Ever notice how useless it is to say "I'd like to have _____ done by _____" and then proceed to give a later date/time as a a deadline? With rare exceptions, and the occasional organization that treats "I'd like"s as "must have"s, that project ain't going to materialize before the deadline.
People seem to worry that if they don't pad deadlines, the people that have to meet it will stress out too much. My personal take on it is that it just trains people to expect the padding. When something has to be rushed, panic sets in, and service suffers. Everyone is different of course, but I need my deadlines. This blog post for example. Needed it up like 10 hours ago. Do I set blogging deadlines? Noooooope.
While I work on my timing issues and blogging skills, lemme recommend the following pro's I look up to: Avinash, master of analytics (another hat I wear here at underabuck), Seth Godin, marketing guru, and my ever-evolving copy-writing bible, copyblogger.

There's a lot of competition out there for nearly every niche, whether you dive into a market that's been around for ages, or develop a new approach that will take business away from out-dated products or services. With promotional products, we're certainly in the former, with the main difference between us and our competition being our focus. We struggle to define our differences and emphasize our appealing features. Despite the reassure to come across as superior, and the desire to down-play our competitors, we share similar goals; we both desire to be successful, and we know the way to do that is to please our customers.

Labels: entrepreneurial comradery, magazines, promotional industry

If Google had never moved beyond being the best search engine ever made, I would still love them for who they are. But despite my general distaste for companies that try to get their tentacles into several different kinds of business, I can't help falling for every new thing, or new spins on old things, that Google puts out. I feel like a hopeless fanboy, but every time they're in the news, it very nearly blows my mind. Except for today. Today, I saw Wave (and I'd like you to know how difficult it is for me to resist constantly making puns), and my mind was certainly and completely blown. I'm a day or so late, I know, please forgive me. Everything I've done since watching the demo I've compared to how I would do it with Wave. I'm not exaggerating in the least. I cannot imagine an aspect of life that could not be changed and/or enhanced by this amazing tool in one way or another. If you haven't seen it yet, please, check it out: http://wave.google.com/ .

What does it mean to the promotional product industry? I really don't know, I'm far from being an expert in the field, but I can imagine. I imagine collaborating with our customers and suppliers in ways that will insure the creative needs of said customers being met several times faster and in ways more satisfactory than has even been possible before. As an online business, the possibilities are endless, it destroys just about every imaginable hurdle and wall. Wave is going to be available to developers before it reaches users like me, people who will discover and solve problems I can't even begin to predict, and that's in addition to solutions which already have the potential to revolutionize, well, everything.

We're still trying to work with what we have, which, quite honestly, is enough for us to offer you exceptional service and solid products. You may have noticed that some of what we have isn't quite working for you at the moment, and I'd like to rectify a small part of that in a small way until we can fix it properly, specifically, the inability to comment on blog posts. So, if you have a comment, response, put-down, praise, criticism (constructive or otherwise), please send it with the post title in the subject line to blogresponse@underabuck.com , and I'll be sure to look through them. As long as it's not rather blatantly and broadly offensive, I'll tack them on to the appropriate posts.

Labels: google wave, promotional products, website functionality

I'm sure good number of people are occasionally floored by the intensity of commercialism in the world today, it's joked about often enough, preached about regularly during holidays, etc. I've been having a number of those occasions as of late (probably due to exposure to the world of promotional products), and felt it may be time to vent about it just a little. Movies get me the most. I'll be enjoying an artful concoction of explosions, witty quips, attractive people, and nifty devices, when it will suddenly hit me that every car in the ENTIRE FILM came from one manufacturer. It takes me a full 5 minutes or so to get over the feeling that the whole production was just to sell me a vehicle. Or it will be just one beverage. Occasionally, other products will get the spotlight, evoking similar emotions, but it's mostly cars and beverages.
It's an interruption to me. There's precious little in the way of entertainment these days without it, but I still feel entitled to 1.5 hours of product placement free amusement for a $10 investment. Perhaps I wouldn't if it weren't for every other flick avoiding such commercials, but hey, them's the breaks. You know where I don't mind seeing people's brands? Handy-dandy promotional products. If you provide a service I found useful, or sold a product, or products, that I needed, I actually appreciate getting a reminder of where to go when I pick up a pen or pencil. Heck, I'll give up my desire for brand-free entertainment if you give me an amusing toy with your name on it. If movies with blatent product placement were cheaper, or free, I'd probably be fine with it. Meh.

Labels: entertainment, promotional products

I'm no early-adopter. It takes me a while to "get things", if I get them at all. Text messages are one of those things. For example, if I'm involved in a text conversation that lasts for more than two sentences from both parties, I start getting noticeably upset. I'm also bad at keeping up with old friends and acquaintances. I fail horribly at everything facebook. It's not because I don't care about people, it's just that I don't care about people I can't actually see, and when I do actually see them, I get all the relevant-to-me information I need from them. Horribly unsocial of me maybe, but I would contend that "relevant-to-me" includes quite a few things that are relevant to them, and is perfectly fair to everyone.
Which brings me to Twitter. The ultimate evil. Of course I have a twitter page. Which will be about as up to date as my facebook page (annually, maybe). And of course, underabuck will have to have a twitter page, which shall be updated much more often in an effort to keep the whole twitter world up to date on what relevant things we're doing. So, if you hate getting cuponish emails (understandable), but want to stay on top of the latest deals on promotional items/products/etc., feel free to get signed up for underabuck's tweets, where we'll rework those cuponish statements into something similar to secret ninja insider infos. There's a good possibility that my frustration with the existance of twitter will manifest its self into facinating tweets. Tune in to twitter.com/underabuck to find out!

