Experience Manifesto

Sam Adams Happy Employees Commercial

Saw this commercial this morning while watching TV and thought it had a great message for all brands to hear. It's about how all of the employees are passionate about beer and that everyone learns how to brew beer, no matter what their position in the company. We always talk about the importance of putting your employees first and happy to see someone putting it front and center.

Spirit flight attendants not happy with airline's proposed uniforms | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Yea, sometimes you can push the whole logos on everything a little too far! Wonder who's paying for it and how much they're paying.

Spirit Airlines flight attendants are saying, "This Bud's not for us," after glimpsing a proposed new uniform that includes aprons sporting logos for Budweiser and other alcoholic beverages.

According to the Association of Flight Attendants chapter at Spirit Airlines, the apron that would go with new uniforms is unacceptable attire that sends customers the wrong message.

"Turning flight attendants into walking billboards is unacceptable," Deborah Crowley, president of Spirit's flight attendants union chapter, said in a statement. "The proposed aprons diminish the primary and federally mandated role of flight attendants as safety professionals."

Spirit flight attendants not happy with airline's proposed uniforms | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Greg Verdino: Marketing, Media & Trends: Brand building during tough times, Amex-style

Greg Verdino has a good post about American Express CMO John Hayes keynote presentation at Mplanet this week. Yea, I should've been there, it seems like I missed a really good conference! The four main points are below, you'll need to read Greg's full post for the details!

At the end of his talk, John laid out a set of guidelines for building your brand during tough economic times.  You might think of them as American Express' own core marketing tenets, but John presented them as part of his advice for marketers looking to thrive amidst uncertainty.

Establish "customer listening posts" and visit them daily.

In tough times, resist the urge to hunker down and stick with the tried and true.

Innovate constantly.

Be equal parts consumer advocate and visionary.

Greg Verdino: Marketing, Media & Trends: Brand building during tough times, Amex-style.

Companies Missing Big Opportunity to Turn Customer Pain Into Competitive Gain, Says CMO Council Report - MSNBC Wire Services - msnbc.com

Very happy to see that people are actually studying the role that experience plays in creating brand loyalty. I must admit that I'm constantly amazed how brand managers can understand this connection in their own lives, by having the experience drive where they shop, etc., but as soon as they put their corporate hat on, they completely forget it! While a few companies have added Chief Experience Officers (CXO) to their C-suite, most companies have not. They still see brand experiences in terms of experiential or guerrilla marketing programs. They don't get that if I have a bad customer experience, it will negate all of the marketing/advertising you're doing. All of it.

And yet, the role of customer experience is often relegated far down the line and I would bet that most c-level staff is completely insulated from the entire customer experience process. I mean, they never have the same problems with brands that the rest of us have. While I like his commercials, I doubt that when Dane Hesse calls Sprint customer service to fix a problem, I doubt that he gets put on hold or has to go through 10 minutes of menus to get help.

Look at these stats from the msnbc article:

In fact, 83 percent of respondents said it is either "essential" or "increasingly important" in driving brand advocacy and business performance. In addition, 84 percent said positive customer experiences and word of mouth have helped their brands and businesses grow. There were 44 percent of respondents who admitted that high-profile negative customer experiences had at some time compromised their brands.

How can 83% of the people surveyed say experience is so important and then only 31 percent rate their company's commitment to customer listening highly? We sure like to talk about the importance of customer experiences, but we're clearly not putting the effort into it that we should. Not because it's even the right thing to do. Because it's critical to the success of your company.

Currently, Circuit City is liquidating after a dismal performance during the '08 holiday season. And one of the items that's always discussed is how they decided to fire all of the knowledgeable staff in favor of less experienced, cheaper staff. So, what happened? People stopped shopping there because they couldn't get the product information that they needed to make a purchase decision. When we companies learn that staff that knows what they're doing is a really critical path t success. I bet that as they fired their experienced staff, the management of Circuit City laughed at how much Apple must spend for all of those geniuses. Yet, I remember reading somewhere that Apple stores generate $4,000/square foot in revenue. I bet the Circuit City execs wouldn't laugh at that number for their stores.

And yet despite the fact that every piece of information available, from actual research to personal anecdotes, shows that experience is the most critical part of a companies success or failure, we just don't give it the weight it deserves. Customer service is seen as something that companies are forced to do and many do it at a bear minimum. Social media folks love to point at how zappos uses Twitter or some kind of tool as part of their customer service strategy, but they fail to mention that customer service is at the core of everything they do. It's not just a tactic.

