04-06mill

Greetings!

Finally a study that makes sense! This one appeared over the wires on August 25th and I'm glad I caught it with one of my online news feeds.

Though born in 1958, nobody surveyed me. And at 6'4", I have never felt particularly smarter, nor did I ever think I was making any more money than those who are a little shorter. But I trust that Anne and Christina have done their homework. (By the way, the media release went on to say that both are about 5'8"—4" taller than the average American woman.)

My parents were both way above average height, and my "little" brother is 6'7". I've grown up around tall people and believe me, they were bright and funny, but not out of the ordinary. We certainly weren't living on Easy Street either.

So, what have I really benefitted from by being tall? I usually know when it begins to rain a fraction of a second earlier than most. I know when to duck in a Chicago bungalow's basement. I can stand in the back and still watch a parade. I can be half a step slower, but still have the reach to beat most opponents in racquetball. Without the step stool, I can reach the top shelf in the kitchen. Beyond these small bonuses that have certainly enhanced my life, I don't see the big advantage.

But this has given me hope. You have to trust the scientists! My ship is coming in, and I hope it's one of those Tall Ships! And for you vertically challenged people—I won't forget you. I will continue to let you know when something is in your hair, paint your ceilings and provide you shade.

Anne and Christina probably got a big fat grant from the government to do this study—which makes THEM smarter and richer—so I guess that's the proof. I hope in their next study they find out bald guys are really sexy and funny.

Tim Padgett
tim@peppergroup.com

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“A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.”
—Steven Wright

“I don't consider myself bald. I'm simply taller than my hair.”
—Tom Sharp

George's Going to Market: Marketing Investment

A successful business owner or two have told me in the past, “I’ve gotten this far without marketing. I’m not a big believer.”

I say, “Just think where you’d be if your company had been putting proper effort into marketing!”

There are successful businesses that “don’t do any marketing.” There are also successful businesses that don’t do any training, don’t have any sales people, don’t keep up with technology, service their customers poorly or have no strategy. But couldn’t those businesses that shortchange one of these factors perform even better if they didn’t?

Marketing is an investment. Though Generally Accepted Accounting Principals put marketing dollars into the expense ledger, building your brand and increasing the value of your business is not exactly like buying paperclips. The best support for marketing as an investment? The most successful companies in the world are those that invest in good marketing.

So how much should you invest? Optimally, you’ll want to identify, through a detailed marketing plan, what tactics and investments are required in order for your company to reach its specific marketing goals. The marketing goals are driven by the overall financial objectives of the company. In other words, identify a vision and invest in achieving it.

But there are also plenty of helpful rules of thumb. Depending on your industry, committing 3% - 5% of your total revenue to marketing investments is a good place to start. Of course it depends on the aggressiveness of your objectives, but if you’d like to compare your current investment level with the industry average, Advertising Age recently published a new list of the ad-to-sales ratios of 200 industries. It’s only the advertising portion and not the entire marketing investment, but it can be very interesting nonetheless to see how your efforts compare. Also, listen to this brief Crain’s Small Business Report that recently aired on WBBM. They identify shortchanging marketing as one of the top reasons that small businesses fail.

And just like any investment, beyond how much you invest, it’s how well you invest it. In other words, would you rather put your money into plain old marketing or spicy marketing?

George Couris
george@peppergroup.com

Todd's Tidbits: Word on the Street

In an effort to satisfy two basic human desires, egotism and voyeurism, we decided it was time to boost the value of your free Pepper Mill subscription with a new entertainment video segment entitled “Word on the Street.” The goal of these monthly videos is simply to give everyday people a brief moment in the spotlight and also to let you get a sneak peek into their minds.

Greg Whalen—professional voice-actor, comedian, longtime friend of the Pepper Group—and I recently voyaged out to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo to get answers to some of life’s burning questions. We spoke with anyone willing to talk on camera and were surprised at the willingness of people to open up to a couple of strangers standing around with a camera and microphone. In fact, we got much more footage than we expected that day and should be able to keep you entertained for months to come.

Why, you might still ask, did we spend valuable work hours putting these videos together? In addition to enriching the content we offer in the Pepper Mill, we wanted to remind you that we offer full in-house multimedia/video/animation capabilities.

And now, for our first installment, we share some of the responses we got to the question: “If you could live in any time period in history, what would it be?”
www.peppercornlearning.com/word-on-street01.wmv

Todd Underwood
todd@peppergroup.com