Awareness up with Earth Hour
At 8:30 p.m. tonight, it’s Earth Hour. Turn off your lights, and get off the computer! Critics wonder, what’s the point of turning lights off for an hour on one day when we abuse the Earth for the other 8,736 hours in the year? But I truly believe that the...Newsletter points to ponder
I’m working with a new client who wants to introduce a newsletter for his customers, and I thought the discussions we’ve been having might be of interest to other people. So here are just some of the points to ponder if you’re thinking of a...
Watch out for jargon, Olympic edition
Among the many sports my family watched during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was one that vividly reminded me to watch out for jargon. I’m talking about curling. I’ve never curled, so I found the unfamiliar lingo quite confusing. The commentators talked about a...Customer disservice files
Can you tell me… Why my bank has hired people to make “courtesy calls” to customers — which seem to be thinly disguised ways to sell other products/services — but cannot tell me that they have discontinued my paper statements? I have no...
Sue awards her own gold medals
Phew. It’s been all Olympics, all the time for the past two weeks, and I’m ready to say goodbye to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. But first, my own gold medals go to the things I loved about these Winter Olympics. Gold medals: * Patriotic feelings....Attention-grabbing titles, 2010
If you pay close attention to words and love clever word play, you’ll enjoy The Bookseller, a British trade magazine, and its quirky “oddest book title” contest. I first ran across this contest in 2008 and have looked forward to reading about it ever...Back to reality
Here’s what I learned from taking a week off and flying to Florida for my younger son’s school break: If you’re looking for beach weather, Florida might or might not have it in February. We happened to hit a week of temperatures in the mid-70s, which...Red Cross gets it right
There aren’t many companies that have earned the trust the Red Cross has. In my in-box today was the latest example of how they do it. I had made a donation to the Canadian Red Cross in support of their earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, and today they sent an...