…but the website Consumer Affairs says it has received dozens of complaints in the past week from viewers annoyed by the ad.

The ads promote the fact that JCP will no longer be tied to its overbearing amount of coupons.  And this was not just in the TV commercials, but online as well. According to the NY Times,

Posters and images on the Facebook page urge shoppers to say “No!” to coupons and other gimmicks. The campaign will inform consumers that Penney plans to hold a dozen sales each year; last year, Mr. Johnson said at a news conference, there were 590 promotions. The average customer visited Penney four times a year in 2011, he added, “so the customer ignored us 99 percent of the time.”

As of today the new brand starts and the promotions will end. Will JCP get the rest of the strategy right?

First there is the new logo, which clearly reflects the American flag. My guess is they may have their fourth new logo in four years coming in 2013.

Then there is the new pricing strategy. Everything is always 40% off (or something like that). This will make it easy for competitors to undercut prices, but if their customer service is great and the “experience” is good, will you pay for to get it from JCP? Businessweek calls it a risky strategy that has failed for many other brands.

There is also a new catalog. OK, I have to admit – I LOVE the new catalog. The cover and internal pages are impactful and beautiful. Hopefully the quality will remain high after the first few months. The February edition is a wonderful inaugural version.

I interviewed a sales associate at a local store and she said the new return policy (they will take anything back whenever) and higher-end products (coming soon) will make JCPenney more like Nordstroms. I’m not convinced of that, they have a long way to climb to be another Nordstroms, but all improvements are good.

Today we should start seeing Ellen DeGeneres promoting the NEW JCP. Hopefully she will not be screaming at you.

What do you think about the branding changes as JCP? Will YOU be more motivated to shop there? Do you believe the new brand will promote increased sales?  Tell us about it here.

There are countless blogs that provide franchisees and perspective franchisees all the nitty gritty details about franchising. We chose to ignore most of those. We read blogs that help franchisors and their corporate staff who support the franchise system. The following blogs fall within that framework.

Our Favorite Blogs For Franchisors

1. The New York Times: You’re The Boss Blog

This blog is fantastic for all sorts of great information on running a business. They also throw in franchise-specific blogs. Many of the postings are real-life examples, not just theoretical, which makes this our favorite business blog.

2. The Entrepreneur Blog

We love it because you can search for blogs on marketing, franchising, technology, money, etc. Well written and a great publication to boot.

3. Inc’s Franchise Section

Stories in the Inc franchise section are about franchising success, franchise growth and business ideas. It is a great news source and case study section for franchise executives. (Cheers to our friends Ron Lynch of the Tilted Kilt and Shelly Sun of BrightStar for making Inc’s 2012 top Franchises!)

4. Open Forum: American Express

All business executives should keep an eye on this blog. The contributors of Open Forum stay on the pulse of business trends and national news that impacts business.

5.  Duct Tape Marketing

This blog provides great insight into small business marketing. Good for the franchisor leadership and marketing teams for helping their franchisees keep on top of marketing themselves within their communities.

6. The Business Owner Blog

A Franchise system dedicated to growing businesses, The Alternative Board publishes a blog focused on just that – business growth. Franchisors in all areas care about growth and can learn tips from The Business Owner Blog.

7. The Franchise King

Against our original specifications, this next blog is NOT oriented to franchisors, The Franchise King is written for potential franchisees. He provides insight to people looking to own a franchise as well as helping them determine if they are cut out for franchising. Many of his tips can be helpful to franchisors in determining how your franchise system looks to potential buyers. He also points out some grave mistakes made by franchisees – issues that franchisors can use as teachable moments for their system. Because of his significantly high readership, franchisors need to know what he is saying because their prospects franchisees will know.

Finally – don’t forget to subscribe to The Side Note Blog to get your ongoing updates for integrated marketing, advertising and PR for franchise systems.

Did we miss one of your favorite blogs for the franchising industry? Be sure to tell us about it here!

Google Places is a free service provided by Google that combines a physical address with the robust Google Maps application. Google Places allows an individual to review and evaluate business listings. For marketing professionals,of of the best reasons to understand Google Places is that Google has a clear preference for businesses listed in Google Places when providing search results.

Here is an example, I entered the search term “copying” and the first page of Google has two paid ads, a wiki entry about the subject copying, two company websites FedEx Office and Staples, then the Google Places results. Interestingly, the top three selections in the Google Places listings all have customer reviews.

