Marketing, Advertising and the Art of Collecting Contacts for WSJE in the Provence, France

My former boss at The Wall Street Journal Europe, Rick Zednik, gave me a WSJE windshield sun shade, before he moved on to a new company. I never knew we had these kind of gadgets. Since my family says I live a life without a separation between private and work time, I decided to try the WSJE sun shade on my holiday in the South of France, in an effort to teach my kids about marketing, advertising and the art of collecting contacts.

This is after I had to explain to my kids that my company car, a Fiat Multipla, plays the role of a running joke at The Wall Street Journal Europe, because it doesn't fit the Audi, VW, BMW category of company cars of my peers.

Sault, market, 30 contacts per hour for 4 hours: 120 contacts

Rousillion, lower parking, 50 contacts per hour x 3 hours: 150 contacts

Our garden, Mont Ventoux in the background, 13 contacts per hour for 1 hour: 13 contacts


Crosspoint Simiane La Rotonde, Revest du Bion, 40 contacts per hour, for 15 minutes: 10 contacts


Road to Simiane La Rotonde: 20 contacts per hour for 30 minutes: 10 contacts (but of high quality because they all thought we were picking lavander)

Simiane La Rotonde, Center, 60 contacts per hour for 1 hour: 60 contacts

Beautiful little town, please do visit.

St Christol d'Albion, sheep market, 100 contacts per hour for 2 hours: 200 contacts.

We bought 'cheese, honey and escargots'.

Apt, city parking nr 2, parked in the wrong direction to generate a lot of contacts, 15 contacts per hour for 2 hours: 30 contacts

Total: 593 contacts

From these 593 contacts at least one third was from foreigners (non-french speaking people)(let's say 200), the rest was native (ca 393).

Then I realised, by joining my family when shopping in the local supermarkets and magazine stores, that our product was no where to be found in the greater area of the Vaucluse. That is a very hard one to explain to kids.

The Wall Street Journal Europe

Sad day today. My boss Rick Zednik decided to leave The Wall Street Journal Europe. He will join the Brussels based EU policy website Euractiv. Today he organized a farewell lunch. Instead of giving a farewell speech he wrote a short play featuring a 'normal' working day at WSJE and the daily actors he had to work with as a boss. Brilliant. He managed to capture the essence of each and one of us and put it in the script. One of my new -higher up- bosses captured the 'essence' of RZ and called him a true 'gentleman'. I couldn't agree more. RZ made our quaterly meetings more interesting by inviting guestspeakers from other departments. I will never forget how RZ pointed out what was happening with the 'Randy Paush' story on the internet after he invited a Dowjones.com editor to come and speak about our .com endeavors. I haven't had many bosses in my life, so it is difficult to compare, but I have learned a lot from this man. His email follow up on all my requests and ideas, and his general 'care' for our company, brand and people was exemplary.