When we're doing client meetings, we always ask where "create a better customer experience" falls on the list of reasons that they do things. And quite honestly, it's not always as high as it should be. Too many companies today focus on creating value for their shareholders, when they should be focusing on their customers and employees. Yep, your employees. After all, if you can't create good experiences for your employees, how can you possibly create good guest experiences. Here's something I wrote about my own experiences doing the Electric Light Parade at Walt Disney World in Orlando back in the early 80's:

And although it's been 25 years or so since I did the parade, just hearing that music and the crowd brought all of those feelings back to me again. Sitting on my couch in West Orange, NJ, I felt the energy that I used to feel waiting to go out the gate at step-off. That performers high you get when you know you're about to bring something special to the audience that's been lining up for probably an hour just to see you. That my friends, is the hallmark of a great experience.

So, take a look at the experiences you're delivering right now and ask yourself this. 25 years from now, will one of your employees see something that brings back those memories and feel elated and excited knowing that they were part of it? Or will they be thinking I can't believe I used to do that. What a waste. We spend so much time trying to figure out how to create great experiences for our guests, but many times we don't even think about the employees. And if they're not feeling the elated and excited first, your guests never will!

When you hire, do you hire to save money or to find the best people possible to represent your brand? Would they be a great brand ambassador or are they simply a warm body that you can get on the cheap. Yea, I know money's tight, but give your employees something other then money to motivate them. Give them a passionate place to work. Give them the tools they need and let them make decisions. And don't be pissed off when you're employees don't care about the company when you cut their salaries/benefits while announcing that upper management made tens of millions in bonuses for saving the company money. If you're not going to treat them like they're important, they won't act like the company is important.

So, if the experience that the consumer has is that important to overall business success, stop screwing around. Make customer experience priority number one. Experience your company like a real consumer would and decide if you would still use your company if you weren't employed there. Go out and experience other people's brands and see what they're doing. It's not about using the right tactics, it's about really believing in what you do.

Despite overwhelming agreement on the importance of customer experience and word-of-mouth, senior marketers admit their companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

Sponsored by Satmetrix, the Net Promoter Company, the study, titled "Giving Customer Voice More Volume," revealed that a surprising 58 percent of the 480 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics. Some 38 percent said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers. In addition, only 29 percent said their companies rate highly in their ability handle and resolve customer problems or complaints.

-- Insufficient availability and aggregation of real-time customer experience data across touch points that should be shared across the organization

-- Poor use of customer interactions to collect insights and intelligence or maximize up-sell and advocacy opportunities

-- Lack of Internet processes and systems to track online word of mouth and drive customer advocacy

-- Intermittent or deficient monitoring of customer experience that fails to provide true and timely insights into problems and opportunities

-- Too few compensation programs tied to customer experience, loyalty and satisfaction gains

"Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth. Yet, most organizations and senior marketers suffer from major blind spots and gaps in the way they interact, handle and respond to customer issues or problems," said CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May. "CMOs must assume ownership for the customer experience and establish enterprise-wide measures and disciplines to ensure continuous improvement. (Emphasis mine) We are missing a major opportunity to turn customer pain into competitive gain at every touch point through better use of web and contact center technologies and processes."

Companies Missing Big Opportunity to Turn Customer Pain Into Competitive Gain, Says CMO Council Report - MSNBC Wire Services - msnbc.com.

Riander Blog: The Chief Experience Officer.

Chief Experience Officer … it’s so much more than a title! | The Fast Company Blog | Fast Company.

Wanted: Experience Officer. Some Necessary. - New York Times.

Experience Manifesto: Shouldn't Every Employee be a Brand Ambassador?.

Experience Manifesto: WDW Electric Light Parade.

Experience Manifesto: Retailers prepare for a new, frugal future - Retail - msnbc.com.

MediaPost Publications Get Real: Hire a Chief Experience Officer 11/02/2007.

Wanted: CXO. A pdf of a London Business School survey of UK FTSE 100 companies done in 2006.

Maybe we Complain a Little Too Much?

Is it possible that sometimes we just expect too much in this connected, fast moving world? During last year's Motrin controversy, one of the main complaints was that no one responded over the weekend. To people complaining about an ad they didn't like.

