May 31, 2008
Obesity rates in the United States have been steadily on the rise since the 1970’s. It is estimated that 65% of Americans are overweight, and 25% are obese. Not only are the rates on the rise in the United States, but all over the world many people are becoming overweight and suffering from obesity.
The rise in obesity is due to many factors, including unhealthy eating, increased caloric intake, less physical activity and sedentary lifestyles. With the rise in obesity rates, weight loss tactics have become very common. Diets such as the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet are popular diets that limit the types of food an individual can eat. Diets promoting pills, shakes and herbal remedies are also popular. Most of these dieting techniques claim fast results. Although a person may lose weight quickly with any one of these weight loss diets, statistics show that people quickly regain any weight lost with these methods.
For extremely overweight individuals, weight loss surgery may be a viable option. There are a number of weight loss surgeries available, including the gastric bypass surgery, sleeve gastrectomy surgery and lap band procedure. Weight loss surgeries are popular for obese Americans, and many go to Mexico to get these procedures done. Weight loss surgery in Mexico is cheaper than the same surgery performed in the United States, but the quality is of equal level. For this reason, weight loss surgery in Mexico is gaining popularity as an option for obese Americans.
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As in most other industries, the cookware industry are constantly coming out with new lines and innovations. Some of the new lines are only available in gourmet or specialty shops and are sure to be expensive.
Regalware has a new cast iron cookware with a twice-fired ceramic exterior. It’s available in Royale Blue or Brick Red. As opposed to older cast iron cookware, this new ceramic exterior will work on any cooking surface, including glass top stoves. I had to give up my old-fashioned black cast iron skillets when I bought my new stove because I didn’t realize how badly they could scratch the surface. Ceramic coating keeps its good looks for years. The interior of the cookware has a non-stick surface that makes clean up a breeze. It also has special handles that give you a secure hold on the cooking utensil and stays cool to the touch.
Chinese food continues to be popular and Clad Metalcrafters is offering two new open stock stir fry pans. The pan features a triple layer disk of stainless steel and aluminum that is permanently bonded for fast and even heat distribution. This is important especially when you are cooking beef, chicken, or pork.
Mirro has introduced a new set made of aluminum and stainless steel, which boasts of durable, easy grip plastic handles that are easily handled. The eight-piece set with a non-stick interior sells for less than $40 in many retail stores.
Another innovative product is Bradshaw International’s new line of flex form bake ware. It is more expensive than regular bake ware but more and more people are learning of the advantage of the silicone bake ware. The cost is slowly coming down as they develop a special line to be sold in grocery stores and mega discount stores. The line is called Flexform and will include:
1 9″ Round Cake Pan
2 6 Cup Muffin Pan
3 12 Cup Mini Muffin Pan
4 8″ x 4″ Loaf Pan
5 8″ Square Cake Pan
6 11×17″ Baking Sheet
Wilton Baking Accessories Company has introduced a stylish serving food centerpiece that can be used for special occasions and holidays. The name of the new device is Cupcakes ‘N More and can be used to display cupcakes, petit fours, tarts and brownies. It’s attractively made with a durable non-chip, non-toxic silver color metal finish. Spiraled wires hold the food items in place.
Periodically dusting with a soft, dry cloth is the key to maintaining your brass chandelier. If it gets dirty enough to need a more intense cleaning, use a gentle dish soap and warm water to clean it. Don’t forget to dry after washing. Do not use an ammonia-based cleaner because this will cause tarnishing.
If your brass chandelier is tarnished and you haven’t used an ammonia-based cleaner, first determine whether or not it’s solid brass. Try sticking a magnet on it; if the magnet stays on, your chandelier is made of steel-plated brass. In that case, the tarnish you are seeing is likely rust and can be removed with steel wool. After removing the rust, your next decision is whether to have it re-plated. If you don’t want to have it re-plated, you can choose to paint it.
A solid brass chandelier which has tarnished is relatively easy to clean. First use a brass cleaner to get the tarnish off. Once it has been removed, follow up with clear lacquer spray paint.
When purchasing a brass chandelier, remember that it is not intended as a main light source. Chandeliers are hung for the elegance and grace they add to almost any room. Brass chandeliers come in many sizes, so they are appropriate anywhere.
