Charlotte area retail store opened in Southpark July 08 specializing in home entertainment systems and solutions. Website is up and running.

go to: experiencehe.com

It’s a bad idea. Sure it’s a stylistic choice, but the company it puts you in. Gah. Gah, I say.

For some inexplicable reason, the use of a ‘Z’ to indicate multiples traps you between
teenaged girlz and semi-literate hip hop gangsaz. Strange that it should work that way. But I don’t make the language, I just work with it.

This is a report developed by the National Commission on Writing. Basically they surveyed 162 CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies about the importance of writing in their companies. The results are fascinating. Here’s a bit about the study from the intro:

“The survey reveals that good writing is taken as a given in today’s professional work.
Writing is a “threshold skill” for salaried employment and promotion. It is particularly
important in services and in finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE), growing employment
sectors that are likely to generate the most new jobs in the coming decade. In a nutshell, the
survey confirms our conviction that individual opportunity in the United States depends
critically on the ability to present one’s thoughts coherently, cogently, and persuasively
on paper.”

And here’s the whole thing.

writing-ticket-to-work1.pdf

Thank you Pfeifer MBA students! With the exception of a few minor technical snafu’s Patrick’s MBA writing class was a success.

Lecture Slideshow (click for link)

Continue reading ‘Patrick! Professor-for-a-Day. MBA Business Writing Class at Pfeifer Univ / Charlotte’

oy I love this post. Every single bit of this. The Checkers are a WONDERFUL client. Nobody on earth has more heart than a minor league hockey team. Everybody from the President on town, bust their ass in this organization. It seems like team shows an operating loss each year, and I’m pretty sure it’s because they keep handing out those large cardboard checks to charities. They’ll donate half the gate in a heartbeat. I can’t say enough wonderful things about this organization.

Anyway, latest press release after the break. Go Checkers!

Continue reading ‘Client Success: The Checkers’

Naming a product, service, concept, company, or child is often difficult. There’s no way around it. The hardest part is building your criteria. When are you done coming up with ideas? How do you recognize the perfect name when you find it. And, more importantly, how good is good enough?

If the answer is, “I’ll know it when I see it”, then you’re in for a world of pain. We have a long-held alliterative belief around here that human beings are fickle, fallible and foible-ridden. Your mood, my mood, everybody’s mood swings. And by saying, “I’ll know it when I see it” is kind of like saying, “I’ll pick the first thing that catches me in the right mood.” Which is nice if you’re buying a candy bar. But if you are committing to the name of a company or a product — we’ll that’s some thing that you have to live with for a while. It requires commitment.

The Most Important Thing

The most important thing to remember is that a name is made by what a person, company or product actually does. A rose by any other name would, in fact, be as sweet. And no amount of naming (or artfully draped models) is going to make this car not suck . Would it really matter if the Pacer had a different name?

This is why so many companies are named after their founders. For example, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Arthur Guinness’ beer and Henry Ford’s automobiles. And this is a fine way to go. If you can get away with it. Splash out the shingle with the your surname on it and go. Avoid the quagmire of naming. It can take a lot of time, money and energy. You can develop a name you love only to find it’s taken. And naming can make enemies of friends. Gah.

But let’s say you press on…

Brave soul that you are. Perhaps you have a new product. Perhaps you have a company that is conceptually difference that you want to communicate in the name. That’s why this post has a part II.

This is part of a series of webisodes that we did for Patterson Pope. It’s interesting to note that every time they sent out an email blast featuring these spots, their website traffic jumped nearly 40%

It’s also worth pointing out that this is all one, continuous, perfect, GLORIOUS take.

When you take a good look at almost anything, it gets weird. Profoundly weird. Like if you stare at the word weird too long. You start too wonder if it’s really spelled that way.

Anyway, the way people interact with technology, especially home entertainment technology, is no exception to this rule. In fact, it’s quite fascinating. And here’s what blowing my mind. People feel inferior when they can’t make the technology work. Very few people, if any bother to ask, “Could this possibly the bad product design?”

To put it another way. People used to feel dumb because they couldn’t set the clock on their VCRs. Maybe dumb is not the best word. Maybe that feeling is best described as inadequacy. But these same people a) knew what time it was b) knew how to set a clock. They lived up to their end of the bargain.

The clock setting function on a VCR is clearly bad design. But, because it was consumer electronics, everybody gives it a pass. That’s weird.

The controls are horribly designed.

Seriously. If you’re good a driving one car, you can get in a completely different car and you’re pretty good in that car as well. But if you switch from one system to another. Or merely from one remote to another — WHAM — you wrap the whole thing around a telephone poll.

That’s also pretty weird.