The Merrill Dubrow Blog

The contest is now closed. You can still take the survey to see how you fare, but there will be no prize. Click here to see the winners and check the right answers.

I just returned from an Omnicom meeting and there was a very interesting presentation. The speaker was Craig Storti, Director of Communications Across Cultures and he delivered a presentation on Developing Cultural Competence For the Global Workplace. During his very creative presentation, he had a few quizzes that I thought I would share with you.

Click on the link and fill out the twelve-question survey. The entire process will take less than two minutes and I will post the answers in a week.

Click here to take the survey

The highest possible score is 12. 

There will be a prize for the person who gets the most answers correct.  If there is a tie, we will come up with a tie-breaker.

We will close this contest at 12:00 PM on Monday, June 16.

For me the questions were amazing about how little I knew about people and cultures outside the United States.

I look forward to hearing your comments and seeing if the same is true for you.

The contest is now closed. You can still take the survey to see how you fare, but there will be no prize. Click here to see the winners and check the right answers.

Six months ago, Amy Shields beat Dan Womack by only 13 points in this contest. Amy crushed most of the other contestants to gain her first title in How Well Do You Know Americans? "Power Of Plus or Minus 10″– the blog version of a popular game show where contestants try to accurately predict the respondent base’s answers to intriguing poll questions.

Today Amy, Dan and others (I hope) will try and play a second round of Power of Plus or Minus 10. On one popular game show, the winner gets 10 million dollars — sorry but that won’t be happening here. However, we will have a few lesser prizes for the top two people — assuming we get over fifty responses.

In case you’re not familiar with the Power of Plus or Minus 10, a few months ago, M/A/R/C Research interviewed 5,800 Americans between the ages of 18 and 65. We built a database of their answers, and it will be your challenge to see if you can guess how our respondents answered the questions.

The way this will work is this: Please click on the link below and answer the 7 questions in our little survey. We will total your answers and when we post your response, we will tell you how far away you were. It doesn’t matter if you are over or under the total. The top two people who are the closest in total to the seven questions will be the winners.

Click here to take the survey.

One change this time is that all M/A/R/C Employees can participate except myself, TA and anyone on our internal team who has seen the answers.

Look for the right answers and winners to be posted on May 19. Remember…the lower the score, the better.

Good luck to all!

First of all, congratulations to Stacey Weber whose stock pick ONXX went from $10.58 to $55.62 — a whooping INCREASE of 426%! Stacey I am sure I am not the only one who wishes they had bought thousands of shares. For winning the contest, Stacey will receive $250.00. And there will be $100.00 for G-Man, the lucky loser whose stock RFNS.PK went down the highest percentage in 2007.

To participate in the 2008 contest, here is what you need to do:

• Respond to the blog with your stock name and if possible symbol
   
• State the reason why you picked the stock you did

It’s as simple as that.

We’ll do the rest.

A few things to remember:

• You need to respond by January 15, 2008
   
• You can only have one entry
   
• The stock price needs to be at least $1.00 - anything less will not be accepted into the contest.
   
• Only one person can have a particular stock, so the person who responds first gets the pick and we will notify anyone who has a duplicate stock (we had at least 10 duplicates last year and I am sure there will be more this year).
   
• If a stock splits, we will make the necessary calculation and adjustment
   
• If the company you pick gets acquired during the year and their company doesn’t have their own stock price, you won’t be counted in the contest
   
• We will use the stock prices as they were at the time the market closed the last trading day of 2007.  

Like last year we will post a leader board.

First prize will be increased to $300.00 for the person whose stock goes up the highest percentage in 2008.

In 2007, we included a few surprises, and who knows…maybe there will be a few surprises in 2008 as well.  Last year (in the name of conducting research for fun) we sent an online survey to those who picked a stock and were part of the challenge. The survey participants voted Apple Computer (AAPL), Google (Goog), and China Mobile Limited (CHL) as the best candidates for the highest increases in 2007. To make the research even more interesting, I purchased $500 of those three stocks with my own money with the intention of splitting the profits (less commission) with those who selected the stocks in the original contest.  I assumed the risk for any losses. Not a bad deal at all. 

