FOOD: I Ain't No Chicken

...but Max's got a chockful of them!

Yesterday, I had a little brush in with death as I dared face the challenge of stuffing my face (and my arteries) with dead poultry, come hell or atherosclerosis, all for the price of P165 and endless fried chicken quarters. Today was the day I took on Max's Chicken-All-You-Can.

It all happened so fast. One minute, I was staring at those creepily smiling waiters in the flyers...


...the next minute, I was listening to my officemates' horror stories that somehow reminded me of episodes of "I Shouldn't Be Alive" (Discovery Channel) or "I'm Alive" (Animal Planet) - repetitive (heck, even the titles scream unoriginal!) but nonetheless capable of inducing paranoia. And, days after - just because it did not happen as fast as you might have reckoned it to be - I was on my way to meet up with a couple of college friends who expressed desire, masochistic at that, to beat their own officemates' records. Fresh from a rather long commute, I stepped out to the world and into the restaurant smelling like the armpits of a hundred MRT passengers after a day's work of baking under the sun. I was ready.

One by one, the chicken quarters menacingly came in and I gorged each with my fork and butter knife, making sure that I kept poised for action. Three quarters in, I was feeling the effects of livestock slowly churning in my digestive system and pushing me to give up. It didn't help, either, that the conversation turned to dysmenorrhoea and circumcision (my friends are just the most awesome, aren't they?) but I was determined to finish. One whole chicken down and four more quarters before I break my officemates' and each of my friends' officemates' record of eight chicken quarters, the bad news came. A friend of a friend of a friend (a chain of relationships which transposes to our own claim to fame) downed 21 chicken quarters. I was doomed. And utterly way behind the chicken glutton race.

Five quarters in, I managed to arrest a gag reflex and, with dismay, I set down my fork, stared at my seemingly bloody spoils - chicken bones piled up and stained with Jufran banana catsup - and let out a huge sigh. World, I do not deserve your praise for consuming just one whole chicken and then some.

I flushed everything down with a coco-pineapple fruit shake (aka, pina colada minus the alcohol) and went on with my life. Tomorrow's another day.

(Times like this makes me want to wish to high heavens for a camera... I can almost hear Dani saying "Pic or not true!". Will wait for my friends' photos. Teehee!)

Photo Credits:
[.]Chicken all You Can flyer by Max's

Monkey Business

I'm getting my hands dirty with a bit of a training on email marketing, thanks to a few good people back in Ateneo CCE and IMMAP who pooled just the best people in the industry to mentor us. Name drop: Chinie Hidalgo Diaz! Who is she? Oh, just the only certified email marketer in the Philippines who runs this little nook in the interwebs with the name Desktop Diva! I would not want to sound like a fanboy of some sort but... OMG!!!1!!one!!1!! Okay, now that I'm done with that, let's get on with another name drop: Elaine Uy of Yehey!

Anyhoo, as I said, this month's marketing venture is email marketing and one week in on the class and I have to say, in my most nerdy state of mind ever, that I am enjoying it! What's not to like when you've got a superkaduper email marketing campaign builder on your side: Mailchimp! I never knew something of such caliber offers their services (albeit at limited features) for free. It's fairly easy to use, even for the less skilled among us when it comes to coding. I could talk about it all day, if only I don't have a deadline to beat so I'd rather have you visit their features tab to learn more.

But, perhaps more than the features that the site offers, I personally adore their customer service! You see, I've only registered for a "Forever Free" account this afternoon only to find this in my inbox:

Click image to zoom in

As it were, my account is unable to send emails temporarily due to a random MailChimp Review of my usage. For an email marketing campaign, that would have been totally negligible save for the fact that said campaign depends on sending emails! I had no idea what I was in and I didn't know exactly who to consult! If it were indeed random then there was no use asking my class facilitators for what are the odds that they might have experienced the same, uhm, hassle that I had. Why, of all instances, did it happen a day before my deadline?

Was it because I used an organization's name of which I'm not in? Well, I had to because I was doing a campaign for the organization's brand! Was it because I used a personal account with a Gmail domain and not an email affiliated with the organization I had to promote? I had no choice! What email was I supposed to use?

So, being the obedient consumer that I am, I answered a survey that came with the email, along with a rather lengthy email explaining the predicament that I was in and why I had to be in it in the first place. After a few hours, as promised, I got a response:

Click image to zoom in

And all I could ever say was "Wow!" (without any hint of sarcasm whatsoever, trust me). Now that's email marketing for you right there - building relationships with consumers through a deep-seated understanding of what the consumers need with a touch of personalization. Just that one little phrase meant all the world to me. I felt important enough to merit a personal response!

Now imagine how this would apply to your consumers. Never mind the long explanation. Forget the statistics. As long as you are engaging them (us!) the way they want to be engaged, then it's all smooth sailing for you!

Great job, Mailchimp! You just made my day.

---

A snippet of a forum reply I sent a while back in response to the people who've been having problems with Mailchimp. (And I thought I was the only one!) On the consumer side, I felt the need to laud MailChimp for it's response to my query after having had defended my claim to an account. On the marketer side, establishing good ground with consumers enable, if not empower, them to root for your brand even if everyone around them feels otherwise. I guess I'm one empowered consumer from here on out!

Hey hey!

It seems like everyone has been experiencing the same problem I experienced. But, as Mailchimp promised, I got mine resolved within 24 hours (or 6 hours, to be exact). I'm guessing you have been subject to a "random" review of some sort and, as such, were redirected to a survey which asked all these questions. At the end of the page, you're asked to provide additional information to help speed up the process of assessing if your account should be validated.

Here's what I said:

1. I am a student enrolled in a digital marketing diploma course which touched on email marketing

2. I was tasked to come up with a mock campaign for a certain brand which I am not affiliated with but needs to work on it for the grade

3. I had to email in my campaign to at most two email addresses thus ensuring that no spamming activities will ever be done in behalf of the account I created.

I got a response within 6 hours, and with a personal note at that! (More here because I felt their efforts deserved a place in my little nook in teh interwebs)

Perhaps the moral of the story is that there are people out there who are very much willing to help you out even if all you see are snapshots of a monkey determined enough to take over a postman's job. Just let them know the rut you're in (in the most humane way possible, please?) and everything would be perfectly okay. After all, relationships work best in marketing and I'm guessing that they have a clear grasp of that being an email marketing service that they are. Hope this helps!

Photo Credits:
[.]Leannele.com