Conner's Blog

Does anyone know where this sign originated?   Was it mandated by some health department somewhere or did some restaurant decide that it would be good marketing to put the sign up?

I hate this sign, always have and always will.  As an employee it was insulting, as a customer it worries me.  If your employees can’t remember to wash their hands after using the restroom, what else are they forgetting to do?

If I was the marketing director of a large food service chain, one of the first things I would do would be to eliminate the use of this sign from all restrooms.  I would then “accidentally” leak a memo which would state, “We feel our team members are smart enough and have sufficient training to feel comfortable removing this sign from our restrooms.”  I would also consider sending thank you notes to the employees mothers thanking them for defraying the cost of training their sons and daughters.

thank you to sandrino for the photo.

I’ve never been a fan of Best Buy.  Yes, I consider Minnesota my second home after Montana, but just because a company is native to MN doesn’t mean I don’t consider it somewhat evil.  I do have to admit though, that Best Buy usually seems to know what they are doing.  If nothing else choosing to sell Ubuntu score them a point or two less on the evil scale.

Still, even considering them evil, I hate seeing local companies do something incredibly dumb.  Best Buy is opening a store in the Mall of America this week.  Considering that the Mall is less than four miles from Best Buy’s corporate headquarters, it surprised me they didn’t already have a location there.  They seem pretty excited about it, more marketing for a new store than you usually see from Best Buy.  They open on Thursday(8/7), and are giving away some prizes to the first few guests.  On Friday they are having a ribbon cutting ceremony.  Seems like a good idea, it’s going to be pretty crazy I’m sure.  Oddly though, as a celebrity, they brought in Magic Johnson.

Now I would be pretty stoked myself if I got to meet Magic Johnson.  Then again I grew up in Montana where basketball is pretty much the sport of choice for most school.  In Minnesota, at least in my experience, the choice of sports is hockey, football, baseball,  and basketball, in that order.  I can say that nearly all my friends love hockey, spend the NFL season following the Vikes, and at least casually follow the Twins.  Not one of them cares one bit about the Timberwolves.

So why would Best Buy bring in an out of town star who played the states least popular sport?  It seems kind of pointless if you are trying to get people around the Metro excited about the store.  Bring in Gordie Howe or Harmon Killebrew if you are trying get people excited.

Of course maybe they are not trying to get people excited, I’m sure they will be packed all weekend.  It is the Mall of America, where you get trampled just walking of the restroom on weekends.  If that is the case though, then why bother with a celebrity at all?

Nineteen years is a good run, but Wal-Mart decided to ditch its successful “Always Low Prices” Slogan.  Read the article here They hired a new advertising firm, which appears to have convinced them to start saying “Save Money. Live Better.”  Not to point out the obvious, but isn’t this the same slogan as another successful retailer.  “Expect More, Pay Less” has been around for a while, and Target was the first thought that popped into my head when I read Wal-Mart’s new slogan.  I’m not the only one to point this out.

Even though I think the slogan is a terrible mockery of a great slogan by Target, I do like parts of the strategy.  The use of the study by Global Insight to highlight real savings to consumers is great and will probably make a positive impact.  But the whole strategy just makes me think that Wal-Mart wants to take the same place in the minds of consumers as Target, yet want to still be known as the least expensive.   I think it is going to be very difficult to shake the low-class and cheap feel most of us feel at Wal-Mart by stealing Target’s slogan yet claiming $2,500 in savings.

If Wal-Mart really wanted to use that study for it’s benefit, why not go out into the real world, find a family that was forced to switch to Wal-Mart for it’s shopping due to a layoff or an unexpected increase in expenses and ask them to recount how much they saved by shopping at Wal-Mart rather than their competitor.  A feel good story with hard numbers to back it up, that sure sounds like a winner to me.

You have to love this sign, which was posted in the window of what was previously Globe College. They recently changed their name to Globe University and built a new building. This was the map they posted at their old location to direct you to the new location.

It is difficult to see due to my camera phone’s poor resolution, but they misspelled one of the major roads in Woodbury, Radio Drive, as Rasio Drive. Click for a Google map of the area. Somehow I don’t see this inspiring confidence in students researching the college.