Dr. Neil Hair

Fantastic. I'm ill. Not sufficient that I have the flu Ive also been told I have gingervitis (to which there is no cure). 'Born with ginger hair' and thankfully a fantastic personality and sense of humor to go with it. A student suggested this site to me last week and Ive fallen in love with it. The ginger population are beautiful people - but according to the site, entirely soulless. Allow me to share my own personal burdens having been born with red hair:

1. I was often the target of local newspaper organizations intent on placing me as a small child on the knees of Santas for colour photo opportunities. I continue to have an aversion for sitting on Santas knees the world over many years later.

2. I have only worn red once in my lifetime. A mistake my grandmother made when I was two and was hastily corrected by my mother when she found me playing with and eating mud (because I had no friends). The two did not speak for a year over the incident.

3. Old women smelling of lavender on busses that I did not know would regularly point at me, coo, wave and smile as I tried to integrate myself with wider society at an early age.

5. My mother cut my curly hair once every two years until the age of ten in an attempt to prolong the agony of my reconciling myself to the fact that I was not like normal people.

4. I wear industrial strength SPF from March 1st every year through to November 1st in an attempt to prevent my entire face from being taken over by freckles.

5. When wearing any colour other than black, green, brown or blue people shout at me 'SHAME!!'

6. I have never dated or kissed another person with Red Hair. It is against the law in America and England (the Welsh don't seem to mind it, but then they have their own problems).

7. I grew up with a younger brother who managed to convince himself he was a 'strawberry blond' in the false hope that one day he would grow the strawberry out and be a real blond. He too now suffers from this full on rare disease as the blond hastily left him around the age of 12. What a crying shame.

8. I was married for no other reason other than my red hair. Rose doesn't even really like me, for her it is more a matter of good conscience that she was trying to prevent another Gingervitis sufferer from procreating with me thus increasing the chances of ginger babies.

9. I grew up listening to ginger singers. Jimmy Somerville, Andy Bell and Mick Hucknall (the latter I hate with a passion as he had the guts to grow his hair very long but could afford the security and protection of personal bodyguards to get away with it).

10. One of my best men is also a Ginger - dispelling the myth that we do not play nicely together (although he did once put me in hospital). Safety it seems in numbers.

And now a personal statement about red hair. I love it. I wouldn't change it. Dye it. Cover it. Not for anyone. I'm ginger and I'm proud of it. It's taken me 30 years of expensive counseling to be able to say it, but it's finally true. Gingers RULE!

Take a technology aimed at annoying the hell out of youngsters to stop them congregating on street corners, flip it, and market it to them. That's whats happened to a Welsh company in the UK whose product used ultra high frequency that only younger ears can hear. The company now offers a ring tone that only younger ears can hear and now music that only younger ears can hear. An interesting spin I thought on marketing the product to a wider audience. The annoying thing is though, I have no idea if I can hear it or not. I'll probaby spend the rest of my life wondering what it would sound like, but then I realized I have a life and no bother. Innovative concept however and one that I wanted to bring to your attention.

I read a really interesting take on Rochester today on the D&C website. They pick up on many of the issues that have bothered me since moving back to Rochester in 2004. What really interests me though are peoples comments on the area and how frustrated graduates of the regions colleges are with it. The comments at the end of the article make interesting reading. I'm not sure I agree with one persons notion that college students are a problem. Students bring a tremendous amount of diversity and funds to the area but I agree that students alone are not necessarily the answer to a flagging economy (especially if there is no reason for them to stay!). Hi-Tech is one way to go, so is tourism. What about the cultural sector as a means of differentiation? I'd like to see the city center receive a lot of attention before we look at the rest of the area. I'm also a believer that college town has the potential to really shape the Henrietta locale. We live in a beautiful part of the world, a short drive to work demonstrates this to me every day. My money is on culture.

How amusing, Microsoft suddenly woke one morning to find YouTube had millions of visitors and the potential for even more millions in revenue. Its response? Soapbox. Too little too late I'm afraid - another great example of the power of mindshare. When people think internet tv they think YouTube. It does pose an interesting quandary for marketers however, how do you take mindshare from a massively popular company of the people like YouTube? The answer as far as I can see is specialized content. Should Microsoft want to get into the game of serious tv they should throw some money at it. And throw some real money into it. Target a specific market that YouTube will find hard to emulate - paid content perhaps (particularly as YouTube is yet to really define its commercial business model). Interesting times for internet TV. I guess we can always wait for YouTube to be sued by those idiots who see it threatening copyright infringement (rather than building a fan base for obscure programming and thus a tangible relationship with people it would never otherwise have realized existed).

It starts with a friendly smile, someone interested in whether you really have given yourself enough time to check in for your international flight or whether you will need help to clear security a little quicker to get you to your gate. You approach the ticket desk and instead of being greeted with the screech "NEXT" you are asked politely for your tickets and your passport. Recognizing that this is your 20th flight on that said airline you are thanked and offered a free upgrade to first class so you can experience the feeling of turning left at a planes entrance and not right as you usually do to join the rabble. Further you are reminded that from here on in at intervals of ten you will always be upgraded as a sign of appreciation for your loyalty. You sit in your nice fully reclinable chair and don a pair of Bose 3 noise canceling headphones and sip your genuine French champagne with not a five dollar bill in sight. Further, you are reminded that it is perfectly acceptable - in fact desirable - that you press for assistance if there is anything we can do to make your travel with us more enjoyable. This of course includes an inflight neck and shoulder massage and if you should so wish, more alcohol than you would find in a small Irish town. Internet access comes as standard as does the ability to shower and change before clearing customs and immigration at your point of arrival. You arrive feeling wonderful, you relationship with your airline in tact and when people now ask you how your flight was they cant shut you up for the positive things you want to say.

