Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Shop at Gilda's Club Worldwide eBay auction

Know someone who would love to have two workout sessions with fitness guru Hernan Pazmino?

Know a golf aficionado who would jump at the chance to attend next year's U.S. Golf Open at the Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, PA as a V.I.P?

Those are just two of the 34 unique gifts ranging from impossible-to-get tickets to sporting events to jewelry, clothing and spa visits that are available at this very special eBay auction . 100% of the proceeds from this auction will benefit Gilda's Club Worldwide -- an organization that provides emotional and social support to people going through cancer treatment.

To be completely transparent, I know and have a relationship with the folks who are organizing this auction. Lynn Fantom, who sits on the board of Gilda's Club Worldwide, is a good friend. She also happens to be the  Chairman and CEO of ID Media -- the agency that employs my son Noah. Noah was in charge of creating the online presence for this auction.

"At this time of year, when we are all thinking of giving, particularly to children, ID Media's employees have decided to give their time and effort to raise money for an organization that has a unique emphasis on children," said Fantom.

Remember, not only do all of the proceeds from the auction go to support Gilda's Club, but you also get to take a tax deduction on the gift.

It's a great place to shop... fabulous presents, donations to a wonderful organization and a tax-deduction all rolled into one. And the best part, you can do all your shopping without leaving  your home or office.

Radio Shack's 1988 Catalogue featuring that new fangled cellular phone

    Shares of Radio Shack closed at a little under $18 a share yesterday -- that's a far cry from its high in 2000 of around $75 a share.

While the stock may not be resurging, there has been a lot of Internet traffic for old Radio Shack catalogs and TV spots.

Someone posted a series of pages from a 1988 RadioShack catalog on Fark.com and over 30,000 people have clicked through to see these bargains where you can buy a cellular phone for $1499 and a  TANDY 3000HL which "provides the power and expandability you need to create an efficient MS-DOS based computer system for less".  It had 512K RAM with an expandable memory slot of 4MB.

Over at YouTube you can watch a series of  nostalgic RadioShack commercials  like this one promoting a  car phone. Circa 1988. 

Are you taking a CyberMonday Shopping Break Today?

  Depending on who you listen to, the  Monday after Thanksgiving is the least productive workday of the year. Why? Because it's CyberMonday. As Single Ma's Fabulous Financials blogs,

"Last year, it was reported that 59% of Cyber Monday online shopping was via work computers, so employers are warned of decreased productivity levels. Imagine that! "Sorry boss, but I can't work today because I need to shop for a flat screen." Ha!"

CNN.Money is also reporting on the tendency of people to do their CyberMonday shopping at work. In an article that features research by Shopping.org - the folks that are home to CyberMonday.com     retailers are definitely offering "serious" discounts today. In return, employees say they'll be taking a Cybermonday Shopping Break.

"More than one-third of the 1,890 consumers surveyed for the report said they will use Internet access at work to browse or buy gifts online this holiday season. More than half of young adults the ages of 18 to 24, and nearly half of those aged 25 to 34 said they would shop online during work hours. Among the most-shopped categories last year on Cyber Monday were jewelry, consumer electronics, gourmet food, furniture and home décor, the report said."

Note: At 7:46 a.m. CST the site was down-- Could it be that folks on the East Coast were so eager to get an early start on their shopping that there was an online traffic jam? Whether or not CyberMonday is the biggest online shopping day of the year is debatable. Cleverhack dot com, a blog written by a self-described geek in her early 30s says Cyber Monday is more spin than reality.

"Speaking as a person formerly involved in E-commerce, I can tell you that Black Friday and the upcoming Cyber Monday won’t be all that. Sure, the weekend will be good for online retailers, but these won’t be the busiest days for online retailers during the 2006 Holiday Season. In fact, the busiest days for online retailers this year will be December 12th and 13th. The reason? Christmas is on a Monday this year, and that pushes up the last day for a package to ship via UPS Ground within the Continental US to Friday, December 15th. (You can spec out a shipment on the UPS Web site to see what I mean.) Many retailers will use the 14th as an extra day for shipping and handling and to sort out issues on their end. With that cleared up, there are a ton of great deals online and the bloggers are buzzing. The bulk of e-commerce shoppers are those who would rather not go shopping in brick and mortar stores, hence the waiting until the second week of December to shop, but who also don’t want to be bothered with expedited shipping expenses and/or waiting for a package to arrive at the last minute."