And now, they complaining that they haven't updated the White House web site with enough new content, two days after moving into the office. Is it possible that they're busy doing some other things that just might be more important, like maybe trying to figure out how to get us out of this economic crisis that we're in? Or figuring out how to make the bailout program work. Or how to get us out of two wars?

Just because we can complain about things 24/7, does that mean we should? This is clearly the downside to our net connected, twittering world. We're in such a rush ourselves, that we expect everything done instantly. Sometimes we need to let people work at a different pace. It's not like the web site hasn't been updated in months, it's been two days. I mean, come on folks, let's lighten up a little bit.

Indeed, as the Post points out, Obama's sleek new White House Web site is looking pretty weak right now, with only five posts (as of Thursday morning) on the official White House blog (including a "Hello World" post and a video of Obama's inaugural address, minus comments), a couple of executive orders, no pool reports, old bios and agenda items from the campaign, and a standard "Contact Us" Web form.

My favorite: The list of Cabinet appointments, all displayed in a basic HTML table circa 1996.

White House stuck in "technological dark ages" : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech .

Marketing Strategy Conference - Mplanet Home

I'm behind in writing about Mplanet (sorry Rachelle!), coming up on the 26th - 28th of January, in Orlando. They have a great program, with a lot of new speakers covering a very wide range topics. Some of the topics to be covered include:

Getting Heard in a Sea of Information

Xerox Chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy will discuss the extraordinary explosion in information media and content. One mind-bending example: the information created last year is equivalent to three million times all the books ever written. This information explosion presents both enormous challenges for marketers, but also amazing opportunities. Getting personalized information to the right person at the right time with the right content is more important than ever. Fortunately, it is also easier and more affordable then ever.

The Marketing Story of the Year and What Marketers Can Take Away From It

Larry Grisolano will discuss the marketing communication strategy and planning that drove the groundbreaking success of the Obama Campaign and share important key learning for marketers.

Retail as a Mass Medium

Stephen Quinn will discuss the renewed pertinence of marketing's oldest medium.

Living Up to the Promise - Creating Integrated Brand and Customer Experience

Senior marketing leaders from different industries will present mini-cases focusing on the strategic approach to implementing totally integrated brand and customer experience. Mr. Fasulo will then moderate a roundtable discussion on key lessons learned in building an integrated strategy.

So take a look at the full schedule and the list of speakers and get yourself out of the cold weather to head down to Orlando for the program. There's a lot going on over the course of the program, including the Digital Marketing Lab, which will take place all day on Monday.

Mplanet is an unparalleled concentration of marketing knowledge and business connections, brought together by the American Marketing Association and its partners: Bain & Company and the Wharton School of Business. Mplanet is a one-of-a-kind forum where B2B and B2C marketing leaders and luminaries will share the latest marketing thinking, ideas, innovations and their visions for tomorrow. Plus they'll offer field-tested strategies and proven solutions that you can take away and put to use.

Mplanet is a totally unique and inspiring environment—a sort of "un-conference" with engaging program formats, topic specific groups, highly interactive sessions and an invaluable Mplanet support network that will keep the conversation and connections going long after the event itself. You'll leave empowered to be a more effective marketer, with greater knowledge and resources to help achieve you and your organization's goals.

Discover more about the challenges and opportunities Mplanet will address and the benefits of attending.

Marketing Strategy Conference - Mplanet Home.

Its Great to Be a Grandparent

A very good friend of the Lab (FOB's, as we like to call them!), Andy Edelman, is working on a great new personal project called It's Great to be a Grandparent and he's looking for grandparent stories. For example, I'll be sending him several, including this one:

My father passed away when Sydney was just over 3 years old. My folks lived in Florida, so we didn't see them all the time, but Sydney spoke to my folks on the phone all the time and she has some remarkably strong memories of him. My Dad was sick for about a year before he passed away, but his death was pretty quick & unexpected when it happened. We went down for the funeral and it was Sydney's first time dealing with death, so we tried to keep her calm as much as possible. After the funeral, Sydney & I went for a walk through their neighborhood, just the 2 of us. Near the end of our walk, she looked up at some clouds and said "That cloud looks like Grandpa watching down on us." She paused and then added "Or maybe it's a goat."

When we got back to my parents house, I told my Mom what Sydney said and we all had our first laugh of the day.

