Check out Reflecteur issue #61, where you’ll find the latest in our favorite photo blogs, like the one featuring a picture of the alarm clock your kids watered because “it looked like it needed it,” and other horrors of kids ruining things you own. Also, find out how easily it is for things to get lost in translation… when you translate it up to 56 times, see how “You and me put on a bad romance” becomes “I love you,” and, finally, robots. ‘Nuff said.

Click here to download the latest issue.

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2. REFLECTEUR – Issue 78
3. Reflecteur – Issue 57

I have a box full of mail at home. I don’t mean a shoe box or anything in the “small” vicinity – this box could hold a microwave. It’s full because I hate mail. Only a tiny fraction of what I get is actually necessary. Seinfeld’s Kramer shares my sentiments in Episode 161, where he returns Pottery Barn catalogs to the store, fills his mailbox with bricks, and tries to eliminate his mailing address all together.

Junk mail is the biggest pain in the butt, and my postwoman probably can’t disagree. Think about it – there’s an effort to design it, print it, package it, ship it. Then, once I get it, I’m sorting it, shredding it and trashing it. If I put off sorting it, stuff gets lost, a bill goes unpaid, a wedding RSVP gets sent late, or let the deadline pass for rolling over my 401k to an IRA (along with all kinds of taxes and penalties for “withdrawing” retirement money early).

I spent some time last year calling all the catalogs that I’d requested and asking them to stop sending me the stuff. There was even a time when if someone sent me something I didn’t solicit, such as a credit card application, with pre-paid return postage, I’d package up all the stuff they sent me into the envelope they provided and send it back without explanation–my way of sticking it to them. Of course, this resulted in a call from some credit card company saying, “We think you may have been a little confused about the process to apply for your pre-approved card…” Fail.

As much as I’ve tried to “go digital” with my mail, this only helped with a fraction of the stuff I need to sort through. Yes, my credit card bill conveniently shows up in my email inbox, or better yet, I get an alert on mint.com that the bill is due, but I still have to put up with anything sent to “resident of…” This primarily includes coupon packs, grocery fliers and stuff like that. Most of it ends up in my junk mail microwave box, to be dealt with later.

This offline problem couldn’t really be solved offline – nobody would target junk mail haters with a junk mail offer, because people like me would just add it to the pile, only to trash without opening at a later date. So, I was very excited to find a site called Precycle in one of my newsletters this morning. For $36, they manage to stop, or at least greatly reduce your junk mail (“with positive results in about 90 days”). Sold.

Now, while my frustration with junk mail is maybe only 5% environmental concerns, Precycle’s is 100%. In addition to the junk-mail-stopping service, your sign-up fee also covers the planting of five trees, two CFL light bulbs and a reusable grocery bag… for all the greenies out there.

It won’t stop everything. Brides will not start eviting people to their weddings, and grandma may still send you $10 checks for your birthday (don’t get me started on checks…), but if this means my microwave-sized box of mail can fit in one of those home mail receptacles, it will be well worth the money spent.

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1. The Strange World Of Direct Mail
2. Belated Xmas Thank Yous & Digital Gift Cards
3. An Open Love/Hate Letter to Foursquare (Stop Wasting My Data!)

“Who in the wolrd colelcts Coke tabs!?” “What a weird thing to hold onto.” Immediately, I’m self conscious and scrambling to explain myself, and the RMHC drive, but the amazement continued. The primary argument was that a check for $.50, the approximate worth of my tabs, is probably preferable to the charity than my baggie of tabs. After all, some poor employee there would have to then haul my tabs and the tiny donations of others to the recycling center, have them weighed, then get a tiny check for the organization.

It took some convincing, but at the end of the day I was on board with the idea that yes, in fact, RMHC would rather have a tiny amount of money than a baggie of tabs worth $.50. The employee I argued about with this said he would donate $2 in exchange for me not sending that bag of tabs, nor sending any other tabs collected over the next year.