So if you are planning on shopping at work today, where should you go? Google Checkout,in an attempt to drive sales from Paypal,is making a major push to entice new users. From that DAMN PC,

"Best Advice: be proactive and seek out promo codes from online shopping sites; AOL consumer advisor Regina Lewis says the risk of sellout is high and advises us to shop wisely by letting technology do the hard work for us. Let online sites do your comparison shopping for you: Shopzilla.com, NextTag, etc. Also: Shop at night! Let your insominia work to your advantage. [FoxNews.com] You may also locate tech sale deals at: Boddit Fat Wallet, Slick Deals, Tech Bargains, Deal News, Deal Catcher, Anand Tech Ben’s Bargains Got a sales tip for online shopping? Please share here! Happy Cyber Monday!"

And,from my friend Lydia (not her real name) check out Restaurants.com where you can purchase a $25 gift certificate to a restaurant for just $10.

Have a great day.Save a lot.

Image Credit: Flickr Member Judy B
This is cross-posted at BlogHer.

WCCO report on Black Friday Ads

 

The email came in a a few minutes before 5:00 pm  from Reporter Jason DeRusha of WCCO -TV , our CBS affiliate.

He had seen my post about Black Friday Ads on Blogher -- the network of women blogs that where I am a contributing editor and Jason wanted to chat. Then he wanted to do an on air interview. Did I mention that (a) my hair was a mess (b) my office was messier than usual and that is beyond comprehension for some and (c) I had to be on a webex facilitation at 5:50.

When Jason discovered I lived downtown he didn't think that my time crunch was an issue. He, the cameraman and the intern arrived at 5:30 and we were done by 5:45.So here it is, Jason's story on Black Friday Ads with me as his "marketing expert.

Besides the fact that he didn't mention the name of my blog, or Blogher and that my name is actually pronounced  e la na ( like sha na na) rather than e lay na -- I thought his story was great.

Check out his blog  he has a lot of info on Black Friday ads.

HOW NEWS CORPS. COULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT

The book could have been a best-seller. With one twist. If the sales of the "confession" had been targeted to the families of the victims rather than the family of the murderer.

If the Goldmans and the Browns would have "profited"  from this hypothetical confession then people would have raced out to read the book-- happily.

If News Corp. had simply matched any payments to Simpson dollar to dollar to the Goldmans and Brown families, people still would have bought the book and watched the TV special.

But they didn't do that. And, that's what the outcry is all about . It's not that its a hypothetical confession.  It's not about the money. It's about who was getting the money.

Had the victims been included in the financial arrangement in any sort of way, the media would have gleefully done rounds of interviews hyping it as an inside look into the minds of a sociopath--as finally uncovering "The Truth" about the murders that launched the trial of the century.

The Media would have reminded us ad nauseum that a portion of every book sale was going to the Goldmans and Browns. The media would have felt clean  and very self righteous that they were somehow helping put money into the pocket of the people who lost their loved ones on that June evening in 1994.

If the money were going to the families of the victims rather than  just the  murderer than we would be living with OJ  Said He Did It all day ,every day, from now until Christmas.

All this outrage would have turned into a media frenzy of "a fascinating look into the mind of a sociopath."

As Bookninja writes about Rupert Murdoch's apology,

"...they don't actually give a rat's ass about the families and if they thought they could get away with it, they'd have done it in a second. It was only the collective gagging and anger that made any impact. This was as calculated a retraction and apology as a motor company recall. It only became an "ill-considered" book once the risk analysts realised they had more to lose from the bad press than from pulping the run."

Clinton Fein blogs about the first amendment on The First:First Amendment Project's Weblog and takes issue with how the media reported the entire episode.

