Who owns the colour purple?

No, I'm not talking about the movie. (I've never even seen it.)

I'm talking about the use of purple in logos and on marketing materials. In freight purple, along with orange, belongs to FedEx. (FedEx uses purple to identify the company and orange to identify its air freight division. The ground freight division used a purple and green logo, with the "Fed" in purple, and the "Ex" in green.) In chocolate most people in North America associate it with Cadbury. (Although a few smaller companies also use it and there has been at least one lawsuit in Australia over chocolate firms using purple.)

But the biggest firm to use purple in the chocolate business is Cadbury. And when I saw this page in a McDonald's flyer I immediately thought of Cadbury, even before I saw the logo.

That sort of brand/colour linkage is rare and very valuable. Only a few companies have built that level of consumer understanding. Some important ones are Coke = red, Pepsi =blue, Tide = orange, and UPS = brown. There are hundreds and hundreds more, but the most important issue is that if a company can establish the linkage in the customers mind, then there can be huge savings in the marketing budget.

As John Wanamaker is supposed to have said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." If you don't need to spend money to get the customer to recognize the colour of your product, then you can either just save the money, or use it for something more persuasive.

Does it matter who your suppliers are?

Wi-Fi is pretty much expected by anyone at a coffee shop in Canada. The independent coffee shops got on the band wagon pretty early on, but the chains have followed and McDonald's is finally providing Wi-Fi.

As with most things, the small independents can try new services quite easily. They probably had Internet access anyway, so it was just a matter of setting up a wireless router for the customers to use. But for a big chain like McDonald's there are corporate standards to meet, and chain-wide agreements to sign.

McDonald's in Canada, or the "more than 1000 participating locations", use Bell as the Wi-Fi provider. Does it matter that the service is provided by Bell? Do the customers know? Do they care?

And that is the key issue. If your customers don't care who your suppliers are then they won't pay a premium. And if they won't pay a premium, how do you recoup the cost? Even if Bell is giving McDonald's the service for free, Wi-Fi encourages lingering. And for a "quick service restaurant", as fast food joints insist on calling themselves, lingering costs money. The person who bought the $3.29 breakfast deal may want to stay all day. And since the ad says "Unlimited Free Wi-Fi", it would seem that they are entitled to do just that.

Luckily for McDonald's the seats are far too uncomfortable to linger for long, but some people will put up with a lot for free anything.

Penguins are animals? Penguins have fur?

I have read thousands of books to my daughter. (3,144 different books to be precise.) I have reasonable expectations. If the book purports to be non-fiction it should be accurate. If the book is fiction then I expect the story to hold my interest.

This book, Frosty Friends from Priddy Books, is about animals from cold places.

At the risk of being pedantic, I have two problems with this book.

1. Penguins are not animals, they are birds (The book also includes a photograph of an Owl, also not an animal.)
2. Penguins, and all other birds, have feathers NOT fur

Is there any excuse for this sort of inaccuracy? None that I can think of.

Am I just being ridiculously picky? I don't think so. The publisher uses the tag line, "big ideas for little people". A big idea, especially one aimed at children, should not be one that gives inaccurate information.

So, I'll just keep on being pedantic until it is made illegal.

Oh, the irony

Langara College is a post-secondary (tertiary) college in Vancouver. As an organization in the education industry, visitors to the website have reasonable expectations about the quality of English (spelling and grammar) on the site.

So, what do I see today? "opporutnities" Last time I checked that was not a word. I think the one they were looking for was "opportunities".

Typos happen, I know because I make lots of them. But an organization in the business of education should be held to a higher standard.

Playing barefoot on Sesame Street

I was not quite the right age for 1969 launch of Sesame Street. My brother was hip deep in it and told me all about his early experiences with the show. Like most successful entertainment ventures, Sesame Street has been exported all over the world. There are 20 distinct versions of the show and it is shown in over 100 countries.

My daughter loves Sesame Street, or as she calls it "Burt and Ernie". We borrowed a CD/DVD from the library with songs from 17 different international Sesame Street productions and videos from five different productions, including India.

