Bruce Fox Blog

Read Time - 3 Minutes

The last thing my 11-year old daughter needs is a megaphone.  Pretty much the entire western hemisphere is within earshot if she chooses to be heard.  And without the aid of any amplifying device.

So it’s not unusual for me to intervene in an attempt to turn down her volume, as was the case the other evening.  For whatever reason—I gave up asking why a long time ago—she was outside, “singing” into the narrow end of a funnel normally reserved for bird feeder fill-ups, directing her boosted voice at no one in particular.  Except perhaps anyone within a three-mile radius.

“Have mercy, child!” I managed over the din.  “Can you maybe dial it down?  Try more James Taylor and less Ozzy Ozbourne.”  But, alas, her crazy train could not be derailed.

So I exercised the only remaining option:  I went back inside.  And thought about funnels, of course.  And how they can be used.  Or used differently.  Which made me think about Devo.  (It’s how my mind works, don’t judge!)

Read Time - 5 Minutes

I like trees.  They give us oxygen…They give us shade…And they’re just darn purty.

I also like fall.  Football season...The World Series… Cool nights.  And scaring the daylights out of the neighborhood children under the auspices of Halloween.  (I DO take the chain off the chainsaw!  And the blood on the hockey mask is mostly fake.)

But what I don’t like is the combination of the two.   As in the equation Trees + Fall = Frickin Leaves.  I frickin hate frickin raking frickin leaves.  It doesn’t help a bit that I might be a tad OCD (which should be CDO so it’s in alphabetical order.) OCD to the extent that one leaf on the ground is too many.  The only upside is that raking leaves is a beer sport.  As most outdoor chores are.

Read Time - 5 Minutes

Here’s a picture of our hero, Carl Friedrich Gauss, at the peak of his life, which spanned from 1777 to 1855.  Gauss was a German mathematician, and developed many statistical theories, including the Gaussian principle of normal distribution, a.k.a. The Bell Curve.  So here he is, comfortably camping out under the famous bell shape I rendered with a particularly smelly marker. 

Read Time - 5 Minutes

Ah, the 80’s…The Golden Age of Reasoning…

Okay, that may be a bit much for the decade that gave us the Smurfs and New Coke.  But as I (quickly) close in on the big 5-0, I look back on those formative years with the utmost regard for the wisdom revealed to me by the totally gnarly movies of the time.

While it’s true there were lifeless movies like Mannequin, and others like Iron Eagle that mercifully crashed and burned, there’s a lot we can learn from some of the best flicks of the 1980’s, much of which can be applied to the promotional products industry…

Read Time - 3 Minutes

Have you ever wondered why the word “why” doesn’t start with the letter Y?  Well, I have, and I can’t find any reason why “why” starts with W.

And while we’re on the topic of W—or at least I am—how come it isn’t “Double V”?  And how is it W, when pronounced, is the only letter that has more than one syllable?

Why isn’t “you” just “U”?  (Female sheep don’t know either.)  Does the spelling of the letter C include the letter C at all?  Why does the word “noel” have an L in it?  But I digress, as I often do, so please forgive me.  I went to school in Illinois near a town called Effingham where I earned an English degree, so it can be said I have a BA in BS.  A man of letters indeed!

OK, so I’m annoying inquisitive by nature, and I ask “Why?” pretty frequently.  Usually about parking-on-the-driveway-and-driving-on-the-parkway kinda stuff.  I admit I am a proud disciple of useless and trivial quasi-information.  Ironically, I don’t know why.

But there is one “Why?” question that was recently posed to me by a distributor that is certainly not a trivial matter.  It’s a big question.

“Why should I take on custom recognition?”

The answers are as easy as A-B-C:

Hurry up and scroll down so we don’t hafta look at this creepy thing anymore!

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There, that should be enough scrolling.

So, what’s up with the troll doll?  Well, I wanted to address the topic of what trends we’re seeing in the world of recognition awards and corporate gifts, and I didn’t want to mistake fads (like the troll doll) for legitimate shifts in what appeals to buyers and recipients of awards and gifts.  There are numerous points along the bandwagon route where passengers can jump on.  And off.  Fads (e.g. Pokemon GO) are short-lived; trends (e.g. “augmented reality”) are far stickier and have greater lasting power.

Identifying valid trends, and distinguishing them from mere fads, is essential to your business.  Ask your supplier partners what’s trending in their world.  In doing so, you’ll discover rare jewels among the pet rocks—valuable solutions and possibilities that endure and set you apart.

Here are some lasting trends we’ve seen developing in the recognition award and corporate gift industry:

Read Time - 4 Minutes

THREE SCARY THINGS…FROM LEAST TO MOST SCARY:

1. There are more dispensaries of logoed stuff than Big Macs.
2. Ronald McDonald. All clowns are downright creepy.
3. Your promotional products company may be more like a fast food joint than a sales agency.
   
   Not my company, you say?  Good.  But let’s give it the taste test first.

 Read Time - 5 Minutes

“What do you mean ‘dial’?” my daughter replied, with a genuinely puzzled look.

Unless you’re a fan of challenging and convoluted discussions, DO NOT mistakenly use the verb “dial” in reference to a telephone when talking with a 10-year old.  What followed was much like trying to describe what the color blue sounds like.  Frustrated, I ended up deploying a Google image search to illustrate what my words were miserably failing to convey.  (The irony of using Google to demonstrate how a rotary phone works is not lost on me, by the way.)

The conversation served as a stark reminder of how rapidly our world has changed—and continues to change.  It made me think about how vision and adaptability are critical to maintaining relevancy in the business world, where complacency is fatal to progress and survival.  As an awards supplier, it made me contemplate how the landscape around employee recognition has evolved and reshaped, and what it means to our business—and yours.

I wondered about the fate of the factories that at one time were cranking out rotary phones.  Did they adapt or die?  What examples could be found of companies that have reshaped themselves in the face of changing markets or obsolescence?  As it happens, there are a bunch.  And some are nothing short of weird.  Which I like.

Try this match game:

Read Time - 5 Minutes

Thingamabob.  Doohickey.  Gizmo.  Doodad.  Widget.

 The English language is a funky and dynamic creature that is always in motion and continuously evolving.  We make up words when we don’t already have them in the arsenal of over 400,000 at our disposal.  To confuse things even more, many words and phrases mean different things in different places.  And you don’t necessarily have to go far to find the differences.

 Our English-speaking Canadian friends, for instance, are accustomed to runners, KD, cutlery, parkades, toques, coffee whitener, and garburators.  (If none of this rings a bell, call Tim Horton’s place, someone there will know.)

 And even closer to home, there can be stark differences in colloquial American terminology.  Consider these two passages:

Read Time - 4 Minutes

Aside from happening every four years, what do the Summer Olympics and the U.S. Presidential elections have in common?  How about sourcing controversies.

You might recall the 2012 U.S. Olympic team came under fire for wearing uniforms not made in the U.S.  And just last month, Team Trump faced a similar stir over the signature “Make America Great Again” hats.  

In between, every media channel we tune into is sounding the alarms over the next product scandal—tainted meat, kids meal toy recalls, tennis shoe wage issues, rigged emissions software.  It seems no sector is immune.  We live in a “sell more, not tell more” culture, where the phrase caveat emptor has never resonated so distinctly.  But as promotional products suppliers and distributors, we can help our emptors be more caveat.  Or something like that.