The Daily Krier

Second visit to the chiropractor today to get the results from my x-rays.  The news was not good.  Major issues in my neck, upper back and lower back.  Basically the vertebrae in my neck are bent in the exact opposite way that they should be.  Great.  At least that explains a lot.  Anyway, he pointed to one of the main causes of this mis-shaping: Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Digital Solid, I stumbled across this interesting website today where visitors navigate the site without clicking.  It’s pretty interesting.  It didn’t take me very long to get used to this concept (in fact, once I clicked for the last time upon entering the site, I didn’t click again — honest!!).  As I work to contiuously improve my employer’s website, I’m always looking for the latest and greatest ideas — those that make someone go “wow”.  While this doesn’t make me necessarily say “wow”, it is kind of cool.  Think this idea will take off?  Give the site a visit and see if you like it.  I’m interested to hear what you think.

So I was playing around on Twitter tonight, after deciding that I should pay more attention to it.  I haven’t been tweeting that often, I hadn’t followed anyone new in a while, etc.  So I did some searching, first for people in Milwaukee, then about topics/companies that interest me, and I came across WeightWatchers.  Now as a current WW member, I have to say that I’m also a fan of the company overall as they’ve seemingly adopted social media tactics before it was even cool to do.  They’ve got a great community of members, who participate in a variety of ways from online to at-work meetings to regular meetings.  Their website is pretty user-friendly and they segment users based on a number of factors.  Overall, they’re pretty on top of their game.  Then I found them on Twitter and my analysis of them as a social media-savvy company has changed. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing like a beautiful weekend of sunny weather to give people spring fever.  Yes, it was only 40-some degrees out yesterday, but my husband and I took our 2 boys to the Zoo and it was packed.  My older son loved the penguins, elephants and monkeys (and of course, Mahal). Given that it was even nicer out today, I can just imagine how many more people were there.  Today was such a great day — we cleaned out the garage, went for a walk, my older son played with the neighbor kids…all wonderful outdoor activities for mid-March in Wisconsin.  Can spring really be here?

So as I blogged about earlier this week, not only had I NOT been selected for the Fitness Together contest, but I hadn’t even heard from them at all.  I was really irritated.  Well what arrived in the mail today but a letter from the owner of the chain, stating that I had not been selected (no kidding), but that they had a “special program not being offered to the public, just those who had the courage to enter our contest.”  So I’m torn.  I still want some type of fitness program, but do I want to give these people my business?  Am I being too petty about their late notification, even though the trainer I met with said I’d hear something a week ago already?  What do YOU think?

It’s days like this when I wonder why I decided to put the word “daily” in my blog title.  That basically means I have to blog every day and usually it’s not a problem but today I am just feeling uninspired.  It’s been a long week (again), I’m tired and I feel all this pressure to write something.  So I’ll just say it…..I really have nothing to say today.  I’m sitting here, enjoying some mindless tv and, honestly, wanting to go to bed.  So I apologize right now for basically blogging about nothing.  I really admire those people who have interesting, insighful posts every day.  This is definitely not one of them.  But hey, we all have days like this.  So have a good night and hopefully I’ll have something more inspiring things to say tomorrow.

After several months of suffering with back pain that doesn’t seem to be getting any better, I decided to make an appointment with a chiropractor to get things checked out.  I first logged onto my insurance provider’s website to determine which doctors were within my network.  Such luck — the chiropractor closest to my house is in my network!  What do I immediately do? I check to see if the chiropractor has a website.  Read the rest of this entry »

Just got done skimming Razorfish‘s Digital Outlook Report 2009.  A long read (180 pages but lots of those pages are either images only or are not a full page of text) but worth it.  Really interesting info about mobile marketing, trends in advertising, email marketing and the mobile mom, to name a few.  Give it a look!

I’m a huge fan of The Biggest Loser, as many people know. I’m sitting here right now, watching it after the fact (gotta love DVR — you can skip the commercials) and the one thing that really bugs me about this season is the completely obvious product placement.  Now as a marketer I understand the value of getting your product in front of a nationwide TV audience.  But it’s so blatant that it’s actually ridiculous.

For example, on tonight’s episode, two contestants were apparently tracking their daily food intake on the computer when Bob walked up and asked them if they were getting enough fiber in their diets.  Cue the product placement!    I immediately forwarded through the “commercial” and wondered how many people do the same.  How long before people get so sick of the in-show promotion that they have to stop them?

In the meantime, I’ll still be a fan of the show.

I was reading an article in a marketing trade journal last night and the topic was telling your company’s story in a compelling way, particularly through the use of case studies.  During my 15 years in marketing so far, I have worked on case studies for a number of employers. It’s always interesting to me how the people who provide the service to the customer have a hard time telling the story from the client’s point of view.  They focus so much on the features or the details of what they do, versus how the client benefits as a result.  The challenge to change that viewpoint for the case study falls on the shoulders of us in marketing. The article I read last night took it one step further in saying that not only must you tell the story, you must do so in a way that makes it compelling to the reader.  Makes sense, yet so many times we get caught up in just talking through the specifics of the client relationship or project.  We talk about benefits and even times include quantifiable results and quotes from clients, but how many times do our case studies really communicate a compelling story?  That’s the challenge I am issuing to myself and to my PR firm.  But the question is, what is your company’s story and, more importantly, do people find it compelling?