There are many types of chandeliers available to add grace to your home or business. If you are in the market for one, remember the long life and easy maintenance of brass chandeliers. You’ll be glad you did.
Cookware sets - are you getting the best for your money?
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May 30, 2008
There is some speculation about how much money you can earn online without your own product. Although marketing your own digital product on the Internet can be very lucrative, there is no reason why you and I can’t profit mightily using creative methods that offer real value to Internet surfers. Here are five simple ways you can start exploding your online income through affiliate programs starting today.
1. Write marketing articles filled with valuable, practical
advice and back-end them with free viral special reports promoted through article resource boxes. You can also capture
e-mail addresses via an autoresponder address in your resource
box as well.
What creative incentive can you give people to pass on your viral ebook? What methods aren’t other people using? Catch their eye with powerful, information-rich article content and then blow their minds with a killer incentive that gets them sharing your ebooks with everyone! Simply tie multi-tier affiliate links into your ebook content and start earning more and more commission every time it is given away.
2. Create a “super-affiliate” blog or website. If you’re strapped for cash, you can start out with your own blog. Forget what doesn’t work and add valuable marketing information to your website or blog on a regular basis, and make sure you allow people to use your articles (and other viral marketing materials) as long as they don’t change any of the article content.
If there are affiliate links within the text, allow them to change your links to theirs, thereby giving them an incentive to carry your articles in their ezines or on their websites or blogs. Try to come up with unusual ways to keep people coming back, and never promote products that you wouldn’t buy yourself.
3. Become a special report specialist. Write informative special reports that are five to twenty pages in length, and develop creative methods to get people giving them away for free. Tie in multi-tier affiliate links, as well as links to recurring and residual income opportunities.
A powerful viral special report is like a floating website that goes from person to person, earning you more and more money as it is spread all over the Internet. A great way to profit from this method is by creating special reports that are preludes to related informational products that others are selling.
4. Create your own affiliate directory. Only add affiliate programs that you would join, and put a creative spin on your
directory as well. What makes your directory different from
everyone else’s? How can you monetize this directory using methods 1, 2, and 3? How can you monetize this directory with
your own autoresponder and ezine?
5. Start your own Internet marketing forum. Give marketers a good reason to go there. Again, tie this concept into the above methods, and see how you can expand on these ideas as well! The secret is to create something of value that people can’t do without!
These are five simple ways you can begin profiting in no time,
even without your own product! Combine them in whatever manner you so choose and have fun as you grow more and more profitable online!
**Attn Ezine editors/Site owners**
Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed below.
Feel free to substitute your referral link in place of ours in the resource box. Thanks!
Wanna learn how to generate thousands of highly targeted visitors, absolutely free? => http://www.iwantchoices.com
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Whether you have found the perfect pair of shoes, the perfect car or the perfect vacation, there is a way that you can fit these items into your budget. It doesn’t take an extra job or even an extreme lifestyle change. All it requires is a little will power and patience.
The first thing that you need to do is to figure out how much money you need for what you want to buy. Then you need to figure out a time frame for when you want to make the purchase. For lesser expensive, you will probably be able to have a shorter time frame whereas a car or vacation might fit more on a one or two year plan depending on how much they cost.
Let’s start on a smaller scale like a new pair of shoes. Say you went to the mall and found an awesome new pair of designer sandals that cost about $100. You know that they won’t be around for a long time, so you need to come up with that money in about one month. If you would normally pay an average of $35 for a pair of shoes you can subtract that amount from the $100 because that is already in your budget. This means you have to come up with just $65 in four weeks. This is about $16 each week. That is a manageable amount of money when you break it down like that.
It is time to start saving. What can you cut out of your life for a short period of time in order to save money? Do you go out to lunch every day for work? If so, you probably spend about $5-$10 per day for lunch. If you would buy bread, chips and fruit at the grocery store, you could pack your lunch for the week which would actually save you about $25-$30 in just one week. Take a cup of coffee from home and avoid the lattes for a week and you will save about $20 per week. Pretty easy?! And, once you make your purchase you can either go back to your old ways. Or, you might decide that cutting back on some things to buy something that you want was really worth it.