This raises questions though. Would I personally have sent $2? Probably not. Would others? Who knows. Quite honestly, I’m a cheapskate. I do give money and time to charities, but I think I prefer these programs where something I’m already doing or purchasing, or something that would require a fraction of my time, helps a cause.

The big question remains though: is this program worth the effort to RMHC? Presumably it’s easier for RMHC to handle cash donation, but are people really going to donate a pocket full of change, as opposed to tabs? Apparently not, since the eventual donation from said employee was $50, not $2.

I couldn’t find information on the official RMHC website of how much money this program brings in, but what about those other non-monetary donation programs? General Mill’s Box Tops for Education has earned America’s schools $250 million in 12 years, Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives helped rais $1.5 million in 2008, and Campbell’s Labels for Education has raised $100 million in merchandise for America’s schools over 30 years. I’m supposing that all these programs/schools would prefer cash donations, but they must have an easier time requesting a piece of a product packaging, since it requires only a nominal amount of time and no additional money from the consumers.

In the end, I probably would not make a cash donation to any of these programs, but I would possibly hold onto the pink lids if I ate yogurt, or collect box tops and soup labels for a school if I had kids. Since I drink soda though, I’ll continue to pull off my tabs and place them in the cereal bowl while continuing to ponder this odd, yet personalbly preferable donation style.

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Influencers and Word of Mouth are hot topics among marketers, planners and researchers – and for good reason. Influencers can affect anything from consumers’ brand preferences to their spending habits through just a single conversation. Whether it’s as small as where to get your hair cut or as big as what firm to trust with your retirement money, conversations are constantly happening, and knowing who the influencers are and what they think about the brands in the category is imperative.

So which influencer is the right influencer? There are several schools of thought on this. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell introduced us to a cultural influencer, the Maven. Mavens are defined by their collection of knowledge on a number of products, prices and places, so they are often first to pick up new or emerging trends. There are also media influencers, who affect the way we think about brands and products through the press. The influencer list is long, but includes activists, trendsetters, connectors and salesmen. While each definition certainly may have some grounding, what we should all be thinking about is a conversational influencer.

Denuo defines conversational influencers on two key metrics: a large amount of charisma and a high number of social connections. In our research, this group generally accounts for about 10 percent of any given population.

For charisma, think of it this way: if there are two people providing equally positive reviews about two different auto repair shops, which shop will someone choose when they need their transmission fixed? Well, let’s say one of those people is a likeable guy – he is more fun to hang out with at a party, he’s friendlier, he laughs more. On the other hand, the second guy is generally more introverted and quiet, or maybe not as likable. In most cases, people will be drawn to the more charismatic person, and therefore that person’s recommendation.

Now let’s say there are two equally charismatic people recommending two auto repair shops. The first guy, however, talks to 60 people on a weekly basis, while the other guy only talks to 10. Which guy has more potential to influence a large number of people? Undoubtedly, the person with more social connections.

Notice that I’m not including category expertise in the definition. If you’re soliciting a recommendation for a place to get your transmission fixed, once you friend gives you one, you’re next question isn’t, “What do you know about fixing transmissions?” While experts definitely have some influence in some categories, recommendations from a friend have been more powerful than an expert recommendation in most cases we’ve seen at Denuo.

Also not included in the definition is likelihood to recommend brands. Going back to the charisma piece, if a guy with little or no charisma recommended a brand, his opinion is not as valuable to you as someone who has natural charisma. Interestingly, our data has found that conversational influencers index higher on likelihood to recommend a brand for 40 of the 53 brands tested to date.

So while there may be a fair number of influencer definitions to choose from, given their likelihood to recommend brands, coupled with their large number of social connections, conversational influencers represent a huge opportunity for marketers. Winning them over will undoubtedly make them brand ambassadors.

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1. Being Human: Community Management Demystified
2. Social Media: Creating Value that Matters