Even I, on Annoy.com, took News Corp. to task, but not with the kind of hypocrisy that the holier-than-thous at MSNBC and CNN et al. saw fit to cover the story. Taking a graphic image of Nicole Brown Simpson lying in a pool of blood, her slashed throat covered by a promo of O.J. s new book and the News Corp. logo and tag line, mocking Judith Regan’s claim of domestic abuse solidarity and whitening her skin in much the same way Time magazine had once made O.J.’s darker, the piece was titled, using the same font as the book, If We Had Ethics. The irony is that I am posing the question as much to myself as I’m applying it to News Corp. After all, we are exploiting a tragedy in almost the identical, gratuitous way. The main difference though, is that ours is a commentary, and we aren’t making any money from it.

It is reported that Simpson's family has already been paid. Some reports say they were paid $3.5 million towards their education.

And as other bloggers have commented, it won't be too long before the now canceled book finds its way on eBay.

Image Credit: Annoy.com

"Pilgrim. You're Causing a lot of Trouble"

It's called blog theft. Rogue bloggers who try to make money by stealing content from legitimate bloggers. As it was in the Wild Wild West, it's up to citizens to take things in their own hands.

That brings us to Root Blog Project that is ripping off posts from Blogher -- yes. I am a contributing editor to Blogher. And yes, my posts,along with everyone else who posts at Blogher, are showing up on the Root Blog Project without any credit to Blogher.

We are not alone.
MaxPower writes about it in a post called  Save Your Blog Content from plagiarist like Karthhik of 33Rockers.com

Nick Barclay outted plagarist Patrick Husting in a post called Blog Post Plagiarism

Where is John Wayne when you need him? Here's how the Duke handled troublemakers in the 1963 film McLintock.

 

Watch Video Clip

Image Credit:  Flickr member The Swiss Globetrotter

At $599, Sony PS3 is a Loss Leader

They started lining up a couple of days ago to spend $599 on the newest and greatest Sony PlayStation.

Some stood in line for three days  to be one of the very few to get their hands on the 400,000 units available in the U.S. and Canada. Others  say the decision to stand in line for three days was a business decision.

As USA TODAY's Mike Snider reports,

"I'd really like to keep one, but I'm honestly going to sell mine just because I don't have any money," said Jack Lund, a St. Cloud (Minn.) State University sophomore who held spot No. 3 in a Best Buy line since Wednesday. The scene may be repeated Sunday, to a lesser extent, when a better supply of Nintendo's new $250 Wii game systems hits stores.

Many suspect that these "flipped" units will sell anywhere from $1200-$2000. Sony is saying that it will "airlift" another 600,000 units before the end of the year. However, According to gameindustrybiz Sony will lose $300 million  on the product.

The manufacturing cost of the 20GB PlayStation 3 is US $805.85 (EUR 629.8), over US $300 more than the retail price, according to research by electronics specialist iSuppli The price is an estimate based on the console's component parts, and does not include the cost of controllers, cables and packaging. The research reveals that Sony is taking a USD $306.85 (EUR 239.8) loss for its 20GB model, and a US $241.35 (EUR 188.6) for the high-end 60GB model, which retail at US$ 499 and US$ 599 in the US, respectively. "The size of Sony's loss per unit is remarkable, even for the videogame console business," said iSuppli."

Not sure what all the fuss is about? This video does a comparison of the features of PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3.

 

Solid business strategy or a sandcastle before the rain?

In this age of transparency should a business leader share the source of his/her metaphor if the metaphor comes from the New Testament, Talmud or Koran?

Lori was completely baffled. She was telling her radio co-host Julia about the time she worked at Carlson Companies and her boss was trying to motivate the troops by telling them the rock and sand story.

The manager's metaphor didn't sink in. The rock and sand story was part of a conversation  that Lori, Julia and Donny Love were having about insipid business expression.s On Their list: Get Traction, Out -Of-The Box and Paradigm Shift.

However, as Lori told the rock and sand story -- I had more than a sneaky suspicion that her boss had not come up with the metaphor himself.

He didn't. Jesus did.  It was part of his sermon on the Mount.  Now not being of the Christian persuasion I was not familiar with this Jesus reference.  Evidently Lori wasn't paying attention in Sunday school that day either.

