Those of you sucked in by my headline—I hope the picture below isn’t too severe a letdown.

The thing is, massage oil came to mind. I’ll leave it to your imagination how.

Are PIG® Absorbents—whether Universal or Oil-Only—used to control spills, leaks and drips of massage oil? I’ll bet they are. There must be incidents that require cleanup. You can’t just let that stuff puddle up.

How about it? What do you know about the use of absorbents in this vital field? As always, comments must pass monitoring to be published. I’m just sayin’.

Enjoy this topic while it lasts. Soon enough we’ll be back to talking about coolant and hydraulic fluid.

I have two reasons to commend Procter & Gamble today.

First, I just learned about Tide Loads of Hope. It’s a free mobile laundromat that goes to disaster areas where people are without basic services like laundry. What a great way to help others.

Second, P & G was involved in a cool event where business leaders experimented with social media by trying to sell T-shirts that support Loads of Hope.

We’re enjoying exploring social media ourselves on this blog and places like Facebook, FriendFeed, Friendster, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, and it’s nice to see cool things that others are doing.

We’d love to hear about your own nifty uses of social media or others that you’ve seen. Thanks.

There are two ways to view most situations: positively and negatively. During this economic downturn, many Americans struggle to see the positive in anything. Bombarded with bad news, it’s easy to feel negative. But look hard enough, and the positive is always there somewhere. Even with dirty ol’ pigs!

The naming of our company’s first invention, the PIG® Absorbent Sock, may be a good illustration of how people can view the same situation (or word in this case), both positively and negatively at the same time.

When we started New Pig in the mid-80s, we spent most of our time asking every maintenance manager and safety director in central Pennsylvania to try our new product, an absorbent sock nicknamed “the Pig.”

Generally, the conversation began with a simple statement: “If you have a minute, I’d like to demo a new product for you that absorbs liquid around leaky machines—we call it a pig absorbent sock.”

“A what? A pig sock?” would be the usual response. That tiny word pig got their attention and would usually stir a hearty laugh or inspire an amusing retort related to Pigdom like “Are you Boss Hog?” or “Where’s Miss Piggy?”

In a way the word Pig changed us from timid to brave salespersons because we could anticipate its positive effect on the sales situation. Establishing a warm rapport between the potential customer and salesperson is primary, and Pig gave us, and our fledgling company, a fighting chance to share our new product’s features and benefits.

On the other hoof … er, hand, we discovered the word Pig had its negative side. When it came time to officially name our product, we hired an advertising agency to brainstorm some “real names.” It didn’t take them long to come back with a list of more than 30 names and with the warning, “You can not call your products Pigs. Industry will never accept it.” Wow, from their experience, they made a strong case for the negative implications of the word Pig. Use your imagination here.

Yes, a case could be made for the positive or the negative of Pig, but as we considered the pros and cons of that tiny word, one overruling thought stuck in our minds: the positive, fun response of our customers. So we rejected the wisdom of the “marketing experts” and went with the nickname simply because our customers loved it. And that decision has made all the difference. There’s a pig lesson in there somewhere.

Images © Adrian Niederhäuser – Fotolia.com

I’ve blogged before that 1 million work hours with no lost-time injuries is impressive, and doing it twice is doubly impressive.

But going 25 MILLION work hours with no lost-time accidents? Nearly 8 years?

Bring out a squadron of safety scoreboards.

Con-grunt-ulations, AMECO!

There’s a Chlorine Institute? Yep. It might sound funny until you realize chlorine’s involved in drinking water, agriculture, wastewater disinfecting, fuels and lots more. Our part? Absorbing the spills.

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Waste minimization is good. Waste elimination is better. Disney’s environmental goals include this clear and bold goal: Zero waste.

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VISE-GRIP stories: Performing battlefield surgery … Holding your exhaust system together so you can drive your mom to cancer treatments … Repairing brakes so that you can finish the Baja 500 … Nice. Whets the appetite for some fresh stories of heroism involving PIG® Repair Putty.

Thanks so much to the customers who sent in the pictures below and told us where they snapped them!

Now send us YOUR pictures of PIG® products doing dirty deeds to keep workplaces clean and safe!

Near the generators at Hoover Dam

At the Louvre near the Mona Lisa (ooh-la-la!)

Drawing a blank on the location, but I do know that it’s PIG® Elephant Mat!

Is there a work application for these sports/workout grip-enhancing gloves called Bionic™ Gloves?

The new Skittles.com is a striking move to feature public content about products, rather than only content from the company behind the products. New Pig is hoofing in that direction and working on new ways for customers to share their points of view. Step right up with your own PIG® Form-A-Funnel video!

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This story’s headline suggests that Fisher-Price will discontinue the View-Master® Viewer, but the story actually says there will be no more scenic reels (the boring ones with the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids …).

Whew. One of Sparky’s goals in life is to be on a View-Master® reel with PIG® Absorbent Mat, PIG® Absorbent Socks, a Spillblocker® Dike and a PIG® Leak Diverter.