HRAdvance.com Gets an Upgrade

Today, HRAdvance.com was upgraded with a 6-scene flash animation and light-box offer.

Just two months ago, HRAdvance launched its new corporate website. Now the site has been upgraded with a flash animation designed to help inform visitors regarding the cost of health care benefits, solutions, and HRAdvance's products and services.

Take a look for yourself at: http://HRAdvance.com/

Social Networking Replacing our Beloved Email?

The Wall Street Journal recently published the story, "Why Email No Longer Rules." The writer, Jessica E. Vascellaro, talks a lot about the increasing number of people jumping on the social media bandwagon, and how that could have a negative effect on the way people use email today. Are people jumping on the social media bandwagon? You betcha! And why not? It's free, easy to use, and you can communicate to the masses. But are they using email less? Nielsen doesn't seem to think so in their recent study.

Thinking about social networking versus email marketing, I felt this warranted a blog post.

Integrating email marketing into your overall marketing mix is pretty simple. However, a majority of businesses (particularly in B2B) don't have a clue how online social networking fits in the mix. Consequently, they use social media in much the same way they use email—offering valuable content (allegedly for the good of their audience).

Truth is, social networking is not replacing anything. Modern social networking sites are an amalgamation of Instant Messaging, Email, blogging, etc. Email (and therefore email marketing) is here to stay. Can't we all just get along?

Extra Credit?

• Value Equation's: "Email Officially Replaced by Social Networking"
  
• VerticalResponse's "10 Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email”
• Chris Crum at WebProNews' take

People Cheat at Golf - Who Knew?

In an interview on NPR, behavioral economist Dan Ariely tells Kai Ryssdal about a survey of golfers that exposed how their approach to the game correlated to the way they worked.

What did they find out?

According to the study, “if you look at law enforcement, education and government, people in those three industries basically cheat on average, as do people in sales, marketing, advertising and so on. But the people in law enforcement, education and government think that they're the most honest, while the people in sales and marketing and advertising cheat just the same but they think they come from industries that are much less honest.”

"Cheating in golf is kind of a good example for how we think about day-to-day tasks." Ariely continues, "The fact that people can take a mulligan or how they can cheat on golf, I think tells us that there is a lot of corner bending in the business world. And what I worry about is that once we start down this path of immorality, even with small bending of rules and cutting corners here and there, that this tendency could become bigger and bigger and really a part of the collective understanding of how business is actually done."

As a marketing guy, business man and It’ll Do! golfer, unfortunately, I just don't agree. I would define 'business' as an entity that makes money for its investors in a legal and ethical way. The reason I wouldn't just leave it at 'businesses make money' is that there are always ways to make money in illegal and unethical ways. The difference is risk/reward and running a legitimate business these days is risky enough. So what if I want to take a mulligan on the weekend!

BlairGMC - New Brand, New Website

JDM is proud to announce the completion of Blair General Maintenance Contractor™ corporate rebranding.

The new Blair GMC™ features a modern, clean Brand, simple content tone and a new logo bug. To kick off the new brand, Blair GMC™ launched their new website: www.BlairGMC.com.

The site features table-less, valid XML mark-up, interactive flash and (recently rolled out) Salesforce.com integrated forms.

More than just a cosmetic change, Blair General Maintenance Contractor™ is built on a 40 year reputation of cost effective, self-performed, facilities maintenance quality.

Learn more at: http://www.BlairGMC.com.

Considering a corporate rebranding yourself? Check out our post, "Ruin a Rebranding in 5 Steps" first.