The KFC Double Down – an inside out chicken cordon blue in a wrapper – has created some controversy.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) released a scathing news report on April 12th requesting KFC avoid marketing the Double Down to children. The claim stated that if childhood obesity was a space craft, the Double Down has created a new form of rocket fuel.

Protect the Children

The PCRM aims to prevent ads for the sandwich from appearing within 500 yards of schools and other places where children are present, or in other words, everywhere all the time. However, the number of children driving themselves to KFCs and purchasing food without adult supervision is not a concern.

They’re even calling for a warning label that would read: “WARNING — Eating meat can contribute to obesity in children, and can increase their risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and double down syndrome.” I asked the PCRM to specify the outcome they would hope to see from the inclusion of this warning and if it was intended to warn children or adults.

“You eat this today, you’re obesely cancerous tomorrow – bottom line. Have cake, smoke cigarettes, drink light beer; don’t eat the Double Down.”

Despite the lack of clarification in the statement, I felt uncomfortable, pledged my allegience and hung up.

Alternate Concerns

Another group up in arms, Atkins Dieters are upset and confused over how to order.

“If this no-bread fad catches on, how are we supposed to continue to express our desire to lose weight in fast food drive thrus?”

This has also blazed a trail for a new Anti-Atkins Non-Dieters Group in which members are requesting a bun be included with their Double Down at no extra cost. They determined that “Atkins freaks” have been paying for buns they haven’t been getting for years and “now is the time for us to get those buns back“.

The controversy over calories in the Double Down has actually been under investigation for almost a year already. I asked KFC Public Relations Representative Rick Maynard what obstacles they faced in reaching their caloric goal.

“We realized the calorie count was going to be astronomical, so we thought what if we took out caloric ingredients and replaced them with something else. We instantly thought sodium – there’s zero calories in sodium. After a lot of research we discovered by color-matching large quantities of sodium to the chicken breasts we could replace a majority of the meat with this calorie-free alternative.”

The Biggest Loser hopeful Jim Harkins has been to KFC every day since the new meatwich hit the grill.

“Last year, I barely missed the final cut to get on the show. With the Double Down, I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to reach critical mass and get what little health I have left to circle the bowl in no time at all.”

Sandwich experts at Wikipedia are reviewing the legitimacy of the Double Down being called a “sandwich,” considering there is no bread on or around the main ingredients.

Among the rejected names for the Double Down were:

• Meat Mittens
• Fab Slabs
• Poultry Pile
• O-Beast-ity
• The Colonel Killer

First Hand Experience

Lacking perspective for this article, I consulted with friend and Consumerologist Blake Pertuset who had this to say:

At the time I read about it, I won’t deny that I dubbed this bun-less, fun-less monstrosity “the reason that terrorists hate America”. However, after refusing to partake for so long, I finally gave in and tried it on April 27, 2010; a day that will live in infamy.

Much to my surprise, it was neither as messy nor as heavy as I had anticipated. I suppose that it may make more sense to most to be more of a “knife and fork” food item, but even with that being said it wasn’t difficult to eat with the wrapper they use. I can honestly say that I felt fatter ordering it than I did after I had eaten it, which was a feat in and of itself. It’s not something that I plan to eat on a regular basis, but I must say that it managed to prove me wrong.

You win Colonel…this time.

This post is largely fictional & intended to be satirical
in nature. It should be kept away from those without a
sense of humor or above average blood pressure.

In a statement, Tengzhong said it was disappointed that it could not pursue the opportunity to build attractive, greener vehicles for sale in China and other new markets as well as Hummer’s traditional bases.

John Smith, GM vice president of corporate planning and alliances, stated shortly after, “The Hummer line is the only brand in the world that can claim a ‘most fuel-efficient’ model (H3) and still only get 16 mpg. I think they’re going to be really sorry they missed out on this.”

“I guess, there is … God,” said an anonymous Tengzhong representative in broken English. “We say buy, but no one know why. We people, very small. Hummer, very big. No sense. Thanking God for no deal.” When asked if hindsight in this failed acquisition in fact created a brighter outlook for them going forward, they rattled off a few sentences in Chinese that our translator quoted as:

“Basically, he said, if you spit-shine a turd, it’s still a turd. America buys turds from us, not the other way around.”