I was intrigued to see that in the opening song from the Indian version of Sesame Street some of the kids run around barefoot. When I grew up summers, especially time at the beach, were a time to enjoy a couple of months without shoes. But for most North Americans it would be inconceivable for children to be out on the street without shoes. What kinds of negligent parents do those kids have? Are they so poor they can't afford shoes?

Well, running around barefoot is a real joy in hot weather. So it is not surprising that some of the kids in the opening credits of the Indian Sesame Street are barefoot.

Just another one of those issues that arises in International Marketing when we look at the world through the lens of our own limited experience.

PS The screen captures are from the DVD Putumayo Kids Presents Sesame Street Playground, Songs and Videos from Around the World, © 2008 Sesame Workshop.

Why can't I compare coffee?

If you were a consumer, how would you compare the prices if none of the products were packaged in the same size container.

I was recently at my local grocery store and found coffee sold in the following size packages.

• 56 grams
• 56.7 grams
• 100 grams
• 150 grams
• 200 grams
• 225 grams
• 226 grams
• 250 grams
• 260 grams
• 275 grams
• 280 grams
• 292 grams
• 311 grams
• 312 grams
• 326 grams
• 340 grams
• 343 grams
• 400 grams
• 454 grams
• 500 grams
• 584 grams
• 737 grams
• 907 grams
• 910 grams
• 925 grams
• 930 grams
• 975 grams
• 1000 grams

Some of the packages size are conversion from imperial measures, 454 grams is one pound, 907 grams is two pounds etc. Some of the other odd measure are also conversions from ounces.

But as a consumer, the confusing proliferation of sizes make price comparison all but impossible.

At one time coffee in North America was sold in one pound packages, but those days seem long gone. So, there must be some logic behind the proliferation of sizes.

Like most things in the grocery store, the price of coffee has been creeping up recently. And one response to increasing prices is to decrease the size of the package. The retail price remains the same, but the consumer just gets a bit less. And if the change in package size is accompanied by a redesign, many manufacturers think that they can pull a fast one on the consumer.

Are consumers that unaware? Well lots of them must be, or they would rebel and manufacturers would not try such tactics.

What does the colour blue mean?

I am used to seeing the colour blue to identify facilities for the disabled. The use of blue is commonly accompanied by a simple drawing of a person a wheelchair.

So, why does the West Vancouver Community Centre use blue to tell users "Do not enter"? This is a sign that is crying out for red.

Consumers, and/or facility users, have all come to associate meanings with specific colours. Some of it is cultural. (Red in China has some very different meanings than it does in North America.)

In North America red on signs is commonly associated with warnings. Blue is a more friendly colour. Cool, but still stylish. It looks a bit more serious and institutional, but it is not really as effective as a deterrent to keep people out. And if the sign does not have the desired effect, then it is not really doing its job.

Are you Shure you know what this company makes?

Two companies, both based in Illinois in completely different businesses. The audio firm was founded in 1927 by Sidney, while the toy firm was founded in 1992 by Tom. I'd never heard of the toy firm until my daughter found the bears and fell in love with the magic of magnets.

So, is the company name an issue? I'd say no, unless either Tom decides to start selling audio products, or the microphone company starts selling stuff for kids.

But there is still some potential to confuse the two companies, but the downside is pretty small. My daughter is not planning a recording career any time soon, and by the time she is interested in microphones I'm sure the bears will be well and truly retired.

Does it matter where the owners are based?

Shoe Warehouse is a budget shoe retailer, or as the firm describes itself, "a shopping destination for fashionable and functional footwear at affordable prices".

So, why should you care if the firm is "BC owned + operated"? Almost all the shoes are made in China. None of the brands, "Adidas, Blowfish, Clarks, Guess and G by Guess, Nike, Rocket Dog, Roxy, Skechers and Steve Madden", are based in Canada.

So, why should I care? What difference would it make if the stores were owned by a firm based in Ontario, or Japan? The firm's website does not really tell me anything about the BC advantage.

