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Vol. 27, No. 3 • March, 2009

Now you can find this newsletter on the web, at Freeman-Spicer.com

Shop At The Company Store, Please . . . . . . . As Japan stalls out, some Japanese companies are asking employees to consume where they work. Electronics giant Panasonic kicked off its campaign in February, asking 10,000 midlevel and senior managers to spend at least $1,050 on its products by July 31. At Toyota, bracing for its first annual loss in nearly five decades, 2,200 managers are being encouraged to buy new cars. And tech conglomerate NEC’s president, Jaoru Yano, has urged employees to demonstrate their loyalty via their wallets in a message on NEC’s internal Web site. It’s not a bottom - line tactic. Toyota’s selling an extra 2,200 cars - it sold 8.9 million last year - couldn’t plug the $3.9 billion loss the company projects for the fiscal year ending in March. But such buy-at-the-office programs create “a real sense of crisis for employees,” says Chiaki Nakano, a management professor at Reitaju University near Tokyo. “That’s very important in Japan when you are trying to change the company from the inside.” (BusinessWeek)

Desktop Earthquake Detectors . . . . . . . Many laptops have tiny accelerometers that warn a computer that it is being dropped so it can protect its hard drive from impact. Researchers at two California universities realized that these sensors could be used to form a cheap network to detect earthquakes quickly enough to provide useful warnings. Operators of the Quake-Catcher Network (qcn.stanford.edu) are recruiting laptop owners to download software that converts their computers to sensors. Like a screen saver, the software operates only when the computer is idle. The system’s largest success occurred last July, when computers detected a magnitude 5.4 quake that caused moderate damage near Los Angeles. (Popular Mechanics)

I Apologize Ahead Of Time . . . . . . . . . . . You are on the bus when you suddenly realize . . . . you need to break wind. The music is really loud, so you time your deed with the beat. After a couple of songs, you start to feel better as you approach your stop. As you are leaving the bus, people are really staring you down, and that’s when you remember: you’ve been listening to your iPod. (LaFree)

Marketing . . . . . . . . The proper choice and presentation of your offer can make a tremendous difference in how successful your ad or mailing is in generating immediate response and sales. But here’s a surprise: Conventional wisdom says that “FREE” is the most powerful word in direct marketing. But I know of a company whose “2-for-1" offer substantially outpulled a “buy one, get one free” offer. Another company did better with “25% off” offer versus a “buy X quantity, get Y free”. What does this tell us? Experts cannot predict which offer will pull best. I can easily spot an offer that is destined to be a loser, but I can never predict with certainty which of the better offers will be the winner. Nor can you. Be sure to test various offers. (Business to Business Direct Marketing)

Postal Pricing . . . . . Only a modest hike in commercial postal rates this year. Starting May 11, businesses will pay an average of 3.8% more for invoices, ad mailings and packages, and 4% more for periodicals and catalogs. First-Class goes to 44¢. (Kiplinger)

Marketing II . . . . . . . . . One way to leverage your marketing efforts is to periodically call former customers. Every company, big or small, has lost some clients. At one time, these individuals were convinced enough to buy your company’s products or service. Then for some reason they became displeased or were attracted away. Getting these people interested in your company again is a worthwhile goal for several reasons. First, while you’re discovering what made them ex-clients, you’ll be conducting valuable research into how your company works and how it is perceived. Secondly, the word-of-mouth praise from a customer you have won back is likely to be more effusive than from one who has been satisfied all along. (Marketing on a Shoestring)

New Golf Book Now On Sale . . . . . . . I was told by Ted Foti [recently retired from Memorial Hospital] about a new golf book he was reading. Might be a good book for many of us. Here are the chapter titles:

• Chapter 1 - How To Properly Line Up Your Fourth Putt.

• Chapter 2 - How To Hit a Nike From The Rough When You Hit a Titleist From The Tee.

• Chapter 3 - How To Avoid The Water When You Lie 8 In a Bunker.

• Chapter 4 - How To Get More Distance Off The Shank.

• Chapter 5 - When To Give The Ranger The Finger.