Sales peaked at 71,524 in 2006. But in December 2009, only 325 Hummers were sold, down 85 percent from the previous year, according to Autodata Corp. A little behind America’s music curve, Hip Hop is just starting to take off in China and most of the revenue generated for the Hummer line was speculated to come from poorly made, wildly over-priced accessories for the Chinese rappers. Thinking back to the last time we saw a Hummer in a music video in America, we asked GM what kind of impact this has had on their sales.

GM spokesman Nick Richards had this to say:

“With Lil’ Wayne in jail, Eminem clean, and Kanye not able to keep his mouth shut outside the recording studio, things have gone from bad to worse for us.”

He continued, “The good news is, we might be able to bring back the Cadillac. We see this as an opportunity to bring the Escalade to Pop Rock, which seems to be doing a lot better again but Lamborghini is still way out of reach for them. Plus, ‘Escalade’ is much easier to rhyme with than ‘Rover’ and you know how disingenuous Pop writers are.”

Richards then went on a two minute and ten second free-style rhyming things with “‘Lade” to demonstrate his point, ending with, “We may even help them along by introducing the Lemonade Escalade in 2012, but nothing’s for sure yet.”

Saturn was the first brand failed to be sold by GM as a part of its restructuring. John Smith admitted, “Hummer was a disappointing miss, but we’re not even going to try to sell Pontiac, we’re just pulling the plug on that crap pile.”

Asking for some closing comments, Chinese Hip Hop star Tang King from group Red Star stated:

“Hummer? That what she say. ROR!”

This post is based on a true story.
The names are real, but the quotes have been changed.

Twelpforce is Best Buy’s answer to leveraging employee downtime to harness a little social media power with the intent to bring more customers in the doors. One awkwardly positive post praises Best Buy for their innovation in this initiative, though it should be noted that Dell actually pioneered this form of customer service in 2007 well before the Twitterverse explosion and saw a ROI of over $3M (source). But of course, I’m writing this because I’m not so optimistic for the ol’ boys in blue. Especially not after today…
I started digging and saw Best Buy Marketing Manager and TwelpForce launch supporter Mr. John Bernier’s tweet that nearly 600 people signed on to the program already. I thought, “Great! Time for a test-drive!”

I hopped on search.twitter.com, dropped in “TwelpForce”, and checked out who was already chatting it up. One ambitious employee was clearly happy about being paid to tweet, but I wasn’t sure why he’d attach the #TwelpForce hashtag to that post. I didn’t dwell on it long before I came across what appeared to be a hashtag-highjack, rather loudly proclaiming:

GET A NETBOOK FOR 99CENTS, REAL TALK! ASK ME HOW. #twelpforce
-RainbowSoulPoet

Voice inside my head: “Wow, spammers have already picked up on this hashtag?!” Again, didn’t dwell on it too long, until I saw the same spammer posting a suggestion to her fellow TwelpForce associates to add a pic and bio to their profile appear more personable. This recommendation coming from this profile page:

Now listen…. I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but I’m fairly certain that without too much work I could find some people who wouldn’t appreciate a Best Buy associate name tag explaining they’re a 27 year old black lesbian who uses biblical love making to define her relationship to music. And if somehow that didn’t ruffle some feathers, perhaps her wandering around the store talking about “ass cleavage” would do it. Further, let’s not forget the spammy $0.99 laptop post that nobody on Twitter wants to see (even though it was a legitimate BBY Promo). Are you here to help or here to sell?

Am I picking on one person? Yes, but it was just so easy. If this person managed to sign on and get paid for being derogatory, it’s worth mentioning, right?

Ok, enough about that, let’s see how it works. . .

I saw a few imaging associates seemed to be signed on, so I thought I’d ask a very specific imaging question about something that is actually not very well defined online despite many reviews on the product. My question as seen to the left was posted at 10:48am regarding what format the HD video records in for the purpose of loading it into my video editing software.

The response came exactly 20 minutes later and was in fact exactly right. Though I would have like to have received a little more specifics like, “1080p @20fps and 720p @30fps”, I was satisfied with the response and it didn’t take too long. This did however bring up another concern.

