Because most of these words are dumb so we should have fun with them.

1. Can you assist me with this insertion order?
2. I make small cubicles fun.
3. I would be happy to be your human resource.
4. You won’t be needing an expense report tonight.
5. I would like to put your consulting expertise to good use.
6. Are you interested in managing my account?
7. I’d like to make you my feature PowerPoint presentation.
8. Can you help me figure out my operating system?
9. Where else can you employ that analytical ability?
10. Hard cover briefcases are so much better.
11. Your eyes are as intriguing as a good biz dev strategy.
12. My account is totally receivable.
13. Let’s get out from under this fluorescent lighting and find somewhere more comfortable.
14. I can tell you’re a team player.
15. If we went on a date, what do you think our profit and loss would be?
16. I don’t believe in automation, I am all hands on.
17. Your customer interface is impressive.
18. I would wager that two self-starters like ourselves would have a good time together.
19. Is that low-hanging fruit or are you just happy to see me?
20. You don’t need a high level of core competency to know that you’re a catch.
21. Let’s give you a skills analysis.
22. Any chance you’d be interested in drilling down with me?
23. I don’t think you and I will need any troubleshooting.
24. You’ve been running through my invoices all night.
25. I was thinking about you during that entire conference call.
26. I’m not into cold-call sales, but I’d love to have your number.
27. Can I see the inside of your cubicle?
28. Who needs a financial analysis when I know exactly where to put my money.
29. Forecasting is for people who can’t live in the moment.
30. Instead of all these policies and procedures, let’s visit the idea of free will.
31. Enterprise this.
32. Want to play a little document distribution strip poker?
33. All this corporate giving is getting me hot under the collar-you?
34. There’s nothing like a little file maintenance to keep you on your toes.
35. All this problem solving has me wanting to create problems.
36. Let’s do this, but in real time.
37. Your methodology is so smooth and deliberate.
38. Realizing we’re working on a timeline, how much time do we have to get to know each other?
39. The best part of this acquisition is you.
40. In all the power meetings I’ve ever been to, this room is one of the hottest…for real, it’s hot.
41. Don’t feel like you have to go this alone, we can tag team.
42. Should we debrief?
43. Performance evaluations are my favorite day of the year.
44. I am feeling this burn rate in many places.
45. Sometimes you just have to ask yourself, “Am I a profit or a loss?” Now which one are you?
46. Now, when you say “team building retreats,” what does that mean to you?
47. Risk management just sounds like something so clandestine!
48. You say accelerated growth, I just say hot.
49. You say there is little margin for errors but I disagree.
50. The first time I saw you, there was only word that came to mind-benchmark.

Image: mark sebastian

Conversion Rate Optimization Glossary

The post 50 Pick Up Lines for the Corporate World appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnAs the food truck trend grows, corporate chains like Jack in the Box are paying attention.

It was only a matter of time.

There was no way we could keep guerrilla marketing techniques and word of mouth culinary tips to ourselves. No, after several years of brief stints in the limelight, the food cart world was destined for mainstream. And last week, Jack in the Box was the latest chain restaurant to jump on the bandwagon.

Jack in the Box’s new “Munchie Mobile,” which is hitting the streets of Southern California, is certainly making food cart lovers across the nation cringe. The simple beauty of a unique food truck serving up dishes you would only ever hear of via word of mouth or Twitter is completely lost on the chain. Well, except that the Munchie Mobile does have a Twitter feed.

A food cart traditionally provides the opportunity to seek out a new business venture, to take a stab at crafting one’s own recipes, and to make a name for oneself in an unpretentious, efficient manner. For big brands, it’s simply the latest marketing tool.

Last fall, in order to promote its new Dip & Squeeze Ketchup, Heinz outfitted a truck to become a veritable moving billboard, starting in Philadelphia and making stops along the way to share french fries and ketchup with the masses. Of course there was an entire coordinated social media campaign along with all this, with prizes given away for Foursquare check-ins and tagged Twitter updates.

Five years ago, such an initiative may have seem a little over the top, or out of place, but in the age of food carts, the Heinz truck fits right in. In larger cities these days it’s practically second nature to walk up to a truck window and place an order.

One could argue that the true original franchised “food truck” was the Oscar Meyer weinermobile – which is still traveling around and keeping up its own blog written by the “hotdoggers” who drive it. But the difference here is between an over-the-top marketing gimmick (a vehicle shaped like a hotdog) and the incorporation of guerrilla street tactics to make marketing efforts seem more genuine (franchise in a truck). Efforts like this aren’t just happening on the street. Take Starbucks, which is putting a large effort behind making some of their thousands of worldwide coffee shops appear more like local institutions that the global multinational brand that they are.

Why do initiatives like this feel inherently dirty? Because larger interests are encroaching on the success that has been created by independent business seeking to do something different, veering from the norm and surprising customers.

