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Tag: Marketing (Page 1 of 6)

Considering Job Automation and Minimum Wage Hikes

A chorus of “I told you so” came down last week as headlines tied minimum wage hikes to job automation.

Fox News: “Minimum Wage Hike Backfiring? Wendy’s Increases Self-Service Kiosks”

Washington Times: “As minimum-wage hikes become mandatory, Wendy’s looks to expand self-service kiosks”

Investors.com: “Wendy’s Serves Up Big Kiosk Expansion As Wage Hikes Hit Fast Food”

The idea: raising minimum wage causes companies to eliminate jobs, bringing in job automation through self-service.

Keep in mind that Wendy’s itself only operates only 10% of stores, including zero in California (a minimum wage warfront), so they don’t fully bear these costs directly. Also, they cited competition to “access good labor” as a key driver of wage inflation. In other words, it’s hard to find good people, so they’re increasing wages to attract and retain them. And especially as the fast foot market softens overall, price competition remains fierce and cost pressures remain high.

Notable in the Wendy’s announcement was that mobile ordering and mobile payments are also coming.

And here’s where any confusion about correlation and causation breaks. And where a brief consideration of job automation begins.

There’s an inevitability to it all (maybe).
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Content Marketing Example: The Patagonia Catalog

“We have three general guidelines for all promotional efforts by Patagonia, both within and beyond the pages of the catalog:

  1. Our charter is to inspire and educate rather than promote.
  2. We would rather earn credibility than buy it. The best resources for us are the word-of-mouth recommendation from a friend or favorable comments in the press.
  3. We advertise only as a last resort.”

Written by Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard and quoted from page 155 of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, these words set up a strong content marketing approach.

Part book review and part illustration of content marketing, this post breaks down the why and what of a beautiful, 68-page print catalog recently delivered to our home by the United States Postal Service.
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1-3-9-12: My Authority Rainmaker Conference Review

Bastardizing Dan Pink’s elegant 1-3-5 opening keynote structure at Authority Rainmaker 2015 … my 1-3-9-12 review of the online marketing conference.

Pink: 1 insight, 3 principles, 5 takeaways

Me: 1 recommendation, 3 reasons, 9 themes, 12 quotes
(yes, I’m willing to break the triad)

 

Subtitled “Integrated Content, Search, and Social Media Marketing (Plus Invaluable Networking),” Authority Rainmaker is Copyblogger‘s (now annual!?) online marketing conference.

I enjoyed the privilege of attending thanks to BombBomb | Relationships Through Video.

To organize my own thoughts (initially captured in 20+ pages of handwritten notes) and to provide a necessarily pale representation of a truly wonderful event (like trying to capture a spectacular sunrise on a spectacular landscape with a photo), my 1-3-9-12 review …

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Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak on Kurzweil’s Singularity, Moore’s Law, Education, Google, and More

In early February, BombBomb, the video email marketing software company I’m helping build, was honored with an award at the Celebrate Technology event.  The Colorado Springs Business Journal, Peak Venture Group, Colorado Springs Technology Incubator, Regional Business Alliance, and several other organizations helped produce a great evening at Pinery on the Hill on the west side of Colorado Springs.

Featured guest: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, The Woz

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Corporate Social Responsibility Is Neither Charity Nor Philanthropy

I enjoy following Reason & its Editor in Chief, Nick Gillespie. I often agree with and appreciate their takes and observations.

Reason’s Slogan: “Free Minds & Free Markets”

And while it hammers the obvious point that an unprofitable business can serve no one in the long run, a recent Gillespie piece published by Time misses a critical aspect of CSR (corporate social responsibility).

Editorial’s Title: “Dear Apple and Chipotle: It’s Hard To Be Socially Responsible When You’re Dead” (story here)
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