Notice the reply is not threaded. Whether this was the fault of the responder or a fault of their program’s API coding is unclear, but this poses two problems for the program.

1. Linking answers to questions is important for people to see the process working.
2. It is important to ensure clarity in communication (depending on the time lapse, I may be well into another conversation).

But then this morning, another problem arose that I thought their system would be handling when I saw John Bernier re-tweet my question to his team at 12:26am last night. If Best Buy’s administration isn’t tracking responses through their system, what is to keep me from getting 100 responses across the entire TwelpForce crew and all associates being oblivious to it? Then I thought back to the case of RainbowSoulPoet and wondered if Best Buy realizes that if their employees post something inappropriate, it can be deleted from the associate’s feed, but is already permanently indexed and can forever be found by search (plus, if any of the links in this post magically go broken, I have screen-caps already uploaded to my server to replace them).

My overall feel of TwelpForce quickly faded from poorly-polished to poorly planned and ill-fated. Social media is a tricky beast. Direct sales are not welcome. It is purely about building brand and trust. But that’s a post for another time.

Best Buy has already been laughed at for their Senior Manager job posting, citing a 7-year degree and 1-day on Twitter as a requirement (help them rewrite it?). But now it is becoming increasingly apparent what that position was created for and that maybe Best Buy really doesn’t know what they’re doing, nor are they aware of how damaging this can be to their reputation instead of augmenting it.

I’m sure some good folks from Best Buy will read this eventually, and I encourage you to sit down and study Dell’s process as an example. If you’re branding “TwelpForce” as “Twitter + Help + Sales Force”, I’m sorry, but you’re doomed already. If you’re going to help, then help. Don’t sell. And if you’ve made the mistake of hiring someone who claims to be a “Social Media Expert”, then I feel extra sorry for you.

I can be reached by any means on my contact card if you want to talk. Otherwise, good luck to you, and I trust you’ll use this as food for thought!

Update: John Bernier has demonstrated some terrific character in handling the response to TwelpForce’s launch, even going so far as to tweet this post to all of his employees and encourage them to re-tweet it. It’s refreshing to see a company respond effectively instead of launching a cover-up campaign. I applaud John and his team for the massive amount of scrutiny they’re taking on with this project and again wish them well!

A traffic reporter for KOMO News that operates out of Fisher Plaza tweeted that a fire set off the sprinkler system which fried the generators. (source)

One forum post says firefighters have not yet allowed re-entry to the area, so no emergency backup plans have begun as of 10:26am EST. This is according to an informant who spoke to the UK branch of Authorize.Net. (source)

You can follow the Tweets about this here. TechCrunch is now posting about this as well here and will likely keep us up to date.

This could potentially be the biggest collective loss in eCommerce business we’ve ever seen. Those suffering from the outage (as I am) can setup Paypal Payments standard option to put a band-aid on the broken leg.

Another post confirmed by a merchant rep states they have been working for a few hours switching to an offsite data center. This would explain why as of 11am EST Authorize.Net seems to be responding to ping requests again, so there may be progress soon.

Update: @Authorize.Net now actively tweeting about this.

Update 2: A tweet at 11:56am EST by @AuthorizeNet states transaction processing is back up.

“I have a business and people depending on me but I want to finally commit to being a rockstar and start making music. How can I do this?”

If you’ve asked this question, or something similar, you’re missing the ultimate point of your aspirations.

The most popular is, “I want to go back to school.” But do you really? Is there a real need, or just a want to feel like you’re moving in the right direction? There are two simple questions you need to ask yourself before committing to a life-changing event, no matter how good your intentions are that will unearth the less obvious and more realistic path to success.

1.       What?

2.       Why?

Don’t stop reading because you’re disappointed with my simplicity. I’m offering to save you a lot of heartache and money here with a very effortless and unique self-interview process.

That guy in the beginning of this post wanting to be a rockstar is me. I’ve made my dreams a reality by answering these two questions in this way and guess what…

I’m not a rockstar, but I’m living my dream.

What?

First the easy part because you should already know this. Write down what you want to be, no matter how outlandish it may seem. Famous actor/actress? Highly sought after artist? World-renowned chef? Good. Just write it down. Now answer this…

Why?