Larger priced items can be saved for in a similar manner. For instance, if you want to take a cruise and you know that it costs about $2400 for everything. That is $200 per month for one year or $50 per week. What can you cut out of your weekly schedule to come up with $50?
There are other ways that you can save money without having to take an extra job. Buy a large piggy bank or jar and put all your change in it at the end of everyday. Sell items on an online auction. Have a yard sale. Eat at home on the weekends instead of going to a restaurant. Buy store brand products and use coupons. Have $5 or $10 per pay period taken out of your check and put in a special savings account. If you can have the patience and will power to do these and other money saving things then you will be wearing those new shoes, driving a car or going on vacation in no time.
I enjoy writing for my websites please visit my bunge jumping, bikeing, civil enginering pages
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The difficulties of calling on a betting hall provides us with plenty of reasons to let it be if it’s not ineluctable. All those long cross country drives, the difficulties, and tasks at hand do not seem worth the exertion only for the chance of placing your wager at betting hall, all the same, if you’re the type that ache for gambling casinos then choosing gaming halls exploiting the net will likely be the obvious answer.
You don’t need to leave your familiar environment to try online texas holdem etc simply because everything is done from within your domestic environment if you have a laptop or pc plus an Internet access account. Yet, don’t get in a frenzy: there’s quite a few tenets which you’ll want to apprehend regarding online texas holdem etc, especially if you are lacking experience. So, stifle all that testosterone to chew on the following. Here is a plan that delineates what to concentrate on if you are ascertaining a reputable online texas holdem etc address. The very first thing which your streetwise internet gamester definitely should hunt for is an online texas holdem etc website of the sort guaranteeing top winning odds. Also, read on for sundry alternative readouts regarding trying to unearth your online roulette etc website.
Always take care to check the online roulette etc website is licensed verifiably, for example by examining the govt. license on the webpage. If it’s not possible to pinpoint any govt. license on that preferred online roulette etc website, do not try to gamble there. After that you’ll want to elaborately pore over the miscellaneous premiums that the online roulette etc website proffers.
News
Moreover, further principal advice could be to place your wager at the outset in slight amounts instead of disbursing so much it can hurt on the fly. First thing, check the integrity and status of this particular online roulette etc structure prior to chancing any grave adversity, especially that of losing your money! Last but not least, here’s the most most critical suggestion regarding online gambling casino. It is bound to be to always call to mind that gambling in an online casino should actually be about having fun rather than becoming rich. Gambling is certainly no business, instead it’s a leisure pursuit which can make you delighted and living pleasing.
Abiding by the above recommendations, go ahead and bow to the seduction of online roulette etc!
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May 29, 2008
Piatas have been a popular party accessory almost as long as the invention of parties themselves. They have, however, grown and changed with the times as most other things do. Candies, small toys, confetti and other wonderful treasures are filled inside the piata.
Children are blindfolded in turn, spun around several times and are each given a turn hitting the piata with a stick until it breaks and the treasures are spilled out on the ground for the eagerly awaiting children to claim. For years this game was considered to be an outdoor game. Nobody wanted a blindfolded child swinging a stick in their homes.
But recently the piata has been altered to a pull string version, turning this traditionally outdoor game into a game that is more versatile. This version of piatas has an opening at the bottom attached to one string of many. Children then take turns pulling one string at a time. When the right string is pulled, the bottom of the piata is released and the treasures come out. It is the perfect piata for pre-schoolers.
If you prefer, you can make and decorate your own piata. By using paper mache, you can create any shape to match the theme of your party. Use strips of newspaper dipped in a mixture of equal parts of water and flour to make paper mache. Use a balloon to shape and mold the pinata.
There are a lot of choices of piatas that you can choose to have for your party. If you can’t find a piata that matches your theme, look into having a piata custom made for your event. The choice to have a piata at a party is the highlight for the young guests that are invited. Fill the pinata with both candy and mini-toys. Have a blindfold and bat on hand ready to go.
Mrs. Party… Gail Leino is the internet’s leading authority on selecting the best possible party supplies, using proper etiquette and manners while also teaching organizational skills and fun facts.
Free Party Games to help complete your event.
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When web content gets discussed on webmaster bulletin boards, the most common question is, “how much should I pay?” That question is both perfectly logical, and perfectly stupid:
- Logical, because the biggest expense of any website, with the possible exceptions of advertising and promotion, is the content. You only have to get web development and design once, but content needs to be added regularly for your site to be successful.
