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British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

The phrase has come to be associated with the idea that statistics can be manipulated or tweaked in ways to bolster virtually any argument. For example, witness  the current disagreement between the White House and Congressional Republicans about the latest employment figures: President Obama heralded the drop in the unemployment rate (down from 9.0 percent to 8.6 percent) while his political opponents noted that the decrease was mostly due to 350,000 people giving up looking for a job.

There had been much chatter lately in the real estate industry about home sales improving – until the National Association of Realtors revealed that many home sales since 2007 had been double-counted, resulting in an inflation of the number. Revised figures will be issued shortly … no doubt they will be received with a skeptical eye.

In Indiana, the big news has been the discovery of $320 million of money sitting around in state coffers. It had been collected from corporate taxes and placed in government bank accounts, but somehow never got moved over to the state’s operating budget for dispersal.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has done his darndest to spin this as a happy windfall for Indiana’s books. The state worker who discovered the error is even being singled out for praise and a possible reward.

But for a governor who prides himself on being a wonky fiscal expert, the shoddy accounting still leaves some egg on Daniels’ face. Democrats, concerned about deep cuts in state funding for education, are crying foul at the GOP proposal to return most of the money to taxpayers.

It just goes to show that cold, hard numbers don’t always tell the whole truth.

 

When I’m not wearing my hat as senior copywriter/editor here at Coles Marketing, I serve as film critic for several newspapers and websites. I’m also a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association, a regional group comprised of 11 Hoosier movie critics.

Now that I’ve been immersed in the marketing/PR world for eight months now, it’s given me a new perspective on getting the word out about organizations and businesses. When the IFJA gave out our first annual film awards in 2009, I was a little befuddled by how to let media outlets know about it, and to get the word out via social media.

Now I can apply my new marketing skills to my duties as a freelance critic — making the day job work for the night job, so to speak.

For instance, I realized I was formatting the press release for our awards all wrong. This year’s was tighter, bolder and got straight to the point.

And there’s no denying that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. can get the news on the street faster than old-fashioned mainstream media. The winner of the IFJA Hoosier Award, given to a filmmaker with Indiana roots, found out about the honor via Facebook before anyone from the organization even emailed her.

Oh, and if you’re interested in seeing what movies won which awards, head over to our group’s (brand new!) website: http://indianafilmjournalists.com/.

LinkedIn is a business community tool that some people use more than others. It can be a great way to connect with potential clients. As a user, I get regular updates alerting me to interesting recent posts in the LinkedIn community. The following post made me laugh. It’s about the overuse of industry speak or “corporate puffery” as I like to call it. It was provided by Dan Pallotta and his post is titled “I Don’t Understand What Anyone is Saying Anymore” and I couldn’t agree more with him.

I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore

I’d say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me. The language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. When I was younger, if I didn’t understand what people were saying, I thought I was stupid. Now I realize that if it’s to people’s benefit that I understand them but I don’t, then they’re the ones who are stupid.

There are at least five strains of this epidemic.

Abstractionitis
We have forgotten how to use the real names of real things. Like doorknobs. Instead, people talk about the idea of doorknobs, without actually using the word “doorknob.” So a new idea for a doorknob becomes “an innovation in residential access.” Expose yourself repeatedly to the extrapolation of this practice to things more complicated than a doorknob and you really just need to carry Excedrin around with you all day.

Acronymitis
This is a disease of epic proportions in the world of charity. I was at a meeting just two days ago at which several well-meaning staff members of a charity were presenting to their board, and the meat of their discussion revolved around the acronyms SCEA and some other one that began with “R” that I can’t recall. In the span of three minutes these acronyms must have been used eight times each. They were central to any understanding of the topic at hand, but they were never defined. So I had not the vaguest idea what the presenters were talking about. None. Could have been talking about how to make a beurre-blanc sauce for all I know.

Valley Girl 2.0
My partner and I were at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley five years ago, and a real-live Valley girl was sitting in the booth behind us talking on her cell phone. We couldn’t stop listening to her. She had a world-class ability to string together half-sentences devoid of any substance whatsoever. And yet you felt as if something important were being discussed! “And she was like, ummm, and I was just like, you know, umm, no way, really, like, yeah, and when she was like that, I was just like..umm….” She could go on in this way for extended periods of time without mentioning any actual people, actions, or thoughts. There’s a business version of this illness. It involves the use of words such as “space,” “around,” “synergy,” and “value-add” with a healthy dose of equivocators like “sort of” and “kind of” to ensure that there is no commitment to anything being said: “I’m in the sort of sustainability space around kind of bringing synergistic value-add to other people’s work around this kind of space.” Oh, OK, that explains it.

