Do brands still matter?

When my in-laws were in town a few weeks ago, we broached the topic of the importance of brands, or lack thereof, in the current economic climate. Their point of view: branding is dead because of the commoditization of products and services. Consumers now place so much emphasis on low price, the significance of brands is far less significant than it used to be.

Has our culture become so entrenched in finding bargains that potentially higher quality, branded products are part of the past? I can’t argue that consumer expenditures are down and can’t predict how/when buying habits will evolve as we creep our way out of the recession. But I don’t think brands are dead. Here’s why:

1. Trust in brands is eroding, but not completely gone. I’ll still buy my Asics running shoes, not because they are less expensive, but because they never let me down on the quality front. My knees mean too much to me to settle for the low cost alternative. I’ll also buy Hellman’s mayonnaise and Heinz Ketchup because they taste better than private labels.

2. The brand landscape is evolving, but not disappearing. With advances in technology and the personalization of products and services, the brand business is not what it used to be. There’s a reason why there are over 100,000 iPhone applications available today (and still counting).

3. Branding is no longer just about advertising. Media fragmentation has changed the landscape, too. For example, the proliferation of ESPN and its universe has not just altered the sports world, but it has influenced the restaurant industry, too. (Hint: Think Buffalo Wild Wings).

4. Portability is changing the landscape. With iPhones, Kindles and microcomputers, the old “hardware” (e.g., newspapers and magazines) is seeing a serious decline in circulation. This presents new opportunities to reach customers and communicate with them.

5. Social networking is here to stay. Though I’ll always argue that social networking is part of the marketing mix versus the entire marketing plan, there’s no debating the power of social networking. With a potentially explosive word-of-mouth network, companies of all shapes, sizes and industries can’t ignore a trend that’s here to stay.

6. Consumer advocates are more important than ever. What people think of a product, service or image will influence a person’s or company’s ability to succeed. News gets around fast these days (just ask Tiger). There’s never been a better time to understand customers’ opinions, needs and interests.

7. Brands still matter, they just need to be created, evaluated and updated differently than in the past. Companies used to rely heavily on TV commercials to build brands. Those were the days when Rolaids taught us how to spell relief and Oscar Meyer had a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Not that advertising is now irrelevant, there are new and different strategic issues to consider in today’s brand new world.

Branding is not dead. It’s just different. And that means it’s important to understand your brand within the context of a whole new competitive landscape, economic climate and age of information.

JUDGING A GIRL BY HER ZEROS

Is it possible for a person to feel vindicated, and then somewhat defeated, all within a period of 48 hours, for the same, exact blast from the past?

This past weekend, friends of ours had us over for dinner. In the course of conversation prior to eating, I brought up an email one of them had sent me the prior day – which included a link to a video I happened to find quite interesting and relevant. It pointed out the senseless money spent on Christmas presents and suggested that, if 10% of Christmas expenditures were diverted to more meaningful causes, we could provide clean water for all the universe. Anyway, as we were re-hashing the point of the email, my friend quoted the amount of money spent on Christmas presents as $450 billion. She then followed up to say, “Well, maybe it was $450 million, but it was a lot of money and the same takeaway still holds.” Her spouse was quick to respond, “Oh, she’s a marketer, so what’s 3 extra zeros?” to which she responded, “Oh, I always mix up my billions and millions.” Now this “marketer” happens to be an alumnus of Yale undergrad/Duke grad, so she’s certainly no dummy! Thus, in some way, I felt vindication for an event which had occurred earlier in my life.

About 13 or 14 years ago when I lived in Boston, I interviewed for a job in Boulder, Colorado, for a company called Frontier Spices. I passed the phone interview with flying colors, so the company flew me out to Boulder for a long weekend in the middle of winter (sad to think I had no time for skiing amidst the interviewing extravaganza). I met with everyone at the company’s headquarters and even toured Boulder with a real estate agent to look for homes – when I moved out there for my new job. The staff loved me, I pretty much felt like the job was mine and at long last, I was going to move to Colorado, my meant-to-be-home.