- Stupid, because the real question isn’t how much you are going to pay, but how much you are going to invest. Your content, if it’s done right, will make you money. In fact, it can easily make back its cost within a month. So the real question you should ask a web content provider is: how much will it make me?
Calculating Your Web Content’s Value
Ultimately, your web content is the one part of your site that makes you money. The code, design, and even traffic, while important, are not what ultimately get a visitor to take action. You have to tell or ask visitors to take action. Telling and asking take words.
Small changes in your web content can make big differences in the bottom line. Take a look:
Advertising/affiliate revenue
Let’s say you have a web page that averages $25/day in revenue from advertising and/or affiliate links. You have a professional writer optimize the content on the page to get more clicks. Watch what happens:
- If just 20% more visitors click on affiliate or advertising links, your revenue will increase $5/day, $150/month, and $1825/year. If your page maintains its current level of traffic for three more years, that’s a $5475 increase, just for that one page.
- But it gets better: the improvements to the page will easily increase traffic by 20%, as more visitors return, more visitors refer your site to friends, and more webmasters, bloggers and others link to your site. That brings a total of $6570 more revenue from that page over three years.
- If you get the same results with 50 pages with similar traffic levels, that’s an increase of $328500. Now multiply that by however many sites you or your company owns. Can you say, “early retirement”?
Keep in mind, that’s only the additional revenue you get from the improved content compared with what you were getting already from your work. No extra work needed.
Sales/leads model
If your website is a promotional vehicle for a business, the results can be even more spectacular. If a page nets you $500/day in sales or leads, website content improvements that increase your sales or leads by 20% will pay for themselves within a month, if not a week.
In reality, if your current content is really weak, the improvement is likely to be even more spectacular. Traditionally, overhauling bad sales writing doubles or even triples the response rate.
The best part of all this is the advantage you’ll gain over the competition, with so many website owners in the dark about their content. If you are earning 20% more than the competition on the same advertising or promotion expense, you will ultimately carry the day.
Making a Content Investment
Now, back to price. What would you expect to invest to see a $6570 return?
Writer’s Market, the blue book of professional writer fees, says web content averages $300/page, which would mean a 2000+% return on investment.
But you can actually get away with paying only half that if you don’t need research or meetingsthe biggest time-sucks when it comes to creative projects. If you order content in bulk, you’ll likely get an even steeper discount.
Why not see for yourself what kind of an improvement professional writing can make on your site’s revenue? Every day you wait is another day of lost revenueand why should you be content with that?
About the author
Joel Walsh is the head content writer for UpMarket Content. Mention this article and get one trial page of website content at no charge: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-content
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May 28, 2008
The performing of dog tricks, while not a necessary part of a
dog’s education, is an accomplishment that offer dog owners and
his friends a great deal of amusement and adds materially to the
value of a dog.
All dogs can be taught tricks, but some breeds have a special
aptitude in that direction. At the head of the list of trick
dogs is the poodle, as he takes to the performance of tricks as
if it was second nature, and he is the main reliance of all
showmen dogs.
Newfoundlands, St. Bernards and Great Danes learn without
difficulty, while the collies and spaniels are very intelligent;
the terriers are quick learners and among the toy dog breed, the
Yorkshire Terrier, Toy Fox Terrier and Toy Poodle are highly
spoken of and can pick up tricks almost effortlessly.
In selecting the tricks that are to be taught a dog, the owner
must show some discretion and no attempt should be made to teach
dogs tricks that are not within their powers. For example, a big
St. Bernard or Great Dane is sadly out of place or rather almost
unachievable attempting to sit up, walk on his hind legs or
dance.
These dog breeds are physically incapable of doing such tricks
and persistent attempts to train them are really toying with
their dignity. They can, however, with appropriate guidance and
training taught to fetch and carry, jump, shake hands or speak.
Talking about specialty, it is interesting to note that dog
breed such as spaniels are particularly apt at fetching and
carrying, collies can learn to count and speak readily, and the
terriers have a wide sphere of possibilities.
