Favorite Weekly Links

Can you believe that it's already Friday again? Dang -- I love these short weeks! Anyway, here are our favorite links this week. Hope you enjoy them.

I love this first post by the Servant of Chaos. Entitled "Seeing the Wonder in Technology," Gavin Heaton discusses how cool it is to be able to engage with the technology today and communicate real-time with folks across the globe. And it's all at our fingertips. It's very cool and as I pointed out in a comment, it hasn't been that long ago that none of this was possible. I remember when internet access was restricted at AT&T in the 90s because the leadership team thought people wouldn't work if they had access to the internet. Can you even imagine doing your job without it today? And that doesn't even take blogs, podcasts, instant message discussions and the like into consideration. Great post!

The next post we really liked was my 2 cents: Holding the bag? Author David Reich discusses the recent announcement by American Airlines about the additional cost of checking even one bag. Reich wonders if this announcement and the resulting consumer uproar makes for a great marketing opportunity for rival airlines -- or not (because they'll follow suit). I personally think the bigger issue is that, unfortunately, the airlines now treat us all badly -- it doesn't matter if you're a once-a-year flier or some super-executive-plutonium-platinum frequent flier status. Anymore, it's just not a good experience with the airlines. They tend to be surly and confrontational, as opposed to customer oriented. That's fallen by the wayside. I think this post will resonate with many!

As a post-script to this, however, I've got to give my friends at Southwest a shout out! They do, really try to treat their customers better. And, I think that they've separated themselves from the rest by keeping their customer focus -- and by doing things like writing a blog where customers can interact with them. If you haven't checked out their blog, definitely do -- it's a good one! By the way, the most recent post features a video from their CEO talking about the fact that "Fees don't fly at Southwest." See what I mean?

Can you think of all of the advertising you've seen lately on being green? Well, if you read our blog, you know we're environmentally friendly marketers and a big fan of Kermit the Frog. On a recent Melodies in Marketing post, blog author Mario Vellandi posts "10 Signs of Greenwashing" by Futerra Communications. It's a cute post that gives us both pictures and words of some of this over-the-top marketing that may be just that . . . over-the-top. Some products (take cigarettes for example) just can't be made to be green, no matter how much the manufacturer may try!

Enjoy these posts and a lovely weekend to all!