I'm not a big fan of electric vehicles. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the big car companies have kinda ruined the concept for me. You see, I remember years ago that the technology for making superior electric vehicles cheaper than current gas-guzzlers would be around before I hit 16, meaning I could probably scoop up pretty impressively powerful, loud, smelly transportation for a steal as the generation before me practically abandoned combustion for the smooth whir of batterymobiles. I won't say my first car was a disappointment, but it didn't do 0-60 in under 3 seconds either. It was, however, a blow to my dreams of seeing a radical change in the world during my lifetime. I settled into the wonderful world of gas-powered transportation, changing my own oil, making my own repairs, falling in love with the complicated symphony of explosions, rotating parts, sweet-smelling coolants, and the burning scent of spent fuel. The vehicle I moved on to has pulled me still deeper into the seductive world of fossil fuels. The motorcycle, to me, is the ideal form of transportation, rewarding the rider for every iota of skill they exhibit, responding to your unconscious thoughts and desires, turning errands into adventures, and immersing the rider completely in the task and pleasure of navigating asphalt gauntlets, or the un-paved expanses of our world. I thought I'd never be able to lust after a vehicle with more than two wheels again.

In fact, the moment it happened, I really didn't think of it as lust. I called it curiosity when I read this Techcrunch article last month. It didn't occur to me until later that when I saw things like "300 mile range" and "instant power delivery", I wished that my bike would do that. I looked up more later, as it actually occured to me to compare it to current forms of transportation. Now, my little Buell is no slouch, it gets a good 50 miles to the gallon and hits super-legal speeds about two to three times faster than most cars you can get on a middle-class budget, but that tank only holds about 3 gallons. And because of that, I know I'd be happy with a 300 mile range, which is far beyond what I would have thought possible at the rate companies like GM and their ilk are "progressing". And not only does this vehicle accomplish things that the offerings of much larger companies can't really approach, it does it for a less-than-astronomical price. Now, I wouldn't be able to toodle out and pick one up tomorrow or anything, but if this car had much more of a grasp on me, I'd make a few financial sacrifices to get one in my garage in the space of a year or so. However, it strikes me that when they can get this sort of performance out of a motor "roughly the size of a water melon", they should be able to do some pretty insane things within the space of a motorcycles' frame. Well that's how it struck me last month anyways. I didn't think about it much more until watching Star Trek last night, and what do I see? A young Kirk riding in on a modern art interpretation of a sport bike with a nice tight wheelbase, and sharp open angles where a conventional bike would have an engine. I don't have any illusions about what that particular movie prop could accomplish in the real world, but if someone out there was thinking about selling something simliar with more motor and less open spaces, I'd be thinking about buying. I'm no environmentalist, but I have to admit shaking my head every other time I pull up next to one of those "SUV"s that don't stand a chance of being used for anything close to sport OR utility. It's a combination of different things that appeal to me, partially the futuristic aspect, partially the thought of being a better steward of our planet's resources. How about you? While I have you thinking about it, I'm going to shamelessly plug our products here at Underabuck. There's tons of promotional products that are trying to harness the wave that's pushing ever more green products into the mainstream, and we're happy to carry a selection of them here. Keep an eye out for buzzwords like "recycled" and "renewable"!

I first gained a healthy (erm. . .well. . . you know) respect for the flu when I read a book about the last true pandemic, many years ago. Honestly, I can't remember the title or author, or why I found a book about the flu all that interesting, but it was, despite the subject, a decent read. I think one of the things that may have made that book interesting was the relatively brief mention the subject got in my history class, considering the intense impact it had on people's lives.
Now I understand how someone looking back on that sort of thing, and the other devastating diseases of the past, could feel some discomfort over the fact that those same diseases still exist in the world today, just waiting to mutate into something that will bring civilizations to their knees. However, considering that the last time a pandemic actually wiped out significant populations, running water was somewhat of a rarity, and even in recent outbreaks, most of the damage has been done where it's STILL a rarity, I find it odd that there seems to be a tangible effect on our economy when these scares arise. Sure, the worst could happen, you could be on vacation away from the complications and hygiene of home and get sneezed on by just the wrong pig, and end up debilitated or dead, but I'd rate that up there with not driving for the fear of getting into an accident. Which I think is probably statistically much, much more likely than getting swine flu. Well, I suppose the WORST that could happen would actually be something like the flu mutating into a cannibal-zombie making disease that spreads via cell phone towers.
So, now that you know that I'm under the impression that this outbreak thing is pretty much over-blown, I feel that I can progress to the next step in our relationship. How do you take advantage of this? Shameless, I know. I'll probably contract the flu in some form later today for this, but bear with me; instead of pens and pencils, maybe handout health and hygiene related giveaways. You're probably not going to just stop promoting your business or message because of a loud wail from the CDC, but think about switching to promotional products that will remind your customers to take care of themselves, and enable them to do just that. There now, that wasn't so heartless after all. My heart does go out to the people suffering from this, I can only imagine the shock of losing a loved one to a "harmless" disease, and I hope we will see this crisis find itself burned out in short order.

Labels: economy, flu, hygiene, promotional items