Just a few years ago, food carts were nothing more than obscure. You wouldn’t find lines around the block or well-known chefs hitting them up for lunch. But nowadays they’ve come to define an important part of American food culture; one that’s important precisely because it isn’t based on marketing to the masses.

And that means money. Whereas many independent food trucks and food carts started small, creating their business as they grew, now there’s a market for getting everything in place from the get-go. There’s even a company called Mobi Munch that is “the nation’s first mobile food service infrastructure company and online marketing channel dedicated to providing established chefs and restaurateurs an integrated online and offline platform for launching innovative restaurant concepts aboard state-of-the-art food trucks.”

Mobi Munch helps franchises get food trucks going. And as the food truck industry continues to grow, business for them is booming. “Six months ago I projected that 10 percent of the top 200 restaurant chains would have some mobile presence,” Aaron Noveshen, founder of Mobi Munch said. “Now I think that number will be higher.”

As conscious lunchtime consumers, maybe we should feel honored that we’ve had a part in driving a movement that’s become so popular it’s now being co-opted by fast food. Then again, maybe not.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, taking a conscious look at what’s bubbling in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: krysnky, ohfaceKillah

The post Foodie Underground: Corporate Food Cart Nation appeared first on EcoSalon.

In a former life, I worked at an agency and I can remember the day we celebrated landing Starbucks as a client. The young-at-heart caffeine king had some hip and clever style, which got our creative department’s juices flowing, and they were based in Seattle – a bonus for quick runs from SF to a city that was a pretty cool place to suffer business trips. Most important, though, was Starbucks’ relatively positive reputation. Though all agreed that the coffee monster was a local-corner-coffee-shop killer, clients with an earth-and-employee-friendly rep were few and far between.

I also remember the first time I arrived on-site at the company’s headquarters. Behind the well-designed doors, past the state-of-the-art eco-office interior, and inside the elegant, glassy and awesomely coffeed conference rooms, our kick-off meeting was (drum roll) … just like any other. It was about time and money and effective communication and, you know what? It occurred to me that that was just fine. That’s what a corporation is supposed to have meetings about, and despite a recent and inane court ruling, they – excuse me – it is not human and it should not be expected to display human qualities. I mean, the people were nice and all, but the purpose of our being there couldn’t have been clearer: It was time to do business.

That said, the Starbucks story – and the fact that as we speak the company is so frantically trying figure out what to do about its damn paper cups – is a pretty good one.

Here’s the deal with the cups: About 3 billion of the more than 200 billion paper cups that end up in U.S. dumps each year are from Starbucks. This is a bad thing and the company has been flailing around for years now trying to figure out what to do about it. Reports Triple Pundit, Starbucks says “disposing of the cups is the top environmental concern of its customers. The angst over the problem has reached the highest levels of the company.”

Supposedly, eco-focused CEO Howard Schultz has promised that by 2012 all Starbucks cups will be recyclable.

They even had a really big meeting about it. Earlier this year, Starbucks hosted its second Cup Summit at MIT, hosting “municipalities, raw material suppliers, cup manufacturers, retail and beverage businesses, recyclers, NGOs, and academic experts together to drive the development of solutions that will make both paper and plastic cups more broadly recyclable.” Attendees even included competitors such as Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s.

This all fits in with the Starbucks’ green-and-all-around good-guy thing, says Fast Company, as “the company is pursuing more LEED certifications and working toward a goal of purchasing 100 percent fair-trade and Coffee and Farmer Equity-certified coffee by 2015.” Indeed, the Starbucks as standout corporate citizen story is well documented – and well marketed.

Now this shouldn’t translate into a non-critical or even a non-judgmental approach to the whole Starbucks phenomenon. Anti-union issues and the previously mentioned local-shop carnage aside, no matter how green a process and product, more stuff – and more stores – means just that, and no spin can erase that footprint. (See “Green? Perhaps. But iPads Don’t Grow on Trees.”) Says Fast Company: “Environmentally… Starbucks has bigger concerns than disposable cups. Its 8,832 company-owned stores and its international supply chain both affect resource use and climate change more than cups in the trash.”

On the other hand, I’m not calling into question the intentions of Schultz and his reportedly hopped-up-on-the-environment team. They do seem to be doing some good in a world where big business is more known for its trail of slime than caring about what is left in our dumps. Nevertheless, they are corporate folk and they represent a money-making team that’s busily trying to bounce back after their stock hit a “multi-year low” in 2008.

What’s good about all this is that a major corporate player knows the concerns of its customers and that it sees its competitive advantage, its winning formula, if you will, as pounding out a constant and consistently green drumbeat. Yes, the only establishment to ever make Cat Stevens seem corporate knows that a good many of us care about those cups and have a habit of buying into, literally, feeling better about our ourselves. (I’m partial to Triple Grande Lattes and my editor, I’m sure, has her own formula regarding the relationship between my word count and my caffeine intake.)

