Righteous Marketing

This morning I read an interesting piece on SmallBizTrends.com titled “Will 2010 be the year of Start-Up America?” Melinda Emerson discusses how Obama should make start-ups the focus of his economic recovery plan in 2010, citing that small businesses have been responsible for 60-80% of annual job creation since the 1990s. She details 8 specific ways the government could assist in this effort, from wage subsidies to tax credits to plain old increased funding.

Small Businesses As Economic Saviors

While statistics can tell a lot of stories, I agree with Melinda’s point that small businesses are where most new jobs will come from as we come out of the recession and try to chip away at the 10% unemployment rate. Large corporations are under pressure to maintain profits and a lot of their gains are coming from cost-reduction efforts (aka layoffs, stretching employees, delaying new hiring). So how should we be going about it?

Government Intervention is NOT the Answer

The ideas that Melinda gives are great ideas and I believe they would be successful in helping a lot of start-ups. However, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that all of them centered on one key idea; the government’s increased interference in small businesses. Some of the ideas were intended to temporarily reduce government interference (payroll tax exemption, tax credits, etc.) while the others increased government involvement (whenever the government give you money they have to monitor how it’s used, so more regulation and red tape.)

Perhaps Melinda’s suggestions are more feasible, but I believe that small business creation will continue to lag in this country until the government reduces it’s role in the process. What do you think?

Google is famous for their slogan “Do No Evil.” However, when Google created Google.cn to serve the huge (and growing) Chinese market they made a very significant compromise with the Communist government of China; they agreed to censor their search results. Many people, myself included, were disappointed that Google “sold out” their beliefs. However, Google announced yesterday on their Official Google Blog that they will not censor results any longer and are willing to close Google.cn and their Chinese offices if necessary. I’m a forgiving person and I believe Google will do the right thing. Google, I salute you!

PS A brief apology: last week (my first week of the new year) I broke my resolution to blog 3 time/week. I’m not throwing in the towel though, so keep holding me to my resolutions.

I know that many people around the country view Idaho as one of the states where everyone lives on farms and votes Republican. Yes, Idaho did go solidly to McCain, but one of the candidates running in the state decided to try a clever marketing ploy in a state that is devoutly pro-life. This is an actual absentee ballot from the state of Idaho:

  That’s right, for United States Senator Idahoans had the choice to vote Pro-Life (a person formerly known as Marvin Richardson). Epic Fail!  

I usually avoid politics in civilized conversation, but I believe that this deserves mentioning. Earlier this morning Sen. John McCain announced that he chose Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his running mate. So why is this noteworthy for RighteousMarketing?

Strategy at its best

No doubt about it, this selection was highly strategic. The Dems just finished their convention which was as much about Hilary as it was about Obama, so he’s partially stealing their thunder with this announcement. Also, there are still a good number of hard-core Clinton supporters that aren’t sold on Obama because they wanted to see a female in the White House. So what does McCain do? He gives all those women a chance to put a woman in the White House. Sure it’s as VP, but don’t forget that McCain turned 72 today. The first female president would only be a heart beat away.