hey Steve !

You're confused, the olive guy is obviously confused, and I for one am not surprised.

Haven't you heard? It's a well-known marketing tactic to make the shopping experience so confusing that most customers will wander around and around and eventually buy more than if everything is logically organized to make it easy to buy. It's "shopping" vs. "buying."

Popcorn next to the cat food? You-betcha.

This morning we went to L.L. Beans in Freeport (Maine, it's just down the road for us) to buy winter boots. Beans is now so big with several buildings, connecting corridors, multi-level, this & that, all mixed up from the last time we were there, big signs that say "LL Bean Home" and "Warm Hearth" instead of "Men's Boots, this way-->", jumbled & tumbled, ricked & wracked. We nearly needed one of those famous Maine Wilderness Guides just to get the heck outta there after we paid for our boots.

When we got back to our place and sat down by the fire

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/71741

my wife said, "I know I'm getting older, but going to Freeport and Beans left me with a bad feeling, like I've been "mall"ed to death."

This was a brief outing, just a couple of hours, the snow's coming down, showing picturesquely on the pine tree lined drive up Route 1, all nice, seems fun starting out, but the shopping experience leaves a bad feeling--like they're desperate to grab more of our dollars than we have to give them. This is not good for Beans to give us this feeling. My dad mail-ordered Beans moccasins when he was a kid growing up a log cabin in the Rocky Mountains in the 1920s, and mail-ordered moccasins for all us kids when we were growing up in a farm house out on the prairie lands of Nebraska in the 1950s. I'm their good customer, so why do they have to spoil it with overly-aggressive merchandising?

I think the retailers are so frightened about the economy that they are going crazy-frantic, cranking up the "merchandizing" so tight that it's going to backfire on them.

Storm Cunningham writes in his book "The Restoration Economy" that the industrial revolution is not going to simply peter-out, the expressed strategy is to accelerate grinding up the earth, financial resources, and human resources at such a frantic pace that there will be extensive collateral damage. Sound familiar?

John (keepin' warm by the fireplace, plenty of dry wood stacked up right outside) Leeke

www.HistoricHomeWorks.com

 

Steve, do you ever watch "Greater Boston" on PBS? Last week (I think) they basically said that "citizen journalists" weren't journalist. They also said people out reporting about the terror attack in India shouldn't be called journalists. I believe Ms Rooney said that any citizen with a camera reporting on the news shouldn't be called a journalist by sites like CNN (their iReport section). I suppose the comments could be found on the PBS site, but that would be too investigative of this citizen...

 

Hi Rebe,

Thanks for that citizen journalism report.

;-)

I'm on the case, tracking down the facts...

Sad to hear they are allegedly still having this argument on tv.
--Steve

 

Found the WGBH Greater Boston Beat the Press report:

I can not believe what I am watching.

Emily Rooney is so condescending.

 

I think "journalism" and "news media" has really dropped the ball and let us all down the past few years. So, it's time for us to pick up the ball and help ourselves, as citizen journalists.

I have never heard of Emily Rooney before, but her defensive attitude here makes me think she is a part of the big guns news media that let us down. She will not get any more of my attention.

John Leeke
www.HistoricHomeWorks.com