Now that you see Google Places is important to Google ranking, there are some to do’s that are important:

• Since Google Places uses an algorithm to list the most relevant results, you should include the most important keywords for your business in the 200-character description of the listing.
• Listings are allowed to include up to five photos. Use appropriate keyword titles for the pictures that will also help with SEO. It is important to control the photos attached to your Google Places listing because with the fleet of street view camera cars, Google reserves the right to use their sources to add photos to your listing.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews on the Google Places page. You can set up a program to give a customer a discount on a return visit for a positive review. One note of caution: Do not submit multiple reviews from the same IP address. The people at Google are smart, if you cram a bunch of reviews from the same IP address, Google will identify and consider this type of behavior a violation.
• Be sure to add your Google Places site to your analytics. In addition to traffic, the analytics dashboard will show you the search terms used to find your Google Places listing. This will provide valuable information as you can focus your content creation on relevant search terms.

Let us know if you’ve used Google Places and seen impact on your SEO. Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

From the Gowalla Co-Founder Josh Williams, “Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well.”

As with many of the strategic moves from Facebook, there are privacy concerns. In this case, Facebook now owns all the pictures, check-ins and connections entered by users of Gowalla. Early rumors have the Gowalla team working on the new Facebook profile, Timeline. Gowalla’s team and data would add a robust component to the Timeline, but will Facebook risk the inevitable complaints of privacy exploitation?

So, in the world of location-based social media, Foursquare is left standing. In 2009, Gowalla and Foursquare launched in the same week as rival location service apps. Both apps provided a method for people to announce their whereabouts by using their smartphones to “check-in” at real-world locations, such as Starbucks. In 2010, Facebook launched Places as an alternative LBS. Places has received luke-warm acceptance, it is not a huge leap to assume the acquired leadership from Gowalla will be able to improve the user experience of Facebook Places.

In the meantime, Foursquare has a window of opportunity prior to Gowalla/Places integration to capitalize on reduced competition and own the LBS marketplace.  Foursquare should take our advice and use these ways to improve the service.

Let us know if you think Foursquare will seize the day or if Facebook Places with the infusion of Gowalla talent will overwhelm the LBS market. Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

This redefining of the personal profile is a significant change. Facebook knows a lot about us. It knows about the crazy party, the time we went on vacation and when we met specific friends. This is the primary source of Facebook power; it is the online service with the most personal data about our lives. Timeline is the vehicle where a user can harness that power.

In another Facebook surprise, Timeline allows users to control what is displayed. (Three cheers for user control over Facebook content!)

• Certain stories can be promoted, they will grab more real estate on the profile. You are not tied to chronological order.
• Stories and posts can easily be deleted from the Timeline.
• If anything is missing, it is easy to add ‘life events’ to the Timeline. The more info you put into the Timeline, the more robust it becomes.
• It is easy to selectively edit the postings that will shape the view of people going forward.

In the past, I’ve written about my favorite iPad app, Flipboard. It appears that the Facebook team has taken the best of Flipboard to create Timeline. Instead of a random scrapbook, Timeline presents our online life as a high-end photo album.

Tell us what you think of Facebook grouping information to tell the story of our lives. Is Timeline a new, exciting way to detail history or is it a creepy way to reveal everything you’ve done in a potentially unnerving way? One thing for sure, anytime Facebook makes a change there will be a cry over privacy concerns.

Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

• How do I get a hashtag? How much does it cost? How often can I use it?
• When I set-up our company Facebook page profile, everything the company does is updating on my personal wall and to my personal email, how can I delete that?
• Our company doesn’t want negative comments, is there anyway to choose the comments we want to post on Facebook?
• When I was tweeting on the Twitter, I didn’t see any results. How can you make sales on the Twitter if nobody is interested?

The intent behind the questions were genuine, but I quickly came to the realization that there is a massive education effort needed regarding social media in business. If we can assume that social media is now an essential function of any business, executives will treat it as a discipline that they must understand.

This will lead to educational opportunities, as companies cannot make strategic decisions without understanding social media. Executives will see social media as function that cannot be ignored. Companies will begin building internal social media teams and it will cross multiple business functions from customer service to employee recruiting.  Any company not fluent in the language of social media will be at a significant disadvantage.

This is an opportunity for the marketing department to step up, take a leadership role in social media education and enhance its value to the entire organization.

Hopefully, we’ll never hear anybody ask about ‘tweeting on the twitter’ again.

