“The billion-dollar question is, is it possible to become happier?” said psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside. “Despite the finding that happiness is partially genetically determined,  and despite the finding that life situations have a smaller influence on our happiness than we think they do, we argue that still a large portion of happiness is in our power to change.”

Lyubomirsky spoke here Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She and colleagues last year reviewed 51 studies that tested attempts to increase happiness through different types of positive thinking, and found that these practices can significantly enhance well-being. The results were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Here are five things that research has shown can improve happiness:

1. Be grateful – Some study participants were asked to write letters of gratitude to people who had helped them in some way. The study found that these people reported a lasting increase in happiness – over weeks and even months – after implementing the habit. What’s even more surprising: Sending the letter is not necessary. Even when people wrote letters but never delivered them to the addressee, they still reported feeling better afterwards.

2. Be optimistic – Another practice that seems to help is optimistic thinking. Study participants were asked to visualize an ideal future – for example, living with a loving and supportive partner, or finding a job that was fulfilling – and describe the image in a journal entry. After doing this for a few weeks, these people too reported increased feelings of well-being.

3. Count your blessings – People who practice writing down three good things that have happened to them every week show significant boots in happiness, studies have found. It seems the act of focusing on the positive helps people remember reasons to be glad.

4. Use your strengths – Another study asked people to identify their greatest strengths, and then to try to use these strengths in new ways. For example, someone who says they have a good sense of humor could try telling jokes to lighten up business meetings or cheer up sad friends. This habit, too, seems to heighten happiness.

5. Commit acts of kindness – It turns out helping others also helps ourselves. People who donate time or money to charity, or who altruistically assist people in need, report improvements in their own happiness.
Lyubomirsky has also created a free iPhone application, called Live Happy,  to help people boost their we

As much as you’d like to communicate all of the things that make your business special, your best message is one that makes your strongest differentiator undeniably clear. If you can express this difference in emotional terms – specifically as a benefit that has emotion at its core, you’ve got it made.

Remember, for every charming gecko, memorable slogan, or unforgettable jingle, thousands of businesses advertise very effectively by being authentic, direct, and adhering to a couple of simple ideas.  You don’t have to be a creative genius to use advertising effectively!

Do: Use copy/dialogue, tone, and sound to tap emotion. Contrary to what we generally believe about our decision-making, most of us act on emotion more often than we act on cold hard logic.   Most of us are all to familiar with the way that emotions can over-ride logic.  Logic, more often than not, acts as a brake on our actions.  Emotion, more often than not, accelerate our actions.  Advertising that taps into an emotion is almost always more powerful than a similar campaign that focuses strictly on reason, fact, and provable claims. Logic is certainly important:  we want things that last, we want things that works better, we want things that will make our lives easier.  Those are all logic-driven wants.  But more often than not, it will be an emotional lever that gives us permission to actually take action and purchase those things.

Don’t: Use emotional levers that aren’t really part of your DNA. Emotional levers should support the experience of using your business, including the tone and values that customers would see in your staff, your store, or your service operations.  Be careful when using emotions like fear.  A negative vibe can literally give consumers the creeps when they think about your brand. If your strongest, or only lever is fear, make certain that the emotional tone of your ad speaks loudly to the emotional positive – security, safety, or comfort.

Don’t: Ignore logic and facts that articulate your uniqueness in consumer-benefitting terms. But think of facts as the “content” and emotion as the “tone and a context” in effective advertising. You have to explain what you do and who you are, and facts are the most credible ways of doing that.  It’s a matter of balance.

Do: Focus on one idea – ideally the most powerful competitive advantage or unique consumer benefit that you deliver. Use your ad time or space to convincingly explain a single, compelling benefit (remember that people don’t buy “features,” they buy benefits).  Always make your point in terms that enable prospects to understand ‘what’s in it for them.’  This is obviously an opportunity to leverage emotion.

Don’t: Try to tell prospects everything that is great about your brand, service or business. Too many ads throw the veritable kitchen sink of benefits at consumers, striving to overwhelm them with great reasons to favor a product or service. It’s extremely easy to lose the prospect’s attention, or blend into the crowd, when you tout a laundry list of familiar benefits (many of which aren’t credible without facts or examples).  If you happen to be the location, price, service, and quality leader (you’re awesome), wrap all three into a larger concept like ‘excellence’ or ‘proven performance.’ Use several ads to support your awesomeness campaign with different sub-themes – “because no one beats us on price or quality”, “because no one makes it easier or more convenient to buy our widget”, etc…