But before the offer was confirmed, however, I had to get approval by the company’s CEO, who happened to live in Iowa. So I travelled to the factory in what seemed like the middle of nowhere to meet with this man. During the course of the interview, I hit a wee bit of a hiccup. He asked me a question about the revenues of my current employer (or perhaps one of its product lines, the exact details escape me at this point in time). When I responded, I accidently left off 3 zeros. I can’t remember if I said millions and it was thousands, or I said thousands and it was millions. The end result was the same. “If this girl can’t keep her zeros straight, she’s sure not going to work for my company.” Colorado was going to have to wait (and it is still waiting, by the way).

So it’s ironic that Monday, as I reviewed a proposal I’d written for a potential client, I again experienced zero dyslexia. Thankfully, this time it was only one and not three. I had given two cost options for a research project and had inadvertently left off a zero in the second option. Even reviewing the proposal via phone, I did not notice the typo. But guess what? The potential client wasn’t the least bit humored by my remark, “Oh look at that! I left out a zero!”

I think when it comes to me and zeros, I am doomed. But at least I know there’s a Yale grad in the same boat as I.

Some say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but my motto is you can’t judge a girl (or her proposals) by her zeros. If so, you’ll miss out on some grit, determination and smarts, albeit a few humorous and sometimes common sense-less comments.

P&G always seems to be the thought leader in marketing and organizational structure. My Blue Chip training was in Boston, based in the classical “P&G” marketing style. I drank the Kool-aid and found the structure quite effective at the time – perhaps because marketing ruled and I was a marketer.

According to an article by Advertising Age, marketing structure is soon to change again, with P&G and Unilever paving the way. (And Nike, too, but mum is the word on how this organization is evolving).

The article highlights a new study by Forrester which suggests that the role of the brand manager should evolve to one of a brand advocate to respond to the new digital age. Is this marketing mumbo jumbo or organizational structure with substance? Apparently, brand management is too antiquated to respond to today’s fast changing, quickly segmenting media environment.

Some of their suggestions are listed as follows (along with my opinion, of course).

· Ditch the formal annual budgeting process. The rationale is that on-the-fly plans adapt more quickly as “conditions” change. I’m not sure how this will work in the real world. As it is, marketing budgets are generally the most prone to cuts when times are tough. And even when times are great. Without knowing what you have to spend, how can you plan anything, regardless of how many tweets are twitted?

· Give marketing research a more prominent and central role. Well, what market researcher is going to argue with this one? Even though a researcher made the recommendation in the first place, we’ll see if organizations follow through. It’s certainly one of the best ways to understand consumers and their evolving habits of information and entertainment consumption (sound familiar?).

· Bring in-house some of the planning, research and creative functions that have been outsourced in the past. Well, I have to disagree with this assessment, as it would put me out of business. But I also don’t think it’s a realistic expectation, either. Since companies are currently slashing headcount, it’s not likely they will suddenly start hiring new skill sets.

· Shift alliances with agencies to media and other content creators. So much for loyal relationships with agency partners who have nurtured the brand for years. I’m not sure if the media will always have a company’s same best interests at heart, so this new strategy may backfire. Only time will tell.

· Marketing to demographic and other segment cohorts may replace the traditional emphasis on a single brand. I actually found this the most interesting idea in the article. It will force companies to appreciate the importance of consumers in marketing and new product development efforts, something which I believe should have occurred all along. Lumping groups of together based on demographics, psychographics or other behavioral qualities/characteristics is something I have advocated for years. However, changing organizational structure to market to these cohorts could be new and exciting.

· Marketers need to better balance art with science. Apparently, Forrester thinks the “art” part of the marketing equation dominated hires in years past, and now suggests that marketers now have more training in research and analytics. Not only am I a dead split along the right and left brain, I found the same to be true of my peers in the Blue Chip setting years ago. So though I don’t disagree with the recommendation, I just don’t think this a real change from “classical” marketing and brand management. It simply means a marketers will be evaluating more than Nielsen data. They’ll be looking at real-time web stats, too.

So now you can read the article (if you haven’t already done so). And if you find out what Nike is doing, let me know.

Yesterday, I spent my morning on an expedition with my child’s kindergarten class. How was I to know, when I signed up to help, that I would have a client deadline that day?

So I was already stressed out when I sat down to my computer at 1 p.m. to “start” my work day. Then I came to find out that the version of a paper I’d been writing was accidentally saved in Outlook the prior day, versus being “saved as” a Word file on my hard drive. In other words, it was lost such that the search function couldn’t find it on my computer.