Another thing from my Dad was that we never, and I mean never, passed a cemetery without my Dad saying "You know, people are just dying to get in there." And it's really fun for me that today whenever we pass a cemetery, it's Sydney who says that!

So gather your grandparent stories and send them off to Andy! It'll be really nice to see the stories and help our children connect with the heritage of their families. I'm sorry that Sydney didn't get to spend more time with her grandfather before he died, but she has lots of stories to remember him buy. And it's great fun to see all of my Dad's mannerisms in Sydney, knowing that I helped pass a bit of him along to her.

For several years now (10 to be exact) I have talked about writing down all the various names grandparents are called.

Some names we, as Grandparents, get to choose for ourselves, some are chosen by family or friends and some are just great names that our grandchildren, the geniuses they all are, decide to anoint us with.

I am called “G” by my 3 grandchildren. The name came from one of my nephews who said I should be the “G-man” , a crime fighter protecting children from monsters, etc, and, well, you get the rest of the story. My Mother was Emah. Although Emah is the Hebrew word for Mother, the name actually was a child’s mispronunciation of grandma.

I’ve heard great stories and names like Mema, Maga, Mimi, Momma, Mom-Mom, Main Mom-Mom, Grammy, Granny and Gigi Then Nana, Nanny and Nonny. Don’t forget Grampa, Gramps, Grampy or Gumpy. POP-POP. Poppy and Papa. Foreign names like Zada, Opie, Da, Pappous or Bubby, Oma. Ma-mair, Abuela and Yaya. Some are just Mike, Billy and Beau. Not to mention Bingo, Binga and just Ga, all names for the same person by 3 different grandchildren.

You get the idea.

We all have wonderful stories and reminisces about our grandparents. On a personal note a favorite story of mine involves my Nanny and Mike. Each year they would take us to Radio City Music Hall in NYC. Every year we would get there and the line would be around a city block. Miracles of miracles, my Nanny always found someone at the front of the line that she knew just as the doors were opening. She would start to catch up with them, always speaking in Yiddish (even if the sometimes the person she was speaking to seemed oblivious to the language) and in a matter of moments, along with her new and somewhat confused friend, we all walked into the theatre together avoiding an hour’s wait on the cold line.

We all have these wonderful and personal stories and I am reaching out to friends, relatives and business associates that cross a multicultural, multiethnic and geographic spectrum.

I want to share them and include them in “Its Great to Be a Grandparent” (a working title for now).

If you would like to share a name, a story or an experience either as a grandparent or about one, please send it on to me. I will give proper editorial credit to each and everyone one who contributes. I would also welcome any photos that can accompany a name or story.

In addiditon, please know that I intend to donate proceeds (if there are any) to various charities, still to be determined, that work with children.

Please send all stories to Andy Edelman at: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

Retailers prepare for a new, frugal future - Retail - msnbc.com

Here's a round up of recent press of the state of the retail industry and, as expected, we're starting off the year with lots of trouble brewing for our retailers. As we say a lot here, however, some of these problems are self-inflicted, with way too many brands selling pretty much the same thing with no point of differentiation at all. We all saw that during the holidays. Everybody selling the same thing. That's why we're already seeing some retailers go under, like Circuit City, because they didn't stand out in a crowded brings & mortals business and they certainly fared even worse when compared to online retailers.

Now, to be fair, there are plenty of sucky online retailers out there as well, but online retailers like Amazon & Zappos.com have really made a name for themselves by creating not only a breadth of product, but by scoring extremely high in their customer experience as well. Too many retailers have become as customer focused as the typical motor vehicle office. It's almost like it's a burden that we're there. And that's just when it's a neutral experience. Sometimes, it's much worse then that, with employees being down right rude.

So, when you start to look at the world of physical retail, you start with a couple of challenges right off the bat:

Parking. Its usually among the top complaints about retail stores and sadly, I'm not sure there's going to be a good solution anytime soon. Well, unless we get the Star Trek transporter system up & running any time soon. But people know it's going to be a hassle and it starts the experience off in a negative way before you even get to the stores. Lots of things being tried, like systems that tell you where parking is available (I found it confusing in Poland, but it might have been a language thing) and valet parking, which seems to work pretty well. But, in the end, traffic and idiotic drivers seem to be with us for the long run.

