Buffalo and Downtown Wine & Spirits stores have an opening for full-time Assistant Manager.  

The Assistant Manager is a working supervisor who is responsible for managing store operations in the absence of the Store Manager and is also responsible for performing a variety of administrative and supervisory duties.  

Previous supervisory experience in the retail liquor industry is preferred.

Wage range $18.06 to $23.77 DOQ.  

Check the website for applications: www.ci.buffalo.mn.us and send to Laureen.bodin@ci.buffalo.mn.us or 212 Central Avenue, Buffalo by July 25, 2014.  

The City of Buffalo is an EOE.  

Nearly 15,000 Shriners from around the world crowded into the Twin Cities this week for their annual convention.

Your humble editor is a Shriner, and coordinated the Marketplace (trade show) portion of the event.

A couple hours into the first day of the event, he received a call from a vendor representing the Imperial Council Shrine Guilds of America.

The nice woman in the booth told him the production company had misspelled their organization's name on the booth sign (pictured above) and people kept mentioning it.

She asked for another sign.

To be honest, their organization is not universally known, and all attention would be beneficial.  

Consequently, it was suggested she keep the sign since people were noticing and take advantage of the attention.

She agreed!

This example shows how being unique and different can become an effective marketing strategy.

Here is another example from coffeytalkblog.com about Starbucks:

The other day I was talking to my friend Natalie about how Starbucks is notorious for misspelling customers' names on their cups.  

We've all had that conversation with someone at some point: "I just went to Starbucks and just LOOK at how they spelled my name? Wtf LOL?!"

Something along those lines right?

This short little exchange had Natalie showing me a blog totally dedicated to the collection of different photo taken by people whose names have been butchered by Starbucks baristas.  

I definitely got a kick out of it.

But then this conversation of poking fun at the baristas led to an interesting thought: maybe they are misspelling these names on purpose.

Maybe completely sabotaging the spelling of someone's name would be enough to lightheartedly irritate the customer just enough to talk about it, but not enough to shun them from the coffee shop altogether.

It's just kind of funny right?

I mean I'm sure they really do care about us and our experience.

Don't get me wrong, I love Starbucks.  

My name gets messed up all the time, but it's something funny that happens that you'd share with a friend on your way to class, or something you might talk about later that afternoon.  

Talking about Starbucks to friends means engaging in word-of-mouth advertising, AKA free advertising.  

The fact that there is a Tumblr blog devoted to the misspelling of names is basically another free form of advertising, except it takes place on the web.  

And by the way, there are multiple blogs dedicated to this misspelling phenomenon so this is definitely an ongoing conversation.

So in conclusion, Natalie and I came up with the theory that perhaps the baristas of Starbucks aren't alphabetically challenged, it's probably a marketing strategy to get free advertising for their company

Makes sense right?

Or we just thought way too far into that and it's just a conspiracy theory.

Just some food for thought.   

Four legendary Minnesota Vikings who played for the team during its most successful era will appear Saturday afternoon at Monticello's Hi-Way Liquors.

Center Mick Tingelhoff, running back Dave Osborn, tight end Stu Voigt and kicker Fred Cox are scheduled to appear from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. during Riverfest.

Randall Johnsen, liquor store manager, said the idea for the "Legends in Purple" event came about during a recent store marketing and brainstorming session.

"We were looking at ways in which we could help promote Hi-Way Liquors and the city of Monticello, especially during our Riverfest celebration," Johnsen said.

"We found out Stu Voigt, Dave Osborn and Mick Tingelhoff were still close friends, so we proposed a 'package deal' to get all three of them," he said.

"Next, we reached out to former kicker, and still all-time Viking's points leader, Fred Cox.  

He said yes, and 'legends' was born.

These are the Vikings of my, and many of our customer's, youth, and my staff and I are personally excited to meet them all."

People are welcome to bring Viking memorabilia to get autographed, as well as their cameras to capture the moment, he added.

Years before, for Hi-Way's grand reopening, the store had an event with Minnesota Twin and World Series MVP, Jack Morris, and celebrity vendor Wally the Beerman.  

"We reached out to those two again for our 2012 Riverfest signing," Johnsen said. "The response was great, and we decided then to pursue more athletes.

In the fall we hosted Krugerfarms.com spokesmodel and former NASCAR Sprint Girl, Paige Duke.  

The next year we had Minnesota Twin pitcher Juan Berenguer and Minnesota Vikings running back, Chuck Foreman."

This spring Minnesota Wild players Erik Haula and Marco Scandella made promotional visits. "On the verge of their Stanley Cup run, it was our biggest signing to date," he said.