Meaningless Expressions
I wrote about the phrase “thinking outside the box” recently and how overused and utterly misunderstood the expression is. There are many more. Another term that has lost its meaning is “Let’s exceed the customer’s expectations.” Employees who hear it just leave the pep rally, inhabit some kind of temporary dazed intensity, and then go back to doing things exactly the way they did before the speech. Customers almost universally never experience their expectations being met, much less exceeded. How can you exceed the customer’s expectations if you have no idea what those expectations are? I was at a Hilton a few weeks ago. They had taken this absurdity to its logical end. There was a huge sign in the lobby that said, “Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation.” The best way to start would be to take down that bullshit sign that just reminds me, as a customer, how cosmic the gap is between what businesses say and what they do. My expectation is not to have signs around that tell me you want to exceed my expectations.

Abstract Valley Girl 2.0 Acronymitis Using Meaningless Expressions
This is when you combine the four diseases above. So you get phrases like, “You should meet this guy with the SIO. He’s sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he’s in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP.” How many times have you heard what you now recall to be precisely this sentence?

This would all be funny if it weren’t true. People just don’t make sense anymore. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you internalize this. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.

You will gain tremendous credibility, become much more productive, make those around you much more productive, and experience a great deal more joy in your working life if you look someone in the eye after hearing one of these verbal brain jammers and tell the person, “I don’t have any idea what you just said to me.”

 

Just “Like” the Indy Auto Show on Facebook for a chance to win two tickets to the Indy Auto Show.

The Indy Auto Show runs Monday, December 26, 2011, through Sunday, January 1, 2012.

The 98th annual auto show will feature more than 375,000 square feet of exhibit space for vehicles. Exhibitors will include a variety of well-known domestic and foreign manufacturers. Tickets are $7 for adults and children under 12 are free. Online tickets are available at indyautoshow.com.

Charities looking to meet their year-end goals now have an answer. The Indianapolis Home Show is offering charities a unique way to raise money.

Local charitable and non-profit organizations are invited to sell tickets for the 90^th Annual Indianapolis Home Show at a discounted rate and keep a portion of the proceeds for their organization’s involvement.

Applications for fundraising efforts with the 2012 Indianapolis Home Show are now being accepted. However, the number of partners working on the fundraising program is limited.

If you are looking for more information on the program and application process, please call 317-705-8719 or visit the Indianapolis Home Show website at www.IndianapolisHomeShow.com.

Information about the Indianapolis Home Show

WHEN: 10 days: January 20 – January 29, 2012

TICKETS: Admission is $13 for adults, $3 for children ages 6 to 12 and free for children 5 and younger. For more information, call 317-705-8719 or visit the Indianapolis Home Show website at www.IndianapolisHomeShow.com.

TIMES:

Fridays                         1/20, 1/27                   11 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Saturdays                     1/21, 1/28                    9 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Sunday                         1/22                             10 a.m. – 6 p.m

Sunday                         1/29                             10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Monday-Thursday      1/23 – 1/26                  11 a.m. – 9 p.m.

 

I recently discovered a new app for my iPhone that I really like.

Waze is a free mobile app that provides voice navigation and turn-by-turn directions. It works with GPS and crowd-sourced traffic data that is anonymously gathered from drivers’ locations from their phones. Waze compiles the information, analyzes the traffic and then provides the best routes for drivers to save time and avoid traffic jams. Waze also builds the maps itself from the social data that drivers provide. There is also a social community component within Waze where drivers can report road hazards, accidents, police, traffic jams and engage with other users. The Waze community is growing exponentially and currently has more than 7 million users.

Here’s the deal:

Waze can be used as a simple progress map where you see yourself as a car icon moving along the map, passing roads just like on a standalone GPS device. But what makes Waze different is user interaction. After you type in a destination address, just drive with the app open on your phone and you passively contribute traffic and other road data to the Waze community. You can take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps or any other hazards along the way, giving other users in the area a heads-up about what to expect.

