Baghdad Journal

I’ve known about the work of the peacemaker community for some time, primarily through the work of David Hartsough. I just think that building a large peace force that could go into situations to help defuse and/or mediate or otherwise discourage violence is a great possibility. On a small scale, in places like villages in Columbia, there have been successes already.
- Wade Hudson, Baghdad Journal, March 2

marketing always amazes me. how can you best manage manipulation? i rilly rilly like the last sentence from the excerpt.

http://gmj.gallup.com/management_articles/customer_engagement/article.asp?i=326

Excerpt:
Gallup scientists have solved that vexing problem. Through extensive research, Gallup has developed a measure of customer engagement (CE11) that quantifies the strength and nature of a customer’s emotional connection to a company. Gallup’s 11-item metric assesses the critically important emotional bonds of Confidence, Integrity, Pride, and Passion that together reflect the true health of any company’s customer relationships. The payoff is a far stronger link to business results than any satisfaction measure can hope to provide. And companies gain fresh insights that help them go beyond measuring to managing the customer relationship. Gallup has found that without a strong emotional bond, satisfaction is meaningless.

Satisfaction without engagement? Worthless. Satisfaction with engagement? Priceless. L3 + A8 = CE11: QUESTIONS THAT GET AT THE HEART OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY.

L3
* Overall, how satisfied are you with [brand]?
* How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [brand]?
* How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend/associate?

A8
CONFIDENCE
* [Brand] is a name I can always trust.
* [Brand] always delivers on what they promise.

INTEGRITY
* [Brand] always treats me fairly.
* If a problem arises, I can always count on [brand] to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution.

PRIDE
* I feel proud to be a [brand] customer.
* [Brand] always treats me with respect.

PASSION
* [Brand] is the perfect company for people like me.
* I can't imagine a world without [brand].

You can listen here.

Right now this is an interview with Donald Rumsfield, who's not in a press conference, he's talking one on one with a British print journalist (i think) who is mildly grilling him. It's interesting.

"What about not using Turkey's airspace?"

"There're workarounds.. ", he says sighing, and you can imagine him shrugging a little bit. "It'll a, It'll be.. It will be fine. Turkey is a modern democracy.. and they're going through a democratic process. And we accept that."

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