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Top of Mind Thursday Memo Archive
Top of Mind Thursday – June 2, 2022: HoJos is NoMo
The last Howard Johnson’s restaurant in America, in Lake George, NY, closed recently.
While Millennials and Gen Zers are saying, “Howard WHO?”, those of us of a certain age remember a time when the orange roofs of Howard Johnson’s were a familiar site along main streets and rest stops across the country.
Long before McDonalds and other fast food chains were found on every corner, travelers could count on HoJo’s to provide good food served quickly and inexpensively…with 28 flavors of ice cream to boot.
But the advent of well-managed, highly efficient fast food chains displaced HoJos and other similar restaurant chains. Over the last 35 years, many of the restaurants were sold off, leaving only a handful of locations still carrying the HoJo banner. As of last month, the last of those sites is gone.
Today, we have hundreds of choices in fast food–from burgers to tacos to pizza to Chinese food and ice cream. We have pre-made meal kits that show up at your door ready to heat and eat, and Amazon delivering groceries the same day you order them.
But we don’t have that piece of Americana that was a welcome site to highway travelers. RIP Howard Johnson’s (or as we used to call them for fun, Joward Hohnson’s).
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Catch the latest episodes of the hottest podcast on business and entrepreneurship…ShrimpTank Seattle Wednesdays at noon PT.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – May 26, 2022: Insanity
Yet again, we are reeling from another mass shooting at an elementary school. This time it was 22 people dead in a small town in Texas.
We are all shocked and heartbroken to see this happen, but it really should not be a surprise. There were 27 other shootings on school campuses already this year, and more children have died in school shootings in 2022 than police officers in the line of fire.
That’s not to say mass shooters don’t endanger police. A security guard was killed in last week’s Buffalo shooting, and three police officers were injured in Texas this week. (So much for arming teachers–those law enforcement professionals were all well-trained professionals and armed).
We hear the typical reactions: Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
There’s nothing wrong with that–but it doesn’t solve the problem either.
What we’re doing now is clearly not working. Until we take action to address gun violence, this will keep happening over and over again.
To expect anything else would be insane.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Catch the latest episodes of the hottest podcast on business and entrepreneurship…ShrimpTank Seattle Wednesdays at noon PT.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – May 19, 2022: Up, Up, and Away
Gas prices. Food prices. Home prices. Interest rates. Inflation is dramatically driving up all of these–and more.
This should not come as a surprise. More than $5 trillion was pumped into the US economy to soften the impact of COVID-19 related layoffs and losses. Lockdowns in China have caused major shortages of many components and stopped the shipment of finished goods to much of the world. The aftermath of the war in Ukraine has caused food and energy shortages–which translate into higher prices. All of these factors are known to impact inflation rates.
Yet, the unemployment rate (which spiked through the roof at the peak of the pandemic) is near an all-time low and businesses across many industries are unable to find enough workers. Consumers are traveling again and demand for goods remains high.
So what’s going on? I’m not an economist, and I doubt even those who are trained in economic theory could accurately predict what will happen next. But one thing I know for sure: Panicking does no one any good–ever.
We’ve spent more than two years adapting to a global pandemic (which, BTW, is not over yet). We’ve survived inflation in the 1980s that was dramatically worse than what’s expected now. Americans can adapt to current economic conditions without major suffering–after all, no one is attacking us with missiles and bombs for the 85th day in a row.
Prices may go up for awhile. But there’s no need to throw confidence to the wind. This, too, will pass.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Catch the latest episodes of the hottest podcast on business and entrepreneurship…ShrimpTank Seattle Wednesdays at noon PT.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – May 12, 2022: In Short Supply
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was nearly impossible to find staples like toilet paper and paper towels. Now, it’s computer chips and baby formula.
Over the last 2+ years, we’ve learned more about supply chains and how they could be disrupted than any of us ever could have imagined (along with adding terms like social distancing, mRNA vaccines and PCR testing to our vocabularies).
Some of these disruptions came because consumer behavior changed overnight during the pandemic (food and paper supplies were now all being purchased for the home, not in commercial packaging). Some of these are a result of world events. Shanghai and much of China are shut down due to COVID restrictions, and the war in Ukraine has disrupted everything from natural gas deliveries to food production and more.
And some times these disruptions come because people didn’t think far enough ahead to plan for what was coming.
The shortage of baby formula appears to be a result of two factors: industry consolidation (which left only a few manufacturers) and the shut down of a major manufacturing plant due to possible contamination. Could the plant shutdown be predicted? Maybe not. But the consequences of having limited supplier options for any commodity can be predicted and modeled.
The war in Ukraine was not a foregone conclusion, but it certainly was a looming possibility for months before Russian troops crossed the border.
The computer chip shortage didn’t happen overnight–it was an accident waiting to happen that was exacerbated by pandemic shutdowns. New chip production plants can cost $10-20 billion and take 3-5 years to build. Even worse, now we’re hearing there may be a shortage of the chips required to build more chips. Talk about Catch-22!
With all of the analytics and technology we have today, why don’t companies run what-if scenarios to make sure they can handle changing conditions? Why don’t they consider how much runway they’ll need to adapt to a changing environment?
It seems like well thought out future scenario planning is in short supply these days.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Catch the latest episodes of the hottest podcast on business and entrepreneurship…ShrimpTank Seattle Wednesdays at noon PT.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com