A few weeks ago I was reading an interesting article that was featured on MSN.com that highlighted the 10 Most Hated Companies in America. I must admit I found the list very interesting. Some companies I could easily understand why people may dislike them very much while others I had trouble figuring it out. I have paired the list down to 6 and hope you will take a quick quiz and give your opinion.

Click here to tell us which companies you hate!

A few weeks ago I was going to lunch with a colleague (thanks S.H.) and we ended up at Boston Market. As we were eating, our conversation centered around the name of the restaurant. I was, and still am, curious if having a city in their name helps or hurts them?

We thought for a few minutes and came up with three restaurants that have a city in their name – the list we have compiled so far is:

• Boston Market

• San Francisco Oven Company

• Jersey Mikes

I am still wondering if having a city in their name is a good thing.  Here are my thoughts.

• Boston Market – I am not sure the name helps at all and in some ways might hurt. Meatloaf, chicken and turkey aren’t really a mainstay in Boston so that’s why I don’t think it really helps the brand.

• San Francisco Oven Company – I am neutral on this one.  I believe the menu is all about the Bay Area but I am not sure people care and has the concept caught on?

• Jersey Mikes – I think the city helps and helps a lot! When I think of cheesesteaks, chicken sandwiches, subs, and hoagies I do think of New Jersey. I really believe this name is perfect!

What do you think?

• Does a city name help a restaurant?

• What do you think of my comments?

• What other restaurants have a city name in them?

I look forward to hearing from you.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of going shopping with my kids. Since my parents and siblings live out of town they sent checks to the kids and wanted me to have them buy whatever they wanted for their holiday gifts! I tried to make the experience fun, exciting and yes, a LEARNING EXPERIENCE! The rules were pretty simple – ok they were simple for me, perhaps not so simple for three wonderful kids under 11 who only wanted to spend money and buy themselves some gifts.
The rules were:

• Each child pick two stores they wanted to shop in.

• Tell me the items they THOUGHT they wanted to buy.

• Not go over $100.00

See, I told you the rules were very easy. As we started shopping my oldest son bought a few items at Best Buy and then spent a little more at Academy Sports and Wal-Mart. Our next stop was Target, which was the store all of them wanted to shop at. As each gift was going in the basket I was adding up in my head what each child had spent. Now my daughter jumps into the shopping cart and is starting to play Barbie Dolls prior to paying for everything. I had this feeling that she might be over and bracing myself for a challenging time at the register. As Luck would have it, she went over by $4.88! My first thought was, “Oh no! Now what do I do? Give in or hold my position?” Decision time needed to be quick and firm and my answer was, “Baby, you went over by a few dollars so which of the gifts would you like to not include in your purchase?”

As I was bracing myself for a problem, for a melt-down, for a tantrum for her to start, for her to start throwing things at me, my oldest son says, “Dad, I have a few extra dollars left of my money and would be happy to share it with my sister so she doesn’t have to return anything!” WOW! I didn’t expect that response! My daughter and myself lit up like the largest Christmas tree around and I couldn’t have been more proud of my son!

My kids were sharing at the holidays! What a great message! Isn’t business about that? Sharing 24/7/365?

• Have a great idea – share it with your boss!

• You found a new way to do something and save time – share it with your colleagues!

• Had success negotiated a deal with a partner – share it with your business development team!

• You didn’t win a project but your prospect gave you some incredible feedback – share it with other salespeople!

• Your last proposal included some cutting-edge technology – share it!

• Your profit margin on your largest account is amazing – share it!

I could go on and on with this list. The bottom line is, sharing might be the most important thing a company and its staff could do day in and day out.

I would suggest the most successful companies have staff that shares all the time and the companies that don’t suffer for sure! When I asked a few industry contacts about “sharing” a number of them said that isn’t something that happens too often within their company.

So I would ask you:

• Does your company have an environment that shares?

• Do you highlight when people share with other team members?

• Do you reward people who do share?

• Do you feel your company is much better off when everyone is sharing success and failures?

If you don’t, perhaps you should take a look at how you could incorporate that into your 2012 strategy!
I look forward to reading your comments.

Celebrity tweets that endorse products are on the rise – clearly no surprise, but what might be a surprise is how much they get paid per tweet!

• Lindsay Lohan $2,353 per tweet

• JWOW $2,353

• Mike Tyson $3,250

• Jose Conseco $3,900

• Khloe Kardashian $8,235

Seriously, that is a lot of money!  When I first read the article I thought, what company would pay any of these stars to endorse a product? That can’t possibly per worth it. Then, I paused for a few minutes and grabbed a calculator and thought that might not be a bad deal.

Here is my logic.

