"America is losing its grip on reality."
It is time to wake up.
The great America was based not on freedom, but on:
1) Having 300 millions (even less) on a territory as big as China (or almost as big) which has to feed 1 billion 200 millions
2) Cheap oil
3) A strong weapon industry
4) wars and colonialism
Cheap energy meant that a few people could run a huge farm and produce ALL the necessary food.
It meant that a few could produce a lot of cheap goods and consume a lot.
Now the energy is getting expensive.
The number of Americans is NOT enough to produce food and good in the same quantity as before.
South America, India, China, DO NOT WANT to produce and work for the Amricans, they do not want a paper that without oil is worth zero.
It is time to realize that imperialism is finished, cheap energy is finished, it is time to save the little land and water America has, it is time to reduce expectations and the size of the dinner.
This is the only way to save America
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
How and what companies know about you
When you shop usually you don't buy everything you need in one only store. You buy groceries at the grocery store, toys at the toy store, and you visit certain shops only when you need certain items you associate with them.
May be those companies sell everything from milk to lawn furniture, to electronics, so one of the company's primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is their.
This isn´t a message easy to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers' shopping habits are ingrained, it's incredibly difficult to change them.
What are most likely the periods in a person's life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux?
It seems that one of those moments is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are more likely to change.
That isn´t difficult to find out because birth records are usually public, infact the moment a couple has a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies.
That means that the secret is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way.
The marketers should send especially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is the moment when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things,such as prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing.
If you can identify them in their second trimester, there's a good chance you can capture them for years.
As soon as you get them buying diapers from you, they're going to start buying everything else too.
If they are rushing through the store, looking for bottles, and pass orange juice, they will most likely grab a carton.
And may be there's that new DVD they would like.
Soon, they will be buying cereal and paper towels from you, and keep coming back.
The desire to collect information on customers is not new for any large retailer, of course.
For decades, they have collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of their stores.
Whenever possible, they assign each shopper a unique code - known internally as the Guest ID number, which keeps tabs on everything they buy.
If they use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail they sent them or visit their Website, they will record it and link it to their Guest ID.
They want to know everything they can.
Also linked to their Guest ID is demographic information like the customer´s age, whether they are married and have kids, which part of town they live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, their estimated salary, whether they have moved recently, what credit cards they carry in their wallet and what Web sites they usually visit.
Shops can buy data about their ethnicity, job history, the magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year they bought (or lost)their house, where they went to college, what kinds of topics they talk about online, whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, their reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars they own.
All that information is meaningless, however, without someone to analyze and make sense of it.
That's where the Marketing Analytics department comes in.
Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a "predictive analytics" department devoted to understanding not just consumers' shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them.
But in a golden age of behavioral research it is amazing how much they can figure out about how people think.
Over the past two decades, the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs.
The push to understand how daily habits influence your decisions has become one of the most exciting topics in clinical research, even though most of us are hardly aware those patterns exist.
One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day.
This research is also transforming our understanding of how habits function across organizations and societies.
The Obama campaign has hired a habit specialist as its "chief scientist" to figure out how to trigger new voting patterns among different constituencies.
Researchers have figured out how to stop people from habitually overeating and biting their nails. They can explain why some of us automatically go for a jog every morning and are more productive at work, while others oversleep and procrastinate. There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges.
For companies the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
Liberally taken from NYT
May be those companies sell everything from milk to lawn furniture, to electronics, so one of the company's primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is their.
This isn´t a message easy to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers' shopping habits are ingrained, it's incredibly difficult to change them.
What are most likely the periods in a person's life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux?
It seems that one of those moments is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are more likely to change.
That isn´t difficult to find out because birth records are usually public, infact the moment a couple has a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies.
That means that the secret is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way.
The marketers should send especially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is the moment when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things,such as prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing.
If you can identify them in their second trimester, there's a good chance you can capture them for years.
As soon as you get them buying diapers from you, they're going to start buying everything else too.
If they are rushing through the store, looking for bottles, and pass orange juice, they will most likely grab a carton.
And may be there's that new DVD they would like.
Soon, they will be buying cereal and paper towels from you, and keep coming back.
The desire to collect information on customers is not new for any large retailer, of course.
For decades, they have collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of their stores.
Whenever possible, they assign each shopper a unique code - known internally as the Guest ID number, which keeps tabs on everything they buy.
If they use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail they sent them or visit their Website, they will record it and link it to their Guest ID.
They want to know everything they can.
Also linked to their Guest ID is demographic information like the customer´s age, whether they are married and have kids, which part of town they live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, their estimated salary, whether they have moved recently, what credit cards they carry in their wallet and what Web sites they usually visit.
Shops can buy data about their ethnicity, job history, the magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year they bought (or lost)their house, where they went to college, what kinds of topics they talk about online, whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, their reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars they own.
All that information is meaningless, however, without someone to analyze and make sense of it.
That's where the Marketing Analytics department comes in.
Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a "predictive analytics" department devoted to understanding not just consumers' shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them.
But in a golden age of behavioral research it is amazing how much they can figure out about how people think.
Over the past two decades, the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs.
The push to understand how daily habits influence your decisions has become one of the most exciting topics in clinical research, even though most of us are hardly aware those patterns exist.
One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day.
