On Wednesday, May 6, the “Academy Awards” of the catalog industry were announced at the Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants in New Orleans. Once again, New Pig brought home the bacon!

The Big Pigalog® 2009 Buying Guide US Edition won Gold in the Industrial Supplies category. That makes 8 consecutive years that our Big Pigalog® catalog has won gold—quite a feat!

Click here to page through the entire Big Pigalog® 2009 online

But don’t put your hooves together yet, there’s more good news. The 2009 Big Pigalog® 2009 Buying Guide UK Edition not only won its 5th consecutive Gold in the International division, it also won Catalog of the Year honors! Bloody good, one might say!

By the way, our Big Pigalog® Buying Guide US Edition was also named Catalog of the Year in 2006.

Winning top honors over tough competition year after year is a tribute to our Creative & Marketing team for its commitment to copy, design, and production excellence. More than just creative awards, however, these honors reflect what the rest of our company is doing worldwide—product quality, manufacturing excellence, brand energy, customer service beyond belief, merchandising expertise, marketing prowess and systems strength. This award honors all Piggers in our quest to be a world-class organization.

Kellogg will donate an entire day of cereal production to fight hunger. Could you do the equivalent? Or maybe you already do?

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Self-healing, bending concrete!

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Maintenance crisis now referred to as a perfect storm hitting the skilled workforce. The factors are:

• An aging workforce

• A compromised education system

• The lack of technical apprenticeships

Need OSHA Compliance Training for Facility and Maintenance Managers? Three one-hour seminars, online on-demand.

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Those of you into supply chain management and supply chain comedy, check out Married to the Job videos.

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A continent of garbage?

I’m glad this blog post reminded me of a great story from the book Succeeding with What You Have, Charles M. Schwab, 1917. In challenging times like these, we need inspiring insights and images of work:

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

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.

This morning, a customer called to ask a special favor. Her company is in Indiana, PA, (hometown of actor Jimmy Stewart) about an hour and 15 minutes away from New Pig. She’s holding a spill response training tomorrow and needed one of our free educational videos. Was there any possibility that the video could be delivered by a Pigger on the way home from work? She’d meet the Pigger halfway.

Our service rep Nicole emailed this to all Piggers at 10:03 a.m. She emailed again at 10:14 to say that this was all arranged.

The only thing that surprises me is that 11 minutes elapsed. This is just one small example of how we’ll do whatever we can to help our customers.

Listening to customers—something we’ve always prized at New Pig—takes on fresh meaning in an age when online outrage leads a major brand like Tropicana to pull new packaging within two months of introducing it.

Orange you glad you have such power?

Using means like this blog, Twitter and more, our sizable ears will get even bigger—the better to hear you with.

Image © Simone van den Berg – Fotolia.com

I asked my curmudgeonly fellow Pigger, Curmudden, if he’d heard about Procter & Gamble’s plan for a new national chain: Mr. Clean Car Wash.

He nodded and frowned. “Times are tough when Procter & Gamble can’t skate by selling all their other stuff: Bounty, Crest, Gillette, Pringles.”

“Dawn, Nice ‘n Easy, Olay,” I said.

He squinted at my naming these namby-pamby products.

I added manlier brands: “Folgers, Zest, Pepto-Bismol.” He relaxed into a fresh scowl.

“Wi-fi, flat screens, colored soap guns for kids,” he sneered about the amenities a Mr. Clean Car Wash will offer. “Just gimme a hose.”

“The EPA prefers car washes,” I said, “because they recycle water and capture chemicals.”

He made a face but also a little grunt of concession.

“And car washes can use a number of PIG® products: Barrel-Top Mats and Secondary Containment for chemical drums, Wash Water Recycling Systems, Wipers and Rags.”

“Hey, local car washes can use all that! The little guy, ya know?”

I nodded and let him simmer down before mentioning that Procter & Gamble will also be rolling out Tide Dry Cleaning Stores nationwide. It’s better to space out the controversial topics with Curmudden.

I also held off mentioning that another of our fellow Piggers is really looking forward to using a Mr. Clean Car Wash. See Tony below.

A local customer (call them Company X) called about a spill this afternoon. Customer Service immediately started working with Distribution on an emergency delivery.  Tim in Facilities was even working on getting the order on a New Pig truck until we confirmed that it could ship with one of our shipping partners, Ward Trucking. The Ward Truck got there so fast with the PIG® products needed that the people at the front gate of Company X hadn’t been informed yet that the delivery was coming. A Pigger in our Distribution area placed a call to Company X to please open the gate.

Appreciative emails started flying around here, aimed largely at Piggers in Distribution for making this happen. Ya gotta love this email from Janet in Distribution:

Thanks for all the praise but keep in mind “THIS IS WHAT WE DO” not just for [Company X] but for all of our customers.  Monday, [Company Y] had a spill and needed our product ASAP. We got the call at 3:00 and the product was on a truck leaving New Pig at 3:45. We appreciate our customers and give them all the same New Pig service.

Right on, Janet: THIS IS WHAT WE DO.