Dogs which are to be taught tricks must have their education
begun early in life, so that the playfulness of puppy hood can
be taken advantage of, for as dogs mature they take on a
sedateness and seriousness that increases the difficulty of
teaching them to assume unnatural positions, whereas, with a
puppy a trick can be made more or less a matter of play and he
will enjoy going through with it.
In the general education and training tricks to a puppy, very
little punishment should be given and in trick puppy training no
punishment at all. A dog can be forced to do certain things, but
if forced he generally acts so slow and sulky that it detracts
from his performance, whereas, if he is coaxed into doing them
and performs because he likes to, he will go through with his
act with an enthusiasm and spontaneous that is most attractive
and fun loving.
For these reasons you must not get overly excited while training
your young dog nor speak loud, nor cuff and whip him, but should
by frequent good-natured repetition of the same performance
persuade and coax him to assume certain attitudes or do certain
things, and when he has done so, praise him; he will then know
that you appreciate what he has done. It is also most desirable
to reward him with plentiful of praise and treats.
To end, remember not all dogs can perform every single dog
tricks, as some breeds do have some physical limitations. Even
so, enjoy teaching your dog “achievable” new tricks, and most
importantly have fun along the way!
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Picture the scene:
It’s the Monaco Grand Prix and the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher is in pole position. The warm-up lap has been completed and Schumacher revs the engine, waiting for the lights to flash in sequence: Ready. Set. GO!
The race begins. Schumacher uses his supreme skill to drive the car to its limits and successfully overcome the challenges presented by the tricky street circuit.
At each third of the race, the perfect opportunity to bring the car into the pits to maintain maximum advantage is determined. Each time the Ferrari makes a pit stop, an efficient pit crew will get to work. The car will be jacked up. Tires will be changed, fuel will be added, visors cleaned, spot checks made.
All completed within 10 seconds. Each team member performs their duties at lightening speed to ensure no time is wasted so the car can maintain or improve the lead.
And as the race progresses, a team of analysts will act on feedback received from the Ferrari’s on-board computers and from the driver. The race strategy will be constantly reviewed and changes will be made if necessary to ensure the car has the best chance of winning the race.
Driver, engineers, mechanics, designers, strategists, technicians - all working together to ensure the car has the best possible chance of victory.
So how can “Team Ferrari” help to accelerate your success?
As you pursue your goals and ambitions, you’ll encounter many trying times. You will face challenges, obstacles, sticking points and setbacks. Your motivation levels will drop, you may feel burned out, stressed, frustrated.
At such trying times, you’re going to need support to help you “stay in the race”. Just like Michael Schumacher, you can’t do everything all by yourself and when you face challenges and problems, these are the times when you’ll need to go into the pits.
It is so important - no, VITAL - that you can turn to positive, success-minded, enthusiastic people. People who’ve done something with their lives, who’ve faced challenges, who know how to overcome fears and obstacles and who can keep you on track to win.
They are the people who we’ll refer to as: “TEAM YOU”.
Unfortunately, many people who pursue a dream turn to people who live life in fear, who haven’t done anything with their lives and who hold a negative view about life.
Guess what happens when you turn to such people when you need support?
You’re right! They increase your fears, they focus on the problems, they offer no solutions, in short, they make it harder and harder for you to win your race.
Would Ferrari’s pit crew consist of people who want to give up at the first obstacle? People who believe the race is lost before it’s started? People who’d retire the car after 10 laps because the race was too hard?
You know Team Ferrari wouldn’t have such people anywhere near their car!
So why have negative people in Team You? OK, I know you may find it hard to find like-minded, positive people to create your success team. So here’s a technique I use to create my own success team, a team I can rely on when I need to make a pit stop:
Throughout history, there have been many people who have achieved great success and who overcame many major challenges. The help they can give you is priceless. So read about them. Study them. How did they meet their challenges? How did they deal with setbacks? You can find out by reading biographies and autobiographies. Use the Internet too.
You can read about presidents and ministers, kings and queens, warriors and pacifists, sporting heroes, entertainers, inventors, explorers, tycoons, personal development experts, philosophers and spiritual leaders - whoever you admire, whoever inspires you, whoever excites you, read about them. These are people who’ve achieved great things. Study them. Learn from them.
These are the people who can join “TEAM YOU”. Why not pick the best to help you win your race?
