Cecille Villacorta was legitimately the best-sellling salesperson that Saks ever had. Her winning strategy: she gave customers real refunds for "returns" and "gift cards" that were imaginary. In other words, she was running her own personal cash-back program. Which made her incredibly popular with shoppers! As you might imagine. She gave away $1.4 million, but she sold $27 million worth of crap for Saks, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in commissions.

And how did Saks thank her for her outside-the-box sales techniques? By pressing charges! Villacorta was found guilty of "falsifying business records" to increase her commissions (by a mere $48K). Now it's time for her sentencing, and Saks is all "Send her to jail, giving away $1.4 million of our money without asking us is wrong, blah blah blah."

"When employees steal from companies, they are not just violating the trust of their employer and damaging the reputation of the company that employs them; they are picking the pockets of all Americans," Andrea Robins, the director of customer relations for Saks Fifth Avenue, said in court on behalf of the company.

Meanwhile the rest of the world is like "What was that, I didn't hear you, I was too busy being happy that this lady gave me free money, so why don't you shut up, rich guy?" Man, Saks, you have a lot to learn about people. They do like free money and they don't like rich faceless corporations, which is why we'll be giving out free "refund" checks from Gawker Media all day today. Stop by and take one!
[NYT]

Ads via The Official Real"ad"tors Awards blog. Click to see the captions! We did this once before, too, which obviously did not stop the maniacal realtors.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.He is a "working man." Is that even good? Also he's obviously insane.

She's just saying: To god be the glory. She's just saying.

Realtor and white slaver.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Liz Carter also sells reefs.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Chet's debilitating case of the mumps hasn't prevented him from becoming a real estate professional.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Because when you need to sell your house, why not have twins sell your house?

BONUS: Richard Blakeley brought this one to my attention. It's Brad J. Lamb, the fabled Moon Sheep of Toronto, and, presumably,close friend to Blakeley.

I mean, every single ad campaign in America has had some sort of 'Hard Times' theme since the stock market tanked. It's beginning to lose its force. They have to step it up a notch. You are literally living in the Dust Bowl, people! Buy your cleaning supplies or whatever!

The look back at the 1930s is inspired by current financial conditions, which many economists have described as the worst since the Depression. Those comparisons are much on the minds of consumers, according to agency and marketing executives.

What good is shiny fantasy world of advertising if it can't distract us from the bitter reality of a new Depression? Very disappointing. We blame your failed presidency, Dennis Haysbert.
[NYT]

In one experiment, Dr. Nelson, along with Tom Meyvis and Jeff Galak of New York University, had 87 undergraduates watch an episode of the sitcom "Taxi." Half watched it as it was originally broadcast, with commercials for the Jewelry Factory Store and the law office of Michael Brownstein, among other ads. The other half watched the show straight through, without commercials.

Um, who wouldn't like a show better when it had the goofy, old school, big lapel commercials in it? That is what hipsterdom is all about! And you're asking undergrads here! Duh on this one.

The scientists say that the findings hold across the board, though: humans enjoy things more when they're forced to pause during them, which they hypothesize has to do with our natural ability to set any experience as a default, rather than as something to be enjoyed more than usual.

The effect wasn't limited to watching TV; interrupting a massage also heightened people's enjoyment, one experiment found.

Or it could just be that scientists like hand jobs. [NYT. Pic via]

From the website of Hypnosis Focus Groups, complete with disturbingly literal illustrations!

[via Fine on Media]

Enter Case Western University's Institute for Management and Engineering, which began using its own 2D codes, called EZcodes, around Case Western's Cleveland campus in February. The codes are found everywhere from transit stops, where students can scan them to see when the next bus would arrive, to applications on Facebook and MySpace, to the student newspaper where QVC recently began rolling out its own marketing campaign with Mobile Discovery. As QVC's CMO Jeff Charney said, "We wanted to make the Case campus look like downtown Tokyo."

...

Google has already seen results from a recent test campaign conducted in three markets with jewelry retailer Blue Nile. Each ad contained a QR code and a response tag, and was tested against the same ads without the tags. The code-enhanced ads ended up driving 6.5 times more revenue than the ads without. Mr. Spinnell added that the majority of the web traffic to the ads' micro-site was also enhanced by search, which is the ultimate proxy at Google in determining how traditional media is performing. "Aside from the fact that it was a great way to bridge the gap and make these newspaper ads clickable, aggregating these calls-to-action will really benefit the end user."