And the results are in!  Congratulations to Stephenie Gordon, Elyse Gammer and RAMA. You will be contacted shortly with an update of your stocks and a check with your winnings since all these stocks went up last year.

I will get the ball rolling with my choice for the 2008 contest: American Apparel Inc. (APP - AMEX) This apparel company is in a position to have a strong 2008!

Take the stock challenge of 2008!

Get your entries in today!  Again, the deadline is January 15th.

While I was in California last week, the Dow Jones hit a milestone for the first time ever.  The Dow Jones closed over 13,000 points. Mark it down: Tuesday April 25th, 2007, the Dow industrials went as high as 13,107.45 before closing at 13,089.89.

Prior to the middle of last week, the Dow rose in 18 of the past 20 sessions and gained more than 780 points in that time.  Last Wednesday marked the Dow’s 35th record close since the start of October 2006. Truly unbelievable!

It took the Dow just 129 trading days, since Oct. 18, 2006 to make the trek from 12,000 to 13,000, far less than the seven and a half years the blue chips took to go from 11,000 to 12,000. The swiftness of this latest trip does bring to mind the days of the dot-com boom, when the major indexes were soaring and it took the Dow a mere 24 days to barrel from 10,000 to 11,000.

• Does it slow down?
   
• Does it spiral down out of control?
   
• And when the clock strikes 4:00 EST on 12/31/2007 where does the Dow Jones stand?

Sounds to me like those questions beg for…

ANOTHER CONTEST!

You have until 5:00 PM CDT on Friday May 11, 2007 to send in your guess for what you believe will be the final resting place for the Dow Jones on 12/31/2007.

The rules are simple:

• You are only allowed one entry.
   
• You will be notified if your choice is already taken and will be given an opportunity to make another choice.
   
• You will need to include a reason to support the choice you have made
   
• If there is a tie (e.g. one person guesses 20 points too high and another quesses 20 points too low) the person who has the lowest guess will win – there will only be one winner!
   
• The deadline is 5:00 CDT on May 11, 2007

In order to help you a little bit, here is a little history on the Dow Jones:

12/29/2006 - 12,463
12/30/2005 – 10,717
12/31/2004 – 10,783
12/31/2003 – 10,453
12/31/2002 – 8,341
12/31/2001 – 10,021
12/29/2000 – 10,786 

Yes there is a prize involved. The closest person to the actual right answer will win a prize. The total amount of the prize will depend on how close the winning guess is: 

If you get it EXACT, you will win an extra $250.00!

Let the contest begin.

I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Periodically I will review my 401k accounts. When I checked online this morning I noticed that my Harris Interactive account was up 16.5% year to date and my Omnicom 401K account was up 16.6% year to date.

It got me to pause and think about a challenge, a little contest for the blog. So here goes.

What I would like to propose is for readers of the blog to pick one stock that they believe will go up dramatically in 2007.

Here is what you need to do:

• Respond to the blog with your stock name and if possible symbol
   
• State the reason why you picked the stock you did

It’s as simple as that.

We will do the rest.

A few things to remember:

• You need to respond by January 15, 2007
   
• You can only have one entry
   
• Only one person can have a stock, so the person who responds first gets the pick and we will notify anyone who has a duplicate stock.
   
• If a stock splits, we will make the necessary calculation and adjustment
   
• We will use the stock prices as they were at the time the market closed on 12/29/06.

We will frequently post a leader board.

There will be at least two prizes.

The 1st prize will be $250.00 for the person whose stock goes up the highest percentage in 2007.

The 2nd prize will be $100.00 for the lucky loser whose stock goes down the highest percentage in 2007.

I will get the ball rolling with my choice. An easy one. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Symbol COKE.  They will follow up a successful 2006 with an even better year.

Take the stock challenge of 2007!

Get your entries in today!