Look past the surface detail here. Assume you’ve already made it and that’s what you’re doing today. Examine what part of that aligns with your goals in life and why. What you should realize is that just because you have the ability to do something, doesn’t make it worth doing.

I wanted to write music and express it in such a way that moved people to think creatively and feel the same emotion I had in the moment I wrote it. I wanted to be heard and change people’s minds about things. Music was my vehicle of choice because I was “pretty ok” at it and knew I could get better. I wanted to be expressive, impactful, and a voice to the voiceless. But guess what – if I hop out of that vehicle, and strip the music away, I can still do all of those things in a much more realistic fashion.

I found internet marketing. Technology has been my hobby and talent more than music since I was born. I can be heard, found, and speak to and for people on a limitless scale. I invoke emotion through copywriting and follow-up through calls-to-action. I found all the pieces of my rockstar puzzle also lay securely in something I could control 100%. Honestly, I can enjoy doing it from wherever I want, whenever I want (kind of like rockstar status stuff without the record label restrictions). In fact, you’re reading this right now as a result of the way I answered those two questions some time ago.

So think about it.

Get your “What” and ask it “Why”. Then figure out how many options you have to meet those same objectives while keeping in mind, “Just because you have the ability to do it, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.”

Respect your resources as valuable, and your time as priceless.

Bottom Line.

If you’re trying to take away from yourself to give back to yourself, you’ll likely end up in the negative. Make every move a positive one.

As Web 2.0 continues to evolve, so do our chances of meeting people and networking with some real talent. There are a multitude of social sites to apply this strategy to, so just think of this as a “hey, maybe there is life outside the box” kick in the head in an info-product-but-it’s-free-info kind of way.

When the Affiliates Don’t Come to You, Go to Them.

Yeah, I said it. Swallow your pride and go head-hunting. If you’ve got a great product and competitive commissions, go find someone qualified in your niche and show them how to make money in your program. Twitter is all the rage lately, so let’s take a quick look at how easy this is to execute. Depending on the size of your niche, the length of this process will vary.

Start out at  Search.Twitter.com (this link is also found in the footer link section of any Twitter page). This is like Google, but exclusively searches tweets. If you’ve never used this service by Twitter, you need to sit and think for a minute about how powerful it is to find people at any time who are talking about anything in that same moment. That is typically how it is used – to find out what’s hot, what’s being talked about, and who you can communicate with about whatever is on your mind.

What I want you to do is flip the coin. Don’t just look at Twitter as a great place to meet potential clients who share your interests and could likely benefit from your product or service. Instead, find other professionals in your niche who are already offering valuable content to the same people. Here comes the “for instance”…

If you have a product for “[your keyphrase here]“:

1. Do a Twitter search on your primary or related keyphrase.
2. Look for the box in the upper right of the screen subscribe to the query RSS. It will look like this:
   
   This will create an RSS feed that updates every time a new result would show in the search query.
3. Review the results regularly and watch for links pointing followers to related products in your niche.
4. Start networking with the leaders already in your niche who have a decent following but understand that their following might be all fluff and they may not have a “real” list to work with. Take time to see how they interact with others and whether or not their followers respond.
5. Once you’ve felt them out over a period of time, direct message the ones you would like to work with and let them know you’d like to offer them a JV deal that you have determined could be instantly profitable for them based on their following.
6. Get them on-board and help them help you.

I came across this method by accident but I was surprised at how easy and effective it is. Make sure you both use tact and proper social-media-etiquette (don’t spam) to protect your reputations. This will either be highly adventageous for you, or ruin you both. No pressure.

Once you’ve run a successful JV, get a video testimonial from them, revamp your sales page, and it’s off to the races to test your new offer to potential customers and affiliates.

The added benefit of this is you will also have a chance to have your product or service critiqued by another professional in your niche since you will be working closely together and they may be able to shed some light onto why you’re having trouble to begin with.

You’ll be able to quickly sharpen up your product, pitch, following, and “stickyness” of your campaign in no time and start reaping the rewards you’ve been missing out on, all while making your first successful affiliate a partner in crime for a long time to come.