• Chapter 6 - Using Your Shadow On The Greens To Maximize Earnings.

• Chapter 7 - When To Implement Handicap Management.

• Chapter 8 - Proper Excuses For Drinking Beer Before 9:00 a.m.

• Chapter 9 - How To Rationalize a 6 Hour Round.

• Chapter 10 - How To Find That Ball That Everyone Else Saw Go In The Water.

• Chapter 11 - Why Your Spouse Doesn’t Care That You Birdied The 5^th . . .

• Chapter 12 - How To Let a Foursome Play Through Your Twosome.

• Chapter 13 - How To Relax When You Are Hitting Three Off The Tee.

• Chapter 14 - When To Suggest Major Swing Corrections To Your Opponent.

• Chapter 15 - God And The Meaning Of The Birdie-To-Bogey Three Putt.

• Chapter 16 - When To Re-grip Your Ball Retriever.

• Chapter 17 - Can You Purchase a Better Golf Game?

• Chapter 18 - Why Golfers Will Pay $5.00 a Beer From The Cart Girl And Give Her a $3.00 Tip, But Will Balk At $3.50 At The 19^th Hole And Stiff The Bartender . . . . .

Floating An Oil Bet . . . . . . . . Oil production may be falling worldwide, but supertanker companies are seeing a rise in demand for their services. Why? Oil traders betting on the “contango” have resorted to renting the giant vessels as floating storage tanks. Contango is an industry term for the belief that oil prices will rise more in the far future than in the near term. So a trader might buy a futures contract at the March 2009 price of $34.57, along with a contract to sell the oil in March 2010 for $48.78, thereby locking in a tidy profit. But there’s a catch: Traders must take possession of the oil. With onshore storage units brimming, they have been turning to supertankers. About 80 million barrels of oil - equal to about a day’s global demand - are currently at sea in contango plays. (BusinessWeek)

My Wife . . . . . . . and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to my wife and asked her if she wanted to “mess around?” “No”, she answered. I then said, “Is that your final answer?” She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying “Yes.” (You know what I said next.) So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend! And that’s when the fight started . . . . .(Pinewynd)

Campus Electronicus . . . . . . . . . It’s a given that young people live in a high-tech world. For details, take a gander at some of the data compiled by Peter Schilling, who heads the IT department at Amherst College in Massachusetts. His IT index, as he dubs it, shows, for example, that just 5 of 1,680 students - 0.3% of the school’s enrollment - have landline phones, compared with 82% of Americans. The data also captures emerging tech preferences. Freshman (average family income: $76,183) make up half of those on campus who own an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch. In contrast to upper-classmen, first - and second - year students are also more likely to own Macs than PCs, for instance. And 89% of the incoming class applied online, vs 33% in 2003. As for the total e-mail received on campus, 94% is spam, Schilling found. Finally, a note to orientation planners: When 99% of freshman join Facebook groups before hitting campus, does it make sense to assume these kids haven’t met? (BusinessWeek)

Do You Jog, Ride A Bike, Etc.? . . . . . . . . . . Google has a new web site that is just the coolest thing if you are a runner, biker, etc. Go to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com - and put in your starting address. Click on the route you plan to take and you can calculate the mileage of your route. You can also calculate the calories you will burn - depending on the means of transportation that you travel the route. Also, want to see which route is shorter from point A to point B - this will tell you exactly.

Another Cool Website . . . . . . . . http://www.howcast.com . . . . . . . . Welcome to the ultimate collection of how-to videos. Howcast offers thousand of original shorts providing easy-to-follow steps on doing just about anything you can imagine. Some videos are self-consciously frivolous (“How to Make Green Beer”) and some downright absurd (“How to Successfully Beg for Money”), but there are also plenty of practical topics, like setting up a wireless network and diagnosing problems with your car. (Popular Science)

My Wife Again . . . . . . . .Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day. I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.” My loving wife of 10 years replied, “Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?” And then the fight started . . . . . . (Pinewynd)

Sincerely,

“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why

do they keep score?” - Vince Lombardi Edward C. Levy

President