And it’s here where we note what famous criminal Willie Sutton supposedly told a reporter when asked why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.” In today’s marketing world, to a growing extent, green is where the money is.

So consider Starbucks a bit of gauge regarding one of our biggest hopes – the extent to which committing to the approach makes sound economic sense in terms of how it plays with consumers. This is not to say that the corporate world will ever see the light. In fact, it has no eyes to see. What it does have is a nose for coin. And Starbucks is following its nose. As a result, hopefully, they’ll figure out what to do with their damn cups.

Image: serendipitys

The post Its Cups Runneth Over: Starbucks’ Green Ways appeared first on EcoSalon.

Are you kidding me? You don’t feel so loved with this, the most loving of corporate created holidays upon us?

I know what you need.

A t-shirt.

Not just any old t-shirt, but a LOV-Neck t-shirt from Blend that forces you to “be brave and stick your neck out for all you believe in.”
In this case it’s well, for love.

Co-founded by a bunch of good friends like Grammy winner Jason Mraz, CEO Jon Marro and COO Jeff Goss, Blend is offering their 100% organic cotton shirt to a lucky lady (or gent) who thinks they’re brave enough to wear it.

Blend boasts that they help wearers of their shirts communicate through iconography which, when you wear this little number, can’t help but make people smile and want to give you a noogie.

Do you want one?

Well, leave a comment below to try and win it and for those of you so taken by how much you LOV it, just go buy one.

For complete giveaway rules go here.

The post Blend’s LOV-Neck T-Shirt Giveaway appeared first on EcoSalon.

Welcome to The September Issue, a frockumentary chronicling the genius behind the fattest ever edition of Vogue, weighing in at over four pounds, reaching 13 million readers and boosting the sinking morale of the $300-billion global fashion industry.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like my documentaries contrived any more than my fashion. Albeit entertaining, this one by R.J. Cutler smacks of high level spin and pretense.

Adding to the “entertainment value” was an art-versus-bottom dollar subplot pitting the painfully bored Vogue chief Anna Wintour against brilliant, model-turned-photo stylist Grace Coddington, both British veterans who have been with the magazine for more than 20 years.

Coddington makes a statement with her unkempt orange mane and naked, aging face, an appearance which defies everything that lets Vogue survive, namely stick-figured, cover-girl celebs with flawless airbrushed faces who are posed like Barbies in lay-outs specifically engineered to sell fashion.

True, it’s always been about the sales, but four pounds of retail pitching might be overkill.

Coddington cringes throughout the film as she battles her nemesis Wintour. We the audience tend to root for the vulnerable underdog in the power struggle as the boss eliminates various elements of Coddington’s romantic fashion spreads at her whim – images labored over with great attention to lighting and detail to add depth to the 2007 September book.

One comes away with little empathy for the emaciated Wintour, who, so taken with herself as a removed icon, keeps her trademark goggles on while observing the indoor runway shows. Guess she figures she has seen it all so missing a few nuances of color and texture shouldn’t be a big deal. Her vacant expression dares the wizards behind the curtain to try and impress her.

If Coddington is the magazine’s soul, Wintour emerges the cold-blooded business brain going through the tedious motions but never really responding to her vibrant environment. Never mind that hundreds of talented, unemployed journalists are waiting in the wings for that chance-of-a-lifetime job monopolized by Wintour for two decades.

Appearing even more bored that the overblown caricature portrayed brilliantly by Meryl Streep in Prada, Wintour seems desperate to pad Vogue and her paycheck at any cost – even resurrecting fur on the cover in the 90s to save the dying trade.

A longtime Peta target for her Cruella Deville attraction to pelts, Wintour is pompous in her disregard for the mission of animal rights groups who have fought hard to sensitize humans to animal cruelty and the absurdity of slaughtering  for fashion’s sake alone. Recently, she told Sixty Minutes she needed to get security to protect her from anti-fur militants. She insisted she likes fur and that is the only reason she wears it. Right.

I find the most staged scene in the film is Vogue’s annual meeting in Paris with the movers and shakers of the retail world, such as the head of Neiman Marcus, who nudges Wintour to wield her influence to get couture houses to speed up delivery of gowns to an ever-increasing and demanding clientele. Hogwash! There was no increasing demand for $15,000 gowns even prior to the recession, and the only demanding clientele is the celebrity stylist crowd that manipulates its clout to borrow treasures for a day.

The only message I came away with is that it might be time for Wintour to hang up her Warhol wig, glasses and venti Starbucks paper cup and give someone else a shot at salvaging her doomed fashion rag. Perhaps it should be someone like Grace, who embodies her name while clinging to what matters most to fashion visionaries and fans – the process of creating and wearing desirable, three-dimensional art.

The post The Devil Wears Fur and Her Hurt on Her Sleeve appeared first on EcoSalon.