Let us know if you think social media education will even extend to the C-suite, even if they never post, tweet or check-in. Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

Foursquare

In the spirit of helping make the service better, here are four ways that Foursquare can become a better social media experience for users, businesses and opportunity for marketers:

1. The establishment/location should be alerted that a user has checked in. Whether the store manager gets a text message or there is access to a group Twitter account, someone at the location should know when a Foursquare user has checked into their establishment. There is one location that I have been the mayor for more than six months and visited for 28 straight weeks with at least one check in per week. So far, ZERO acknowledgement from management.  The marketer in me wants them to know I am loyal and in return they should consider providing some recognition that will encourage me to spread news by word of mouth or social media. I know this will not be popular with all establishments, as I have heard from retailers that they do not want to ‘pay’ Foursquare to recognize someone that has already entered their store.
2. The leaderboard and points are irrelevant – connect them to something of worth or simply eliminate them. This is the portion of Foursquare that feels like a frequent flyer program as I accumulate points with every check-in; but there is no cashing in my points for a romantic getaway to Napa Valley. In fact, the most often question I am asked by a non-foursquare adopter is, “A 5 point check-in? What did that get you?” I would be in favor of a donating my points to a charity and that charity can redeem the points for a monetary donation. But, for that to happen, the points need to mean something.
3. Create another layer of recognition besides mayor. Foursquare has designated the person with the most check-ins over a rolling two-month period as the mayor. Since many locations are offering specials and discounts to the person holding the mayorship, it can be desirable to be the mayor. However, there are many valuable, loyal customers that cannot breakthrough to become mayor of a location. For today’s purpose, let’s call them a patron. Establishments should consider a loyalty bonus for a patron based on repeat visits over a short period. The offer can be less than the mayor’s offer to encourage a patron to strive to mayorship and still recognize the patron for being a valued customer.
4. Enrich the experience at events. On Nov. 17, I am attending the Thursday night NFL game between the New York Jets and the Denver Broncos. Wouldn’t it be great to have a video highlight from the game broadcast for someone viewing my check in? You know, actually sharing information. This summer, I attended the Peter Gabriel concert at Red Rocks. When I checked into the event it would have been great to have a live video link for others to share the experience, a connection to his Facebook or My Space page or at least a link to iTunes to allow someone to purchase music. This is also an opportunity for ‘Swarming,’ Foursquare’s moniker for a location with a lot of concurrent check-ins. The idea is: everybody is here, you should be too! However, if I am engaged at a great networking event or an awesome happy hour, I am way too busy to check-in. How swarming can someplace be if you are stopping to tell everybody about it? There should be an automatic check in Foursquare pre-set option. For example, if my phone is at a place for 20 minutes with 200 other Foursquare users, it automatically checks me in – and you’ll know it’s really swarming.

We are convinced that location-based social media can be a powerful marketing tool. Many of our franchise clients would benefit greatly from a robust location-based program, but only if they can see a spike in repeat visitors.

Have you had good experiences with Foursquare? Want to add to this list, share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

Whether it is potentially personally embarrassing or taking an action to protect yourself from an employer, we expect to see a service in the near future for people who want to selectively edit their social history. A Silicon Valley smartie is undoubtedly working on a tool to delete photos from other people accounts, an automatic clean up of your Facebook wall and other actions to sanitize your social history.

With the controversy over Mark Zuckerberg and questionable privacy policies, we believe there will be a fundamental shift from hiding information to cleansing information. The interest in electronic brainwashing will increase and will have impact and influence for the foreseeable future.

For example, what politician would like that picture from the long, lost college days deleted from view and access well before they make the run for political office.  Wouldn’t President Obama like to have the famous picture of him smoking (right) when he was in college stricken from the public record.

In a world where perception is reality, former Iowa State head basketball coach Larry Eustachy lost his job over pictures (left) that surfaced about him drinking beer (well, Natural Light) with underage college coeds.  Some might argue that the choice of “Natty Lite” is the greater offense. Wouldn’t he like a social media cleanser?

According to the survey by Marist College in New York, half of all users on Facebook and Twitter polled say that verbal or photographic miscues lead them to believe social media does more harm than good.  We’re fairly confident that former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner agrees.

Let us know what you think will happen when someone from the ‘Millennial Generation’ runs for President. Without selectively editing social media history what do you think will happen to every tweet, Facebook status or blog post they ever wrote? Share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

In the past several years, Quick Serve Restaurants (QSR) have starting implementing healthier menus to reach a larger demographic of customers.  This new craze has helped many restaurants increase sales and use new marketing and advertising campaigns to draw in a previously untapped audience of healthier consumers.

The Burger King franchise recently (finally) decided to jump on the healthy trend.  Burger King, the home of the Whooper, is attempting to re-brand the system by adding a fresher approach in their fast-food menu which began with the success of the new Whopper Bars.  The Whopper Bar is a concept designed to create a more “gourmet” atmosphere for “Whopper Connoisseurs.”  With an open kitchen concept and the “create your own Whopper” menu, Burger King was aiming to reach new markets and satisfy new types of customers.  Due to the success of the Whopper bars, Burger Kings is dethroning the King mascot in favor of a fresher approach to advertising that reflects the new menu.

