Bruce Fox Blog

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.

Read Time - 5 Minutes

I do a fair amount of the grocery shopping for our household, and I pride myself on my ability to navigate my cart like the pilot of an F/A-18 Hornet.  Sure, there’s some collateral damage from time to time, as there is in any theater of war.  But with my shopping list as my nav chart, I glide through unharmed and unfazed.  Most of the time.

Except one time recently.

I was doing my Top Gun thing in the local Meijer store, and the body count was running high.  I was taking no prisoners.  Until I made the mistake of improvising…and leaving my cart (with the list) behind while I quickly fetched something an aisle or two…or three…away.  My side trip fulfilled, I returned to the cart and resumed my singularly-focused, OCD-fueled sortie through the store, body parts flying and mushroom clouds mushrooming.

I covered a few more aisles, exclusively from memory, before I had to refer to my list.  It was at that moment I realized the cart I was piloting was not mine.  Goodness gracious!

 Read Time - 4 Minutes

With all due respect to Dagwood Bumstead, the premier hero-maker is you.  And all the ingredients are already in your kitchen.

Custom recognition is a great way to serve up a platefull of goodness.  Like any worthy sammitch, a hero is made in multiple layers.  There are many flavors that are blended together to satisfy any appetite.  Done properly, hero-crafting yields a sum greater than the parts.

Here are some things to chew on about custom recognition as I head to the fridge, hoping I still have some dijon mustard: