As holiday commercialism continues at full tilt, The Westender calls for a Vancouver toy library — a community resource where children and parents can borrow toys. Many years ago, my third grade teacher, May Mossey, operated a toy library at Fairview Elementary School. Regardless of family income, children and their parents could borrow toys, including […]
Gillette’s new vibrating razors for women may seem like just another power play. Everyone knows that the real money is in the razor blades, not the razors. But the real news is in Gillette’s decision to price the Venus Vibrance razors at the same level as the much hyped Mach 3 Power series for men. […]
Today’s Vancouver Sun carries a story about a little girl who unknowingly ingested water mixed with GHB, a street drug. The girl’s father left the water bottle on the counter overnight. Police have recommended a charge of criminal negligence, but prosecutors have not formally charged the man. Vancouver Police have not identified him, in order […]
Santa knows marketing. Formerly a European saint, Santa branched into the gift market in 1804, through a partnership with the New York Historical Society. Working with society member Washington Irving in 1809, Santa managed to gain notoriety through mention in a history of New York, an annual banquet, and several anecdotes. Before long, everyone knew […]
Customers and new marketers often ask me how to identify and research target markets. Today, viaDarren Barefoot, I stumbled across “Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend” by Tristan Miller, a Canadian research scientist who works for the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. His article, which originally appeared in the The Annals of Improbable […]
Google recently launched Google Scholar, a search engine for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. By special arrangement, Google’s spiders index content from open and password-protected sites. However, unless users have a subscription to protected sites, they can’t read those articles. When I need to analyze consumer trends, predict […]
CIBC customers got a big surprise when a bank machine in New Brunswick spat out Canadian Tire money this week. The bank, already under fire for faxing private documents to a West Virginia junkyard, suspects a business customer put the money into a cash drop. No word on the suspects, who must “Spend like Santa; […]
Merriam Webster has named “blog” the word of the year, based on requests for definitions at its online dictionary. Other words in the top 10 reflect top news stories, such as the US election, Florida hurricanes, and Iraq War. The bizarre entry, “defenestration”, seemingly stems from political hara kiri or Unix manuals. (c) 2004 by […]