Lack of variety in the malls and too much variety in the stores. Once you’ve made it through the parking experience and you get into the malls, you find a lot of the same thing. A lot. And once you’ve passed the first 5 or 6 stores or selling the same things, they all start to blur together. And when brands blur together, then I start shopping on price, which is not really where you want the consumer to start. Listen, in today’s economy, the consumer will almost certainly get to price sooner or later, but if they start with price, where do you go from there?

Take a look at lululemon athletica. Now, those of you who actually know me, know that even when I was in good shape, I wasn’t really the yoga type. I really have a hard time relaxing. So, I’m not their target audience. But if you haven’t been into one of their stores, everything there speaks to their story. They use green building materials. The employees are dressed in their clothing and actually look like they can do yoga, if they’re not doing yoga. At their location at the Garden State Plaza, they even do free classes in the morning for people to do some de-stressing. And take a look at monthly challenge, which for January is a BHAG, which stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal!

Or how about Adrenalina, the extreme store. With their in-store, Flowrider system, they don't just show pretty pictures, they bring the experience to life right there in their store.

What value-add to you bring to your customers? Do you give them something other then merchandise as a reason to walk through the door? When they get there, do you make it as easy as possible to buy something or do you put up barriers because of our internal procedures? Are your employees excited to be there or is it just a job to pay the bills? Have you created an environment that fosters enthusiasm for your employees? If not, you can't expect them to create an atmosphere that fosters enthusiasm for your customers.

For years, retailers could afford to be sloppy about running their businesses because customers kept buying. No more. Stung by the worry that shoppers — who cut spending by the most dramatic amount in at least 39 years this holiday season — may not start spending again for a long time, stores are making drastic changes. They are cutting out marginal suppliers, hiring outside experts to keep inventory lean, holding special events for those who are still buying and making extraordinary efforts to gauge customer satisfaction. (Emphasis mine)

The new discipline will be mostly good news for shoppers, who will find stores less cluttered and see an array of products at lower prices, from ordinary groceries to jeans from brands they could once only aspire to.

In another article from the Wall Street Journal, they discuss the continued, weakening retail sales. Interestingly, they also note that foot traffic is down as well, indicating that people aren't even using the trip to the mall as low cost entertainment, something I do all the time! And if they're not in the stores, they sure ain't buying.

The slump in U.S. consumer spending worsened last month as sales fell at a wide range of retailers, restaurants and car dealers, raising fresh concerns about the U.S. economy in 2009.

Retail and food-services sales fell in December for the sixth month in a row, sliding a seasonally adjusted 2.7% from November to $343.2 billion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Sales were down nearly 10% from December 2007, the biggest yearly drop since records began in 1968.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said in a client note the declines were not only bad news for U.S. economic growth in the final three months of 2008, "but it also starts us into [2009] on very weak ground."

The combination of deep discounts and feeble sales has led numerous retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Macy's Inc. and Gap Inc., to warn this month of looming weakness in quarterly or annual profits. ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which estimates retail sales and visits, said this week it now expects U.S. foot traffic to decline 16% and sales to drop 4% in the first quarter from a year earlier. (Emphasis mine)

And where there's trouble with retailers, there's going to be trouble at the malls. I like what Susan Reda wrote about the mall business in the January issue of STORES:

They arrive with high expectations – that they’ll find the perfect outfit, buy the anti-wrinkle cream that will make them look 10 years younger or enjoy a relaxing bite to eat with friends. But it turns out a majority of those shoppers are not having as much fun as they’d anticipated. They complain that there is nothing new or unique at the mall, and they gripe about the limited variety of restaurants.

Other gripes ranking near the top of the list, according to a study conducted by the Baker Retailing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Toronto-based market research consultancy Verde Group, include too many stores carrying the same products and difficulty finding a parking space. Overall, it reveals an undercurrent of dissatisfaction among shoppers that overshadows problems they may have with individual stores.

“What we refer to as discovery – or the ‘what’s around the corner’ factor – seems to be missing,” says Stephen J. Hoch, faculty director of Wharton’s Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative. “Roughly half of the problems we heard about can be summed up by saying that malls are becoming mundane.

“In this economic climate, malls can’t afford to be mundane,” he says. “A real opportunity exists for developers to be more creative and to ramp up the level of discovery for shoppers.” (Emphasis mine)

In the same article, Michael Brown, retail strategist with Kurt Salmon Associates says "in a down market there are always opportunities for those who are willing to take chances.” We try to tell this to our clients every chance we get and, in a down economy, feel that this is more important then ever.

