Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Why DELL is running pre-Christmas ads the week after Christmas

Looks like Grant Thornton isn’t the only company that is taking the week off. DELL Computers is evidently closed for the holiday week as well. That’s what their message said when I contacted media relations.

I wanted to know when someone finally realized that the TV ad they were running all day Sunday had an unfortunate reference to Tsunamis.

DELL Computers must have bought a very heavy schedule on CNN this past Sunday .It seemed that their commercial popped up during every break.

The ad was a post Christmas ad –targeted to the people who had just gotten a new DELL computer (this was the day after Christmas after all). The purpose of the ad was to reinforce that  DELL’s phone support lines are open 24/7 –365…and in the case of leap year, as the ad says 366.

The creative shows a man lying in bed. He’s on the phone with a DELL phone customer service person. It’s obviously in the middle of the night. The guy in bed starts rattling off all sorts of situations that might cause the customer service center to close. He names holidays. The DELL guy says something like   “We’ll be here.”

After listing a series of bizarre events, the new computer owner says, ‘what about a tsunami?’

The DELL guy hesitates. Then says, ' yes we’ll be here'. A few more plagues are mentioned and the ad ends with the guy saying “I’ll call back in an hour.”

The first time I heard the ad I wasn’t sure that I heard correctly. The news had been saying Tsunami all day so I thought maybe I imagined it. I didn’t.

Talk about bad luck. Listening to that ad you got the feeling that someone, somewhere in DELL’s advertising department is going.  “Holy $#(&!”. Obviously the ad needed to be pulled.

What was supposed to be humorous and entertaining while simultaneously getting across the message of DELL’s commitment to customer service, now sounded horrifically in bad taste. World events made the commercial un-airable.

Unfortunately, it continued to run all day Sunday. The question is…why didn’t someone pull it sooner? Surely I wasn't the only person who noticed the Tsunami reference?

That is what I would have asked if anyone at DELL was working today. I also want to know how many complaints they got on Sunday for the perception of “insensitivity”.

Those answers will have to wait until next week. Meanwhile, DELL is running their pre-holiday ads and probably someone is working overtime to shoot a new commercial that lets new computer users know that DELLs help line is available 24/7. The new ad probably won’t include any natural disasters.

The Croissant Rule

Riding from Denver's airport to my lovely hotel in downtown Denver in the Super Shuttle van with the difficult to maneuver seat beats, I got tired of eavesdropping on the conversation of the two college coeds, “Todd hasn’t gotten over Lydia yet….sad” and decided to check my voicemail.

Nada. An entire workday and no one left me one single message.

I assumed it was because most people I know are not working this week. I am. That’s why I’m in Denver. Not to ski. Not to play. But to work. There’s a January 3^rd deadline looming.

According to USA Today I─ not my circle of trust─ am in the majority

Employees are getting less paid time off around the holidays than in previous years. With Christmas Day and New Year's falling on successive Saturdays, 33% of companies plan to give workers three or more paid days off this year. Last year's figure was almost twice as high, at 65%, according to the BNA.
But it's not just because of the calendar. During 1999, when Christmas and New Year's Day last fell on Saturdays, half of employers gave workers three or more paid days off. That means that this year more employees will be working on or around the holiday -- adding extra pressure to an already stressed workforce, experts say.

"Employers are being a bit more miserly," says Josh Joseph, BNA's director of research.

The 3500 hundred employees at Grant Thornton, with 50 offices across the country, are also part of the minority. For the first time ever, Grant Thornton which describes itself as “the leading global accounting, tax and business advisory firm dedicated to serving middle-market companies” decided to completely shut down between December 24^th and January 3^rd.

“People are just too busy to work this time of year," says Jill Osborn, Principal Workplace Solutions at Grant Thornton. Ain’t that the truth.

The firm had given people extra days off last year and it was so appreciated that the company decided to give the entire week off. “We have been busy all year so what better way to say thank you than to give them the week off.”