Thank goodness for writing extraordinaire (aka Microsoft apps expert) Rob Salkowitz who had sent me directions on where to find lost documents several months ago when I did exactly the same thing. I found the file about twenty minutes later and dove into my work.

Five minutes later, the YMCA calls because my child had a stomach ache and wouldn’t stop crying. I really wasn’t that worried because this had happened one other time when he didn’t go to the bathroom all day. My prediction was correct, but after a teary eyed boy swore he was sick, my husband picked him up and brought him home.

Once home, he wanted to play computer games beside me at my desk while I was working. How can you say no to a “sick” child? I continued to (try to) write my paper next to the loud sounds of Sid the Science Kid PBS Games. This, itself, got a bit challenging when I started also to listen to a prerecorded interview to (try to) finish the paper I was supposed to complete by 5 p.m.

Just when things couldn’t get worse, my dog came in my office and accidentally knocked the plug to my computer out of the socket. At least the document wasn’t completely lost, thanks to Word’s auto save function. But I did lose some of my additions/revisions and at least another 30 minutes figuring it out. Not to mention the sanity I lost in the interim.

By the time 5 p.m. came around, I sent off the imperfect document and tried to go for a run, too frazzled to go far. I was actually glad when my dog when wore out first and I had an excuse to come home.

I fell asleep at 8 p.m. last night. Another day in the life…..

I love dogs, especially my dogs. I love running with them, hiking with them and cuddling with them at night. I enjoy having them beside me when I work during the day. I pretty much like everything about my dogs except when they bark when I’m on a business call, and when my puppy poops on the carpet at night like he did last night, despite the fact I’d just let him out to pee (who says kids are the only ones who keep parents up at night?).

I have read books about dogs, seen artwork with dogs and even have a signed sketch by Steve Huneck which illustrates the thoughts running through a dog’s brain. Today, as a tribute to Walden and Boedi, I am going to use dogs as my subject for marketing lessons.

Learning the basics pays long-term dividends.

I made many a mistake in raising my first dog Shelby. Some might argue that many of her odd behavioral traits were largely my responsibility (and unfortunately, they might also say this about my second dog). Without understanding the basics of potty training, food portion control and jumping (or not doing so), you’ll forever be cleaning carpet, changing dog food and washing paw prints off of your clothes. Poor Shelby lived in a crate for most of her first year of life, but she could hold her bladder for 24 hours or longer.

There are many people who claim to be “marketers” who don’t have a solid grasp of subject. In some instances, employees get stuck wearing the marketing hat even though they were hired for a completely different job function. In other instances, someone might be fresh out of school and eager to learn the ropes. Either way, training and education equip individuals with the skills they need to make better decisions on behalf of their employers. Where there are skill gaps, there’s always an outside expert to pinch it. Much like we now have dog psychologists (see next bullet).

Know when to use the leash (or muzzle, whichever is appropriate).

One of Shelby’s odd behavioral traits was her aggressiveness. I even took her to a dog psychologist when I lived in Boston in hopes of fixing the problem, and the trainer told me her aggressive behavior was my fault and there was little I could do to eradicate it. He recommended a number of ways to control the behavior, however, most importantly by always using a leash. Well, I found this to be completely unfair to permanently affix a leash to her collar, so when we were in the open woods and I knew no other dogs was around, I’d let her run free and enjoy life to the fullest. If I dared take her to the dog park, I’d even try a muzzle (even if she hated it).

So many times, when we describe a product or service to customers and prospects, we tell it like we know it rather than like how they want to hear it. When selling Smartphones with a Windows Operating system, manufacturers and carriers often harp on key benefits like “Easily check your email when you’re on the road,” “Sync with your PC,” or “View and edit Word documents” (like we really want to edit word documents using our phones). Apple got it right when they started talking about the iPhone in terms of applications that made life more fun. Hum….maybe some of the others should have put a muzzle on the geek talk and talked more about fart games.

Repititon is important.

Everyone knows a dog will never learn to sit, stay and roll over from a single command. It takes time and repetition to successfully train your pet.

