Scott's Turf Builder - Shame Marketing - BITTER

Scott's is running a commercial for its Turf Builder product right now which I really don't like. It falls into a category of ads I called either "stigma marketing" or "shame marketing". (Dan and Chip Heath did a great piece on this concept in Fast Company last year.) These ads try to create a problem to make the viewer feel ashamed or embarassed.

In this particular commercial, a husband and wife are discussing the tradgic problems they had with their lawn. It was riddled with dandelions and they were the bain of their neighborhood. They felt awful because they never wanted to be "that neighbor". Finally, though, after using Scott's Turf Builder, their lawn was cleaned up and perfect. They profess that, "now the neighbors wave at us" as if prior to "perfecting" their lawn they were treated like the scum of the earth. Its the equivalent of trying to make all women think they need to be a size 4 to be accepted. Truly ridiculous.

At what point did someone decide that dandelions were the worst things in the world? I have small children and, at one point, was a child myself. These were actually the greatest things in the world at the time. Free flowers you could pick and attempt to cultivate in a paper cup. Spores you could try to blow out like birthday candles. This is living to a child. When did the lawn become the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

When I eventually do have a front lawn of my own, I fully intend to go natural with it. No chemicals fertlizers or weed killers. Just hopefully a lawn without any big missing patches and hopfully a few of mother nature's beauties for the kids to bring in to their mother.

Scott's, for trying to make all of us feel criminal, you get a BITTER.

No Turn Signals - BITTER

While I'm on the subject of driving, what's up with nobody using their turn signal anymore. People don't use it making a simple turn and they don't use it when they change lanes at 80 miles per hour in front of you. I've recently heard this regarded as the single biggest danger on the road today.

There's a great scene in the film, "Shoot 'em Up", with Clive Owen where someone cuts him off without using a turn signal and he instantly goes into a tirade about it. It's what we've all felt I think. Unlike the rest of us, he catches up to the guy and runs him off the road. If only.....

A BETTER Traffic Light

Is there anything worse than sitting at a red light at midnight for a minute or two when there isn't a car in sight? OK. Of course there is. But when you think about it, the whole thing is really silly. You, sitting there at midnight, with no cars around. That's not why they put the traffic light there is it?

They put it there to manage traffic at rush hour most likely. If you drive the road any other time of day, you'll just be inconvenienced a little.

There isn't one person reading this who hasn't contemplated running the red light if only they knew they wouldn't get caught. Why? Because we all know it's ridiculous to sit at a red light when there is clearly no danger.

I'm of the basic opinion that all traffic lights, at least on purely 2 lane roads, shift over to blinking red and yellow signals after say, 10pm. One side is typically the busier side, so it gets the flashing yellow. The less travelled way gets a blinking red, which means drivers have to stop, but then can go if there is a clear roadway.

Sure, some traffic lights do this. But doesn't it seem like this is a rather arbitrary decision when the light is put in place? I'm just asking for a little coordination and a standard policy. It could make life just a little bit better for people who actually have to be out driving late at night.

Service Charges and Tipping - Better or Bitter?

Here's just a very quick post. When getting food via delivery, many restaurants now charge a delivery fee. I'm not sure if this started when gas prices were spiking, but it's here to stay. At the same time, I still tip anyone who delivers food to my house.

The question is, should you tip someone if there is a service charge? We have become accustomed to tipping people like waiters and waitresses because their pay system is primarily based on the tips. Would you feel the same way though if you got the check and there was a line item for "Food Service Charge"?

I tend to feel that the delivery charge has nothing to do with the delivery person, so the tip is still necessary, but I just thought I'd reach out for your take on it.

Kawasaki, Scoble and Tweet-Spam - BITTER

So I'll admit that I'm not the biggest user of Twitter but I've started getting my feet wet. I have my criticisms of course, which I've posted in a previous entry. I realized though, that there are definitely some offenses within Twitter that I would call worse than others.

I will preface this whole segment by saying that I really like both Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki. One of the first "professional" books I ever read was Kawasaki's Rules for Revolutionaries. I read Robert Scoble every month in Fast Company.

My problem with how both of them operate their Twitter accounts is that they are about 20%-30% personal (meaning either observations, pearls of wisdom, or the comment about breakfast) and 70%-80% random reposting of links to various web articles or pages. Kawasaki, for example, has tweeted 54 times thus far today. About 40 of those tweets were just random articles such as Hubble's Greatest Hits and Crimes Most Stylish Crooks. When I add Scoble's 39 tweets, 20 of which were article/page reposts, you can imagine how difficult it gets to find anything else, especially when you follow dozens of people.

