JephMaystruck.com

If you’ve ever driven around Regina you’ve seen these ghastly sites many times.  They pull and prod your attention for a split second until you realize what you have found and quickly jerk your neck away, hopefully never laying eyes on one ever again.

Ok, they aren’t that bad but these fluorescent letter board signs are growing in numbers at an alarming rate.  Why?

Obviously it is cheap, and businesses are trying to get their message out to a local market but do they ever wonder if this hurts their brand?  Besides the signs not being on the “cutting edge” of artistic design, don’t you think you’d want to at least standout a bit?  I mean, the thirteen (13) photos posted here were all taken within a three block section of Rochdale Boulevard.  In less than one Kilometer you are shown thirteen different messages, what are the chances that you remember one?

They are not all terrible, I don’t mind giving away something free, just too much text on this one:

Subway’s not doing too bad either, that’s a pretty good deal for a sub.

The average driver has less than three seconds to get your message, how easy is this to read?

A personal favorite.  I wonder how the conversation went when they decided to go with this master piece;

“Everyone else on Rochdale has a sign”

“We should too, but lets be different.”

The lightbulb goes off.

“I got it!  Lets put our sign on a blue background, that’s sure to get attention!”  The result:

The ghostly 9 is a little creepy here:

Beginning to notice a trend of yellow, white and fluorescent pink by now.

This one gets the point across, if you’re searching for the most extensive 2 for 1 glasses offer anywhere.

Another good deal, my only complaint is where’s the fluorescent pink?  I don’t think a letter sign will ever be visually appealing.

Obviously the Pita Pit owners are in cahoots with the Denture Clinic, again personal favorite, love the blue.

If you do decide one of these signs is right for you, at least offer the correct phone number.

Too much writing and again, where’s the pink?

Short and sweet, good idea, I don’t mind what Arby’s is trying here but it seems as though Arby’s is cutting costs on their advertising by using this type of messaging.

This is troublesome, the BARGAIN! shop has on special right now, spring fashion and fun.  What if you enter the store and it isn’t fun?  Chuck E’ Cheese could use this, not the BARGAIN! shop.

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If you’re on Twitter just to promote your business like a traditional advertising campaign you missed the boat.  It’s not about telling everyone your latest deal or special, we’re human, we want interaction, we want to know someone is on the other end of the conversation.

I don’t claim be be a Twitter expert but Scott is and so is Michael.  Read what they have to say about it, there are so many more things local companies can be doing on Twitter besides telling me how great YOUR company is.  Get creative! Yes it may take a little time but I bet if you sat down and actually made a plan for Twitter you’d be surprised with the results you could attain.

So please stop the constant self-promotion and engage a follower or two.

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The Flynn effect states that since the 20th century, IQ test scores on average increase by 3 points every decade.  A person taking an IQ test in 1930, scoring in the average, would be considered mentally handicap compared to today’s IQ standards.  As civilization progresses, so does our average intelligence level.  When the knowledge base increases across the board, strange things begin happening. We get smarter.

Something I’ve noticed as of late is that pyramid schemes as business models are still around.  In the past month, two friends have been invited to “recruitment” seminars, which I am proud to say they both, within minutes discovered the pyramid business model and left in disgust.

Now the proper term is “multi-level marketing” (MLM) but it’s the same theme, you make commissions on your sales and on the sales of the people you’ve recruited as sales people.  You can already begin to see the problem.  If I’m selling, then I get you to sell, we are now competing for future sales.  Doesn’t make sense does it.  Not anymore, but it did for a very long time.  What surprises me more is that their is actually a list of companies still around using this as a business model.

As communication worldwide increases over the internet, so do conversations.  Within three minutes of researching MLM I came across a startling figure that 99.9% of all participants end up losing money by joining the organization.  When in history have we been able to verify a businesses legitimacy within five minutes?

Maybe we’re smarter (our IQ’s would say so), maybe we’re just better at finding information which make us seem smarter.  Either way this new generation isn’t dumb, business models such as these are now a joke around the water cooler.  There will always be people who join for unknown reasons, I just hope that if you are ever proposed on a seemingly to good to be true scheme you’ll Google first before signing up.

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Last Saturday morning I was woken at 9:45 by my doorbell.  No one comes to our house that early, it could be an emergency I thought to myself, so I staggered out of my room.  My room mate, in the same state (squinting eyes, wearing the pants from last night) was a step a head of me and opened the door.  To our dismay we found no one, just a little, old man leaving the yard going to the neighbors house.  We thought nothing of it except for how mad we were at this little, old man that got us with the ol’ ring and run trick.  Back to sleep.

Two and a half hours later I finally woke from my sleep and decided to check the temperature before I left the house.  Standing on the front porch something in the mailbox caught my eye, it was a “Heaven, how do I get there?” pamphlet.  The little, old man didn’t ring and run our house for nothing, he woke us up to ensure we got this pamphlet in time.  I think you understand the title for this post now.

Heaven’s a touchy subject, but I think Church is great, I try to go as much as I can and this has nothing to do with Church in general.  This has to do with the specific Church that lets this little, old man walk around neighborhoods ringing doorbells to try and get their message across.  Let’s think about this for a minute, how many people will answer the door, find that there’s no one there but grab the pamphlet that was left behind and say “You know I have been wondering for a while, how DO I get to Heaven?”  I’d be willing to bet no one.

So why ring the door bell?  The pamphlet isn’t time sensitive, I don’t need to read it immediately do I?  What ever happened to mail delivery etiquette and just leaving it in the box that it was intended for?  If your message is a difficult one to get across you may not want to piss people off before you tell them.

So do you want to know how to make me hate your organization no matter who you are?  Wake me up on a weekend to tell me your message, I guarantee I will hate you.

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