Products for a cause

Although the majority of Americans (96%) say they can identify two to three causes that are important to them personally, the recent 2011 MSLGROUP Social  Purpose Index found that only thirty-seven percent of Americans have actually purchased a product associated with a cause in the past year.  The gap between socially-conscious consumers' and their actual cause-related purchase decisions can be explained through heightened skepticism in the marketplace today. This skepticism is a result of many companies supporting causes that don't necessarily make sense for their business or their brands. Seventy-four percent of Americans agree that there is often too much of a disconnect between the causes companies support and the brands and products they sell (74%), while nearly as many (67%) feel that companies only support causes to sell products.

"These findings suggest that simply tying a cause to your product to get consumers to purchase is no longer enough, despite what others are telling you," said Scott Beaudoin, SVP, North America Director of Cause Marketing and CSR at MSLGROUP, one of the world's top five global  PR and events agencies.  "In order to connect with consumers in an authentic and meaningful way, companies need to elevate beyond purpose-driven table stakes and better align their core competencies with societal needs in order to fuel greater participation and profits."

Ripped? Really?

While I love the concept of a free market place, there are times when I come across the name of a product and it makes me laugh. I admire the creativity, but I still laugh. Take testoripped as an example. It's clearly designed from the name to increase testosterone, to make you ... "ripped" as in having muscles. The visual derived from the name immediately creates the vision of a muscled Adonis ... Which goes to show you in marketing? The name really does matter ...

Online marketing

Many companies opt to take advantage of the free market place by using online marketing over traditional print. You'll see this with quite a few products like, adapexin-p, as one example. Keywords, or purchasing online advertising using keywords has proven to work for them as a more cost effective option. Which makes sense given the rising cost of advertising in some areas. It's also easier to target specific target groups on the internet when advertising is placed on websites that attract specific groups more likely to use a product or service.

Marketing curiousity

A popular marketing technique designed to take advantage of our natural curiosity are ones that advise you to click here without telling you what you are clicking on. Unfortunately hackers and those with less than honorable intentions have taken advantage of this natural curiosity as well, which means if you do decide to click here or there, if you are asked to download something? Don't do it unless you are certain it's safe. I recently experienced this on classmates.com where some spy scam pop up began. So don't just assume if it's a place you believed to be credible that it's okay, it may not be.

Open ended questions

When you come across a website that asks an open ended question like, does apidexin work? The answer to the question is almost always, "yes" -- which is logical. If the product did not work for someone out there, word of mouth alone would have killed it. However, as most of the websites state, the results experienced by some are not the same results everyone gets. There is no one magic cure that's a one sized fits all.

Research reviews

Almost every diet, health or skin care product out there has reviews on their website or another website is created to provide reviews. Take ephedra reviews as an example, it's designed to give you reviews on a product. Don't rely on just one website to give you the answers you are seeking when it comes to any product, be wary of sites that have no negative reviews since these products do not work for everyone and don't forget to talk to your health care professional first. No matter how great a product sounds, they don't know your medical history.

Truck loads of products

If I kept every different skin product or acne lotions that my four daughters have tried and found either not strong enough, too strong, or not just right, I'd probably need several trucks to haul it away in. However, it shows how marketing works. Had the products not been marketed in a way that one of them thought would work? They would not have bought it. Perhaps they have a future as a product testing company -- they have the experience.

:-)

Going LCD

We have not replaced any of our television sets with a lg lcd screen, in part because we watch very little television. We have however replaced all of our monitors for our computers. Gone are the monster clunker monitors that would take up a huge amount of space replaced by slimmer ones that are not only larger in screen size, but much better in resolution. Some of the LCD's can be a monitor for your computer and also a television, which gives you even more options.

I'd inhale

Cigars are still popular with some of those I know, including several friends who are women. Yet as a decade long cigarette smoker, the few times I've tried a cigar I've found it difficult to resist the years of the inhaling reflex. Even something as smooth as a camacho triple maduro is not meant to be inhaled. Though ironically some of those I know who smoke cigars used to smoke cigarettes and managed to give those up, yet still enjoy an occasional cigar. Perhaps it would take more time and a bit more practice.

:-)

On labeling

Most times labeling is not something that is supported in our society, yet when it comes to paying attention to clothing lines, that is an area where some in our society place a high value -- an example those who cherish blac label clothing -- The virtues of placing importance on clothing labels is also one that creates discussion. Yet no matter your opinion on it, it is a part of a free market society and marketing strategies are designed to try to enhance the desire related to owning a particular label.

Green cleaning

Even before it was the "popular" thing to do, I've been a fan of ecologically friendly cleaning supplies, relying on some old fashioned ones such as vinegar and baking soda. Now there are a variety of different green cleaning supplies out there on the market. Some make me chuckle a bit considering the price factor, in theory most of the green products should cost less, in practice, many times they are much higher priced than their chemical cleaning cousins. There are however some green products that won't take all of your green ... All that is required from you is a bit of research.

