Pre-Pay

Years ago when I started  working at Cullman Electric co-op we had a lot of customers that just couldn't pay their bills on time. We at the co-op spent endless hours cutting people off and then reconnecting them when the bill was paid. An inconvenience for both parties. Some people get embarrassed about this, but the truth is that there are a lot of today's population that just can't make ends meet on what they make while trying to provide the expensive necessities in life. Then companies started offering pre-pay options. For these companies I thought how nice of them to work with the working public to meet them half way on providing a service along with a payment option. Then the co-op announced that they were going to offer a pre-pay option. I was not in any kind of business class when this started and my first thought was that this will never work. At that time I did not realize that in order to be good in business you have to develop a plan to work with your paying customers. If you can't get paid for your services, you won't be in business long. Yet new technology and smart business people came up with a great pre-pay payment option that really helps the customers keep their bills paid on their terms. I was proven wrong, and after getting into business management classes, learning what I have I realize that I was looking at this from the wrong side. If your going to be successful in business today, you need a good product, a fair price, good service, and sometimes depending on the type of business, have a payment option available.  

Playboy Magazine

What a magazine in the good ole days. Of course some people know this magazine as a skin magazine. That it has been indeed, but if you take a minute to get past the nude pictures, this magazine has always offered a lot more. In the years past, it was actually considered as the bible for cool men's fashion. It was a way of understanding certain lifestyles that young men looked to live. As of March, 2016, Playboy has announced that it will stop publishing images of nude women. It's bad enough that the circulation's has dropped from 5.6 million magazine's in 1975 to less that 800,000 in 2015, they now are going to stop doing what the magazine has always been known for. This is going to be a very difficult marketing problem. Common sense in my book say's that the company should have done something long before a loss of 4.8 million magazine's per year. Playboy's issue is defining what the brand stand's for as it revamps its editorial content. At least they have the heritage and they have the very clear authentic position. Before you give up on Playboy, note that it did away with nudity on its website in 2014 and the digital version actually attracted more traffic as well as a younger audience. The strategic decision resulted in a 375 percent increase in global unique monthly visitors to Playboy.com. The editors are going to have to figure out who its audience is since the magazine isn't nearly as accessible to the younger demographics. It seems that it would have been a better move to have addressed this problem a little at a time over the years as the magazine was losing its audience instead of such a drastic move all at once, or a have too if you will. I wish Playboy well on its transition and its major journey as it reworks its marketing strategy. This will be interesting to follow the restructuring of this magazine.

Monsanto

I was brought up in a time where I was led to believe that the government stood for good things. The government and the representatives where in place to protect the public of their district that they represented. As we all know that has changed over the years big time. Its not about the people that elected you into a position anymore, it's all about them and how much money and favors they can hoard while in office. I now get on my soap box concerning the company Monsanto. Has anybody took a minute to read what this company is doing to our nation, children, our crops, our DNA, everyone's health. Who is letting this company get by with this sort of thing. Now here is where you can justify that this company is sleeping with our government officials. All for the love of money with no ethics or moral concern for the people. This kind of thing makes me sick that these people that are in Washington, that has been elected to those positions to protect the people as a whole, is looking the other way and letting these big companies get by with what ever they want. I don't know about you, but I like my DNA just the way it is. Where does a company like this profit from doing things to the food chain that alters a humans DNA. And this is just the chip of the iceberg. I know this blog is not on marketing this week, but these articles on Monsanto just chap the cheeks of my .... Get a minute, research March Against Monsanto. Before you start your research you need to get yourself a punching bag because before you are done reading these articles you will need something for your frustration. It just blows me away that this is actually happening in this country and it is personally affecting us and our family's. 

Hands On

This past week I went to Kentucky to a utility trade show. I've never been to a show like this but I saw a different approach to marketing here. I would not be hesitant to say that there was in excess of 3 billion dollars worth of equipment on the expo grounds. It cost a lot of money to get this equipment to this location as well. The unique side of this show that I have not seen before is the equipment was set up for actual hands on test drive. You could climb up on a piece of equipment and operate it and make your decision instead of listening to a salesman who only knows what the company tells them about these products. What a marketing concept. You actually get to feel and see what the equipment does in person. Most trade shows have the look how pretty the new product is and this is what it can do for you and your company attitude. This attitude has worked for a lot of years, but I will have to say that this hands on concept was awesome. The vendors that were in doors were also set up to show how their product worked and let you try it out. Very interesting business marketing concept.