This research is also transforming our understanding of how habits function across organizations and societies.
The Obama campaign has hired a habit specialist as its "chief scientist" to figure out how to trigger new voting patterns among different constituencies.
Researchers have figured out how to stop people from habitually overeating and biting their nails. They can explain why some of us automatically go for a jog every morning and are more productive at work, while others oversleep and procrastinate. There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges.
For companies the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
Liberally taken from NYT
Friday, March 02, 2012
The mistery of the Greek debt
It is a mistery to me, how a country that began with a total debt of 300 bn euro in 2009 (112% of GDP), received as Bail out from Europe
110 bn May 2010
109 bn July 2011
130 bn March 2012
(total 349 bn. euro)and now in March 2012:
The debt is 160% of GDP
The creditors are asked to a "hair cut" of 75%
By a simple mathematics, if the "hair cut" had been done in 2009 it would have cost to Europe "JUST" 300 Bn...and would have saved so much suffering to the population AND a complete default as the Europeans are asking now...
Why?
Simply because the debt changed hands.
In 2009 the creditors were MOSTLY Germany and France.
I mean German and French banks.
Now with the bail out the above banks have got rid of the unwanted debt, the boiling potatoes has passed from one hand to the others and the actual creditors...can lose 70% of their money.
But who are the actual creditors?
Europe.
And who is Europe?
110 bn May 2010
109 bn July 2011
130 bn March 2012
(total 349 bn. euro)and now in March 2012:
The debt is 160% of GDP
The creditors are asked to a "hair cut" of 75%
By a simple mathematics, if the "hair cut" had been done in 2009 it would have cost to Europe "JUST" 300 Bn...and would have saved so much suffering to the population AND a complete default as the Europeans are asking now...
Why?
Simply because the debt changed hands.
In 2009 the creditors were MOSTLY Germany and France.
I mean German and French banks.
Now with the bail out the above banks have got rid of the unwanted debt, the boiling potatoes has passed from one hand to the others and the actual creditors...can lose 70% of their money.
But who are the actual creditors?
Europe.
And who is Europe?
APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE!
Kicking the can down the road, or moving the boiling potatoes, these are colored ways to define the actual economical situation of many countries in Europe (including mine Italy).
Not being able to change much, they do the only thing they are able (and paid for) to do: postpone the problems.
What is urgent today, tomorrow will be even more urgent, so why bothering to care for urgent matters, when you will have more urgent matters tomorrow?
In the mean time, the only urgent thing to do is calming down the people, promising, telling lies, covering up...
But the real purpose of this exchange of debt from one hand to the other is unknown and unseen by the mass.
It is simply tranferring the debt from the few to the mass.
When it will be complete, who cares what will happen.
APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE!
Not being able to change much, they do the only thing they are able (and paid for) to do: postpone the problems.
What is urgent today, tomorrow will be even more urgent, so why bothering to care for urgent matters, when you will have more urgent matters tomorrow?
In the mean time, the only urgent thing to do is calming down the people, promising, telling lies, covering up...
But the real purpose of this exchange of debt from one hand to the other is unknown and unseen by the mass.
It is simply tranferring the debt from the few to the mass.
When it will be complete, who cares what will happen.
APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE!
Franchise marketing
I like franchise marketing.
I think it is very often the best way to begin and run a business.
Because, even if it can cost a percentage of what you can earn, you can count on an immediate revenue and the marketing experience (and investments) of a big company even though you are small.
For example, if your future business is going to be in Internet marketing, offering SEO services, it pays off to use the experience of a team that comes from the search world.
Who better than them can know how it really works?
And what really means seo friendly cms?
Content Management system is what you need when you want to control the performance of many web sites and improve or optimize their search engine response.
It is the best way to manage all your projects and web sites at a glance, that means having their performances ALWAYS under your control.
That allows you to react immediately modifying all the factors critical to their ranking.
One of the internet marketing services they offer is an automatic marketing software which includes all the SEO techniques, good for SEOing one website, but perfect for managing and following the simultaneous performance of 1000 (or more, if you are so lucky and good).
When it comes to seo technology, it is not only useful, it is essential to be up to all the new techniques, because what is good today, can be obsolete tomorrow.
And franchising is important also for this: being one to work, but having the experience ( and the constant update of knowledge) of many.
I think it is very often the best way to begin and run a business.
Because, even if it can cost a percentage of what you can earn, you can count on an immediate revenue and the marketing experience (and investments) of a big company even though you are small.
For example, if your future business is going to be in Internet marketing, offering SEO services, it pays off to use the experience of a team that comes from the search world.
Who better than them can know how it really works?
And what really means seo friendly cms?
Content Management system is what you need when you want to control the performance of many web sites and improve or optimize their search engine response.
It is the best way to manage all your projects and web sites at a glance, that means having their performances ALWAYS under your control.
That allows you to react immediately modifying all the factors critical to their ranking.
One of the internet marketing services they offer is an automatic marketing software which includes all the SEO techniques, good for SEOing one website, but perfect for managing and following the simultaneous performance of 1000 (or more, if you are so lucky and good).
When it comes to seo technology, it is not only useful, it is essential to be up to all the new techniques, because what is good today, can be obsolete tomorrow.
And franchising is important also for this: being one to work, but having the experience ( and the constant update of knowledge) of many.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Stumble It!