Let’s take Khloe Kardashian, who has over 5,000,000, yes, 5 million followers! Let me just say I am not a fan of the Kardashians, nor do I follow Kloe, Bruce or any of them.

So if Khloe endorses and tweets about a product, what is the ROI? Is it worth it? Well, this is where my hand dandy calculator comes in.

5,000,000 followers

If 1% take action because of Khloe’s tweet that would be 50,000 people. If you don’t like that number (which might be too high) lets use 10% of that number which would be 5,000 or .0001% of the original number (which might be more likely) and multiply the 5,000 people who buy the product (call it body lotion) for $25.00 generates $125,000 in revenue.

So the tweet cost you $8,235 and generated $125,000 – who wouldn’t take that ROI?

When I did the math I actually thought it was a pretty good deal for the companies and the tweet cost wasn’t that outrageous.

• What do you think?

• Where does my logic breakdown?

• Which stars do you follow on twitter?

• Have you ever bought a product based on a tweet endorsement?

• If you were in charge of marketing at a large company would you use celebrity tweet endorsements?

Crazy yes – but very interesting in my mind.

I look forward to your comments.

PS – here is a sample tweet from Khloe:
OMG… Wheat Thins has a new limited time sweet cinnamon flavor…. Why am I so excited about this?  LOL

There are a lot of things I don’t understand and this is one of them. Every time I walk into a movie theater I am amazed at how much space they have in the lobby and what a poor job they do turning that space into revenue.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Why not rent the space out to a company that sells movie memorabilia?

• Why not rent out the space to a company like GameStop that sells the most up-to-date games?

• Why not rent out the space to Apple to see their hottest products?

I must truly be missing something because I think all three of those suggestions would increase revenue for an industry that might be looking for revenue.

They have the space, they have the customers and frankly they could easily match their demographics to attract the right opportunities for companies to target new customers.

• What am I missing?

• What do you think of my ideas?

• Do you have any other companies that should be included?

I look forward to reading your comments.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a Baylor University S3 Advisory Board meeting and participating in a leadership panel. During the discussion, I was asked who the leaders that have influenced me the most are.

Without pause, I answered with two names very quickly:

1. John Boni – He was my boss when I worked for Quick Test way back in the 80’s. He was an amazing person who taught me many things, including not to react to something when you are emotional, treat everyone fair and give back to the research industry.

2. The second person was my dad. Over the years his name has changed to JD, a nickname I gave him years ago. JD taught me so many things but one in particular has really stuck with me. I have always embraced and often share it:

When an opportunity presents itself, you need to do two things:

1. Recognize it’s an opportunity.

2. Do something about it.

Thanks, JD and John Boni for having such an influence on my life!

One of the other things I discussed was the importance of having a great boss to start your career – John really was that. I was young, goofy and many other things but I was also impressionable and a sponge. John was perfect for my career. Unfortunately, he passed on shortly after he retired so I don’t get to discuss business with him anymore but I do quote him often.

Think about your first boss (no names please).

• Were they good/bad for your career?

• What do you remember the most from them?

• Who are the leaders that influenced your career the most?

I really look forward to reading your comments.

For some reason my mind started to wander the other day and I starting to think about all the amazing contacts I have and how cool it would be if I opened up a school and my friends, family and industry contacts were the teachers!

Maybe this will never happen but it was really cool to pretend and dream for a few minutes.

During my life I have met so many wonderful and talented people. Many of them teach during their day. So maybe they don’t have the current title of ‘teacher’ but they are leaders and managers who are constantly mentoring, teaching and developing talent.

Here are a few of my choices for teachers:

• Joel Dubrow – My dad. He is a financial wizard, great with numbers and needs to teach accounting.

• Steve Schlesinger – Great friend. He is competitive, energetic and is now the tennis coach. For those of you who don’t know, he is a GREAT tennis player.

• Andrew Bausk – He is one of the most creative people I know and a perfectionist when it comes to taking pictures. He is now the photography instructor

• Sheryl Cronin – My sister and the best salesperson I have ever met. She is in charge of our new business development course.

• Jeffrey Lorber – He is a friend of mine who gave up acting for the research industry. He has now come full circle and is now teaching acting.

Ok I started to put together the faculty.

• For the people I mentioned, what do you think of your teaching assignments?

• We have lots of openings, what would you like to teach?

• Can you handle more than one class?

Let’s all take a moment and dream today.

I look forward to hearing from you and what class you would like to lead.

There is nothing like a board meeting at the University of Wisconsin A.C. Nielsen Center.  I must admit I really enjoy the passion around the program and always learn something new when I am there. My direct flight (thanks American Airlines) landed at 11:00 PM and if all went right, I would be at my hotel (thanks Marriott) around midnight.