As you travel along, indicator boxes appear showing issues that other Waze users have encountered. The maps are updated in real time by tracking the GPS points of the Waze drivers. Once you get in your car you may wonder what the traffic may be like in route to your destination. After you type in an address to navigate to, Waze may display multiple routes with different destination times, based on the current feedback of Waze users. If there are road/traffic issues on one route, Waze will show that and offer an alternate route or two. Check out the Guided Tour.

Waze is available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile.

 

I’m not really sure, but according to the History.com below are some interesting facts about Thanksgiving.

1) Most experts agree, the first Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth Colony, in present-day Massachusetts, in 1621.

2) President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

3) Minnesota is the top turkey-producing state.

4) Sarah Josepha Hale, the enormously influential magazine editor and author who waged a tireless campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday in the mid-19th century, was also the author of the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

5) One fifth of the annual total of 235 million consumed in the United States in 2007 were eaten at Thanksgiving.

6) The first time the Detroit Lions played football on Thanksgiving Day was in 1934, when they hosted the Chicago Bears at the University of Detroit stadium, in front of 26,000 fans.

7) 88 percent of Americans said they eat turkey at Thanksgiving.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest pumpkin pie ever baked weighed 2,020 pounds and measured just over 12 feet long. It was baked on October 8, 2005 by the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio, and included 900 pounds of pumpkin, 62 gallons of evaporated milk, 155 dozen eggs, 300 pounds of sugar, 3.5 pounds of salt, 7 pounds of cinnamon, 2 pounds of pumpkin spice and 250 pounds of crust.

Hopefully something men and women can enjoy together, Kathy Ireland will be on stage at the Indianapolis Home Show on Saturday, January 21. If you are male and grew up in the 80′s, like me, you will likely know that Kathy Ireland was a swimsuit model for Sports Illustrated.

However, what you might not know is she launched her own line, Kathy Ireland Home®. Kathy Ireland Home® works to offer both home solutions and products to make your personal spaces your home. Her products include everything from indoor and outdoor accessories to furniture, fabrics and home décor trimmings such as decorative pillows, clocks and area rugs.

So, could 2012 Indianapolis Home Show tickets be an excellent stocking stuffer for men AND women? I think so. Oh, and don’t wait to buy tickets at the door — buy tickets online and save!

Good manners=
“Say please and thank you.”
“It’s not nice to stare.”
“Keep your elbows off the table.”
“Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”

These might be some of the things you heard from parents and grandparents as you were growing up. Manners and courtesies seem to change as society evolves, but the basics remain the same. And how would those common courtesies apply to today’s world of social media?

Check out “10 things your grandmother can teach you about social media” from Eric Fulwiler.

1. Mind your manners. Social media is still social. Even though we are interacting in a virtual space, the same traditional social rules, laws and faux pas still apply. If you act like a jerk, don’t expect many friends.
2. Tuck in your shirt. How you present yourself is just as important in the virtual world as it is in the real world. Make sure you are always aware of how you appear to others.
3. Send a thank you card. People still appreciate being appreciated. It really doesn’t take much to convert an acquaintance to a friend, which will offer exponentially more value. A simple thank you or any genuinely human interaction of gratitude goes a long way towards this goal.
4. Keep your elbows off the table. Acting respectfully in front of others proves that you value them, which will usually make them value you more. And in social media, it’s all about value.
5. Turn your music down. Don’t contribute to the noise. Listen to whatever you want in your own personal space, but when your personal preferences start to become a distraction to others, people will tune you out.
6. Finish what you started. Any way you look at it, engagement is a commitment. When you make an effort to become part of a community, it’s not only up to you when or how often you interact with other members. If you put yourself out there as a friend, be prepared to be there when people reach out to you.
7. Finish your vegetables. There are some aspects of social media that aren’t sexy. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t important to your growth and health. Make sure you are keeping up with the essentials and not just chasing that buzz you get from a social sugar high.
8. Whatever happened to a good old fashioned…? Sometimes all these new gadgets and thing-a-ma-bobs aren’t as important or effective as we make them out to be. Sometimes a good old-fashioned email, phone call, or even in-person “get-together” can accomplish things that social media can’t.
9. A man is only as good as his word. The currency of social media is trust (or social capital). And if people can’t trust you, you have no value to them.
10. Think twice before you speak. You can always say something, but you can never take it back. Especially in social media where everything you say can be heard by anyone, forever, there are just too many “finites” to not reconsider everything you say before you say it.

Let Grandma’s old-fashioned advice help you, and in return, you can help her tweet.