Credit Where It's Due

We spend a lot of time pointing out what brands are doing wrong, so it's nice to be able to point out something they're doing right.

Maui Jim sunglasses, whose corporate address is a sunny 1 Aloha Drive, despite being located in Peoria, Illinois, is the perpetrator of a recent random act of corporate kindness.

A few weeks back, I accidentally broke a pair of glasses I had (sat on them and snapped the armpiece.)

I called, and they said for $10, they could replace it. I filled out the online form, headed down to Mailboxes, Etc., and sent it off.

Not a whole lot of time went by. I wasn't at the point where I was wondering if they were lost. But I came home to find a box with my (repaired) glasses, a brand new case, and a note apologizing for having taken so much time to do the repair, so much time, in fact, that they were going to waive the fee.

So there you have it. A delay that couldn't have amounted to more than a day or two, and Maui Jim fixed my two year old sunglasses for free. And they included a nice, personalized ("Dear Alan...") note as well.

You can bet I'm going to get my next pair of sunglasses from them. Well done.

First Post on iMediaConnection

Building on my iStrategy presentation "Why Your App Will Fail" is this piece in iMediaConnection with the more workaday title "Best and Worst Practices For Building Branded Apps."

Same general premise, but in article form. You can check it out at iMediaConnection.

iStrategy Today

I've been in Chicago the past few days, meeting with agencies and socializing/networking at the iStrategy conference. Met a lot of great people and was forced to up my knowledge of KickApps and what it is we actually do ;)

Today I am on stage to give a talk on "Why Your App Will Fail."

The answer is all the usual reasons, beginning with the most basic one of never asking "why?"  As always, my goal is to make it light and interesting and let the audience have some fun. Thanks to the folks at Euro for sitting through a dry run of it yesterday, as a preamble to my "Why KickApps" pitch.

10:55 AM CDT at the Allegro Hotel in Chicago.

New, from the Rutger's Center for Management Development Blog

This fall, I am going to be joining a number of well-known bloggers and other digital media types are going to be teaching the Social Media track at the Rutgers Center for Management Development, an innovative "mini-MBA" program that's been getting a lot of press.

Among the names you might know who'll be joining me are Christina "CK" Kerley, David Berkowitz, Ian Schafer, Dr. Augustine Fou, David Polinchok, Beth Harte and Mark Schaefer (among others.)

The center has gotten permission to start a blog for the faculty and you can find my first post, "TV is Social? Or is it?" up right now along with some other thought provoking posts.

Definitely worth bookmarking the site and adding it to you RSS feed.