I landed on time and after a short walk to the Hertz counter I arrived at 11:06 PM. I have been to this airport and counter many times before and have never had a problem – well this day was different. The counter was dark and locked up. Next to me was a person with the same problem – a reservation without an agent, so therefore without a car. I won’t bother to go into the Jerry Seinfeld skit which happens to be very funny – perhaps another day. At this point I couldn’t believe what was happening. I called the local number they said to call and left a message but that didn’t help. I then looked around and spoke to all of the other car rental companies. There were five – all open and two of them were actually laughing when I described my problem. One guy said, “Yes, they do that all the time.” He did have a car available for $125 day. I said that won’t be necessary since no matter what the time/situation is I will be fiscally responsible.

In many cities this wouldn’t be an issue but in Madison, Wisconsin it is. First of all, I picked a hotel (because I am brand loyal) 8 miles away from campus so I needed to take a minimum of 5 cabs over the next 36 hours and cabs are not easy to find. This wasn’t NY or Chicago where they pass by every 5 seconds.

As I said, I left a message for the Hertz office at the airport as did my assistant. Let me speed up to 36 hours later. After taking a cab to the airport I passed by the Hertz desk. Ok, that isn’t true, I went out of my way to pass by the Hertz desk and went and spoke to someone. The first person was Beth who I asked to pull up my reservation. After she did and I explained my situation basically said, “Here is the manager.” She couldn’t care less or had heard the issue many times before.

I spoke to Emily who was the manager and very nice. She pulled up my reservation and said that seems odd that we wouldn’t stay because we have your flight information in the reservation. She said they are supposed to stay and she was very sorry that they hadn’t. She then volunteered to say it wouldn’t have mattered since they ran out of cars. To me, she added fuel to the fire, giving even more reason to stay a few minutes (6 to be exact) and let a gold customer (brand loyal) know what was going on. When I asked her why no one returned my call or my assistant’s call she quickly said that they were having phone problems and once again apologized.

Emily was very nice, apologetic but I must admit it just seemed like one excuse after the other. She did give me a travel voucher for $75.00 towards my next rental

The question is, what should I do?

• Never use them again?

• Write a letter to the President of Hertz?

• Not sure I believe all of the excuses? Do you?

• To me it seems like horrible customer service – what do you think?

The most interesting part of the story for me was speaking with their competition who clearly said they do this all the time and we benefit from it. He was actually laughing as he was speaking with me. Don’t you want to feel important when you want to feel important? They couldn’t keep a car for a gold member?

• So the question is, what would you do?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Unfortunately with the economy the way it is right now lay offs are happening very often. Whether it happened to you, a friend or a loved one, I am sure you have heard of this happening in the past few years.

Let’s not get into the reasons why someone gets laid off but rather what to do when it happens. Here are five things to start the list:

1. Don’t do anything for a week. Relax, go workout, read a book or spend time with the kids. Do anything but look for a job right away. Here is my reason why. Take the time to think about what happened, what you should do next and most importantly, map out a plan. Take a little time to really figure out what you want to do.

2. Stay positive. Yes, you are upset. You have reason to be upset but if you are angry potential employers will be able to sense that and may not hire you because of your anger.

3. Don’t bash your previous employer. It is a very small world and although it might feel good for a few minutes to bash them, it is a possibility that it will backfire.

4. Rely on your inner circle and industry contacts. If you are as old as me you have lots of industry contacts. Now is the best time to use them. They can help review your resume, point you in the direction of resources to use and identify potential jobs.

5. Update your LinkedIn status first and your résumé second. In this day of technology, LinkedIn (I have over 2700 contacts) is more important than anything else.

Ok your turn:

• What would you do?

• If you were laid off what did you do?

• Are there any job listing sites that you recommend?

• Do you have any advice for people who are currently going through this?

I look forward to reading your comments.

• Yes, I have a number of brands that I am loyal too.
• Yes, there are a number of brands that I love.
• Yes, I have waited 45 minutes for a donut at Krispy Kreme.
• Yes, I have driven to 3 grocery stores to find Coke.
• Yes, I have gone way out of my way to buy a few shirts at Nordstrom Rack.
• Yes, I will stay at a Marriott even if the conference I am attending is a mile away.

The question is, which brand am I the most crazy about?

Funny – my answer may surprise some of you. This brand is opening in Dallas! More importantly, it’s only ½ mile from my office!

I think the brand I am most crazy about is In-N-Out Burger! I love it! I love the simplicity of the menu! I love the taste and freshness of the food! I love the secret items that aren’t on the menu! And I love the people who work there!

Ok, your turn:

• What is the one brand that you go crazy about?

• What is the one brand you love?

• What is the one brand you will go out of your way to visit?

I look forward to reading your comments.