Dr. Neil Hair

The marketing was brilliant – the following extremely loyal. It is with great regret to hear today that Zoom – a low cost carrier with umpf went into administration. I am gutted for them. Not least because they offered great prices from Canada to the UK – but because they appeared to be one of the very few airlines capable of marketing to their consumers effectively. Their business model was fundamentally flawed however. It doesnt matter how great your marketing is, when the price of oil jumps from $80 to over $120 your costs exceed revenue. So – what can we learn from this? Marketers and budding entrepreneurs alike need to appreciate the importance of forward planning when putting together business plans and of course learning the jargon of finance! Whether you got into marketing or not to avoid the numbers – to be successful you cant ultimately avoid them. Make sure an introduction to finance course is on your list of must have classes if youre planning on starting a business. No excuses. Thankfully I remained loyal to British Airways when booking my flight to the ICRM conference in Swansea this September but it was a close call.

Came across Bag Borrow or Steal today whilst perusing the dainty delights of woot.com. The first thing that surprised me was that my attention was captured by an advert online! This doesn't normally happen and I usually drown out the annoyances of flashy ads (like we all do). So – curiosity got the better of me and off I went to the site. Interesting business concept – rent a designer bag of your choice for as long as you like without actually owning it. Now, I know what handbags mean and do to normally loving and sensitive members of the opposite sex. It drives them wild with passion, produces largely unpreventable cooing noises from them in public settings when they spot a Chloe, and convinces even the most frugal that dropping a couple of grand on a piece of sewn leather is somehow – and I quote from personal experience here – 'a sound investment for the future.' How exactly a brown and yellow strapped bag is an investment for the future is beyond this professors abilities to reason. That said, a business that rents these out is onto something I can tell you! For just $49 a week you can carry the latest, be seen with it, then ditch it back for another, and then be seen with that as well. Smart marketing and I hope my wife doesn't see this posting.

I recently read an article exploring the notion that Scotland might sometime in the future field its own Scottish Olympic team. The article mentioned a dream team scenario of a 'European' team and I did a little digging to see how it would have performed. The results are startling. I counted at least 78 Gold's and a whopping 250 medals total – both count more than double the leader in each category. The world should probably hope unification never really takes hold as a result! Go team Europe!!

Ive known for a while that people were making money (good money relatively speaking) from farming gold – in popular virtual worlds – to sell to other gamers who dont have the time to rack up the points. Ive known for some time that people buy and sell characters developed over time with special powers and abilities. What I didnt realize however was that people from the poorest parts of the world were using it as a way of supplementing income. Part of me is amazed by the whole sub culture that has developed around virtual worlds – especially as it relates to their economies. Part of me says good for the person wanting to make money from it. And part of me realizes that making an extra $77 a month must take game play of at least ten hours a day. Im thinking digital sweat shops – and to my mind that is a rather sad reflection on a modern society that turns having fun in a virtual environment into a form of modern day serfdom.

This quarter I managed to receive grant funding in support of my research program which essentially buys me out of teaching until the Winter. However, there is still a Professor Hair on the roster of Saunders faculty. A Dr R Hair rather than a Dr N Hair. My wife starts teaching Organizational Behavior in class and online in the fall and Im looking forward to seeing her in action. Dr R Hair shares a number of similarities with her husband regards teaching style and philosophy. Student centered, experiential, interactive, and – hopefully – fun. I've reminded myself just how much fun you can have inventing a course from scratch. It also reminded me of just how much work and preparation goes into designing what we both call – a good experience – in the classroom. We've had several long conversations about our pedagogical approaches and there are a few differences – mainly given the fact that OB is very different in nature to that of marketing. Shes really looking forward to it as well which I think is always a good sign. Its certainly making for interesting conversation and its reminding me of all the issues I faced initially when I started my teaching career – plenty of soul searching in terms of who you are and what you want to accomplish in terms of the classroom experience.

I was delighted to learn that my blog and site has been listed in the top 50 business professor blogs by http://www.mbaexplorer.com/. Site visits continue to grow as does my reader base. People often ask me why I do it. The answer is that I enjoy it and it helps me stay in touch with my network. It also serves many additional purposes – materials for class and corporate training programs, humor, keeping family and friends updated among them. You can check the report here.

It is with mixed feelings to report that Phil Tyler – my mentor and close friend has finally left the building. On Thursday evening Phil taught his last marketing class for us and I was there with his wife and my wife to greet him. Phil has been with the college for almost 40 years and has never taken a quarter off from teaching in that time. His plans now – he tells me – are to travel and take it easy. The allure of life without grading it seems, was just too much. Mixed feelings because I'll miss having him as a colleague (he hired me back in 1999 as a visitor) but I'm pleased for him and Carol that life 3.0 is about to begin. Best wishes mate.

This summer I completed my third online learning class at the MBA level using the Adobe Connect suite of products. I'm a passionate convert to the platform and so are my students and their clients. The course I teach mirrors the in-class version of Marketing Concepts;

• Office hours – twice a week face to face (in one of the Connect Meeting rooms set up specifically for it).
• Small study sets of no more than 6 students working for a real client needing marketing help.
• Secure team rooms where students meet with each other, me, and the client to discuss the project.
• Bespoke lecture materials streamed in Adobe Presenter format and MP3 for those on the go.
• Client deliverables include an online presentation (sometimes pre-recorded) and a live debrief session in their Connect Meeting room.
• and the usual levels of rigor and stress that tends to accompany one of my classes and then some.

The feature I enjoy most about Adobe Connect is the ability to record and archive live meetings. This takes the whole client presentation and debrief to a new level of usability. More people get to see it. What a I love most about the process is that a team of masters students can co-exist in a virtual space, deliver top quality marketing plans and present all of their hard work without ever having physically met either myself, the client or eachother in the process. Many of us have also travelled this summer whilst still being able to fully engage in this process. Now if that isnt REAL online learning then I dont know what is. Congratulations summer class of 08. A fantastic set of projects. YouTube video of these guys in action to follow…

So. Having successfully removed the excessive levels of zink protecting my little ginger skin from the sun today - my red head loving wife sent me a link to a Telegraph article that she found on Vogue. It seems that Vogue, in its fine wisdom of all things fashion, has decided to post for the 7th time in its 116 year history a 'glorious' picture of Karen Elson – on the front page. No doubt Karen's lovely pale complexion has been maintained by her similar use of SPF factor 50 (thats right – fifty in my case). Anyways, the world is said to be in shock. Several issues of note from the article: That there is a "red-headed reputation for being hot-tempered and being hypersensitive to pain" – a comment so absolutely rubbish that I flew into a violent rage before getting a headache - that we are "proud flame-throwers" (I particularly liked that one) and of course liberal smatterings of use of the word 'Duracell' (trademark infringement noted in the article by the way) and most imaginatively 'carrot top' and 'ginger nut' by the author Hannah Betts. I actually enjoyed reading it to be honest – but seriously – only 7 times in 116 years? What they need now are statistics demonstrating the hike in readership for the month of September. Buy it now and put Ginger back on the map! Oh and dont you pity the poor researcher that had to go back and count all the previous issues?