Given that Grant Thornton is a service firm there is a chance that some clients had their hearts set on doing work this week. In that case, the policy is work this week, take time off later.

Asked just how many employees would opt to work when no one else is in the office, Osborn said, “there’s no way of knowing until after the holidays.”

Has anyone ever calculated the productivity of American Workers during the holiday period? From past experience, not a lot happens…usually.

Which got me thinking about a policy in France.Carolyn Moncel, an American businesswomen living in Paris, once told me how businesses functioned during the famous August holiday season. In Carolyn’s neighborhood there are four bakeries. While many people are off on holiday, there are some people who stay behind. Naturally, they need their baked goods.

To prevent any one baker from having a competitive advantage, they are forbidden from staying open the entire month. In other words, they are required to rotate their store hours so that only one bakery is open on any particular week, and no bakery can stay open the entire time.

Now, naturally no one would even think that " the croissant rule" could work here. But would it be so terrible if work really shut down for a week in this country? The education system shuts down. So do many companies in the manufacturing sector. They say it’s to retool.

Retooling is a great concept.

Could Grant Thornton be starting a trend? Or better yet, Should Grant Thornton being starting a trend?

Would the economy go to hell in a hand basket if more firms gave their official blessing to a holiday week respite?  Maybe we could create our own version of " the croissant rule".

Instead of completely shutting down, maybe within each business employees could alternate holiday weeks. Half the staff could take the week before Christmas off-- half the staff could take the week between Christmas and New Years off.

Unofficially, that's what most people do anyway, so why not make it official. It would be so festive.

A holiday tale

It’s not the fact that 95% of companies in a recent survey indicated they are having holiday parties this year.

It's not even the fact that 25% of the companies surveyed said they are spending more on their parties then they did last year.

No, what surprises me is that these holiday office parties are popular.

"Popular" is not a word I would use to describe these parties. Not one to be mistaken for a party girl, I've always regarded holiday company parties more in the vein of a command performance -- something that you had to do -- not something you really wanted to do.

Am I so out of touch with my fellow comrades in work that I couldn't tell a good time if it were right in front of me?

Apparently that is a yes-and- no answer.

A consultant who studies the effects of holiday parties and bonuses on employee morale for several years once told me that, "These parties are more about celebrating the effort and hard work of employees and not so much about the holidays. It's an opportunity for the company to take the time to say thank- you."

Net net: It's hearing management say "Thank You," not the hors d'oeuvres, that makes these parties popular.

That’s not the only thing that makes these parities popular – you can usually count on someone making a complete ass out of themselves…creating an office legend for years to come.

These tales of unseemly behavior are great fun─unless the story is about you.

And so my holiday gift…a cautionary tale.

Once upon a time, long long ago, in a land far far away, two young female reporters would get together for a weekly home-cooked meal. One night, as they dined on Chun King Chicken Chow Mein over Minute Rice and a bottle of Nouveau Beaujolais, the silly young girls decided it would be fun to rank their male co-workers. And so, long before David Letterman had a Top 10 list, these two ingénues created their own top 10 – listing which male co-workers they thought would be good in bed.

While the two girls didn’t agree on everyone on the list, they were unanimous on their number one choice. They chose their boss –the news director.

Several months passed. The two girls never breathed a word of the list. But then, on the night of the holiday party, one of the girls, who had one too many rum-and-cokes, decided it was time to go public with the list.

And so it came to pass that one of the young reporters could never quite get excited about going to a holiday office party again.

The moral of the story: Don't share secrets with girls who like rum-and-coke, and  whatever you do,leave the Top 10 List to David Letterman.

Rule 635, where are you?

The National Association of American Scholars has a link on its home page called Advertiser’s Index. 

When you click on Advertiser’s Index you see a page with four companies: Sierra Wireless, Telkonet, Avaya and The City of Las Vegas. So far so good.

There’s something about the word “advertisers” that might lead most rational human beings to assume that the companies listed on the page have paid and provided support for the organization.

