We experience things in many ways, and marketers are always in search of a new way to connect with the consumer.  Psychological research always shows that the strongest recollection comes from the highest involvement of our senses.  For example, when you are a florist trying to sell a flower, you don’t just market the fact that the flower looks nice, you also sell it on the merits of its smell.  This adds value to the end product, because it has more uses, and more ways for someone to experience it.

This morning I awoke to a strange surprise – the winter’s first snow. It was then that I realized I haven’t written about safe snow driving on my blog…so here goes.

5. Check Exhaust

Before getting into your car, check the exhaust of your car to make sure it is free and clear of any obstruction, including snow or ice. Why? Because hundreds of people each year die from Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning. CO is odorless, tasteless, and has barely any recognizable symptoms. Snow or ice in your exhaust can trap the CO that would normally be exiting your car through the exhaust.

I, like most people in the USA, love entertainment.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2004 we spent over $540 Billion entertaining ourselves (I include eating out at restaurants entertainment – we’ll discuss this in a different time and place). Although the last decade or so has seen many changes in the type of entertainment we prefer, one thing stays the same – we watch entertainment in order to:

• relax/de-stress
• laugh
• live a simulated life
• pass time

These days it seems like everyone has a solution for your voice communications.  The wireless providers have a cell phone for you, the voice over ip (VOIP) providers have an internet line, and of course who could forget the traditional old school landline phone.

To make your life easier, join GrandCentral which allows you to get a local phone number.  With this new number, you are able to:

- Listen in on a voicemail in realtime.

- Keep a phone number that is yours, not your phone or location’s (i.e.- for your lifetime).

Aside from online video ads, today there is a great demand for “Product Placement” ads.  This is a form of advertising where the advertiser has an actual product written into a script, or appearing clearly in the media.  Product Placement ads appear on TV, in video games, and even plays, but you may have to think hard to recall having seen it – since these ads are made to be less obvious than other forms of advertising.

Those of us involved in selling on a regular basis know that sometimes selling is more of an art form than a science. Selling at its most basic level is convincing someone to buy something from you, regardless of its worth to him and his need of it. As you deal with more market savvy people though, you really need to move up to a higher level of selling. This selling method needs to take into account what the person is there for, and what he needs, and then find the right solution for him. This brings us to the discussion of Technical Selling Vs. Cliche Selling.

Do you sleep enough? Chances are you don’t. It’s probably related to one of the following:

Uncomfortable bed, kids, work, friends and lastly (you guessed it) Internet.

While we read on a regular basis that people are supposed to get 8 hours of sleep or even more, some recent research shows just the opposite. It is well known that adults need less sleep than children, but no one was advocating cutting your sleep.

“people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep.”

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, I recently posted about Apple entering the cell phone market with the iPhone. The exclusive wireless provider for the iPhone is Cingular, which wasted no time in debuting it on their main page. This is just the latest attack on Verizon’s marketshare by Cingular.

Pinger lets you send voicemails instantly, without having to wait for the annoying computer generated voice to tell you what you already know ( for those of you who don’t know, it’s the beep ).  This tool has some extra features like the ability to send the same voicemail to several people.

For example, say you are planning a get together.  If you want to let all of your pals know about an event you are holding, in the past you would be forced to call each one or send them an Evite, which could get lost in the mounds of spam.  Now, you just need to say a couple of names after your voice message with pinger, and presto! everyone is invited.

If you look closely at the world around you, you will notice that although many new technologies aim to “converge” several different uses into one machine, we somehow always end up buying more specialized items, or “divergent” products. Let me give you an example:

Ovens

Ovens have been around throughout the ages, in one form or another. Many years ago, a wonderful new product came out on the market – the first toaster oven. People would place all sorts of food in there to “toast” it, and even placed slices of bread in the hopes of toasting it. Only a few years after that someone came out with a great idea – why not create a smaller oven, which is made especially for toasting bread – a toaster. This seemed like a great idea, and before you knew everyone and their mother had a toaster.