I love that little clip, mainly for the satire, but also as a perspective on how to not handle stressful situations. (Really, cutting off your hair and throwing it at the problem solves absolutely nothing, in any and every situation)

However, this clip also shows insight into how public relations should be handled, and the lack of it during the oil spill of 2010. 

As James Herring put it in a Time Business Article

“It’s left people in the p.r. industry scratching their heads.”

“What should have happened? Well, from a … PR stance, the exact opposite”

Another fact: I have been vegetarian for the past 15 years of my life, and a wanna-be vegan for the past two  (I have a legitimate cheese addiction, so being it isn’t the easiest thing). One of the questions I often – very often – get asked is “Well what do you eat? Lettuce?”

Yeah actually, and quite a lot of it.

However, I never really put much thought into where my salad greens come from. Sure, in the summer time they come from my Grammas garden (talk about a direct marketing channel), but the other nine months of the year it is simply “Capers”….

…and truth be told, I wouldn’t have thought of it either until I read The Omnivores Dilemma this past summer .

Some little known facts about the distribution of lettuce

1) It requires an indirect marketing strategy

                Though there are typically less than two intermediaries between the consumer and the lettuce producers, there is no way you can go to an industrial lettuce farm and ask to pick your own lettuce. Though an organic company such as Earthbound may grow and package their own lettuce, most other farmers sell the lettuce before it becomes packaged.

2) It Is a conventional marketing system

                In the case of Earthbound Farms, the farm sells to the wholesaler (Costco), or to retail stores (Whole Foods) before the product reaches customers.

3) Organic lettuce distributes selectively

                While lettuce may be available for purchase at most grocery stores, Earthbound tries to stay selective by selling to stores that are moving in the organic direction. Do we see Earthbound at the shady convenience store down the road? Probably not. Do we see it in the produce department at Safeway? Yeah, generally.  

4) Organic lettuce stays at a temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit, from the moment it is snipped until the moment you put it in your shopping cart.  

               To keep lettuce fresh, while it is transported from farms across America to grocery stores across North America, lettuce is kept at a temperature of thirty six degrees Fahrenheit from the time it is cut, to the time you put it in your shopping cart.

 One last tidbit to chew on – it takes fifty seven calories of fossil fuel per one calorie of  lettuce energy. With this in mind, it goes to show that the distribution channels for lettuce everywhere could be made to be more efficient.

I think I just realised the point of this blog. And by point I mean how this blog is ever going to be extremely useful to me (providing deep meaningful insight into my life is great in theory, but you get out what you put into a blog). Somewhere, between catching up on Kim Kardashian’s divorce and trying to figure out just what Direct Labour Variance is (apparently accounting, whiiiich there is a midterm on Thursday), it came to me,

I’m probably a little slow on the bandwagon, but I am going to do a blog post about every chapter! Genius right? Never thought of before, right?

With that, I will leave you with this:

My favorite advertisement, mainly because Diplo is my favorite DJ… if only I had a blackberry so we could BBM….