Target and Oreo Cookie combine to make a cute milk teardrop commercial.

It's nice to see Target breakthrough and let children's creativity seep into the Oreo Cookie commercial featured below.

However, somewhere in this vast country of ours, this commercial idea might have been STOLEN from a cute lil girl who actually did what is depicted in the commercial. I would hope that girl was rewarded with a 4 year college scholarship for coming up with something that room full of advertising agencies could not possibly come up with on their own.

Grow a conscience and pay the girl!

Oh, congrats on making something so good in only fifteen seconds. However, if I had been consulted on this commercial, there is one small suggestion I would have made, not anything earth shattering, but something that might have been overlooked.

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How I would Solve the Public Employee Union Pension and Benefits controversy.

I think the Public Employee Union Pension controversy can be problem solved by viewing it as a known percentage of the total city budget. I actually wonder if it is constitutional to promise city pensions without a cost analysis of what percentage of the total city budget those pensions may cost the city 30 years in the future.

There has to be an agreed to percentage of the total city and state revenue that can be applied to city and state employee pensions, vacations and healthcare. I would guess that 10 to 12 percent of total state revenue is the maximum a state can afford to allocate in the form of pensions on an annual basis.

If pension, vacation and healthcare benefits rise over that 10 to 12 percent of a state's budget, the pressure to sustain growing public employment levels (as the population rises) while paying additional benefits to past employees, becomes suffocating.

So now the question becomes, what percentage of a state's budget do pension, vacation, and healthcare presently require? I would guess that present levels are probably closer to 20-33% of a states budget.

If an public employee works from age 24 to 54, then retires, and is retired for 20 years, then basically, they worked 30 years and received a significant percentage of their regular wage for the next 20 years as pension. The math does not add up. Now, if a public employee works from 24 to 64, and then retires for 10 years...that math almost adds up.

I would suggest that a new formula be incorporated in which public employees receive one pension year at 80% of their average pay, for every 3 years they work, and provide a death benefit if they pass early to go to a family member.

My presentation above can easily be tweaked in any direction. But the underlying point remains the same, pension, vacation, and healthcare benefits can only take up a certain percentage of a states budget before the result is a budget suffocation that hurts everybody.

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When Television is ahead of its time, Harry's Law and Fairly Legal promote dispute resolution, something the real world can't seem to fathom.

When Egypt was in lock down for a week, I suggested halfway through that Hosni Mubarak should come down from this throne and walk among the people, and talk to them. I further suggested Mubarak should immediately hire six of the street protestors to be part of the transition team, and then a few days later, hire an additional six that would be selected by the street protestors.

Instead, the military has taken over.

Fast Forward to Libya, where there are reports of protestors being gunned down by war planes from above. If Mubarak had met with his people, perhaps Moammar Gaddafi (aka Kadafi)

doesn't kill his own people if Mubarak had met with his.

I think its great that the networks picked this year to come up with two quality shows, Harry's Law, and Fairly Legal, that focus on dispute resolution over gunfire, too bad the real world could not follow suit.

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Analyzing how some Disputes Begin Innocently, Part 1 of 3, the Snowball effect.

I recently witnessed what was supposed to be a friendly internet video suggestion for increasing one's business, turn into a mini brouhaha in the comments section. You can view the video suggestion and the comments that followed by clicking here. Please read the comments from the bottom up since that was the order that they originally occurred.

The comments section quickly overshadowed the entire point of the video, which was to give out for free what was supposed to be a motivational idea for realtors and appraisers to increase their business. The comments section turned into an escalation of angry, accusatory statements. Because the upset comments caught those who liked the idea off guard, they in turn replied in a hostile manner.

I suggest studying the video, then the comments, to really experience how disputes begin. In parts 2 and 3, I'll go into a bit more detail as to what caused the dispute to escalate, and what could be done to prevent the entire dispute from happening in the first place.

http://www.thinkbigworksmall.com/mypage/archive/1/58291

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Analyzing How Some Disputes Begin Innocently. Part 2 of 3, How Disputes Snowball.

In case you missed the first part of this three part series "Analyzing How Some Disputes Begin Innocently...", you can refer to the "free idea" that resulted in dispute escalation, and led to this series being created, by clicking here. First watch the video, then start reading the comments from the bottom to the top, since that is the order in which they originally came in.

When I analyzed how the sharing of the video that was meant as a free gift, a free idea for other realtors and loan arranger's to use at their own discretion, I noticed certain common elements that made the comments section quickly escalate into one of anger and confrontation, or what I call "blowback".

Blowback occurred because different contributors to the topic had created a different interpretation of the original topic. It became clear as the blowback escalated that what was driving the confrontation was anger and accusations of advocating an illegal action, while others were shocked that some others found the idea offensive at all.

There is a scene in Everybody Loves Raymond, in which the wife, Debra, tells Raymond that her parents are getting a divorce. Raymond, trying to be sympathetic, instead bursts out in laughter. I've seen this episode a few times, but it wasn't until perhaps the 4th or 5th time viewing that I finally understood why Raymond was laughing.

When describing the impending divorce of her parents, Debra had said, in a very tearful manner, "My parents are headed down the path of divorce". It suddenly struck me how pretentious that sounded, which would then explain Raymond's giggling and his explanation that he pictured Debra's parents walking down a pathway with a sign that said divorce on it up ahead.