Sometimes this message is forgotten in the world of marketing. A company will place a single magazine ad with expectations of heroic sales, only to be disappointed. Not only is advertising typically a brand-building vehicle, but it usually takes more than one placement to have lasting effect. I recently heard a client say, “We tried direct marketing once but it didn’t work.” With so many factors influencing the outcome of a direct mail campaign – message, creative, offer and list among them – it’s nearly impossible to label the tactic as ineffective after one attempt. Try and try again, with a few tweaks to test for effectiveness. After all, some dogs respond to praise; others require treats.

Unless you repeat the same mistake over and over again.

I always tease my husband when he tells our dogs to sit. He never says it once. Instead, he’ll say, “Walden, sit.” “Walden, sit.” “Sit.” “Walden, sit.” “Sit.” “Did you hear me? I said, sit!” Now if you have to tell a dog to sit 15 times, how’s he ever supposed to learn it when you say it only once?

Likewise, if you know a marketing tactic isn’t working as effectively as you’d like, despite your attempts to tweak and/or improve it, then why spend your money and do it over and over again? I’ve had clients tell me, “Yellow pages don’t really work anymore but I’m scared to think what might happen if we don’t use them.” Hum….perhaps you should try and find out! Likewise, when I worked for Network Commerce in Seattle, our CEO loved press releases. We issued so many press releases that we probably publicized his trips to the bathroom. However, if a company places a slew of unimportant issues on the wire, how will the media ever pick up a story when something exciting actually takes place?

If you love them, they love you.

My puppy Walden has an uncanny awareness of who doesn’t like dogs. If a non-dog lover walks in the door, he growls without fail. If a dog lover comes over, he kills them with kindness. I honestly can’t figure it out except to say he knows who’s going to rub him, feed him and give him treats.

If only companies cared for their customers in the same way, especially those who have been loyal. I will never understand why phone companies don’t give a break to long-standing customers if they wish to purchase a new phone (especially when the old one breaks like mine did recently). Despite the fact I’ve loyally paid a steep bill for years, I get NO break on a new phone until my contract is up for renewal. If they would give me some tender loving care, I wouldn’t be so tempted to switch carriers as soon as Verizon starts carrying the iPhone. Companies are missing the mark when the put customer service at the bottom of the list of priorities.

Making smart decisions saves money.

One morning this summer, I went running down a trail in the woods with Walden. Being the klutz than I am, I tripped and fell and caught my leg under a barbed wire fence. A month later after my stitches had healed, I went running with Walden again on the same trail. This time, it was he who ran beneath the fence. $400 and multiple stitches later, Walden is recovering (and yes, it costs more for a dog to get stitches than a human). I have now concluded that I should avoid this trail – and this fence – altogether, and save myself some money and pain in the process.

Sometimes we are pressured to make dumb decisions because the CEO said to do so, or because we were racing against a deadline and didn’t have the best information at hand. If you know better, say so! And if you don’t have time to evaluate things as thoroughly as you should, hold off until you are more adequately prepared. Going to the doctor or vet is as much fun as a bad performance review.

Last week, in a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Girls and Dieting, Then and Now,” Jeffrey Zazlow discusses the pressures on fourth grade girls to be thin. Though his dialogue actually began in 1986 after studies in Chicago and LA were carried out, weight-focused pressures on young girls are even stronger today than in the earlier decade. Sadly, he mentions that a preoccupation with body image can show up in children as young as age five. The country’s ever-growing percentage of obese children is not helping matters, either. Increased awareness of this medical condition appears to leave children even more obsessed with their weight.

As I mention in the early pages of my book, I, too, was obsessed with being thin at a young age. In high school, my friends and I spent hours examining our butts and guts, wishing for a flat belly when we viewed our profile in the mirror. Though I wasn’t the slightest bit overweight, I still found it necessary to try all-fruit and all-liquid diets. When I did gain weight in college, 25 pounds to be exact, it wasn’t a fad diet that helped me drop the weight. It was moderation and other healthy habits that did the trick.

In today’s culture, being skinny is highly regarded and body images re formulated by photo-shopped body parts on magazine covers. As such, the line between obesity and eating disorders will likely grow thinner and thinner.

At some point, the emphasis on being thin should take a backseat to other personal values which instill self-esteem and self-worth in children, and adults, too, for that matter. The name of the game is feeling good, and feeling good about yourself. Managing weight is an outcome of taking good care of your body and respecting your own well-being.

