Via the WSJ:

U.S. retail sales tumbled again in June, threatening to drain steam from an economy saddled with high joblessness. Sales fell 0.5% from the previous month, the Commerce Department said. Excluding auto and gas sales, though, sales rose 0.1%.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.3% decline. In May, sales fell a revised 1.1%.

As I continue to say, a small fluctuation either direction should be expected, but more importantly, the state of the economy isn’t really any better than it was two years ago.  If anything, from what I’ve personally seen here in the “real world”, things are actually a little worse.  Most companies are still making money, but they’re tightening their belts as they see their income decrease.

What have you seen? Do you agree or disagree? Please leave a comment or leave a voice message at 317-565-4250.

Hey The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the consensus is in and your new logo sucks!

Comments from my Facebook friends:

“GAG, the old logo was OK, but the new one has even less appeal.”

“Haha, or a zit! Ugh, what is the bump anyways?? Does the museum have a bump in it’s design somewhere!? They should have incorporated something iconic of the museum whether out-of-state visitors get it or not, like the clock, or something like that!”

“Looks like a crocodile eye or a terrible skateboard ramp. Either way, I expect record attendance and season pass purchases any minute now.”

“Very dated typography and very conservative.”

“I vote a big thumbs down on this change. Makes no sense. It doesn’t look very inviting as far as a museum geared towards children. Fail.”

“It looks like a stodgy business logo. Not kid-friendly at all. Boo.”

And to my own comments:

I’ll preface this by saying that I love the The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the logo won’t deter me from personally visiting, but…

Some “marketing” people really don’t get “branding” at all. Yes, update logos once in a while if/when necessary, but not something like this. (UPS is a good example of how to do it right.)

It certainly doesn’t scream “Fun” and I’m wondering if they did any market research with this because I’ve not heard anyone say they really like it. Even my 6 year old tells me “It looks like a mountain or hill & it’s boring to look at all day.” Way to market to your target audience!

Personally if I were in charge of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis I’d have a nice chat with the creative director and the marketing team.  Bottom line, you want something that brings in your target audience, especially out-of-town  visitors.  While logos don’t always need to give a feel for what the business is about (their main purpose is branding), in this case that should be important.  And by all means you don’t drastically change them every 15-20 years.

But I digress and am just happy that’s not something I’m responsible for.

via my Wall Street Journal News Alerts:

In a setback for the U.S. economic recovery, retail sales fell 1.2% in May from the previous month as consumers pulled back their spending on things from cars to clothing, the Commerce Department reported. The decline was the biggest — and the first — since September 2009, when sales fell 2.2%.

Excluding auto and gas sales, retail sales slipped 0.8%, the largest drop since 1% in March 2009.

For my own business I know that I think in a “micro” scale compared to the overall U.S. economy, and being up or down a few percentage points isn’t a huge hit to my business operations, but are we really basing any sort of reality off of a 1-2% fluctuation in sales (either way)?  If sales went down double digits during a single month on a grander scale for the economy as a whole I might be worried, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over this.

I am constantly inundated with spam from supposed “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) companies that go something like this:

We are interested to get your website on first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Please get back to us for more details.

These are always the same, normally someone sitting in India using a Gmail account, not disclosing their website and claiming to be named “Bob”, “Anna” or any other American sounding name.  (On occasion it’s some bored college kid, trying to not get a real job, which I can respect, but I still am not going for it.)

To be fair, there probably are legit “White Hat” SEO companies out there, but the “Black Hat” crowd has muddied the waters so bad that it’d be hard to spot them.

Without going into all of that, I’ve came up with my own canned response that just as full of crap:

We have all the SEO we can handle AND are already on the 1st page of every site. We own half of the Internet.

But hey, if you want to sponsor us to help you get on the 1st page too, feel free to do so.

All joking aside, if you’re really interested in hiring someone for SEO, here’s one main fact that you need to know:

No one can guarantee you the #1 spot in any search engine.

Now with enough money, you can purchase the top spot for an ad for a specific keyword in the search engines, but that’s a different animal which has absolutely nothing to do with the SEO company/individual. Money talks & why pay someone else to spend your money for you?

Anyway, if you want to talk general “SEO” practices, I’ll leave that for Watershed Studio.  And before you ask, no, SEO isn’t an official service that we provide, mainly as a business choice due to the nonsense mentioned above.

Via The Wall Street Journal News Alerts:

Simon Property offered to buy General Growth Properties Inc. for about $10 billion, as the world’s largest shopping-mall operator seeks to absorb the No. 2 mall owner in the U.S. while General Growth grapples with its exit from bankruptcy court.

Although shopping-mall real estate investment trusts have been struggling with declines in consumer spending, Simon is viewed as one of the healthiest. Reporting better-than-expected profit for the fourth quarter last month, Simon was still hurt by write-downs and lower occupancy rates, but it predicted brighter days for 2010.

They just sold off some malls, but lately they’ve been buying more. Hmmm.

Cabela’s has put their 96 acres in Greenwood up for sale, thus effectively removing any hopes that they will be here in the Hoosier state any time soon, if at all.  Not that I find that surprising (they officially announced that they were pulling out back in July), but it is very unfortunate due to the money that was poured into developing the surrounding area solely based on the announcement of their opening.

The Indy Star also has a brief article about this.

Via The Wall Street Journal Alerts:

General Motors posted a 45% drop in September U.S. light-vehicle sales, while Chrysler’s sales fell 42%. Ford saw a much more modest drop of 5.1%. Among Japanese auto makers, Toyota said its September U.S. sales declined 16% from a year earlier, while Nissan saw its results fall 7% and Honda said its sales slid 23%. The auto industry was hurt by the expiration of the U.S. government’s “cash-for-clunkers” rebate program.

File this under “duh”. And don’t be surprised for some time to come at the repercussions of program.

Via The Wall Street Journal:

A company owned by Skype’s founders filed a copyright suit against Skype, a move that could complicate the $2 billion deal by eBay to sell the online communications company to a group of investors.

Joltid, owned by Skype’s founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, filed suit seeking an injunction against Skype and statutory damages for copyright infringements. Joltid owns a peer-to-peer technology that is used in Skype’s software.

As I said on Blue Shotgun Radio #40, eBay was extremely ignorant in this deal from the get-go and I have no idea what the new investors are thinking.  Nothing good can come of this in my opinion.

If you’re getting a new online phone number, I’d opt for Gizmo.  I have had one of each for a few years & like Gizmo a little better than Skype.

Mel Simon died this morning at the age of 82. Mel was best known around Indianapolis as chairman emeritus of the board of Simon Property Group (mainly malls, malls & more malls) and owner of the Indiana Pacers.  To say that he had a major impact on the city, as well as the entire country, would be an understatement.  Most recently Mel and his wife, Bren, donated $25 million to Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center at the IU School of Medicine campus in Indianapolis.

Check out the Indy Star for an in depth article about Mel Simon.

Via the Indy Star:

Eli Lilly and Co. said today that it plans to cut employee headcount worldwide by 5,500, or about 13 percent, by the end of 2011, as part of a move to slash $1 billion in costs.

I’m not sure if that’s a sign of the times or not, but that is sad regardless, especially since Lilly is a major employer in the city (who doesn’t know someone that works or has worked at Lilly, directly or indirectly?).