If you can't articulate the advantage, then why are you promoting it?

Engaging with customers, yong and not quite so young

I have been a fan of LEGO since I was a kid. One of my proudest accomplishments was never making anything from the design book that accompanied the LEGO set that I got for Christmas when I was 9.

Too late I've found what would have been the ideal job for me, LEGO Certified Professional.

"LEGO Certified Professionals is a community-based program made up of adult LEGO hobbyists who have turned their passion for building and creating with LEGO bricks into a full-time or part-time profession.

LEGO Certified Professionals are not LEGO employees, but they are officially recognized by the LEGO Group as trusted business partners.

Each LEGO Certified Professional is selected for the program based on his or her:

• Building proficiency
• Enthusiasm for the LEGO brick and building system
• Professional approach towards other LEGO fans and the broader public"

Source: http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/lego-group/programs-and-visits/lego-certified-professionals/

This level of engagement with your customers is both remarkable and rare. Despite the recent battles that LEGO has had with its main competitor, Canada's Mega Bloks, LEGO has a very loyal clientele, some great licensing deals ( including Star Wars and Harry Potter), and, in my experience, superior product quality.

So, I'll remain a keen fan of LEGO, and who knows, maybe in my next career I might try to become a LEGO Certified professional. Sounds much cooler than an MBA.

Great book designs

I know that I'm not the first to make this connection. I knew about the top two books, "eat pray" and "drink play", but found "eat nap" at the library yesterday.

Evidently either book designers have a very limited imagination, or a successful design that sells well is worth copying in hoping of boosting sales.

My wife read "eat pray" and I read "drink play". We'll probably both read "eat nap". I think that is probably a limited crossover of the demographic of all three books. (Think Venn diagram.)

A great cover design grabs readers attention. For a long time Penguin stuck with simplified designs based on categorization by colour. Green for mysteries, Black for the Classics, Grey for Modern Classics etc. There is a story that when Terry Waite was being held in Lebanon (1987-1991) he wanted to get a book to read. His captors spoke no English so he drew a picture of a penguin knowing that any book published by Penguin would be worth reading. Pretty fabulous endorsement.

If you are interested in book design there are some great resources. I found this site, The Book Cover Archive. (http://bookcoverarchive.com)

But we should all remember the maxim, don't judge a book by its cover.

Don't buy now. Wait and save

Once you start using a particular brand of income tax software you are pretty much locked in as a customer. After you install the current year's version of the software all of your previous year's figures are uploaded automatically and thus you save a ton of time re-entering figures etc.

In order to get the most up-to-date tax tables etc. you must register on the website of the software publisher. For the past 10 years I've been using tax software from Intuit. I know it and they know it.

I also have come to know that every year, towards the end of February, the software goes on sale in the local retail stores for about 25% off. And so I resist the questionable attractions of Intuit's November emails offering 10% off and free shipping. I know that if I wait until February I can save 25%.

So, why doesn't Intuit just sell me the software for the 25% off price from the start? I think there are two reasons.

1. Intuit depends on the "channel" for a large portion of the sales of its software (Quicken, Quickbooks etc.) and does not feel that it can risk seriously undercutting the retailers MSRP.
2. Why give a big discount when some of your customers may actually be motivated to buy if you offer 10% off and free shipping?

So, every year I get email from Intuit offering me a paltry discount, and every year I wait until the retailers offer me an even better price.

On the whole this is a highly illogical practice, but as long as Intuit and its retailers are willing to offer me a 25% discount, I'm willing to wait for a couple of months or so.

And since I don't my income tax forms from my banks and employers until the end of February, I can afford to wait until then to buy my software.

Can you define fast and stylish?

According to one statistics I read, 60% of Ferrari customers already own at least one Ferrari. Now that is customer loyalty.

And what does Ferrari mean to those customers? It is the epitome of style and performance. And it is not that Ferrari has to please a lot of customers. 2011 was a record year for Ferrari, and the firm sold a total of 7,195 cars and brought in record revenue of $2.63 billion.