Welcome to airline travel as it should be.

I feel compelled to spill the beans on the other news from my recent travels. No longer will I put up with such a shambles. Someone has to say something! Here are several commandments I wish to issue all international American operators with immediate effect:

1. You will not rearrange my flight times without prior notice, even if these are less than an hour in nature. Half an hour longer in certain airports is half an hour too long. Leaving earlier just isn't civilized.
2. You will not forget to ask me if I packed my own bags, been asked to carry something for someone, and only ask if I am carrying dangerous firearms (what is a non dangerous firearm I feel compelled to ask but dare not - to do so would involve more time in the said airport).
3. You will not tell me you are operating a 'reduced beverage service' and then only offer me either water or the option 'with ice' as though you are treating me like royalty. You will not then try to sell me a credit card and have the captain come online and announce in an apologetic voice, thank you for flying an American Airline in such a way that they clearly hope you forget the experience.
4. You will not attempt to ever fly me on a connecting flight from Philadelphia ever again so long as I shall live.
5. You will not attempt to charge me $5 for the loan of second grade headphones with specialised two prongs (thus justifying the price) so I can watch films that were on my netflix list before Christmas 2004.
6. You will not charge me $5 for a gin and tonic and then forget the lime (and the gin as far as I could detect).
7. You will not charge me $5 for a glass of red from Chili when I could have bought a buckets worth for that back home, or $5 for a glass of champagne only for the label to read sparkling 'white' Californian wine. Also, you will not to try convince me that 5 Euro of my hard earned money is the same as $5. In your dreams! You've just made a buck on me - charge please (and they then pay the 2% visa charge - oh wait - it's cash only! Hmm… can you spell stocktake?)
8. You will not provide me with chicken OR pasta as a source of nourishment when there is clearly no difference between the two. Ever, ever, ever. Lest you want it and the plate its served on adorning your flight attendant and book reading lights.
9. You will not announce on the tannoy half way through a transatlantic flight that, and I quote, "there is absolutely no need for you to press the attendant button on your console," ever. Lest you want 700 passengers in tandem doing JUST THAT.
10. You will not employ people who really dont want to be there, who are as incompetent as to ask whether you would like a plastic glass with your red wine from Chili (assuming instead that you would like to sup from the bottle as they do when they finish work) or sleep half way through their 8 hour day thus taking up 6 seats (notice how they always appear refreshed at the end of their travels only to go on and sleep in a hotel for another 8?).

Jet Blue - you're excused - you're excellent at what you do. The rest of you should be ashamed. I for one would rather pay an additional $100 a flight to be guaranteed friendly service, a decent meal and a couple of free drinks for my trouble at checkin. What ever happened to that old age of civilized travel? All of this in the name of cost efficiencies? Enjoy your decline, I'll be supping to it from my plastic cup nursing a sore index finger.

Having just returned from Leipzig where Ryan Kearns (a recently graduated honors student at Saunders) and I presented a full paper. I wanted to report on a number of reflections. The first is on the community of relationship marketers. I love participating at this conference for a number of reasons, the collegiality amongst fellow supporters is near legendary in status. Unlike the large conference circuits where thousands of faceless people move like drones from one track to the next the colloquium is a single track affair. This presents several benefits - you get to meet everyone over a three day period. You get to listen to and feedback on everyones presentations. There are more opportunities to collaborate on future research projects. You receive specialized feedback on your work from some of the industries top scholars (including on this occasion, Gummerson, Ballantyne, Saren and Lobler amongst others) and most importantly you get to socially interact with these people who share a fundamentally common interest - relationships in marketing. Several important personal outcomes can be noted:

1. Extremely positive feedback on a piece of exploratory research Ryan and I are working on regarding the perceptions of consumers relationships with electronic retailers. Expect a forthcoming journal article on this in the not too distant future. Ryan has subsequently been offered a fee waiver for a place to study at the University of Westminster in the UK on a PhD programme and is considering several other options that were made available to him as a result of his conference presentation.

2. Several opportunities to work with international scholars on relationship marketing issues - most notably my friend Lyle Wetsch from the university of St Johns who begins a research sabbatical later this year. Looking forward to it Lyle.

3. A rekindled love affair with Germany. I was not expecting much from Leipzig to be honest, a former East German city with a population of about half a million. To my surprise the city is beautiful, comprised mainly of service sector employment, heavily populated by students (40,000) and thoroughly cosmopolitan in nature. Just what Rochester needs to be in my humble opinion! I cant wait to go back and will add this city to a very short list of those that I have fallen in love with.

I had an excellent start to the fall quarter with an energized bunch of undergraduates interested in Internet Marketing. Very much looking forward to working with them. Several issues interested me as our discussions unfolded today that I want to report on;

• The proliferation of social networking is well established it seems. Over 70% of students had either a myspace (only a few) or a facebook presence (the vast majority).
• There were more students in the room who had been poked than were prepared to admit to being pok'ers (interesting social implications I think, particularly as they relate to forming social bonds online).
• No one was prepared to admit they had found love online (one assumes we can blame ehar'money'.com for this, either that or it still holds a certain Geekyness perception).
• 1 student owned their own domain name (but not their name domain such as neilhair.com).
• Three students admitted they had been to hamsterdance.com (one hopes this is not a regular occurrence).
• Only 2 students admitted to being regular Amazon users (this really interests me, is this a financial issue or perhaps the demise of this monster for companies that offer better 'value'?).
• Oh, and there were NO French nationals in class.

Looking forward to the next eleven weeks.