According to New York Times, a regional convenience store chain treats its employees right, which leads to happier customers. In fact, many of these happy customers have become online evangelists for the brand. The I Love Wawa group on MySpace.com has more than 5,000 members, making it the largest of several Wawa-related groups on the online-community site. Over on Livejournal.com, there’s a group called We Love …
Hotel Chain Breaks Away, Seeks Reinvention
According to USA Today, Wyndham Worldwide, which completed its spinoff from Cendant on Tuesday, now plans to bulk up its top hotel brand with better marketing and a new, more consistent look. CEO Stephen Holmes acknowledged that the Wyndham brand has suffered from varying standards at its 87 hotels, all in the USA. The result: Travelers don't know what to expect. To reinvigorate the chain, Wyndham recently tapped …
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Tech Titans Park Where They Damn Well Please
You know how to tell if a company is making money? You look at their parking lot. No, not just for the German engineering, for a decided lack of parking spaces. Lack of parking spaces means there's alot of action going on inside the buildings. Yahoo is one company with inadequate parking spaces, according to the civic-minded photo documentation of Flickr user, ycantpark. I wonder what Google's parking lot looks …
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How Karl Lagerfeld Sells Dom Pérignon
Kate Spicer examines Karl Lagerfeld's penchant for marketing to women in The Sunday Times: How does a septuagenarian homosexual fashion designer in a powdered ponytail know what women fantasise about? He’s not Nancy Friday. Yet here he is, giving us a heterosexual fantasy that most women — and men — would find immensely satisfying. …
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(Red) Crocs Jump The Shark
Holly Burns of Nothing but Bonfires is on holiday in Singapore. Poolside the other day, she witnessed three adolescent boys considering their Crocs. I'm sorry to report that Burns was scarred by the experience. Did you know this? Did you know that there was a Hierarchy of Coolness based on the color of your Crocs? Isn’t it enough that they’re all entirely hideous and that everyone on this tiny island seems to have …
Google Or Yahoo?
Like the new Apple spots that ask, "Are you a Mac or a PC?" one might ask the same of the world's top search engines. Do you Google, or do you Yahoo? This New York Times story explores some of the differences in the two companies. Do Internet users prefer services that are consistent and predictable, like those offered by Yahoo, or are they more interested in Google’s wow factor? “Yahoo has lost its appetite for …
This Commercial Sucks. This Commercial Sucks. This Commercial Sucks.
Every so often, a commercial comes along that is the absolute antithesis of everything that creative people aspire to, but gets legendary amounts of attention. The ubiquitous HeadOn ad is just such a spot. Slate takes a closer look. According to Dan Charron, VP of sales and marketing for HeadOn, the company used focus groups to test all sorts of marketing tacks. One experimental approach maxed out on repetition, and …
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The Concierge’s Blazer
According to Lewis Lazare, Hotel Monaco, a division of Kimptom Hotels, will begin to sell its staff outfits to customers who want to look at home in the lobby. Of course these aren't exactly standard-issue hotel uniforms. Underscoring the Monaco's penchant for always displaying good taste, the small chain tapped noted fashion designer and Chicago native Cynthia Rowley to do the honors of giving Monaco employees a …