News: Invesco – An
Opportunity Lost?
Ever since I posted the foresight goggles ad that Invesco
had in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago, I have had visits from people
specifically looking for that ad. So, I
went onto Google and typed in “invesco foresight goggles” – which took me
straight to Invesco’s main page, which was horrendously disappointing. One of the things that attracted me to the ad
in the first place is that steampunk is mostly a young people’s interest;
however, when you search for Invesco using those terms, it takes you to the
same website that they have for the company’s target market, who are older. It doesn’t take you to a special website set
up for young people who are interested in investing (but not investing yet), or
who are early enough in their investment relationship that they can be easily
stolen. I think this could have been a
great opportunity for Invesco to snare some younger customers, or at least get
younger customers thinking about them and investing; instead, they didn’t take
the extra few steps to make this marketing campaign into something truly
special.
The other day, my husband decided that we should have pork
carnitas for dinner – so I went looking for recipes, and knew I had hit the
jackpot when I saw that Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen had posted such a
recipe. While it was delicious, ours didn’t
come out with quite the right consistency (ours looked nothing like the above), but that’s because we didn’t have
the proper cut of pork – we were just using what we had. The lime in this recipe adds a great
tanginess that goes well on tacos and burritos.
If you don’t have the cumin by itself, then I’m sure you could probably
sub a general taco mix and be fine. We’ll
be making this one again, for sure.
This article, about the upcoming book The Rise of the Naked
Economy, discusses changes in how businesses operate today, including using more
freelancers, offsite personnel, part-timers, and so on. The authors of the book view this as a
positive change; people are valued more for their skills and what they bring to
the table, and are more free to manage their work themselves.
However, I think that this change has negatively affected young people,
because to be hired as a freelancer, previous skills and experience are a requirement. When fresh out of highschool
or college, or just a few years into your career, that’s a huge hurdle.
One thing that the authors discuss that particularly
resonated with me is the discussion of young people’s priorities changing;
people in their 20s and 30s who have children are looking for better ways to balance life and
work, because they place a higher value on family time. That description fits me and my husband very
well; sometimes we’ve sacrificed getting ahead because we thought being with
our children was more important. I think
that freelancing, and part-timing allow a greater level of flexibility
that previous generations didn’t get – of course, those of us who are younger
or just beginning our careers might not get this option because of our lack of
experience. It seems to me that people
have to get experience in the conventional way before becoming a freelancer. You have to do your time, so to speak.'Til next week!