Copyright 2006 Christopher Green
Chris Green is the author of the new book “Conquering Fear”, the acclaimed book that shows you how to turn fear, your worst enemy, into your most powerful ally. For a FREE preview, please go to => http://www.conqueringfear.net
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May 27, 2008
Differentiating products and services through advertising is common for many industries. Financial services marketers seem to be having a particularly tough time.
In preparation for my role on a branding panel at the recent Washington Bankers Association marketing conference, I hired a clip service to capture Western Washington bank print advertisements for two months. The panelists also collected their personal financial direct mail for the same period. The result was thousands of ads from scores of banks and credit unions. The junk mail must have weighed 30 pounds.
Consumers are being inundated with financial ads, direct mail, and telemarketing. With direct mail, much of the effort attempts to persuade consumers to open envelopes with fake checks, fake government documents, and fake come-ons that offer incredibly low interest rates that aren’t that low when one looks at the fine print. Everyone at the conference agreed that this tactic is expected from loan brokers, yet seemed surprised to see this tactic from quality institutions like Bank of America. Still, we are seeing more of it. Precious little direct mail demonstrated why each bank was the right choice. Much of the advertising is not much better.
Carrie Williams, president of BrandLab (www.brandlab.com), agreed to sort through the marketing messages and create brand maps to demonstrate how banks appear to consumers and how banks compete against each other. Carrie has a lot of experience doing this for industries such as healthcare, fashion, and the airlines and is skilled at getting to the essence of what she calls the brand soul. As she says, brand soul is a reflection of what is core to an organization. It encompasses its values, personality, its style of doing business, and how it gives back to the community.
The good news is that any bank that wants to stand out through exceptional advertising has almost an open field. The bad news is that the financial industry is rapidly moving to commodity status by educating consumers that all they should consider is the best deal. With the exception of a handful of financial institutions, none of the ads contained any brand attributes at all, per Carrie. In essence, most financial institutions are not talking to consumers in ways that are memorable or compelling.
Rather than cluster by brand attributes, the work focused around product and service features. In rank order, offers focused on the following:
1) better rates
2) higher return
3) personal service
4) product specific
5) promotions
6) local community
Advertisements feature pictures of happy customers, happy employees, and experienced bankers. And most of the work is remarkably similar.
There were some exceptions. Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Key Bank, and Wells Fargo all have the kind of advertising one would expect from giant ad budgets. Their messages are consistent, they emphasize ideas that differentiate them from other banks, and they look like quality institutions by having well produced ads. Banks with more modest budgets, such as Sterling Bank, Banner Bank, and Homestreet Bank, have also done a good job creating work that differentiates and offers marketplace consistency. The rest of the work is just wallpaper.
More of the financial industry is moving away from human interaction and relying increasingly on electronic service, and consumers are embracing this trend in growing numbers. Now they can shop for loans from the privacy of their homes, and they can consider institutions from across the U.S.
Fabulous communications are mandatory in our less-personal-touch world. They can give consumers a sense of relationship with their financial institutions and help illustrate through storytelling each bank’s personality in a way that resonates. Still, the evidence would say that banks are being wooed by the notion that ROI is all that counts in communications. If you get the greatest response rate, the story ends there. But does it?
I learned at Disney decades ago that several factors should go into evaluating advertising performance. Campaign performance and ROI count for a lot. Equally important is the net impression that the communications leave behind. With direct mail in particular, a two percent response rate is not the only factor. What was the take-away for the 98% who did not respond? At Disney, we cared more about the 98% than the 2%. And most important of all, we cared that the work reflected well on the Disney values, which every employee understood.
Shareholders and consumers will be well served when bank messaging reflects each bank’s people, values, and personality and the consumer experience reflects those unique attributes in a consistent and winning way. With that said, stop the slogans, research your brand personality, and create work that makes it possible for Carrie’s concept of brand’s soul to penetrate through the ad clutter and engage the right customers to propel your business forward.
Bill Fritsch is president of Hydrogen Advertising, an award-winning, Seattle-based advertising agency emphasizing superb ideas efficiently produced. Reach him at 206-389-9500, ext. 224 or email bill@hydrogenadvertising.com. For more information, visit http://www.hydrogenadvertising.com.
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