Someone told me, and I tried it, if you Google “DMX-3 blogs” my blog from a couple of months ago comes up on top. A personal achievement, and you’ll hopefully pardon me for bringing this up, but it leads to another fascination of mine which is how quickly things change around us. For example, the term “google” has become a relatively new verb (as in “I used the Yahoo search engine to google DMX-3”). Even the word “blog” is so new to our lexicon that Microsoft Word continues to flag it as a misspelling of “blob”. Maybe that will get fixed soon.

HDS hosted Shel Israel, (Right Image: Me, Shel, Hu, and David) co-author with Robert Scoble of Naked Conversations, the definitive book on blogging. One of the things that occurred to me in our conversations with Shel was how “ad blind” I’ve become.
Whether I’m reading a magazine or newspaper, I read it as though the ads do not exist. Advertising supplements? I page though them as quickly as I can. A few years ago when supermarkets started placing ads on their floors I thought that was a very clever way of getting a message across until I ran my shopping cart into a stroller with a 2-year old boy. The boy was amused, the mother was not, and since then I don’t “read the floor” anymore.

So while the marketing types are constantly looking for new avenues and ways to “message” products, some older, tried and proven techniques still exist. One such avenue is the corporate briefing center.

Some of you that have been loyal HDS customers for years, are no doubt familiar with our old as well as our new briefing centers (or EBC’s). The old EBC was small, poorly painted, and consisted of just rooms to conduct briefings. The new EBC is large, brightly lit with skylights and fountains. The old EBC did not exactly exude “high tech” (unless one considers an 80-pound projector “high-tech”). The new EBC is high-tech from top to bottom.

The reason I bring this up is that a recent conversation with our EBC staff revealed that customer visits have more than doubled since moving into the new EBC. (Left: I’m pictured next to our USP Tagmastore and one our EBC Hosts, Kiyoko) I find this fascinating since it not only demonstrates a continued commitment from my company to reach out to our customers and to make them more comfortable, but also a demonstration that the “means” of communication is as important as the message itself. Very impressive, and if you haven’t experienced our new EBC, put it on your “must see” list. Also, unlike the supermarket floor ads, the food and drinks in the new EBC are all free.

So take a trip and let us know what you think. Maybe I’ll see some of you down there and be able to show you around.

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