Whose Faulty Vision

Delta Update

I sent Delta an e-mail expressing my unhappiness with their new fee structure, and got back a canned reply that included the line: “These changes will make our fee structure more in-line with other airlines.”

Which is a pretty weak justification. I liked Delta because I thought they were better than the other airlines, not just “in line with” them. If they’re “in line with” the other airlines, why should anybody choose them, instead of just going with whoever’s cheapest?

Delta Falls

I’ve been praising Delta to everyone I know for being pretty much the last airline that doesn’t nickel and dime you with ridiculous extra fees. Well, now they do. They’ve added a fee for checking any bag, and a fee for sitting in the exit row, just like the other airlines. I’m really disappointed in them.

Question Answered

I remember debating with friends back in college: Of a non-white President, a female President or a non-Christian President, which will we see first? Well, now we know the answer.

Congratulations to Mr. Obama, and I hope he does a better job than Bush did.

I still don’t expect to see an openly atheist President in my lifetime, though.

Link: Marketing Lessons from the Election

An insightful post about marketing lessons to be learned from this election. Best bit:

Attack ads don’t always work. There’s a reason most product marketers don’t use attack ads. All they do is suppress sales of your opponent, they don’t help you. Since TV ads began, voter turnout has progressively decreased. That’s because the goal of attack ads is to keep your opponent’s voters from showing up. Both sides work to whittle down the other. In a winner-take-all game like a political election, this strategy is fine if it works.

So why didn’t the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.

Salmonella

I think I picked up a case of Salmonella at focus groups I attended on Thursday. I haven’t been to a doctor, so this is all just my speculation, but I have all of the symptoms: nausea, diarrhea, (slight) fever, chills and muscle aches. And it started with the nausea about 8-10 hours after eating a bunch of coleslaw at the focus groups.

So why haven’t I been to a doctor? Well, to start with, all of the symptoms are pretty mild. And I know what the doctor would tell me: take Immodium and drink lots of fluids, and it’ll blow over in a few days. So I’m just doing that on my own.

It’s pretty much killed my appetite, so I’m not eating much. To make up for it, I’m trying to drink fluids that have some calories in them–a smoothie yesterday, a vitamin water today, that kind of thing.

I called the focus group facility to let them know, so that they could warn their supplier and keep it from happening again. I tried to make it very clear to them that this isn’t a big deal, to imply without saying it outright that I have no intention of suing them or causing them any other trouble. But I did think the supplier needed to be informed.

“Chuck” Nitpick

I’m watching last week’s “Chuck” right now. It’s a show I enjoy a lot, but can someone explain me this: Why does the female lead walk into a room full of armed guys, carrying a machine gun herself, and start punching them? And why do they punch back?

Linguistic Peeve of the Moment

Linguistic peeve of the moment: People in today’s focus groups saying “artesian” when they mean “artisanal.”