy chicken wings. It’s a great story and you should read it.

I feel as if I’ve been cheating. Writing stories on a new site and ignoring my poor neglected BrandingBlog. I’ve been involved in helping our Wizard of Ads group create a new work called American Small Business. We’ve also mirrored it on Canadiansmallbusiness.com and Australiansmallbusiness.com.

Like any new venture or multi-authored site, there is good and bad. The very cool thing is that you get to vote on what’s good and what’s bad. Enough bad votes and you save future readers from seeing a bad story. That’s right, we elected to allow our readers to eliminate content that they think is not worth reading.

You’re invited to come on over and see what it’s about. Be sure to read Rex’s Chicken Wings Story.

I’ll keep posting here too. See you around!

Customer Satisfaction Month at FastCompany Part II

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Mac Continuing coverage of this month’s customer service focus at Fast Company.

Interesting article about Apple and why they didn’t make the list. My take is that perhaps their new campaign is working so well that they can’t deliver on their customer service promise. It’s a powerful message and I have been tempted. My oldest daughter donated her PC a couple of weeks ago to her little sisters and ordered a Mac. The girl at the Apple store convinced her to order online because if she had the upgrade installed in the store it would cost her $100 more than just ordering it. Short version is that the computer was ordered 2 weeks ago, expedited 2nd day shipping and it isn’t here yet. Hmmm.

If I’m right, do you pull the advertising campaign until you can catch up with demand? I think you can get away with delivering a mediocre sermon to the choir now and then, but when it’s Christmas day and the heathens show up, you’d better deliver the goods. Apple created Christmas and the goods are still on the assembly line in China.

I put up a quote back in 2004 by by Amy Curtis-McIntyre, JetBlue‘s Vice President of Marketing. I think she nails the subject.

"Advertising is the last thing you bring to the mix. You start by getting the product right, getting your attitude right, getting everyone internally understanding the mission. Then you move to telling the story through PR. You build the advertising last, and that way you can live on realistic budgets."