1. Be all things to all people. If you sing your tune to more listeners, then you’ll convert more people into buyers.

· Even if this does prove to be true, it takes lots of money to attract lots of people. So if your business is small and budgets are limited, use your money more wisely and market to a niche audience.

2. Skip the branding process. After all, it costs a lot and takes a lot of time.

· If you take the time to evaluate issues such as the core strengths/weaknesses, competitive strengths/brands, and target audience (just to brush the service), you will have a much better opportunity to showcase your own brand optimally, setting yourself up for success.

3. Visually brand your business on the cheap.

· A logo in India might only cost $200. Or a stock photo for 10 credits. Check out this tree logo from www.istockphoto.com:

This looks really cool, I think. But depending on your business, you may want your icon, color choice and type treatment to say something about you, your personality and values. A stock logo may say it well, but it may also say it for throngs of other businesses, too.

4. Change your name till you find the one you really like.

· I once worked for a CEO (who was very smart and successful) who changed the name of his start-up business 3 times in 3 years. I advised him otherwise but he chose not to listen. The company is now out of business (not just because of the name changes, of course, but it certainly didn’t help build brand awareness among its customers).

5. Never change gears.

· How many times you have followed directions from mapquest, only to learn there was an easier or better way to reach your destination? The same is true with your business. Sometimes you need to take a minor detour to accomplish goals. I firmly believe in a roadmap, one grounded in the branding process you went through (and did not skip, right?), but sometimes you have to re-boot and re-route . There’s a reason why GPS devices have gained popularity – they know if traffic is bad and alter directions accordingly. Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, suggests:

“If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan, and if this new plan fails to work, replace it, in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”

6. Always go with your gut.

· Gut instinct can get your 95% there in many instances. Especially if the business or product concept is your own, you have to hope that instinct counts for something. But I firmly believe that a little research goes a long way in refining the go-to-market strategy, tweaking the product and/or understanding customer needs and desires. It’s better to spend a little money upfront to test your product, message or advertising concepts before you throw out the big marketing bucks.

7. Always put customers ahead of employees.

· I’m not suggesting you treat customers like crap. But if you always put customers in front of your employees, you risk burning them out, pissing them off and dragging them down. Happy employees translate to happy customers, so treat them well. Keep them happy, healthy, inspired and well-balanced. After all, they have pressures, stresses and interests outside of the office, too, and this plays into their productivity during business hours.

8. If at first you don’t succeed, give up.

· I had to have a good excuse to bring up a quote from Michael Jordan. “I‘ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Who argues with MJ?

I was trying to find out my friends’ favorite songs about food, so I posted the request on Facebook. I got so many great responses that I’ll cut and paste below in case you need the songs as reference one day. Bear in mind, there were 23 songs alone about chicken on this web site.

• Orange Crush – REM
• The Oscar Mayer Weiner song
• Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
• Cheeseburger in Paradise
• Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy! Wiggles!
• Home Grown Tomatoes by Guy Clark
• Texas Cookin” by Jerry Jeff Walker
• 8 piece box’ by Southern Culture on the Skids
• Banana Puddin’ by Southern Culture on the Skids
• Rock Lobster – B-52’s
• Sugar, Sugar – The Archies
• Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie – Jay & the Techniques
• Hungry Like the Wolf – Duran Duran
• Eat It – Weird Al
• (I Found My Thrill on) Blueberry Hill – Fats Domino
• Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
• Mashed Potato Time – Dee Dee Sharp
• Hot Potatoes – The Kinks
• Hey, Good Lookin, Whatcha got cookin – The Mavericks
• Food Glorious Food – from ‘Oliver!’
• Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs – theme from Frasier
• Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
• Champagne Supernova (Oasis)
• Beat It – Michael Jackson
• Whip It - Devo
• Cheeseburger in Paradise – Jimmy Buffett
• Red Red Wine – UB40
• Peppermint Twist
• C is for Cookie – Cookie Monster
• Spam Song – Monty Python
• Love Goes Where Rosemary Grows
• Jumbalaya
• I Want Sex & Candy

This is a great list; and when I looked up the lyrics to some of them, the words were awesome, too. The winner, for the purposes of my book, was Home Grown Tomatoes by Guy Clark.  This is because I long for the summer months when I can pick ‘em out of my own garden, fresh and sweet to taste. An excerpt is below:

Ain’t nothin’ in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin’ out in the garden

Get you a ripe one don’t get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter without `em’s a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin’ & diggin’
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes

You can go out to eat & that’s for sure
But it’s nothin’ a homegrown tomato won’t cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with eggs, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

Food definitely has a leg up on exercise in the lyrics world. And with that thought, I am going to go check the vines and have myself a snack. Bon appétit!

