Here at JZMcBride and Associates, The Hamster Revolution was required reading.  A cute, quick read (comparing an overwhelming in box to being stuck a hamster wheel) that offers several email management suggestions which have definitely made our internal communication more efficient.  But unless we can give a copy to every single email address holder in the world, overwhelming email in boxes will run rampant.

This morning, I came across this handy diagram that just might help us to take control of our in boxes..  Print it out, laminate it, post it next to your computer and live by its wisdom, dear readers.

EOM.

Worth a cool $525 million – in today's dollars

A story on MSNBC.com lists the 10 wealthiest presidents in history and here’s the surprise: If you want to see the richest, then pull out a dollar bill and say hello to Washington.

That’s right, the first president not only earned a salary that was 2 percent of the total U.S. budget of 1789, his Mount Vernon plantation covered 8,000 acres of prime farmland, and Martha enjoyed a sizable inheritance of property herself. In all he was worth half a million – in today’s dollars.

But what intrigued me more was a link to the 10 poorest presidents. On that list: Truman (the only 20th century commander in chief in the ranking), Lincoln and Jefferson.

Turns out that American presidents found themselves bankrupt at a rate at least 20 times the national average. In fact, eight presidents had become insolvent at one time or another during adulthood, often because of poor investment decisions, risk taking or good old-fashioned living beyond their means (though not in the cases of Truman and Lincoln).

So on this President’s Day, as we read report after report of unfathomable campaign wealth, let’s remember that even some of the earliest presidents had a tendency to live a larger than the rest of us.

Seems like an innocent exchange.

Well, apparently it’s not. It falls under the category of employee theft. And it even has a name: sweethearting.

 According to a recent study by Clay Vorhees (Michigan State University) and Michael Brady and Michael Brusco (Florida State University), 40 percent of the $200 billion in U.S. employee theft costs stems from sweethearting, costing retailers $80 billion annually.

Sweethearting is defined as “unauthorized discounts to customers, thus not embraced by management.” The survey of 800 customers and employees –– in restaurants, hotels, car washes, cable TV, installation and repair companies, tanning salons and other retailers and service providers –– showed that 67%  have participated in sweethearting within the past two months, some for the prospect of receiving better tips.

However, it’s not all bad. According to the study, sweethearting is also key to building customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Vorhees, Brady and Brusco urge employers to conduct more in-depth screening and training to limit “the potential damaging effects of deviant acts such as sweethearting.”

Some may call it deviant.  I, for one, call it sweet!

1-800-Flowers is under fire this week for failing to deliver countless orders on Valentine’s Day and giving no reason why. When customers were stuck on hold ‘endlessly’ – as some say – they turned their ire to 1-800-Flowers’ social media pages. Here are just some of the comments:

- @kyrauff, “How many couples broke up because of @1800flowers’ no good, very bad Valentine’s day?”

- @vancouverkate, “I’ve already been waiting 14 hours for a response.”

- @mirelleguia, “@1800flowers I want a letter of apology sent to my wife for failing as a business on the most important day of the year.”

- @AnDTheNNNN “MT @dhewlett: My wife just recd her special vase of dirty water w/wilted fraction of bouquet I ordered Happy Valentine’s day 1800Flowers!

- @marcusk911, “@1800flowers Thanks for not only providing my fiance with a bouquet that made her co-workers laugh, but that my co-workers call swamp weeds.”

Oh, and there are more. Many more. Many upset customers, the ones who did receive their flowers, posted pictures of the shoddy quality, like the one above.

While many are saying that 1-800-Flowers failed in its communication through the phone, they did an OK job through their social media sites. Flowers is asking that complaints be posted on @1800flowers, with order number and the issue spelled out. I’m not exactly sure if they are just straight refunding money at this point or what. It’s not something you can really make all better tomorrow. Valentine’s Day is officially over for the next 363 days.

Bottom line, this is the most important day for flowers in the entire year, and 1-800-Flowers screwed up. People have emotion invested in Valentine’s Day and this will not be an incident that those unhappy customers will be likely to forget in the years to come. I think 1-800-Flowers is going to have to do better than just refund money here. I think a free dozen roses for the next two big events for each customer might sound reasonable, don’t you?

This is why I’m glad I’m a chocolate girl on Valentine’s Day. No disappointment there!

I’m not in the market for a new pen. I don’t collect pens. I couldn’t even tell you the brand of pen sitting on my desk as I type this blog. But thanks to the magic of a PR campaign that is absolutely beautiful in its simplicity, I happen to know that Paper Mate is selling a new InkJoy line of pens that deliver a revolutionary writing experience at an everyday price.

There’s just one reason I know about the InkJoy. The DJ’s on my megawatt, drive-time radio station that reaches tens of thousands of listeners in half the country were intrigued by the results of a survey about the disappearance of pens, and the heartbreaking problem of outright pen thievery in the American workplace.

Yep, the survey was sponsored by Paper Mate. Turns out that of 1,000 American office workers who were surveyed, all admitted to having taken a pen from a colleague. Seventy-eight percent said it was an accident. Twenty-two percent said they took it knowingly.

Who would steal a pen? For 51 percent, just needing one was a good enough reason. Half said they’ve stolen a pen because it  writes smoothly. Thirty-six percent said it was because they liked the way it looks, and 34 percent said they liked the color.

Admit it, you want more data. Thirty-eight percent said they’ve caught a colleague red-handed. Twenty-three percent said they’d steal it back. Nine percent said they’d call out the culprit in a meeting.

I’ll spare you the stats on the deterent factor of chewed caps and teeth marks.