Now, in a recent post on Retail Design Diva, they talk about yet another challenge to the whole retail brand issue, faux brands. And not only that, but an entire mall in China built around faux brands. I mean, how do you not at least give them points for Pizza Huh?

But in China, knockoff lovers might soon have an entire mall at which to ponder the benefits of a "Coached" bag, a pair of "Poma" or "Adidos" sneakers, and even a pair of "A & G" designer jeans. (Don’t tell Dominico Dolce.) That's according to the Mirror UK, (article by Hannah Wood 01/05/09), which has photos of some of the faux food and knock-off retailers that have already set up shop at the mall, located in Nanjing, just a stone’s throw east of Shanghai. They include a McDonald’s look-a-like dyslexic restaurant called McDnoald’s, a Starbucks-style coffee shop called Bucksstar Coffee, KLG Chicken and a wannabe Pizza Hut, called Pizza Huh. Given that China banned dog, and monkey meat during the Olympics, I'd be suspicious of consumables from imposter food chains, but then again, how hard would it be to replicate Pizza Hut's operations? The Pizza Huh version couldn't possibly be much worse. Pizza, Huh? It’s just the kind of blasé question Doug Heffernan might ask Carrie in an episode of “The King of Queens.”

So, if you're a retailer or mall developer today and you're just holding the status quo, it's not going to be a good year for you. Take advantage of this market to boost your in-store experience, not pull back on it. It might mean that you'll be behind for a quarter or two, but you'll probably be around for the long haul.

Retailers prepare for a new, frugal future - Retail - msnbc.com.

STORES - January: Breaking The Monotony.

Retail Sales Keep Sliding, Declining 2.7% in December - WSJ.com.

Retail Design Diva. Fake brands shopping centre set to open in China - pictures - mirror.co.uk.

Random Jack Bauer Fact: Top One Hundred Facts

Now that 24 is back on the air, I found this last from a few years back listing the top 100 facts about Jack Bauer. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites. Check out the whole list, it's a hoot! The one thing missing from the list, though, is anything about his great cell phone & service. I mean, seriously, this guy uses a phone for 24 ours straight and while buried underground, in a bomb shelter, next to a nuclear reactor, he can say to Chloe Quick, send me all of the schematics for California and he gets them in like 10 seconds. The next time he gets summoned to testify before Congress, it'll be to explain how he runs up such a high phone bill in just 24 hours.

If everyone on "24" followed Jack Bauer's instructions, it would be called "12".

Most people would need months to recover from 20 months of Chinese interrogation. Jack Bauer needs a shower, a shave and a change of clothes.

Once, someone tried to tell Jack Bauer a "knock knock" joke. Jack Bauer found out who was there, who they worked for, and where the goddamned bomb was.

Jack once shot himeself 10 times, just to prove 50 cent is a bitch. He proceeded to wrestle and aligator while talking to Chloe about schematics.

Random Jack Bauer Fact: Top One Hundred Facts.

AdScam/The Horror! : I'm PC... And I'm not talking Microsoft!

Nothing I can add to these post from George Parker over at Adscam other then to say if you're not reading him every day, you should be! Sitting in my office laughing out loud while reading this!

On the BBC news today, here in England (I’m over for a short time on family business) it was announced that Cadbury is going to print the warning "contains milk" on bars of Dairy Milk, despite the presence of the name and a fucking big picture showing a glass and a half of milk being poured into a the chocolate. The warning is being introduced on wrappers to meet legal requirements, according to the company.  The warning will be made on wrappers in capital letters encased in yellow boxes saying "Contains: Milk". Cadbury is also introducing a warning on bars of Dairy Milk Whole Nut, saying "Contains: Nuts, milk". This to me is further proof that we have all gone stark, fucking raving mad. With all the shit we are currently in; don’t we have more serious things to get our knickers in a twist about? Cadbury's move is not the first, after Tesco (Britain’s biggest supermarket) put labels on milk cartons saying they contained milk three year ago, and also warned that bags of assorted nuts contained nuts. Fuck, what’s next, health warnings on cigarettes?

AdScam/The Horror! : I'm PC... And I'm not talking Microsoft!.