It took me several viewings for me to realize that Raymond was actually right. The first few times I thought Raymond's character was really being a jerk, but then I changed my mind and realized that there was a pretense to the way Debra describe her parents getting a divorce that made Raymond giggle.

Am I implying that there was a pretentiousness in the way that the video idea was presented that may have triggered the reactions that followed? While yes would be the somewhat short and direct answer, I would then become guilty of further blowback escalating the situation and frankly, that would not really be accurate either.

Part 3 of 3 of Analyzing How Some Disputes Begin Innocently reveals one possible solution to preventing blowback escalation where good intentions were meant to be fostered.

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Analyzing How Some Disputes Begin Innocently. Part 3 of 3, the Solution Revealed.

If you read Parts 1 & 2 of Analyzing How Some Disputes Innocently Begin, I'm glad you are back to uncover what actually sparked the unforeseen dispute into a war of words.

The unforeseen dispute was caused by communicating the original idea, an idea that had already been apparently successfully implemented, in an oversimplified manner.

While many times, "less is more", that is not necessarily true when it comes to describing the secret to someone's success. W

hen it comes to describing the success of a project or endeavor, oversimplification can rile other people up and make them feel like they are being talked down to.

Even now I am treading the line of oversimplification in explaining what went unexpectedly wrong when an idea was freely shared.

However, the difference here is, you can analyze the original video and the many many comments that followed and see if you draw the same conclusion that I have come to.

If you read the comments section, please start at the bottom, not the top, so that you can experience the "escalation in miscommunication" that an overly simplified yet potentially successfully implemented idea, can spawn.

Oversimplification of successful endeavors can be a ticking time bomb when it comes to sharing that success with others. However, I thank Frank Garay and Brian Stevens of Think Big, Work Small, for letting us experience such an invaluable lesson while also sharing a potentially good idea with their own viewers.

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Harriet's Law takes a new perspective on Law and Order Shows.

It looks like David E Kelley has managed to reinvent the legal show genre in an original way with Harriet's Law, which can be seen on NBC every Monday Night at 10PM, with a bonus rerun Saturday Nights as well. In the episode that is running as I write this, Mr. Kelley managed to handle a situation in the opening scene that has long been one of my pet peeves about our society.

A smitten lawyer from the show is planning a weekend trip with his girlfriend of just one week. The two are discussing their plans via cellphone, at night, as they walk to their cars. Suddenly, the girl is attacked by a would be rapist.

Scenes like this are wake up calls reminding us that just because we own cellphones and Ipods and Ipads does not make us "safe" as we walk to our cars at night, and this is a message that is too infrequently broadcast on television.

Of course, the attack scene while the good guys were gabbing to each other on their cell phones was very powerful. Hopefully this scene will remind others that just because they own a cell phone does not mean they are impervious to their surroundings simply because they choose to ignore the world around them as they gab on the phone.

It will be interesting to see if Harriet's Law ever takes on the issue of unfair foreclosures in the United States.

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Hey, AlexLOGIC had a similar thought to Mark Cuban about investing, however it was three years later.

Mark Cuban said this a while ago, perhaps as long ago as Feb. 1, 2002.

"I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren't much more than baseball cards. They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for it." --Mark Cuban

What Alex LOGIC wrote on Jan. 25, 2011...

Even successful stocks like Apple make less sense nowadays. Why am I buying Apple? I get nothing for it. I don’t get a dividend. If a company as rich as Apple can’t afford to give out a dividend, why am I buying their stock? Because I’m gambling that others will continue to want Apple and the price will continue to go up.

But Apple Stock will probably not go up forever. Therefore, Apple becomes a gambling stock and people are not in it forever, or not even necessarily for the long long term, because Apple does not give the investor anything unless the investor sells.

I only discovered Mark Cuban's quote earlier today (Feb. 6. 2011) on the Big Picture Blog (on a February 3rd article begging Cuban to buy the Mets), where it was featured as the quote of the day. It felt good to have something in common with a billionaire, even if it wasn't the money.

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Million Dollar Money Drop is a Drip Off and how Fox Television can fix the leak.

The biggest problem with Million Dollar Money Drop is it almost doesn't matter how much money contestants start with, they inevitably lose a certain portion every round so even if they make it to the final round, round seven, they have lost anywhere from 50% to 90% of the money they started with, EVEN THOUGH THE CONTESTANTS HAVE TO WIN EVERY ROUND!

It is my assertion that Million Dollar Money Drop could become 5 Million Dollar Money Drop and contestants would at most win 100,000 to 200,000 dollars because the game is systemically engineered against the contestants.

It's a shame really because the questions are fun. The question side of million dollar money drop is the best part of the show, and I would rethink the money drop part very quickly before fans of the show simply realize how difficult it is to come away with just a small fraction of the original million dollars.

The advice I just shared in this article, that Million Dollar Money Drop could go up to either 2 million, or 5 Million Dollar Money Drop, without breaking Fox's bankbook, is worth tens of millions of dollars to Fox Television because the minimal increase in contestants winnings would be overshadowed by an increase in ratings, or the prevention of ratings erosion.

Hey Fox, if you use my suggestion, please contact me about my fee.


Check out AlexLOGIC's best and worst commercials of 2011.

If you are planning on creating or broadcasting a commercial and want an objective, outsiders point of view about your commercial, contact Alessandro Machi about his consulting services at...

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