Diet debates

There is quite a bit of debate out there on the topic of hgh human growth hormone and diets. The other day I saw a debate on hgh start on Facebook. One person believed it worked in conjunction with a special diet, one did not. What was interesting about it was each one used different websites to make their points. Which means for those of you looking for information, the challenge is to find a website that provides you with both the pluses and the minuses and drives home the point that you should talk to a health care professional before taking any supplemental product.

Use the Internet to check prices

The way to find the cheapest auto insurance may be just a few mouse clicks away, though some online insurance companies try to make it not quite as easy by expecting you to wait for an agent to e-mail you or call you with a quote. Not all online insurance companies do that, and you can also take advantage of the 1-800 numbers that the companies have to get a quote. Some personal information is necessary to give you a quote, but you are the only one who can determine how much information you want to share. Remember, just because you visit a site doesn't mean you can't just click away ...

Wikileaks: Beyond Good and Evil

One of the better pieces I've read out there on the WikiLeaks story can be found on the Advocate site -- it was written by Advocate Staff and covers a few instances of the differences in media coverage and reaction. One small part:

There is obvi­ously some­thing pro­foundly unde­mo­c­ra­tic about this state of affairs. In order for a democ­racy to func­tion, it is nec­es­sary for the cit­i­zenry to have sig­nif­i­cant access to infor­ma­tion about mat­ters of state. Par­tic­u­larly when it comes to Amer­i­can for­eign rela­tions and Amer­i­can over­seas adven­tures, the cit­i­zens of this coun­try are very much — too much — in the dark (obvi­ously this is gen­er­ally true of every coun­try). Wik­iLeaks or any sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tion thus car­ries with it a democ­ra­tiz­ing poten­tial whereby infor­ma­tion that has been unnec­es­sar­ily locked away becomes avail­able to the aver­age cit­i­zen. On the whole though, lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive elites are united in their belief that this ought not to hap­pen, and thus Wik­iLeaks is either demo­nized or shrugged off as fairly insignif­i­cant. Even some lib­er­als, such as Jon Stew­art, who are pre­sum­ably more skep­ti­cal of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy than the aver­age Belt­way insider, don’t par­tic­u­larly know how to react to an orga­ni­za­tion that has the poten­tial to pro­vide the kind of infor­ma­tion that could, the­o­ret­i­cally, inform a move­ment that would seek to utterly trans­form Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy. Stewart’s scathing, ironic style is absolutely top­ping when it comes to evis­cer­at­ing the pow­ers that be, but it has no idea how to respond to the pos­si­bil­ity of act­ing in a man­ner that would chal­lenge America’s impe­r­ial pres­ence in much of the world, some­thing which is at least made more pos­si­ble by a trans­parency orga­ni­za­tion like WikiLeaks.

almost everything is wholesale

You can buy almost anything wholesale anymore, even online, from food to clothes to sunglasses even insurance. Insurance you say? Yes, places exist out there like Wholesaleinsurance.net where they state they have wholesale pricing on insurance. As always check the fine print and exactly what each plan offers compared to what you have now, that said, it never hurts to compare prices, you could save money.

Silly marketing ideas

With the movie "Tangled" being popular right now, I couldn't help thinking when seeing this shampoo for thin hair product that a fun, yet probably silly, marketing idea would be to have Rapunzel promote it. It'd be really easy to say, "have hair like me" -- so advertising execs if you are out there? You heard it first here.

:-)

Aging nightmares

Since I don't take care of myself the way I should and I don't always eat right or exercise or anything else we are supposed to do to have healthy skin and a healthy body, I have spent time looking for what is the best wrinkle cream out there as I have spotted a few wrinkles. My problem is however, that when I buy a product? I forget to use it. For some reason, it doesn't seem to work that way.

Looking for answers

Turning to the Internet to ask the search engine of your choice questions is one great way to find answers. Take for as an example the question does p90x work? If you type that into google or yahoo or whatever search engine you prefer, you'll find a variety of answers. However searching for "why is Lisa crazy" might not find you answers. At least not yet...

:-)

Skin care the easy way

There are hundreds of different skin care products out there designed to do everything from preventing wrinkles to dealing with acne. One way to learn more is to talk to a dermatologist, another is to turn to the internet and read some of the ingredients as well as read customer reviews of the products. Then take that information to see what might work for you as well as see if samples or smaller sizes are available for sale. That way, if a product doesn't work? You've spent less.

Scrubs is really the wrong word...

The word "scrubs" has been given a negative connotation when used to reference a person. Yet the concept of surgical scrub clothing is far from being "scrubby" -- the professionally designed wear for doctors, nurses and other health care professionals has gone main stream outside of the medical facility because it's comfortable.

The days of the green scrub pants may still exist in some medical settings, but for the most part, in the outside world of consumer wear, there are bright colors and a variety of patterns.

Beyond comfort there is cost, cheap scrubs can be found, at times even with holiday themes for those of you looking for a bit of pizazz with your scrub wear. My personal favorite has bats on it. I love October since it's the one month I can wear them out of the house without getting strange looks.

:-)