Hot Commodity

A new burger joint called Top This just opened up on Penn’s campus. The restaurant has a creative name, and an even more creative pricing strategy. Take a look:

See anything strange? In case you didn’t catch it, the Fries & Beverage “combo” actually costs more than purchasing the fries and a beverage separately… 1 cent more to be exact. Creative no? Trick your customers into thinking that since it’s convention for combos to be cheaper than buying the individual components, they are probably getting a better deal with the combo and they probably don’t need to check…

Except when they do. A friend noticed this, took a picture, and showed me, and of course he’s not the only one that’s noticed. The 1 cent difference isn’t even the issue, it’s more about principle, and it’s justifiably pissing people off. Strategic pricing is an art, and firms pour tons of money into research in this area, but there some basic no-no’s. This is one of them.

CBS recently aired a story entitled “The Millenials are Coming” on their show 60 Minutes, that claims that my generation (born between 1980 and 1995 and called the Millenials), is rapidly turning the workplace into a “psychological battlefield.” The article also goes on to bash our work ethic, alleges that managers must speak to us as therapists may speak to patients on TV, says that we don’t know how to take criticism, and grossly exaggerates and distorts our ambitions to become CEOs and managers at an early age. Much of this is attributed to the “coddling virus” and Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow goes so far as to blame our “narcissism” on the beloved Mister Rogers.

Well, I certainly agree that we are changing and will continue to change the workplace… but aren’t our increasing technological savvy and reaching aspirations a sign of progress? We may talk, type, and text all at the same time but we get things done faster don’t we? And when it comes to work ethic I have a hard time understanding how my friends who are toiling away for 15-20 hours a day, 6-7 days a week at investment banks, hedge funds, and consulting firms, or how my peers that are working at the National Institute of Health while studying for the MCATs and running their own research projects on the side, or how other Millenials that are interning for minimal pay at a literacy camp for underprivileged children in Harlem while working a second job to make money can be construed as lacking dedication. Oh and regarding criticism: today no university course is complete without lots of room for feedback, teacher/student sessions, and peer reviews, and I believe this has carried forward into the work place as well. Millenials can handle criticism- in fact they often ask for it. And yes we may be guilty of finding pleasure in compliments and awards… but aren’t we all? I realize, of course, that I may be talking about a specific segment of the Millenial population; but so is the article. Not only does the article neglect the kinds of Milennials I just described above (for the most part), but several friends have noted that it also ignores many minority students whose childhoods were not colored with Little League, ballet classes and “you can be anything you want to be” speeches.

No doubt my generation has its flaws, but I think the article and 60 Minutes’ Morley Safer’s pessimism may be a little overstated.

College recruiters are constantly looking for innovative ways to attract potential students. Eager high school students are always looking for a way to get college recruiters to notice them. Unfortunately, sometimes this can lead to illogical tactics. A recent article on insidehighered.com reports that The State University of New York at Plattsburgh has hired an outside public relations firm, Media Logic, to create a custom built Facebook application to market itself to new students outside its immediate reach. The application basically asks current students and students interesting in attending the University to solve a series of “challenges”. The article goes on to explain that each challenge requires the students to upload video or photographic evidence that they completed the task. “Challenges can be anything from attending a sporting event on campus to visiting Lake Champlain to wearing Plattsburgh gear in the nearby city of Burlington, VT.” How exciting.

The beta has only been out for a few weeks so the University is unsure of its appeal but I already see some major problems with this logic:

A) Current students have no incentive to participate. It’s bad enough getting Facebook requests to Ninja Fight or play Texas Hold ‘Em every other day; I certainly wouldn’t have time to undertake these “challenges” in addition to my schedule during the semester.

B) Prospective students are crazy. When they really want to go to a certain school they’ll undertake all kinds of unnecessary measures- some sort of psychological thing to make them feel like they are doing everything they can I guess. Anyways my point is that even though completing these “challenges” will have absolutely no bearing on whether or not the participating high school students are accepted, I’m sure several will try to be overachievers and “take on” as many as possible. So now in addition to joining every single extracurricular activity offered at their high schools and convincing teachers to write rave recommendations they will also be running around taking pictures and videos of themselves at various locales. Imagine if schools like Harvard or Princeton started something like this. And while the effort is aimed mostly at students in surrounding areas what if you are an interested student but live in Florida? Taking a picture in Vermont isn’t exactly feasible. Road trip!

More importantly, if they’re going to do this the University should at least come up with tasks that are useful to society, otherwise it’s a complete waste of time. Volunteering through the University’s service organizations perhaps? I’m not even really feeling that because the intentions would not be pure. Since when the college search and application process need a scavenger hunt anyways?

If it’s at all telling, only 60 current students have installed the app so far and there are currently 0 active users. One lame Facebook application isn’t a huge deal, but I’ve read other articles about similar upcoming tactics and if these are the kinds of recruiting techniques colleges are thinking about using, I think they’re headed in the wrong direction.