I finally sent my finalized book manuscript to Morgan James today, and aside from edits which could last till eternity, the thing that held me up were the quotes I had included at the start of each section of my book. I kept re-reading the quotes and not feeling very passionate about them. After some thought, I decided I’m simply not a quote person. There are a lot of people who can throw out quotes all day and be natural, proficient and effective at it. I guess I could come to be one of these people, but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, so I had a revelation that I’m more of a song person than a quote person, because I’ve always loved music and can often to relate to lyrics.

So my task was a song/lyrics for the three sections to my book:

• Food (Eat up!)
• Exercise (Shape up!)
• Life (Live it up!)

The Life section was a no brainer because there are several Dixie Chicks songs that I’m convinced a subliminal me helped write. The Food section was only challenging because there are SO many songs about food (more on that tomorrow). The Exercise section was the toughest. Even though there are a million songs that would qualify as good workout songs, most workout songs are either sexual, illogical or kinda silly if you look closely at the lyrics. Here are a few examples:

“Bust a Move” (Young MC)

This here’s a tale for all the fellas
Try to do what those ladies tell us
Get shot down cause you’re over zealous
Play hard to get an females get jealous
Ok smartie, go to a party
Girls are stancin the crowd is showin body
A chick walks by you wish you could sex her
But you’re standin on the wall like you was Poindexter
Next days function, high class luncheon
Food is served and you’re stone cold munchin’
Music comes on, people start to dance
But then you ate so much you nearly split your pants
A girl starts walkin, guys start gawkin’
Sits down next to you and starts talkin’
Says she wanna dance cus she likes the groove
So come on fatso and just bust a move

“Shake Your Booty” (KC and the Sunshine Band)

AahEverybody, get on the floor, let’s dance!
Don’t fight the feelin’, give yourself a chance!

Shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty!
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty.

“Gonna Make You Sweat” (C&C Music Factory)

Here is the dome back with the bass
The jam is live in effect and I don’t waste time
Off the mic with a dope rhyme jump to the rhythm
Jump jump to the rhythm jump
And I’m here to combine beats and lyrics
To make you shake your pants take a chance
Come on and dance guys grab a girl don’t wait make the twirl
It’s your world and I’m just a squirrel
Trying to get a nut to move your butt to the dance floor
So you what’s up hands in the air come on say yeah
Everybody over here everybody over there
The crowd is live enough as I pursure this groove
Party people in the house move

Left to right (groove) work me all night
Come on let’s sweat (sweat sweat) baby
Let the music take control (control control)
Let the rhythm move you
Sweat (sweat sweat) sweat
Let the music take your soul (soul soul)
Let the rhythm move you
Everybody dance now

And my personal favorite, the song most suggested on Facebook after my status request:

“Let’s get Physical” (Olivia Newton John)

I’m saying all the things that I know you’ll like,
Makin’ good conversation
I gotta handle you just right,
You know what I mean
I took you to an intimate restaurant,
Then to a suggestive movie
There’s nothin’ left to talk about,
Unless it’s horizontally

Let’s get physical, physical,
I wanna get physical, let’s get into physical
Let me hear your body talk,
Your body talk, let me hear your body talk

I’ve been patient, I’ve been good,
Tried to keep my hands on the table
It’s gettin’ hard this holdin’ back,
You know what I mean
I’m sure you’ll understand my point of view,
We know each other mentally
You gotta know that you’re bringin’ out
The animal in me

Let’s get animal, animal,
I wanna get animal, let’s get into animal
Let me hear your body talk,
Your body talk, let me hear your body talk

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like I could make some money writing lyrics if these songs were hits.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my favorite food tunes.