For me, it’s fun to imagine the original brainstorming session. My guess is that one of the participants, perhaps from Paper Mate, suggested in-depth research on the chemical composition of the ink. Another called for an end-to-end study of the ergonomics of the InkJoy line. Then, one of the PR types said: Why don’t we ask a bunch of office workers if they’ve ever had their pen stolen. Disapproving glances from all around the table pierced the PR type. A lot of money was spent on the chemical research and ergonomics study. No media coverage followed. Months went by. Finally, they tried the stolen pen thing. Viola!

The InkJoy campaign also features Facebook and contest components. Somebody else can blog about that.

I doubt that Mark Zuckerberg and his college buddies dreamed that Facebook would become such an integral part of society and that they would become the richest group of 20-somethings in the world. 

Even more, I’m sure they never dreamed their social networking/photo-sharing creation would also become the source of life-altering events…in a negative way.

In today’s Facebook news search alone, the following headlines appeared:

Facebook “defriending” led to double murder, police say

Dad shoots daughter’s laptop over Facebook post

P&G to lay off 1,600 after discovering it’s free to advertise on Facebook

Number of crimes involving Facebook leaps 346% in a year

Facebook cited in 33% of divorces

Is Facebook the villain? Of course not. But is it a powerful influence in our world today? Hell, yeah. For better or worse.

Zappos.com recently announced that it was the victim of a data breach that affected 24 million customers. Yet it did not appear to suffer the same consumer or media scrutiny as did other companies in the same spot.

This is in part because Zappos.com responded quickly and pretty transparently. But I have a hunch that Zappos.com’s investment in goodwill among customers and the press also played a role. Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, by way of his book Delivering Happiness, has agreeably sat down to interviews with reporters from most major papers and magazines, meaning that he has spent time building a rapport with them. Hsieh is the face of Zappos.com, and it is a smiling face; the two are really one.

Which gets to what really distinguishes Zappos.com: Its efforts are – or at least appear to be – completely genuine. It does not go out and do good things as a strategy; doing good is a business principle.

So when I read a recent (positive) Bloomberg Businessweek article about how Hsieh is investing $350 million of his own money into reviving downtown Las Vegas, I was not at all surprised. I could actually feel the company’s stock rising.

And so it is that when Zappos.com announced that it had been hacked, many of us took it personally. Zappos.com is our friend; many of us have had fun conversations with its call center workers, and it invests in the community.

Zappos.com succeeds because it builds emotional connections. And there really is no better way to delivering a good image.

Apparently, Germany’s Meteorology Institute allows companies to ‘sponsor’ weather systems through its ‘Adopt a Vortex’ program for the low, low price of what would be $393 American dollars. A steal, right? BMW thought so and paid to have a European cold front named after the Mini Cooper, thus having it called the ‘Cooper Cold Front.’

Well, as of last week, the Cooper Cold Front is now responsible for 113 deaths and 950 people in the Ukraine alone are being treated for hypothermia and frostbite. So it seems that BMW got publicity, but not in the way it wanted. Now, every time a new death is announced or some other catastrophe of the storm occurs, that tragedy will be linked to the Mini Cooper and BMW. Ouch.

It is “a wind- and weatherproof idea,” the Munich agency, Sassenbach Advertising, said on its website in late January, as the Cooper-driven front began to make its way from Siberia.

BMW has since apologized. I personally think the idea of branding a storm crosses some kind of weird line, but BMW is not the only one to do it. 20th Century Fox has participated and paid for the names Yoda, Luke and Leia to promote the “Star Wars” film franchise.

There is a lot in PR that is out of control, but nothing is more out of our control than the weather. So let’s just leave it alone.

But even as I marveled at the skill and bravery of these “elite of the elites,” I could not help wondering how all the publicity they’ve received squares with their (previously) super secret status. In the PR business, I spend a fair amount of time telling clients that shining the light on their good deeds will change their lives, make the phone ring, grow their business and earn them more money — because those are their business objectives. In the case of SEAL Team 6, I don’t understand how all the adulation serves their primary objectives.

Some of my fears have been confirmed in a column by J.D. Gordon, a retired Navy commander. Gordon noted that SEAL Team 6 members are highly specialized, seasoned professionals who are hand-picked from existing SEAL teams. The last thing they want is publicity, he said. They all live and train somewhere, he said, and drawing attention to them, their families, their bases and their local communities creates safety and protection problems.

Gordon further said that historically, the military and U.S. government have kept SEAL Team 6 missions secret to shield their members’ identities and protect operational security.

Gordon served as a Pentagon spokesman in the George W. Bush administration, so there may be some partisan politics at play in his viewpoint. After taking that into account, I remain concerned.

Matthew Broderick is giving us a time-out during the Super Bowl, and for a middle-aged, recession-weary public, the timing couldn’t be better.

Broderick, if you haven’t heard, is reviving Ferris Bueller, the school-cutting, life-loving teen of the 1986 movie. It is for just a brief time, but it is the quality of the moment, not the length, which matters.

The effort comes in the form of a commercial for Honda. That’s right, instead of the wickedly gorgeous, cherry-red Ferrari 250GT California, Ferris ditches work and gets his kicks in a red CRV.

But it works, not surprisingly. With smart writing, an eclectic soundtrack and a terrific cast, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off introduced lines that are still being used 26 years later, from “Bueller? Bueller?” to (more resonantly) “If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away?”

To our delight, many of these lines (as well as the Yello song “Oh Yeah”) are used in the ad, no doubt designed to get viewers of a certain age to nudge each other conspiratorially. Remember that? Wasn’t that great?

By uniting with Ferris, Honda is aligning itself with the free-spirited, adventurous youth who still lives, somewhere, in all of us. It is extending our loyalty from the principles of  Ferris to the principles of Honda. It will also likely get us asking on Sunday night: How can I work on a day like tomorrow?