There's something about having a page called Advertiser's Link that suggests this companies have confidence in the organization. That they have shared values. That they are saying we trust this company, so should you.

But most websites don’t have Rule 635. I would link you to Rule 635 but as I shared in Frankly, My Dear, that would be a violation of Rule 0, and the consequence of breaking any of these rules can be disastrous,as exposed in  the The New York Times article -- Apply Here for Scholarship, And Prepare to Be Smeared ."

So I’ll paraphrase. Rule 635 basically says that readers should not interpret that any of the companies listed on the site have actually given their permission to be listed.

It goes on to say that just because a company is listed, readers shouldn’t assume it means the company is actually endorsing the organization.

In other words  Rule 635 basically says that The National Association of American Scholars participates in Faux Advertising.

So given Rule 635, I guess what the term Advertiser’s Link means, at least in the context of this web site , is that they are presenting a list of businesses that do advertise in various media. Clever? Maybe. Devious? Absolutely. Illegal? Not sure about that one. Still checking on that.

Sierra Wireless and Avaya, two of the companies listed on The Advertiser’s Link page are not amused.

Sierra Wireless responded to my inquiry with this email:

Hello Elana,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Sierra Wireless does not and has never sponsored the National Academy of American Scholars or any of its affiliates. We are working to have our name removed from this organization's page as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Sharlene

__________________________

Sharlene Myers

Media Communication Specialist

Sierra Wireless, Inc.

That was about 10 days ago. Their name is still on the site.

So is Avaya’s. They also sent an email:

We are currently investigating this, and I have no information at this time. To our knowledge, this is not a corporate-authorized sponsorship.

Regards,

Deb Kline

Deborah Kline|Senior Manager, Corporate Public Relations -

I was able to catch up with Kline for a brief phone conversation. She was under the assumption that their name had already been removed from the website. When I informed her that they were still listed, she said she would let legal know.

“We have been unable to find out how it’s come to pass that we are on this web site. The direction we have given is get our name off of it,” said Kline.

Kline promised she would let legal know. I requested an opportunity to talk directly to legal .She said she would pass on my request.

I did ask Kline whether this kind of thing happens a lot. She said,as a Fortune 500 company, a lot of professional and industry organizations link to their site without asking permission. Kline said in most cases Avaya doesn’t care because under most circumstance the hope is that the link will do some good.

Now the link to the City of Las Vegas is a bit more complex. It says the City of Las Vegas on the page, but the actual link is to a website called Las Vegas.Com. Despite numerous messages to the city attorney of Las Vegas, he has chosen not to answer my calls. It happens.

Where is Rule 635 ? You have to drill down deep into this website to find any of the rules. If you get to the home page, click on Program Descriptions. Scroll down to just above the end of the page and you’ll find a listing that says  Table of Interesting Links.

Once you click there, you’ll find the link to the Rules. It’s the first link in the left hand column. It would take a couple of hours to read all of them, but they are there.

On that same page you’ll also find the offensive website that defames the students. Click on Golden Bear Media Reports.

Patience is a virtue. You’ll come to a page that has animated bears and a very bizarre PowerPoint presentation. It takes a couple of minutes to go through this, but once you do, you’ll be instructed to click for news, and voilà it will take you to a hate infested site.

It is there that my family members are defamed. One link says something to the effect that the NY Family Underboss Centor ( whatever that means) is suspected of recruiting a professor to attack free speech, the U.S. Constitution,and Christian Themes. There's lots more.

Now make no mistake about it, my goal is to not just have Sierra Wireless, Avaya, Telkonet and the City of Las Vegas removed from this web site, if I had my druthers I would like to see the entire website banned. Of course who is going to do that?

If that can’t happen, I would like to see some state attorney general,somewhere,step up to the plate and make this organization stop publishing false and malicious statements about students who applied for their scholarship and inadvertently broke Rule 39 -- that states that if anyone contacts the organization about a scholarship applicant, the student automatically gives up their right of privacy.

Sure, this website posts their Rules but it's like a tree falling in the forest with no one around.