"I have to admit my gas guzzling SUV went from [$]80 a tank to 40. That is helping the Christmas present cause...I just hope I have a job seven months from now."

I explained that none of this would have happened had the website been correct, to which he replied, "it's the website... that's not our problem... we're the store."

He wasn't being rude. He wasn't treating me poorly. He simply said what we all know (but don't want to admit): "the Website is not the same as the store, it's always different from the store, and even I don't know who to call when something like this happens."

No, he didn't say that line exactly, but I'm paraphrasing the overall sentiment of the dialogue.

The writer makes some great points and is absolutely correct that a retailer needs to treat its web site as part of what it does, not something separate. Many retailers have made tremendous improvements at this over the past few years. For example, look no further that Wal-Mart's colossal Site-to-Store program. Wal-Mart has managed to harness its greatest strength (i.e., the scale of nearly 4,000 stores) to attract more consumers to its web site.

The real issue here is that legacy policies and systems prevent retailers from being able to fully tie their online and offline worlds together. Keeping inventory information accurate in real time is excruciatingly difficult and a struggle for virtually every retailer. Pricing is another problem. Margin requirements and competition vary from one channel to the next, and retailers face a significant challenge in deciding whether or not they can honor online prices in their stores.

One thing is certain. Retailers need to understand that their customers are asking new questions these days, and they need to equip their store employees with the right answers.

Gottlieb starts by saying that "Hasbro has managed the Scrabulous challenge about as well as can be expected." Well, I agree that Hasbro has every legal right to protect their IP, but to say that they handled this as well as can be expected is a bit dubious. I am not suggesting that Hasbro handled this poorly, but the reality is that their actions created a risk for their brand. As one commenter noted:

I no longer play any version of Scrabble online and I also eliminated a planned purchase of the traditional board game as I was going to introduce the game to my kids. My friends have done the same. They took a million fans of the game and thew [sic] them in the trash, hopefully it's just the beginning of more failure for this poorly managed company.

To say that Scrabulous fans will "get over it" is short sighted. Time will tell if Hasbro's attempt to "take pee out of the swimming pool" is positive or negative for their brand.

The second half of Gottlieb's post is terrific. He's absolutely right. Toy companies need to be much more in tune with the increasing number of Gen X and Gen Y moms and dads who live their lives online in ways that much of upper management just just doesn't understand.

Just think... what if Hasbro had reacted to Scrabulous by immediately introducing an official and better Scrabble Facebook app of their own? They could have trumped the imposter or at least slowed them down enough to make Scrabble appear genuine and Scrabulous as a cheap knockoff. We'll never know if the thought even crossed their minds. In fact, I wonder how long it took someone in a position of authority to even notice what was going on.

JR Cigar's new catalog is hugeJR really stands out from the crowd. First of all, the new catalog is huge. It measures 10.5" by 12". This giant, almost square catalog must have cost a fortune to mail. It's as if they are flouting the ever-increasing postage rates on flats. While other catalogers are crying in their beer and sending slim jims to keep costs down, JR is
Click to enlargedifferentiating themselves with a catalog that demands to be read. It also probably creates a handling challenge for the post office, JR's way of sticking it to the man.

JR also writes hysterical copy. It's sarcastic as heck and very entertaining. This paragraph had me busting a gut and is typical of their style.

The cigar business can't be what it was during the boom of the 90's, but JR seems to be doing just fine. They are very consistent in their message, and every now and then they surprise me with something really out of the ordinary like they did this week.

There are many sites that talk about toys and products for children, and there are even more that cover the joys and travails of parenting. Creative Play Plus takes a different approach by focusing on the benefits of play in general. It provides a wealth of practical information and links to articles that give insight into how play shapes children's lives and helps them grow their gray matter.

Much of the content is provided by some terrific people at the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Believe it or not, right in our own backyard, the folks at the Schubert Center are among the elite when it comes to studying play. We learned about them from Optiem, our interactive agency, and we spent several months drawing up plans for the blog.

Sure, we hope to sell more toys as a result of this new site, but that's secondary. There's really a dearth of good information on play, and parents need to connect the dots between the products they buy and how their children learn. If we are able to help them make better choices for their children, then everyone wins. That's doing it right for the community, and that's part of our purpose at Step2.

Our local NBC affiliate ran a great segment about the new blog. Education reporter Kim Wheeler provided a good overview of the project.

These kinds of sales decreases are monstrous. With such huge supplier networks and thousands of employees, the ripples in the economy have to be felt at some point.

Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day, the business research firm Basex estimates. The risks are clear.

Employees who are routinely interrupted and lack time to focus are more apt to feel frustrated, pressured and stressed, according to separate studies by [Gloria] Mark and the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit group.

There are no big surprises here, but the quantification of these phenomena are still remarkable. I am not so sure about the attempt to draw an analogy with the "planet focus" terminology, but there are some good observations and suggestions here.

My greatest career battle is an ever-diminishing sense of accomplishment. Even the most mundane tasks like managing my to-do list (now at 128 items) or listening to voice mail (43 last time I checked) have become huge challenges. I now receive 200+ emails per day, not including spam. Overload is real; it's not a pop culture complaint.

I suspect that the root cause of much of this pain is the distraction syndrome that Ms. Jackson talks about. It's amazing how productive I can be when I can focus. Staying focused has gone from a good work habit to a major league skill.

Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime. 

I think many missionaries would find this research to be confirmation of what they've known for years -- that people often make major decisions together in groups. The specifics vary from culture to culture, but this is just more evidence to suggest that we are wired to interact socially with each other. Making major decisions, even tough ones, based on social influence, doesn't seem that surprising.

This also leads us to think about the potential influence of online social networks. My guess is that additional research will find that the online connections are just an additional method of communication and that real personal connections must have an offline component.

What do you do with extra, outdated POP materials? Well, in this case, you build Jeff a new office. Architect and contractor Joe finished the project in a single evening.