To your continued success.

Rich Site Summary

If you’re new to RSS, this post will be life-changing for you.

Do you have a long list of sites you check every day? News sites, weather sites, blogs, sports, etc.? Man, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just go to one place and see the latest updates on all of them?

RSS feeds do just that. Anytime you see that lovely orange box on your favorite site you want to keep tabs on, just click it and go through the subscription process. RSS feeds update with every site update, so you never miss a thing.

RSS feeds are generally pretty ugly looking, so to make the best of them, you can integrate them into most email clients (including My Yahoo and Gmail) and get your updates the same time you’re checking your email for the day! There are also a ton of feed readers out there for use in the form of desktop software, widgets, and integrated browser tools, but if you’re new I’d point you to Bloglines to get started.

Now a quick “for instance” – Take a look at my site’s RSS feed here. You’ll notice my updates are listed in chronological order and on the right you can subscribe with a reader or have my updates delivered by email. Not all RSS’s are as friendly as mine, but hey, I do what I can to help. You’ll also notice in the top-right of my pages I have a box linking you to my RSS and offering the subscription there as well. This is just good practice for anyone offering new updates frequently that wants to encourage readership from its visitors.

Now if all that made sense, RSS should have a new meaning for you – Really Simple Syndication. Enjoy!

There’s a natural celebration that takes place when we witness our favorite sports team score a goal. We are unintentionally emotionally bound to our favorite team’s success. In contrast, we are equally as hinged on their opponent’s failure. We get pumped up before the game, scream for hours, and go off into the night all kinds of jacked up if our team wins. And what happens when they make their goals but still lose the game? We end feeling just as deflated as the team. Right there in that moment, we feel disappointment. But there will be another game, another surge of emotion when the goals are made, and another win will come. I believe there’s something deeper that draws us to sporting events than being a fan.

The goals are predefined. They never change. Sometimes they may alter the rules on how to score, but the goals remain. When our team wins, we feel that air of success that surrounds them. They practiced, they worked together, usually for countless hours, and they deserve to bask in their success. Ever feel like you had something to do with it?

Brace yourself….. You didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Sports teams need support. They feed off your energy. And we feed off their success.

Ever think about why they call them goals?

Someone throws you a ball and says, “Let’s play.” You say…. “What’s the goal?” In other words, “How do I succeed?”

I find it interesting we can be so passionate about a team of people reaching their goals, as if it’s a break from our daily routine. It’s actually very much the same except the goals are always the same, we know all the rules, and all it takes to succeed is screaming our guts out.

I challenge you to examine your professional life, contrast it with your personal life and ask yourself two questions:

“Is my professional life in opposition to my personal life?”
“Are they even playing the same game?”

Now think about what your goals are. How will you define success and know when you’ve won? The rules are not predefined, nor are any of the rules entirely apparent at first. Maybe you either have no one routing for you, or you don’t think anyone would understand your position. You instantly have more opposition to face than any sports team.

So what makes it worth the fight?

The success is all yours.

When you watch an actor receive an award, they give an acceptance speech and thank all the people who helped them along the way. They share that piece of success and exposure with the people who have helped them get there. Sometimes these are people who have been placed under them by contract, and others have been placed there strategically to help them achieve that award. That was their goal – ultimately their definition of success. But then they go on to the next.

Our biggest opposition toward personal and professional success is that we don’t take time to identify the commonalities shared between the two nor the opposition they face.

I would like to challenge you to do 4 things and commit to them:

1. Align your goals so your personal/professional teams can play the same game.
2. Define your opponents.
3. Draft fans and strategic players to your team.
4. Play ball.

Why is this important?

I don’t mean to beat the horse that’s been dead for 4 months, but with the American economy circling the bowl, the stress of potentially losing your job might be costing you more than grey hair. Recent observations indicate that the stress involved with losing your job is worse for those who still have them than those who have already lost them. Even if you’re not worried about cut-backs or lay-offs you should still consider the possibility of it happening to you.

Taking the time to align your goals with your efforts may even propel you to quit your job once you realize no matter how far you go in your current position, you may never actually succeed. If you do lose your job, you’ve already got your head in the game.

Play ball.

To your success.