I was reading some articles today about various programs here where the companies are getting rid of paper forms in favour of having people going online and submitting the information digitally. While for many this is alright, at the same time a lot of people would say it is unfair such as requiring those who normally don’t use a computer to buy one. As expected this created bad press for the company too. What was interesting was that they anticipated this before where they were weighing the pros and cons on whether or not it made sense to lose those people who probably will never agree with it simply because of tradition.

I think as usually whenever you suggest change you will never be able to appease everyone. It made me wonder too what is the best way to gradually get people like in this case to go digital if you still have a significant user base that has yet to embrace the technology. The only thing have really seen so far is that some companies still give people the option to do things the old way. However, what they do is they stop advertising the old methods it all together so that all their new customers get adopted to the new digital methods. That way you keep the old and new happy where eventually the people using the older method will shrink.

Kind of makes sense in many way if you are trying show sensitivity I suppose to everyone while at the same time looking out for what makes financial sense for the business. Eventually I often seen businesses offer incentives for people to switch too such as giving people discounts where financially they won’t be losing anything. More effective than simply dropping a bomb on people I guess you can say.

I was reading all these stories about how soon enough we will all be introduced to quite a few new top level domain name extensions. For those who are unaware of what this is, essentially it is like the “com” or “.edu” that you would type in at the end of the web address. As many of you are aware there are quite a few variety of them as well.

What was interesting to me was reading how there were proposals to allow domain name extensions for company name brands too. For example, instead of something like company.com it would be company.company. As well there seems like a bunch of generic proposals such as extensions ending with “.food”

When things like this do launch this usually results in a flurry of activity where people want to try and secure the best names possible. As well, cyber squatters usually attempt to snag up domains of popular icons or businesses in hopes to profit from it. One thing is for sure, this can sure be frustrating for the little guys. Imagine them bringing out fifty new domain extensions and you having to try and secure the names for all of them. At the same time, apparently some of these names can potentially cost people over one hundred dollars a year to register. It’s almost like turning it into a exclusive club of sort.

Would you simply just allow someone else to register the domain name in these cases as there are simply too much? Generally speaking though, I would say the .com one is still the best one to have. However, the other domain extensions can be good for branding specific projects and items too I suppose.

Today I was looking at a company that was gloating that they were growing so big as apparently they acquired thousand of members in a short amount of time. I was then talking to another person about this as we were curious how legitimate it was. While the people themselves seemed real, the thing was a large portion of these “members” were simply inactive such as signing up just as a trial to see what they were like. Regardless of that, the business is definitely milking it for all it is worth.

What can you say? It’s almost like using sex appeal where it helps to sell regardless of how obvious the marketing tactics are. I suppose quantities does matter in these cases. While like in the above example people in the know will probably rip that number apart to show how it’s not as significant as they would like you to believe, at the end of the day it is an effective marketing tool with the majority of onlookers.

This season almost went completely by me as I wasn’t even aware it had started already. Fortunately I did notice that it was on now though. It seemed like this was the All Star version of the show where for the most part it was past contestants. The teams this time weren’t divided by men and women either as Trump decided to let Bret Michaels and Trace Adkins choose their teams. In the end, the two teams and its name was the following:

Team Power:
Bret Michaels
Omarosa
Lil Jon
Brande Roderick
La Toya Jackson
Claudia Jordan
Dennis Rodman

Plan B:
Trace Adkins
Penn Jillette
Dee Snider
Marilu Henner
Stephen Baldwin
Lisa Rinna
Gary Busey

The first challenge appeared to be a food related one where each team would have to create their own signature meatball and then sell it to the public. The team who made the most money would win. The project manager for Team Power was Brande and for Plan B it was Trace.

Trace had a vision where he didn’t care about the meatball itself as his thought was since it was a money challenge everyone should just focus on getting people with deep pockets. Team Power went with the the more traditional route. As well, the two teams went on the show Kelly and Michael to sample their meatballs. Since Team Power made a vegetarian meatball Plan B was trying to criticize them for that decision. However there was an interesting note that the host Kelly was actually a vegetarian.

There was an interesting tid bit during the episode where Omarosa made a comment where she would take a lot of personal pride if she was able to take out a former Celebrity Apprentice winner. In this case, specifically Bret Michaels. It was funny too I was thinking as some people were commenting why in the world she was even on the show when she isn’t really a celebrity. I guess examples like these show she knows how to be the villain of all villains which I guess makes it entertaining at times as the person you love to hate.

When the stores opened you definitely saw the difference in atmosphere. Team Plan B’s store was virtually quiet as they closed it off from the public and even had closed signs to discourage random people. Team Power was the opposite as it was crowded and busy. Plan B’s plan seemed to work eventually as the big donors started to walk in.

In the board room Omarosa wasted no time in trying to throw Bret under the buss it seemed. She tried to emphasize a point that he expressed how he had a large group of potential donors where in the end he did very little. Therefore, it was implied that he said this to set Brande up in a way to make her confident in becoming the project manger.

Stephen on Plan B took a huge blow too as throughout the episode he said he was purposely holding back his resources for when and if he becomes a project manger. He emphasized this point on his own as if it was a smart strategy. However, it just ended up making him look bad. Trump then announced which meatball Kelly and Michael enjoyed the most. They ultimately decided that Team Power’s was the best and that they were rewarded $20,000 to their funds.

In the end Plan B raised $419,539 and Team Power raised $250,530. It would seem that Plan B’s strategy obliterated the other team’s. For the boardroom there seemed to be a huge debate about numbers as it seemed like Brande simply didn’t know her team’s financial numbers. Essentially, she put Omarosa in charge of the accounting but felt something was off with it. However, she couldn’t challenge it as she has no real records of it. Brande was emphasizing that the people who should be fired are the one’s tha raised the least. Again though, because she didn’t know her numbers she couldn’t really say who that was indefinitely.

Therefore the team had to rely on Omarosa’s numbers where she was insisting Bret brought in the least. Ultimately Brande chose La Toya and Bret using her decision of trying to bring in the people who raised the least. People seemed shocked that Brande even trusted Omarosa. In the end though it seemed like Trump was really negative about Bret for choosing to be a contestant as oppose to say one of the advising judges. On top of that the fact that he raised very little in the task seemed to be the nail in the coffin and so he was fired. Crazy start so far I must say.

While getting a haircut today the owner told me an interesting happening where for some reason a lot of potential male customers would come in the store and ask if they cut men’s hair as well. She thought this was weird as she doesn’t advertise the store as women only and she even has prices for men’s haircut versus a women. We were then saying how stereotypically when you think of things like a salon you automatically think of it as a very feminine place such as painting one’s toe nails and such.

I was then mentioning too how the whole store had like model pictures of women too which further gave the impression that this was a female only place. As a result they tried to put a lot more signage to
specifically say they welcome male customers as well. They even went as far as placing a barber’s pole outside the store to hopefully attract more male customers.

Kind of shows you how important your store design can play when it comes to attracting customers huh? Imagine how many customers they loss where most people probably wouldn’t even bother to ask too.