In my previous post I referred to Twitter as being like "listening to 100 collective streams of consciousness all at the same time, unfiltered." Now imagine that a few of the 100 are screaming. These users have what could be referred to as "twitter tourette's".

"Sitting down at lunch, but they are serving breakfast....... 30 Funniest cats! Fast electric cars! Who likes horses?........ lunch was good...... New Microsoft ad campaign! Twitter for Moms!...... shit.bitch.fart."

If I were Digg, I'd be taking notice. I'd be trying to sell "guy.digg.com" and "scoble.digg.com" right away. That would really make much more sense. At least there, we could follow an organized, structured list of the pages/sites/videos/images that our favorite "publishers" wish to share. Because that is what I see in Twitter. I see the full swing shift from 90% monotonous posts about cats and teeth brushing to 90% republishing of other materials, which is what Digg already does.

On Twitter, I'm much more interested in personal pieces of information. In Scoble's defense, he actually has a decent share of tweets today about more personal iPhone problems that he and others were having. Buy for Guy Kawasaki, I would much rather get less as long as it was things Guy wanted to say. That's why I'm actually in the middle of reading Reality Check right now.

Someone who really seems to have it nailed down is Tony Hsieh from Zappos. He tweeted twice today and both were messages very relevant to his tribe of followers. One was about a pizza making vending machine that he suggested might find its way into the Zappos offices and the other about a book he just finished reading that he was adding to the Zappos library. A couple of very relevant updates.

I know. I know. If I want to, I can just stop following people who basically spam my Twitter feed. I may have to do that. I did it with the feed from TechCrunch already. It's just tough when I know that some of the tweets will be really meaningful to me from these individuals that I have followed off of Twitter. Add to that the fact that I've seen other big names figure out a really great standard of messaging on Twitter, and I guess I just wish for the best of both worlds.

Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble's overuse of Twitter as Digg gets a BITTER.

Best Buy Plots Against Price Match Guarantee - BITTER

Jacqui Cheng at ars technica reported yesterday that a class action suit has been filed in the state of New York against Best Buy "alleging false advertising and deceptive practices" relating to its fullfillment policy on the "price match guarantee". This guarantee reads as follows from the Best Buy website:

BestBuy.com Price Matching/Price Guarantee

If you've made a BestBuy.com purchase and discover a lower price offered on our Web site or at a Best Buy store on the same available brand and model, let us know and we'll match that price on the spot, tax included.

Exclusions:
The BestBuy.com Price Guarantee does not apply to competitors' offers; third-party offers; online auction sites; shipping charges; clearance, Outlet Center and open-box items (when price matching with a Best Buy store); items for sale November 27th through 29th, 2008; special offers or promotions such as mail-in incentives, gift-with-purchase and financing offers; services such as installation; or typographical errors. Best Buy stores in Puerto Rico have their own price match policy.

Apparently, an internal Best Buy e-mail was used in the court filing detailing examples of how employees should try to not honor the policy. You can read exerpts on the ars technica site.

Anyway, I am not surprised by this lawsuit in the slightest. I have tried to price match at Best Buy in the past and indeed been met by these excuses and walked away without the policy being enforced. Of course, when the policy was first enacted, I price matched many times successfully. I think a lot of people were doing it and management likely decided to start trying the tactics described in the lawsuit.

The mistake that Best Buy makes on a daily basis is that they use their customer service policy as a marketing campaign with no plan to follow through. Not good, especially when their biggest competitor just went out of business. And that doesn't mean Best Buy can get comfortable because stores like Walmart are jumping right into the ring in home electronics.

Best Buy, for my own personal experiences that seem to jive with the allegations in this lawsuit, you earn a BITTER.

The Container Store Sliding Drawer Organizer - BETTER

So the best thing in my kitchen might actually have cost about $15 at the Container Store.

Many a night I spent frustrated at how little space I had in my silverware drawer in the kitchen. I always looked around at stores like Bed, Bath, and Beyond for a better drawer organizer but never found one.

When the Container Store opened, my wife and I were browsing around when I found the most amazing drawer organizer. It is something like this. It is 2-tiered. That means there is literally a bottom section that is the full width of the drawer and then a top piece that is only half as wide that slides back and forth. Sheer genius. You can hide the stuff you don't use every day like the serving pieces and ladels under the one side while everything you normally use is plainly accessible.

It's amazing that will all the gadgets and electronic appliances in the kitchen, the coolest thing I have is a little piece of molded plastic.....

Container Store, for offering a much wider array of storage options than most, AND solving my kitchen drawer problem, you get a 2-tiered BETTER.