But even for people who will never be able to afford a Ferrari, the brand carries a whole lot of weight. The new Colnago for Ferrari bicycles are a combination of the technical, design and production expertise of the two firms. Even if they ignore the Ferrari name on the downtube, wheels and fork, the Ferrari headtube badge and red colour let consumers that this bicycle has some pedigree.

And if you are intent on going fast, then that Ferrari pedigree probably has some value, even if you are your own engine.

The problem with red

Colour is one of the key ways that organizations brand themselves. If they pick a weird colour they will not have to compete for the consumer's attention. However, if they pick a popular colour, such as red, then they will have to compete in a very crowded segment.

In addition to the three organizations listed above, I've made a short list of another fifty or so other organizations, from Coke to Air Canada, that also hang their identity on the colour red. I'm sure that with a bit of research I could come up with another couple of thousand organizations who've also "hitched their wagon" to the colour red.

In lots of cases you have more than one company in the same category using the same colour. In mobile telephones in Canada both Virgin and Rogers use red. The Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC also both use red.

For political parties the colour red has different associations depending on the country. The Liberal Party in Canada, the Republican Party in the United States and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.

So, while red may be popular and a safe choice with consumers, it very popularity means that consumer may have already made a number of potentially competing associations with the colour.

To avoid competition, you could always go with brown. When you think of brown, do you think of any other brand apart from UPS?

Does it matter where you make it?

One of the essential issues in international marketing is country of origin. In some categories, watches for example, the country of origin pretty much defines the highest levels of both quality and price. For consumers and retailers all over the world, Made in Switzerland is the unarguable badge of quality.

For cyclists, Italy gets a similar level of respect. The home of Campagnolo, the most storied name in bicycle components, and renowned bicycle brands like Bianchi, Cinelli, Colnago, Pinarello, and Wilier, Made in Italy has a level of authenticity that newer brands can only dream of.

Even though the Italian economy is in the dumps, and a Greece-style bailout may be lurking in country's near future, the "Made in Italy" tag still has value for consumers.

In an era when everything seems to be made in China, and no one seems to put enough value in authenticity, I think that there is something rather nice in a firm getting some mileage out of its country of origin. And if you are in the bicycle business, having Italy as your country of origin is not such a bad thing.

How old is this?

My mother-in-law found a pair of Hanes pantyhose at the back of a drawer. I saw the instruction card and echoes of the past came flooding back. The illustration, the typeface, and the type colour all screamed 1970s.

This made me wonder how designers can avoid their work looking dated. (And to me this Hanes piece really looks dated.)

The work that looks contemporary today will seem so dated in a few years. And this situation is even more pronounced in industrial design. The original design of the Compaq computer looked like a sewing machine, and was about as heavy. It was a remarkable piece of industrial design and offered an unimaginable level of power in a relatively portable package. Today when we look at shape and more importantly that ugly beige, the whole package looks irredeemably early 1980s.

The same thing will happen with things like the iPad and iPhone. In a few years their designs will just seem so 2010. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a reality of our awareness of design.

Yet some designs seem to be timeless. Bang & Olufsen audio equipment, the Gill Sans typeface are some designs that I think are pretty classic. I have a 25-year old B&O receiver that would not look out of place in a show home today. I guess the trick is not to be too trendy. The problem is figuring out what is trendy today. Good luck with that.

"World's Safest", but so what

This week we got a new Sears catalogue. On the back cover I saw this photo, and the proclamation, "World's Safest Trampoline".

This made me wonder what sort of hazard trampolines really pose for users. According to U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) the number of accidents per year rose from "estimated 37,500 in 1991 to almost 100,000 in 1999" and by 2001 the figure was 91,870.

According to the CPSC, "About 93 percent of the victims were under 15 years of age, and 11 percent were under 5 years of age. Since 1990, CPSC has received reports of 6 deaths of children under age 15 involving trampolines."

So, thousands of accidents every year, and a few deaths. I wondered how those figures compare to children injured or killed in automobile accidents. According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about 30,000 people die in traffic accidents every year in the US.