Do: Commit to your advertising or don’t do it at all. Advertising is very similar to exercise (for someone who has been out of shape for a while).  You generally don’t see a lot of results at the start, just like you don’t see results after your first trips to the gym.   In fact, the early experience may seem a little painful.  But ad campaigns, just like your body, have to undergo a significant period of base building — slowly, steadily building muscle and cardiovascular capacity (in the case of ads, awareness and familiarity) before you start to see obvious benefits. But just because you don’t see them, it doesn’t mean these benefits aren’t accruing! Once you’ve built that base, the results come faster and with less onerous effort.  Eventually you’ll be looking forward to more.  As most people who go through the process, and make exercise (and advertising) a regular part of their lives, will attest, the early sweat yields tangible benefits: it makes you look better, feel better, and live less stressfully.  The same applies to advertising: once your base is built, steady advertising (consistent exposure and a consistent message) will yield stead results.

Don’t: Change your approach or worse, give up, after a few weeks (or even months) because you don’t see results. As long as you’re achieving decent frequency, and your message differentiates your brand in a relevant way, you will be building a base, just like with exercise.  Once you do start to see results, don’t stop working.  Just like at the gym, you can dial down the intensity a little, but when you stop building the muscle and cardio of your brand, you’ll quickly fall ‘out of shape’ and be right back where you started – and having to go through that whole miserable ramp-up period again!

Buseness goes where its invited. Let’s roll!

Appliances Show Encouraging Sales Increase…

In another sign that consumer confidence may be improving, The NPD Group reported that both major and small appliance sales posted positive dollar and unit sales figures in the fourth quarter (October to December) of 2009, compared with the fourth quarter 2008.

Both unit and dollar sales for major appliances were up 5.5% over Q4 2008, according to NPD’s consumer tracking service.

The ABCs of Effective Advertising…

If you want your advertising to resonate with prospective customers, it’s essential that you appeal to their emotions in some way. Fail to do this and you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Effective ads sell your message, company, or product. They may or may not be creative, but if you can package some good creative in with a message that appeals to a strong need or want within your target audience, it will certainly help. Effective ads are convincing. They engage prospects as if you were speaking directly to them, and when you succeed in making this connection your prospective customer’s thoughts will become your brand itself. Be sure to check out Advertising Basics for Small Businesses for some pointers.

Even if you achieve the enviable position of having a provocative ad execution with an effective message, your work is far from over. In fact, in the world of advertising, your work is never over. Continually exposing your customers, prospective customers, and suspects (those who aren’t currently interested in your company or product, but who might be shortly) to the same messaging over a prolonged period of time will lead to stagnation. Eventually, you’ll fail not only to inspire brand loyalty, but also to retain it. Even Coke, one of the world’s most valuable brands, reinvents its messaging and image when it decides they have begun to lose effectiveness.

Creating an Effective Ad Campaign…

So how do you create an effective ad campaign? One way is to go with the single benefit methodology, which directly links your brand to a single benefit. If your deodorant lasts longer, tell the world about it. The characterization or personification angle involves creating a character that expresses the product’s benefits or personality. The narrative methodology involves developing a narrative story with episodes describing a problem and its outcome.

Again, aim to produce advertising that states not only a product’s facts, but that also appeals to emotions. Using the deodorant example, you might accomplish this by playing off your customers’ fears of having body odor at an inopportune time.

Although a calculated and well thought out advertising campaign may do a good job of creating brand awareness, it may fall short of inducing product preference or, the end goal, purchase. For this reason, don’t rely on advertising as a complete solution. Instead, support it with marketing and sales promotion to help trigger a purchase.

Apply the following criteria to test the effectiveness of your advertising message:

1. The ad intelligibly and simply states a single message.

2. The ad evokes a specific, acute emotion.

3. The ad is being presented in a space where it will likely be noticed.

4. The overriding message is clearly evident.

Finally, understand that even a carefully thought out, highly creative campaign with a strong, concise message will fall flat if the product you’re advertising just isn’t any good. Be honest with yourself on this one. Solicit existing customer feedback. Then decide whether or not it would be a wiser investment if you were to spend the money and time on first improving your product. The better your product is, the less time and money you’ll need to spend on traditional advertising. After all, word of mouth advertising is free, and it’s often what ultimately makes or breaks a product, brand, or company.

Special thanks to my friends at ALL BIZ for this information.

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising/2589-1.html

So I said to him, “Barack, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain’t Abe Lincoln.”

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

…..Abraham Lincoln

* June 27 – Ojibwa Casino Harvey
* July 3 – The Exchange Club’s International Food Fest
* July 4 – Ishpemings 4th of July Community Picnic 1p-4p
* July 25 – Ojibwa Harvey
* August 15 – Marquette County Fair