Freshness and healthy meals are some of the most important categories that are increasingly emphasized in the fast food world.  Competitors of Burger King began this new approach a while ago. McDonalds’s started the trend with healthy alternatives such as oatmeal, sliced apples, and salads. Subway also launched its new avocado topping and even the Cheesecake Factory has their new skinnyliciouse menu (can you use the words skinny and cheesecake in the same sentence???). Guacamole, oatmeal, and other healthy foods have proven to be very appealing to mothers and health-enthusiasts, which could be an untapped for Burger King.

Below is Burger King’s new TV spot. Its refreshing in so many ways, most notably because its not a Peeping Tom wearing a crown.

Burger King might be a little late catching up with the new changing food trends, however this new strategy will most likely prove to bring a wider consumer market into the historically  successful Burger King franchise system. According to an AdAge article, a survey by YouGov’s BrandIndex among people who had visited fast-food restaurants in the hamburger category in the last month — the same time that Burger King launched the campaign for the California Whopper — their perception of Burger King had gone from a 24.2 before the ad aired to a 34.3 just two days after the launch of the spot. (YouGov BrandIndex’s scores range from -100 to 100 and are compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive.)

Have you seen other industry trends that companies should jump in to increase market share & revenue? Tell us about it here or visit our Facebook page.

1. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes provisions about IRS oversight of requirements that nonprofit healthcare providers must meet in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. Nonprofit organizations are seeking assistance to track community benefit programs and keep it in a format approved by the IRS. This is an opportunity for the right company.

2. HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a national survey that asks patients about their experiences during a recent hospital stay.  When will the general public adopt HCAHPS as criteria they use to select a hospital? Unfortunately, there is a lot of focus by hospital administration on these scores, but no evidence that a patient is using it in the hospital selection process.

3. The new buzzword, ‘Patient Experience’ Not patient-centered, not patient-centric, not patient-focused…Patient Experience.  This is intended to represent the totality of the interactions and perceptions of interactions between the patient and the health care facility. Patients with a more favorable experience are more likely to adhere to treatment protocol, have a positive outcome and provide favorable recommendations to others.

4. A big question from the conference: is government mandated health care constitutional? When will a ruling that provides certainty occur? How much legislative change will occur to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prior to the large provisions taking effect in 2014?

5. From Michael Sachs’ keynote presentation on Friday, Constitutionality ruling on healthcare reform will not affect the macro trends in the healthcare industry.

6. Hospitals are waiting for someone to figure out a strategy for Accredited Care Organizations (ACO’s) before they adopt it. Right now there is too much uncertainty and confusion. ACO’s are too far away from current Key Performance Indicators.

7. From Jeff Bauer’s keynote presentation on Saturday, “By 2020, there will be more people living in the United States under 18 that were born outside the U.S. than were born inside the U.S.” The impact on medical treatments will be far-reaching. For example, men of Korean descent do not have the genetic enzyme to process the anti-depression drug, serotonin. How will this effect care, drug protocols, pharmaceutical company focus and online information?

8. Marketing strategist in healthcare organizations are the only people in the organization that can bring the customers point of view to strategy. Hospital Administrators are counting on the marketing strategist voice. Marketers need to speak up.

9. Healthcare marketers must consider the system of care is not inside the hospital walls, it is outside of it. Healthcare marketing strategists must take the leadership position and consider all entry points including: the website, community events, referral lines, physician offices, etc.

10. Integration across multiple platforms of data and across functional areas within a medical facility must occur to provide value to patients. The cost-efficiencies will be mandated in health care reform and are essential in a competitive environment.

Maybe we should have called this a top fourteen list because we have to include some of our favorite quotes:

“Patients fear rude doctors and nurses more than death.” – Colleen Sweeney, Director of Innovation, Ambassador, and Customer Services,
Memorial Health System, South Bend, IN

“HIPAA is the mullet of patient safety, your data is not as protected as you think.” – David McDonald, CEO, True North Custom Media, Chattanooga, TN

“Be realistic when setting Facebook goals for any hospital. Who really wants to LIKE a hospital?” – Dean Browell, Executive Vice President, Feedback, Richmond, VA

“The FDA has rejected many new cancer drugs because they were tested on the wrong kinds of cancer.” – Jeffrey C. (Jeff) Bauer, Ph.D. Health Futurist and Medical Economist, Chicago, IL

Want to find out more about what we learned at SHSMD 2011? Give us a call. Want to add to this list, share your thoughts here or on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.