How Campbell’s Dusted Off a Century-Old Recipe to Cook Up Its Latest Marketing Idea | Adweek

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On the 350 acres they farm in Vineland, N.J., Richard Marolda Sr. and his son, Richard Jr., grow 30 different kinds of produce. They raise beets and bok choy, peppers and radishes, four varieties of lettuce and even dandelion greens. But when the Marolda’s phone rang last year, the customer on the other end wanted just one thing: beefsteak tomatoes.

“Lucky for us,” Richard Jr. said, “we had what they wanted, and they wanted what we had.”

The caller was the Campbell Soup Company, located 31 miles north in Camden, and Campbell’s didn’t just want beefsteak tomatoes; it wanted every single beefsteak tomato on the property. The Maroldas combed their fields and found a thousand pounds of tomatoes. Campbell’s bought it all.

Up in Camden, a secret project was in the offing. On a recent trip to the company vault, Campbell’s R&D team had come across the original 1915 recipe for Beefsteak Tomato Soup, and decided to cook up a batch.

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Five Things The HR Department Won’t Tell You | Forbes

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I became an HR person in 1984, the same year the Cubs got to the postseason for the first time since 1945.

I did not apply for an HR job. My boss John moved me into HR from my old department, Order Processing. He said “This will be good for you, and for our company” and he was right.

I moved into my new office over a weekend. The culture shock was immediate. My office had a window in it, and blinds for privacy. I would look out my office window at the employees doing their jobs.

Supervisors made appointments to come and see me and talk about their employees, and I always wondered “How come my time is available to the managers much more than to the employees, who need more help and support?”
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How to Radically Improve Your Writing in Under 2 Minutes | Inc.com

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We’re already more than a week into January, but I’m still slowly working my way through all the “best of” year-end lists out there (there are so many of them!). Combing through all these recommendations may be time-consuming, but it’s worth the commitment, I’ve found, as sometimes you turn up an absolute gem you missed earlier in the year.

Take a post titled “The Two Minutes It Takes To Read This Will Improve Your Writing Forever” by marketer Josh Spector, for example. As short as it is useful, the piece is one of the most recommended posts of 2016, Medium informs me. It’s not hard to see why.

Spector offers five dead simple changes you can make to basically any piece of writing in a matter of seconds that will make it much more forceful and compelling. We’d all enjoy reading a bit more if more of writers followed his tips:

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Better Business Etiquette During Phone Calls | The Startup Magazine

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Whether you are on your mobile phone, at home, or at work, the following are 8 helpful telephone etiquette tips that everybody should always use.

  1. At the beginning of a call always identify yourself.

A) When you are at the office, always answer your phone by saying: “Good Morning/Hello, Accounting Department, Sandy Smith speaking.”

B) From your cell phone, either state your name or just say Hello. “Hello, Sandy Smith here.” Don’t answer your phone by saying something like “yes” or “yeah.”

C) Whenever you place a phone call, you should always say your name and the name of the individual you are calling to speak to. Example: “Hello this is Sandy Smith from ABC Incorporated. May I please speak with Mr. John Doe?”

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Changing Your Business Name? Don’t Put Your Credit at Risk | AllBusiness.com

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Changing your business name can be a lot of work, and, quite frankly, a hassle. But can it also put your business’s credit history at risk?

Kimberly Wilson is about to find out. In 2006, she started First Step Therapy, a counseling and training business, and grew it into multiple locations. A few years ago she took a hiatus from that business to earn her doctorate degree, and now she’s ready to relaunch her business. She has chosen a new name that reflects her new vision for the company. It will be called First Step International Consulting & Counseling Services and will offer training for individuals, businesses, and professionals.

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Land Rover design chief: Car industry needs more female designers | Money CNN

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The mastermind behind one of the world’s most distinctive SUV brands says gender imbalance is hurting the automotive industry.

Land Rover design director Gerry McGovern, who works on the luxury brand’s newest models, said the industry needs more women.

“I think for a long time we’ve suffered [from] not having enough automotive female designers,” he said.

According to EY, women comprise only a quarter of the auto industry workforce. But they influence almost 80% of decisions to buy a car, according to market research firm Frost & Sullivan.

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Millennials 10 Things Old Farts Won’t Tell You About Entrepreneurship (Number 7): Be Wrong, Be Strong | Peter Mehit

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The ability to be truthful goes directly to the heart of whether you get funding, attract customers and recruit great employees. But that is just one part of it. The ability to be wrong can determine if you survive at all.

We’ve all had bosses, friends and relatives that just couldn’t admit they’d made a mistake.  We know how we feel when we know the facts and someone tells us we’re wrong or don’t understand.  The longer we are in that environment, the less we trust the person, the more we doubt reality, or both.

Make no mistake, we presently live in a say anything to win environment.  Sometimes people are intentionally dishonest.  These situations tend to be self-liquidating.  Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, who famously said that having a backup plan is admitting failure, is the latest example where outright deceit brought someone crashing down. While spectacular, these cases relatively rare.

Continue reading “Millennials 10 Things Old Farts Won’t Tell You About Entrepreneurship (Number 7): Be Wrong, Be Strong | Peter Mehit” →

4 Mistakes That Ruin Business Meetings | Business News Daily

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Business meetings have a longstanding reputation for being unexciting, boring and a waste of time. Entertainment and stock photos characterize meetings with scenes of bored employees watching the clock, rolling their eyes and falling asleep while the presenter seems to drone on interminably.

Though the representations on TV and photos seem overdone, they’re true to life. According to a recent survey by enterprise intranet company Igloo Software, about half of all employees find meetings to be unproductive. More specifically, employees are annoyed with unnecessary meetings (76 percent), meetings going off-topic (59 percent) and people repeating one another (58 percent).

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Nemonic is like Post-It notes with IoT smarts | TechCrunch

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Mangoslab, a company spun out from Samsung’s innovation division back in June 2016, showed off its first product today. Nemonic is a $120 thermal printer that prints on sticky notes from your phone. That’s right – everyone’s favorite tool for passive-aggressively leaving notes on a colleague’s computer monitor is now weaponized with all the powers of IoT combined. Ladies and gentlemen, the future of office warfare is here.

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Volvo wants you to never miss a meeting again. Thanks so much, really | Mashable

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The best thing about being out of the office is being unavailable for certain meetings.

Evil geniuses Volvo and Microsoft are about to end all that. The two companies have collaborated on an in-car solution to this office absentee problem: integrating Skype for Business in a Volvo car.

Maybe Volvo should take most of the blame… er… credit since it’s the one integrating existing business communication technology in its 90 Series cars.

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