For 2009, the fatalities included 6,770 passengers, 4,092 pedestrians, and 630 cyclists. (If we assume that 1/3 of the total passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists are children, that is about 3,000 deaths, or about 10% of the total.

The 2009 vehicle fatality rate was 11.1 per 100,000 population. With 258 million vehicles registered in 2009. Even if there were only 1 million trampolines in the United States, your child is much better off on the trampoline than driving in a car. (And there are probably far more trampolines, making their relative safety even greater.)

So, if the US authorities were really serious about safety maybe they should think about having everyone on trampolines, and banning automobiles.

Xerox loses the plot

Xerox is an international company. And like most international companies it has grappled with the "adaptation/standardization" argument.

The two sides of this argument are either;

• Adapt everything you do to meet the needs and expectations of the individual markets where you do business
• Standardize every aspect of you business and make the same offering to all customers, regardless of location

Now, it is never this simple. There are very few product that can be standardized for every market. The IKEA Billy bookcase is one potential example of a rigidly standardized product. And even the highly adapted product often has a standardized underlying platform.

I received this mailing from Xerox. It came from the Xerox office in Canada, and was mailed to a Canadian address. The reply card, to enter the contest for a $500 Apple gift card, is going back to a Canadian address and has a Canada Post Business Reply Mail permit.

So, why does Xerox use a drawing of a US penny on the paper plane? Everything else about this mailing was adapted for the Canadian market. To make a small change, like the nationality of the penny, in an electronic file would be very easy and cheap. I can only put it down to laziness or sloppiness. Either is inexcusable for a big firm like Xerox.

Does it matter who made the recommendation?

If you're like me, you regularly find your mailbox filled with fliers from restaurants. If you've never heard of the restaurant then a good review, or award from a magazine or newspaper, goes some way to reassuring you that the restaurant will be a safe bet.

But for those reviews to be useful there must be some context. Where was the review published? When was it written?

You may be more likely to trust a review from a well known national or international publication than one from a small local newspaper that is entirely dependant on keeping its advertisers happy. And a recent review is more useful than one from 15 years ago. They owner, chef, and even the location may have changed since the review was published.

So, this flier says "Recommended by Newspaper". Without providing the "where" and when" context, the statement "Recommended by Newspaper" is completely useless. It is intended to provide some level of comfort for prospective customers, but I can't see it accomplishing that goal.

I don't think that I'll be ordering from Timkee Kitchen any time soon.

The packaging is "new and improved"

The Original Packaging

The New Packaging

"New and improved" is a staple, if you'll pardon the pun, of the consumer packaged goods industry. If you can't or don't need to change the contents, then you repackage.

In many cases the redesign is updating to bring the package looks up-to-date. That was the case with this packaging change. The ingredients and weight remained unchanged. The packaging was changed to both bring the design up-to-date and also to change the model to a less "Indian" looking woman. Also the model is wearing both less jewellery and more "Western" jewellery.

These sorts of changes are often required when firms start selling outside their home market. But in some cases the authenticity of the product seem diminished, and that can be part of the underlying appeal.

My wife bought both boxes of tea, and the brand name, "Tea India" was the same size font on both boxes. Was this a successful change? I think so. The consumer recognized that the new packaging replaced the old. If you change the package design and your old customers keep buying I'd call it a partial success.

Of course the real test is if the new package design attracts new customers.

The incredible shrinking lip balm

On the inside back cover of Consumer Reports magazine you find a feature entitled "Selling It". This regularly features what the magazine calls, "goofs, glitches, gotchas".

I think this falls into the category of a "gotcha" I don't like dry lips, so I use lip balm. Blistex seems to work pretty well, and the flavours are not too repulsive.

My wife bought this box of Blistex for me. Now if you saw this box, what size of Blistex tube would you expect to find inside, the big one or the small one?

Despite the fact that the box seems a perfect fit for the big tubes, it contained four of the small ones. And how much smaller is the small tube? The net content of the Blistex tube has gone from 4.25 grams to 2.83 grams, a reduction of 33.4%.

