Pardon me all to pieces

There were 40+ in attendance at the workshop at the Ramada on Merle Hay

I've been doing this all wrong! I attended a marketing workshop today, put on by my work peeps. It was much needed and really good. Trash people need help finding ways to get the message out to people about just what it is (bury trash, deal with household hazardous waste, run recycling programs and more) they do. I should know - I used to be one of them! People think it's still the dump.

Mark Mathis talks to a group from across the state

In the small world department, it turns out the marketing firm that presented at the workshop is run by Mark Mathis - the husband of Liz Mathis, former TV broadcaster from KWWL in Waterloo and High School classmate of my college roomie Vicki. They were DeWitt class of 1976 grads. Kumbaya!
This is Mark's blog on marketing. One-Minute Marketer.

The first thing I took away from the workshop is that my blog is way too long. Oops! Sorry readers. I just pump them out. I heard that takes a minute for people to read 200 words. This Internet thing that Al Gore invented - it has resulted in reading ADD. I will try to do better. Or less. Twitterize it, Mark said. At least I'm not marketing what I write...even though I saw that I could have made $784 last year as my blog was ranked the 11,485,988th blog. But you'd have to look at ads. Yuck.

I DID find out why Paul doesn't know most of what I've told him - and proceeds to repeat it to me like a new fact a few days later, "Did you hear that...?" Why I told you that a few days ago...People only absorb 18% of the information coming at them - in that staff meeting, at church, at home when their wife is telling them important stuff.

There is a great deal of clutter in our lives. Mark Mathis told us

• We were hit with 570 messages a day in 1970
• 3,000/day in 2008
• 5,000 today

And those darn marketers - they just keep finding ways to squeeze in their products. It takes 12 ad exposures before purchase and 47 days. Workshop participants received a great deal of information to help them figure out the best ways to get the best methods to reach their customers - and then evaluate the results (my favorite part). They will be able to receive follow up training over the next few weeks. Our department is helping Iowans get information about safe disposal of the things they have to get rid of. Yay us. That's why I work there. Woot, woot!