The Shopper BFF

If you’re a bargain shopper, allow me to introduce you to one of my BFFs: Text Coupon. Brilliant time and money saver! So much more shopper friendly than email. TC gives you store-event basics without the hype: sale name, date, coupon. Have charged battery and you’re good to shop. Present your phone at checkout to receive the coupon discount on your purchase. Bye-bye clipping! Bye-bye begging a sales associate to cut you a break “just this once” because you left the coupon on the coffee table.

A 2011 study by Prosper Mobile Insights found that 42.2 percent of smartphone owners use their mobiles as coupons and 51.1 percent get coupons via email. My guess is that, when the new Verizon phone plans go live, more smartphoners will get to know TC in order to conserve data usage from email apps.

Since I met TC, I no longer appreciate getting emails from my favorite retail haunts – especially the more-than-one-a-day variety. Don’t read ’em, but have to delete ’em, then empty the trash. TC shows me more respect and consideration. What more could you ask of a BFF?

Bring Back Navy Blue!

The inaugural meeting of BBNB  -- Bring Back Navy Blue – took place in a nondescript location in western Pa., recently, spurred by an equally nondescript trip to the mall. In a world overflowing with apps for everything, 150 cable channels and left-handed scissors, society lacks a choice in neutrality: navy blue shoes, blue coats and suits are hard, nay, impossible to find. Black has become the new navy, apparently. And, be warned: brown may suffer the same fate as the once staple blue hue.

One would think retailers would apply a bit of clairvoyance and realize that in a struggling economy, a bit of conservative color would be welcomed by credit card-toting shoppers and therefore might add a much-needed boost to sales. Contrary to their merchandise displays, we are not a nation in mourning. And, although our elected officials have a propensity to make their mark on history by enacting official bird, flower, drink and tree legislation, none have made “noir” our national fashion color…yet.

BBNB has no objection to Pantone’s Color of the Year 2012, Tangerine. But why has navy blue vanished from the color radar? Our favorite neutral doesn’t appear on Ford’s car color study. Research by both Ford and PPG Industries indicates that white has overtaken silver as the most popular car color. Only 9 percent of 2010 cars in the U.S. and Europe and 7 percent in Asia were blue. PPG’s research found that color influenced three out of four car purchases. BBNB found no similar studies on coat, shoes and suit selection.

BBNB did find this ray of hope: Midnight appears on the Fall 2012 color trends for women from forecaster Interfilière. It’s not navy blue, but it’s an acceptable and welcome close.

Obnoxious JOB-oxious

Show me a workplace  in 2012 -- excluding government -- where change rarely disrupts the day's plans, where responses to executive questions and requests take a back seat to everyone's agenda, where reactions to the market center on predetermined calendars and where customer needs are met, but met in due time. If you have trouble conjuring up one, don't be hard on yourself. It doesn't exist.

With e-communication, smartphones and all the other tools of the business trade used today, life as an employee is a busy, constant state of action and reaction. Yet, human resources departments industry-wide and nationwide operate under the assumption that only insiders know the pace at which business is conducted. Those not on their payroll live in another world, a world that cannot possibly resemble the cultural environment of change that they oversee. So, in order to practice full disclosure, they feel compelled to reveal their "secret" to prospective talent via the job descriptions they post.

A position description from any job board or any company career portal that does not include a version of the phrase "fast-paced environment" does not exist. At least I have yet to find one (government sites excluded). Anyone in the midst of a job search will start to gloss over this "de rigeur" bullet found near the top of the qualifications list after reading only five position descriptions. "Fast-paced environment" has become the HR equivalent of "keeping up with the Joneses." Gotta say it 'cause every other company says it. Let's blue pencil it, please, and let some refreshing credibility enter the recruiting process.