Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Marketing Recognizes Procurement. Does That Mean We’re Sexy Now?

The World Federation of Advertisers, or the WFA, which is a global trade association for multi-national advertisers and national advertisers, quietly launched a Global Sourcing Board about six weeks ago to revolutionize the practice and perception of marketing procurement as per this press release.

According to the press release, the ambition is to reposition procurement as a driver of company growth rather than a seeker of savings, transforming cultures and approach within sourcing teams as well as perceptions across the wider marketing, finance and agency community.

Great ambition, and desperately needed, but how much change is going to be driven by a board of 12 people that meets only four times a year? No matter how big the companies they work for are?

At least we can say if a global marketing organization is recognizing procurement then we must be getting sexy. Too bad they’re not doing more to promote us.

One Hundred and Twenty Five Years Ago Today …

The Americans got themselves an official, federal, US Holiday that goes by the name of Labor Day. While this may not mean much to SI’s readers across the pond (where it seems that they get a bank holiday every other week in the UK and over a month of vacation every year in much of the Western EU), this is pretty significant when you consider that paid holidays in the US are not required under any government regulations and
blue collar and service workers in the US average only 7 paid holidays (while federal employees get 10).

And while this might not sound bad, US law does not require employers to grant any vacation and about 25% of all employees in the US receive no paid vacation time (or even paid holidays). And even in companies where workers get vacation, vacation starts at one week for entry level / new blue collar / service employees and two weeks for white collar jobs (after a year of service). It usually takes five to ten years at the same job for an employee to accrue three weeks, and twenty years of service to get four weeks.

In short, even though Labor Day has been a federal holiday in the US for 125 years, the plight of labour in the United States still needs to be recognized!

Fifty Years of Monty Python

Fifty years ago today, the Monty Python Comedy Troupe formed.

A mere 148 days after the troupe formation, the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus airs on BBC One! And the world was never the same.

(As an FYI, This is a historic day for Canadians everywhere as it was the Monty Python Comedy Troupe that first exposed the world to the inner mind of a Canadian lumberjack! 😉

Follow the link for the Monty Python Lumberjack Song.

It may not have been the image Canadians wanted to project, but at least the world knew that there were Canadian lumberjacks after its release! [Better to have a message with some impurity than to fade into obscurity.])

(One thing the Troupe didn’t tell you is that a Canadian Lumberjack’s favourite pet is a House Hippo [and a cousin of the West African pygmy hippo], native to, and now only found in, Canada due to the changing hunting habits of the eastern wildcats.)