22 More Go

Off they go, 22 more souls leaving ePrize today. And it sounds like the message that they need to remember is to stay away from PrizeLogic. Good luck folks. With Chrysler and GM coming out of bankruptcy, there should be some positions opening up at agencies that deal with them. Otherwise, there's still a list of job posting places on the blog.

One Big Happy

Thanks to a fellow eXprizer for the following tale of woe:

Seems a former ePrizer went to work for PrizeLogic in a different role than they held at ePrize. This person has a wife and kids to support, but that didn't stop ePrize from suing him and his employer for a breech of a non-compete clause!

Can you imagine, in this economy, those fuckers would actually deny a man the ability to provide for his family? Hey, didn't Josh Linkner always refer to ePrize folks as "family"? I guess he has no care if they starve.

The Days of Whine and Poses

I read on Twitter today that there are more bad times happening at ePrize. I don't tend to put much stock in tweets but felt obliged to report to see if anyone could substantiate or refute:

"no bonuses at eprize and monthly commission delayed.

Not sure what kind of "bonuses" to which this refers -- perhaps the quarterly performance bonus that was always so easily snatched away? -- but delay of commissions is pretty bad. Of all the people you don't want to piss off, your sales force is close to the top of the list.

Happy Passover

Enjoy the office while it's quiet!

No Alibi

Wow. I'm a little flabbergasted. The creative for ePrize's Bluefly promotions has been bad in the past but I think that the latest one really goes above and beyond.

Now, I'm assuming that this is in no way the fault of the creative folks at ePrize but wholly on the shoulders of Bluefly's agency. They apparently have yet to learn anything about this thing we call the Internet. Take a look at the homepage for the promotion:

I'm all for good use of negative space but this is abuse. And the pages are all about built out tall -- so tall that they get cut off even at high resolutions (game page: 1114 X 800). It's obvious that someone has a really big monitor and doesn't give a damn about the common user base.

Apparently, they also don't care about people understanding their contest. The actual "instant win" screen is fairly obtuse with no instructional text of what's going on. It took so long to load that I was scrolled down at the bottom of the screen looking for something (anything) to click when the flash loaded above. For some odd reason, the game page's footer is different than all the other pages.

In short.... "B-L-U Fly, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly."

Smirch Engine

A lot of the issues that have been brought up on this blog recently about anonymity and ruining reputations via online libel was brought up in this week's "On The Media". Check it out.

Adios Weesh!

I heard a sad story the other day that ePrize's marketing maven... the sizzle on the steak... the toothpick in the cake... is heading for greener pastures. Best of luck!

I Wasn't In

I've referenced this event in previous posts but someone was kind enough to send me some pix of it for me to relive (and begin my nightmares anew). Here are some pix of the 2006 kick-off event where upper management dressed up in superhero costumes, danced around, and generally acted like fools. That was the same day I started looking for a new job...

Promotions 101

There's a new, funny video up on ePrize.com -- at least it's new to me. It's a little ditty about why ePrize is so great.

My favorite part has to be this one:

CMS Suggestion

Trying to find out if the London office of ePrize is open or closed, I've come to the conclusion that ePrize would really do itself a favor by instituting a CMS across their various sites. ePrize has a lot of pokers in the fire these days -- "The Power of e", the ePrize Blog, eprize.com, eprize.net, etc -- and it would be smart to give these sites a bit of a cohesive look as well as consistent content.

That would probably help prevent differences in the footer from one site to another. For example -- the "Power of e" site still has London in the footer:

An update to the ePrize.com site, overall, is desperately needed. The back end may not run on the same technology (ASP) but it's still a crappy table-based layout with graphical text. Worse, it's the same antiquated front end interface from 2003. Meanwhile, the few updates that are visible leave a lot to be desire. I'm still harping on the slipshod RSS feeds on pages like the portfolio feed which is sorted alphabetically rather than historically, invalidating the whole RSS idea of updates. If anything, there should be a CMS in place for easy updates of news, promotions, contact information, etc. with a simple transform that could make sections into RSS feeds where applicable. Likewise, the blog and other sites could be folded into one umbrella with a cohesive look and codebase.

Regardless... what happened to the London office?

Facebook?

If anyone's interested, I started a group on Facebook for ex-Prizers. Click here to see. I don't expect the turn-out to be tremendous, despite the growing number of potential members.

Great Culture!

This video is so great, I had to bring it back. Can someone give me an accurate headcount of hour many exPrizers there are in this video?

More Job Cuts

Just got this message:

FYI: Round 3 of cuts just hit on Friday (2/6/09). Another 13 people let go. All free pop gone and lunchbox subsidy is canceled. They will of course still have lunchbox to keep the sheep at their desks but now everyone has to pay full price.

I can't wait to find a new job and jump from this sinking ship. What a mistake it was to ever come here.

No word yet if these were more "underperformers" or if Linkner will ever be able to live down his comments about the July firings (20). He managed to keep his foot out of his mouth with the December round (13).

Back in July, 2008, the Oakland Business Review reported:

The company has 350 employees, 275 of which are in Michigan, and the layoffs amount to less than 5 percent of the workforce. Those laid off received severance packages, and there are no plans for more layoffs, Linkner said.

Laid off? Does that mean they'll be called back any time now? There's an interesting discussion of that topic here.

Does this mean that ePrize is down to 324 employees or 304... or have others quit without the press? I doubt (m)any were hired. And, what's the deal with the two sets of firings of thirteen people? It's enough to give someone triskaidekaphobia.

And the idea of severance at ePrize isn't much to sneeze at. Typically it's two weeks pay (at their low rate) and your signature on a document that dispenses of all your rights. I still regret signing mine and encourage anyone who is presented with this document to get it reviewed and amended by a lawyer.

The Big Idea

Without a nod to Donny Deutsch, ePrize is shilling for a "Big Idea" with their latest internal promotion.

To quote the site, ePrize is "giving away $1,000 to one lucky winner among all who submit their ideas. Give us your best shot – you may only enter once."

Now, let's not go into the poor copywriting of that section but focus instead on the strangeness of this skills-based promotion. Are the creative coffers at ePrize so empty that they're reaching out to the world for ideas? Has the employee-base become so sycophantic that fresh thoughts are in such short supply? This just seems like a bizarre move for a company that touts its creative edge.

Special thanks to Anonymous for pointing this out!

Prize Logic Website Live

Slither... er... Prize Logic has its website live. Pretty slick. Check it out here.