No change in price, but a big reduction in grams per dollar. How will consumers react? The vast majority of them won't even notice, which is what the manufacturer is counting on.

It's not a secret anymore

When I was a buyer, one of the most valuable pieces of information, and one of the most fiercely guarded, was the identity of suppliers. The time and trouble to find and develop a supplier made it very important to avoid letting the information fall into the hands of your competitors.

Evidently this is no longer a concern, at least for some companies.

I found this box at my local nofrills® store. The nofrills® chain was started by Loblaws (Canada's largest food retailer) in 1978. Originally company owned, the stores are now franchises. However the stores rely on Loblaws product development and sourcing staff, and Loblaws huge buying power.

Among the frills that the stores eschew are plastic bags, unless you want to pay for them. You bag your own groceries and either bring your own bags, buy them from the cashier, or use the boxes that the groceries were shipped in.

This is great. The store does not need to deal with the cardboard as consumers take it home and recycle it themselves.

But these boxes often contain potentially confidential information.

When I went to the red-empress.com website I can see all of the products that the firm offers for sale and contact details for all of its offices. I don't know if the produce buyer at Loblaws intended that this information would become publicly available, but that is what has happened.

For many companies disclosing confidential supplier and/or customer information is a firing offence, and rightfully so. This sort of information is a valuable competitive advantage. To bad the advantage has evaporated.

So, what floor do I go to?

I must seem like I am the most petty person. I nitpick about everything from the spelling of "care" to signs with no brand names.

But there is a practical side to my complaints. If retailers make it hard for customers to find their way around the store, or find the products they are looking for, then sales will be affected.

Shoppers Drug Mart has been building lots of new stores. In high-rent urban environments these stores are increasingly two story affairs. Like any multi-floor store you can find an elevator in the store. The sign outside the elevator identifies the floor as the "First Floor" and the "Second Floor". Yet in the elevator the floors are identified as "2" and "G".

In addition, for some bizarre reason the sign outside the elevator has the first floor on top, and the second floor underneath. Logic would indicate that the order on the sign would be the top floor on top and the bottom floor on the bottom.

And why would the ground floor be identified with a "G" in the elevator and as the "First Floor" on the sign.

In the end this just confuses the customers. And there is no logical reason for it. This is a brand new store and the designers should have thought about these sorts of issues.

And if they are not thinking about this sort of issues, then they really don't have any business designing retail stores.

So, what is being promoted here?

It's not the start, nor the finish. But what organization are these banners talking about?

If you are in Vancouver, and frequent the area around Cambie and 49th Avenue, then you probably know. And that, I think, is the problem. Cambie and 49th is the location of Langara College. And orange is the colour that the college uses to brand itself.

But banners like this, on light poles across the street from the college are preaching to the converted. The students are already going there. They don't really need to be convinced. However, their parents and prospective employers need the convincing, or reassuring.

I've previous talked about a model of integrated marketing communications (IMC). I think that any time you are communicating via mass media with a prospective customer, new customer, or existing customer your messaging needs to accomplish a number of connected goals.

You need to move the customer along the continuum of understating and behaviour. Awareness-Attitude-Trial-Purchase-Repeat Purchase.

This sort of unidentified slogan does nothing to address the first three stages of the process. If I don't know who the message is from, I have no context for the message. For all I know it could have been a left over banner from a 10k race, or health research fundraiser.

A problem with Chinese

Translation is a troublesome task at the best of time. And translating a phrase from traditional Chinese characters to English words is a notoriously inexact task.

I've seen this phrase spelled out about a dozen different ways including these;

• Gang He Fat Choi
• Gung Hey Fat Choi
• Gung Hei Fat Choy
• Kung Hey Fat Choi

For people contemplating learning Chinese the sheer number of characters, between three and four thousand for basic levels of literacy, makes the task a daunting one.