But you would think that someone who was opting to tell a parable from the bible might have mentioned the source of his metaphor. Kind of tacky to steal a parable. Particularly Jesus' parable.

Was the business leader trying to impress the troops with his creativity? Or, was he simply uncomfortable mentioning Jesus in a business meeting?  Did he just assume that everyone in the room had gone to Sunday school and therefore the disclosure was not necessary?

Depending on what numbers you choose to believe,church attendance in the U.S. is hovering anywhere from 20-40%  which means that if you are going to use a parable to make a point in a business meeting you will be more successful if you don't assume everyone grew up singing:

The foolish man built his house upon the sand

And the rains came tumbling down

If you are unfamiliar with this parable Robert Brow explains

The parable points out that a house built on rock and a house without a solid foundation outwardly look the same. A person could look very impressive like a house with top quality windows, doors and locks, bathroom fittings, fireplaces, paintwork, appliances, and kitchen cabinets. But then the banks of the river of life burst, flood waters come swirling up, and without a proper foundation all that seemed important collapses. That is our situation if we build on the sand of fair weather friends, reliance on money, trust in our qualifications, education, and successes.

Amen.

Note: You can listen to Lori and Julia at FM107

Image Credit: Flickr member rayn27

Only her #$%! Knows For Sure

  The product promotes itself as " Color for hair down there". it is the first over -the-counter- hair coloring product for the Betty.

The business story is that the product's creator  invested in  just one $1,995 full page ad in the official publication of the Cosmoprof beauty trade show in Las Vegas in July. Then the buzz began. As Advertising Age reports,

By the time she registered for the show, the ad had already created enough buzz that several people around the table were asking her about it. The ad also helped draw the "Leno" team, which was taping a segment at the show. "It was just banter," she said, along the lines of "It's Betty -- color for the hair down there." But it was enough to draw thousands of visits from people who did online searches even before her site was taking orders, Ms. Jarecki said. Mentions in magazines, on drive-time radio and on the website DailyCandy.com followed this summer and fall.

MortarBlog shares that the company is doing very well.

 Last week, Betty Beauty’s website was on pace last week for 2 million annual visits, running well ahead of Procter & Gamble Co.'s Clairol.com and climbing toward that of L'Oreal's website

Mortarblog reminds readers that several years ago Sex In The City shared that there was an eager market for this product.

"In an infamous episode of Sex in the City, Kim Cattrall’s character, Samantha, discovers a grey hair…down there. After being told that plucking each individual hair actually causes the grey to spread, she attempts to dye it. Instead of getting “the carpeting to match the drapes” so to speak, Samantha ends up looking more like she’s giving birth to a tiny clown."

So how long will it be that there will be a product placement opportunity for Betty Beauty on Ugly Betty?

To Blogher Min Jin Kim for highlighting 'The Betty".

Sal Iannuzzi's $4 million transaction bonus

Never heard of Sal  Iannuzzi? As soon as the merger with Symbol Technologies and Motorola is completed, he will be second highest paid executive at Motorola--earning a cool one million  buckaroos a year.

As always Michelle Leder at Footnoted.org  reveals the funnybusiness occurring in corporate America.

Under his existing separation agreement with Symbol, which coincidentally enough was altered just a few months before Motorola announced the acquisition, CEO and President Sal Iannuzzi was set to receive a $4 million "separation payment". But since Iannuzzi is likely to stay on post-merger, the $4 million is now being called a "transaction bonus."[edit]Equally interesting is that Iannuzzi took over as interim president and CEO of Symbol on Aug. 1, 2005 and that it took only three days for Motorola’s CEO, Ed Zander, to reach out to Iannuzzi to talk about a potential merger."

While I will assume this is legal, the question remains is it ethical?
The problem is, ethics is often left to individual interpretation. What is ethical to me might be unethical to you.

Where does Motorola stand on ethical behavior? Does the company care that this  transaction bonus doesn't pass the public sniff test?
If they do care, now that the  transaction bonus is public knowledge, what do they plan to do about it?

In all likelihood reading the news of this transaction may create some head rolls,smirks and a few "you gotta be kidding me" But, in all reality it probably won't make many people take any action. It is what we have come to expect and accept out of corporate America.