In recent years there has been vigorous debate about the likelihood that Chinese will supplant English as the world's lingua franca, or as some have described it, "everyone's second language". One common issue is the learning curve for the alphabet. People coming to English from any of the Romance languages (Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish), the Germanic languages, or even the Cyrillic languages have a huge head start.

At my age I can't even contemplate the difficulty of wraping m,y head around and inflection-based langauge with thousands of characters.

That being said, I'm tempted to enrol my three-year old in Mandarin lessons. In this part of Canada it is likely to be much more useful that French.

Ride2Rio and Bicycle Sponsorship

Naomi Devine is riding to Rio de Janerio. (ride2rio.ca) She is planning to arrive in Rio in time for the start of the Rio+20 Conference.

From the start of planning in December 2011, to her planned departure date on February 9, 2012, there has not been much time to get organized and line up sponsors. According to the report on CBC radio this morning she did manage to line up local Vancouver bicycle manufacturer Brodie as a sponsor.

So, why is she pictured on the CBC website astride a Giant bicycle? If I was Paul Brodie I would want to get a photo of Naomi on my bike on the CBC website ASAP.

Seeing your sponsored athletes photographed with a competitor's brand drives marketers crazy. I remember my brother telling me about a press conference for the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, South Australia. Lance Armstrong was the star attraction. The first thing he did when he sat down at the table was to remove the label from the bottled water in front of him. His obligation to his sponsors included making sure that he was not photographed using any other brands of products.

Picture source: http://www.cbc.ca/earlyedition/high-velocity/2012/02/08/ride-to-rio/

One more thing. The ride is 11,000 kilometres, not 11,00 kilometres as stated on the CBC website.

Another Typo

I recently signed up with Telus for the firm's Optk TV service. The PVR features are great, but I noticed this typo in the on-screen menu for the recording feature.

While spelling it "recodings" instead of "recordings" is not a sign of quality. It is one of the things that makes consumers wonder what else, "under the hood" might not work properly.

This sort of problem makes me wonder how these typos slip through. Are there no spellcheckers available?

Unless, of course, the programmers really did mean "recoding".

Should I really post this entry?

Rape and sexual violence of any sort are not topics to be treated lightly. And my comments on this advertising should not be construed as mocking the seriousness of the underlying message.

While the newspaper ad, from The Georgia Straight is typo-free, there is an egregious spelling mistake on the transit shelter ad is pretty inexcusable. If the word was an uncommon one, or in a language other than English, I might be able to understand it. However, making a mistake on the "stupid" and spelling it "stuipid" belittles the message.

I wonder what reaction my comments will get.

Official Size, or perhaps not. You need to check for yourself

I saw this hang tag on a piece of Swiss Gear luggage at the Sears store. If I was looking for a carry-on bag I'd like to know if it was actually the right size to use as carry-on baggage.

Of the people flying from Vancouver, where I live, the vast majority would be flying on either Air Canada or WestJet. How hard would it be for Sears to actually check with the airlines about their size limits for carry-on baggage?

Providing more information for consumers makes the decision process easier. If it is easier for me to buy, then I'll probably buy more.

This lack of service at the big stores drives consumers crazy. And one frequent response by consumers is to go to the small independent retailer for answers to their questions, and then shop at the big retailers to get a better price.

It should be obvious to anyone that the big retailers can offer lower prices because they don't offer the same level of personalized service, or have staff with the same level of training.

Amazon's price checking smartphone app it the end game of this process. Go to the independent retailer for advice, recommendations. and to see and touch the product and then buy it online via Amazon.

And this time next year don't wonder why that great little shop with the great service went out of business.

No connection between writing (Well printing) and mailing

Another episode in my ongoing saga with the telephone company. This week I received a letter telling me that the installation would happen on the 24th. Great, except I received the letter on Monday the 30th, and it was not mailed until the 27th.

Somewhere inside the company there is a fatal disconnect. With problems like this it is no wonder that customers are not happy.

That being said, the actual telecommunication services are pretty good. The PVR-enabled TV works really well and my young daughter seems to have figured out all of the features already. It reminds me of one of my father's definitions of high tech, "your kids understand it, your parents never will".