I must admit I was riding an emotional high last week when I posted the video from the 8 year old, in which a classic video game was turned into stop motion animation using legos. I was temporarily fooled into thinking the U.S. Education system was on track.
Then……….this video surfaces from the Miss Teen USA pageant. The pride of South Carolina, right here. It hurts too much too look away……
So President Bush visited Seattle, or more accurately, Bellevue, this afternoon for a fundraiser for Congressman Dave Reichert. I happened to be driving by the hotel a few hours before the President’s appearance, and was surprised by the hundreds of protesters gathered on street corners around the hotel.
As I drove through this collection of people, I was struck with a thought. Just based on their appearance, I don’t know if I could ever agree with them. They were ragged, dirty and unkempt. I found myself wanting to disagree with whatever their signs said, just so I couldn’t be classified with them.
It made me wonder whether protesters could be more effective if they spent a little more time tuning their message to the mainstream, rather than preaching to the fringe. How many worthy causes are derailed by failing to observe basic tenets of marketing and public relations? Furthermore, if a protester’s goal is to sway and persuade, and their actions instead make me sympathetic to the cause they are protesting, shouldn’t the protester stop attending events? Isn’t in the protester’s best interest to evaluate the effectiveness of his campaign?
I wonder if the power of Freedom of Speech is diluted by zealots and loonies who use it to push people away. From a marketing perspective, how do you control your zealots, and make them unharmful to your cause? If you were the Prius Marketing Manager, and someone started a blog campaign asking people to send in pictures of where they get stoned in their car, how would you react? In today’s internet where everyone can be heard, how do you control your fans that can do harm to your ability to market to the mainstream?
Ok, you still don’t think you’re getting laid off when you’re 45? Well here’s what 8 year olds can do with their computer and a set of legos. What can you do?
Ok, I promise this is not going to turn into a soccer blog.
But, let’s look at football, baseball and basketball. We have all seen games in which an official makes an EGREGIOUS mistake. The players know it, the fans know it, the announcers know it. The next day the papers write about it. The bloggers can’t stop wriitng about it. Talk shows go on about it for days.
Yet the league will say nothing. And when the owner complains about it, he gets fined.
From a brand perspective, this is disastrous. By defending the official who made the error, the league is saying one of three things to the fans:
1) We told him to make a bad call.
2) We don’t care when they make bad calls.
3) Heck, we’re lucky the official didn’t make more bad calls.
Now I present you the English Premier League. A mere 30 hours ago, Liverpool played at home vs Chelsea. This is the equivalent of Colts vs Patriots, except imagine every Patriots fan has slept with the wife of every Colts fan, and the Patriots are owned by Osama Bin Laden.
Now, the ref makes a horrible horrible call to basically award Chelsea a game-tying goal, and as American soccer fans know, one goal in soccer is like 21 points in football. So imagine an NFL ref making 3 consecutive calls that award 21 points to the Patriots – and because of it, the game ends in a tie.
Fans here would be in outrage. And the NFL would sit in absolute silence, defending the integrity of the officiating crew. (If you don’t believe me, maybe you want to go back to Seahawks vs Steelers in the 2006 Super Bowl….)
But not here in the EPL. And to bring a sudden conclusion to this ramble, I will simply say that the league has BANISHED the ref for a week and the ref *gasp* admitted he made a mistake – and then apologized! This my friends is what makes the EPL great. The ref screwed up. He admitted it. He got punished. He said he was sorry. Move on to Week 4. I’m imagining Mark Cuban printing out copies of this article and bringing it to every subsequent meeting in which he gets fined.
You want to know how to build a brand – you be honest about it. End of story.
More on this at ESPN SoccerNet.
So, I finally sat down and watched the 1st half of a MLS game. It was probably because of David Beckham, and a New York vs LA game in front of 66,000 people is good in any sport. And if you were the MLS, you had to be pleased with 3 goals in about 12 minutes, with 2 of them assisted by Beckham.
The game was fun, it was ok soccer, and I recognized some names. The fans were enthusiastic and the stadium was packed. But there was still something missing for me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Then the next morning I went down to the George and Dragon for breakfast and to watch Manchester City v Manchester United. That’s when I realized what was missing from the MLS game. For all the excitement and story lines, at the end of the day, it’s just harder to watch any league in which the best players in the world aren’t taking part. That’s not a knock on the MLS – it’s a credit to the EPL. And as much as I am rooting for soccer in the U.S, I’m still unsure how to promote what is essentially a minor league.
But then I think about all these reality TV shows, where second rate singers, chefs, designers, MBA students and outdoorsmen compete for big money and a short-cut to the big time. These are people who by definition are not successes yet – minor leaguers in their professions if you will. And Americans eat it up. The chase for the dream is what drives the viewership. Americans are actually watching other people cook, yet we can’t get them to watch soccer.
So what I’m getting at, is in the case of a minor league sport, maybe we need to promote the dream aspect. It would be great if they could figure out some way that one MLS guy gets a European contract every year, based on some sort of elimination. Just a thought.
So I have to admit being very intrigued by a company called Ripple TV. You may have seen Ripple at a neighborhood Tully’s. The concept is pretty straightforward – a typical High Def TV, displaying canned news and sports information from CBS and ESPN. But the catch is, the screens are designed to run locally targeted ads that small business can create and upload themselves.
Or to put it another way, the two major pains about advertising are the creative costs and the inability to target effectively. Ripple TV solves both these problems. I get to choose which Tully’s my ad runs, and they provide me the tools to create the ad on the fly and upload it.
"Ripple has partnered with many of the World’s leading retail brands to provide a powerful in-store digital media experience that keeps their customers engaged, entertained and informed. Ripple’s user experience is customized specifically for each distribution partner, providing a truly custom experience that perfectly supports the brand, demographic, geographic and user experience requirements of each partner. Ripple keeps your customers engaged with the very latest news, financial information, sports, weather, traffic, local information and entertainment programming from the World’s leading content brands."
So, the only initial limitation, which I’m sure will be solved soon, is that they have relatively few major partners (Tully’s), and so the audience is not very diverse. But, that’s hardly a criticism. Instead, I applaud Ripple for landing such a great anchor partner. That really is quite a coup.
I don’t this affects agencies at all, because if anything the Ripple system grows the advertising pie, catering to small business owners that agencies didn’t really care about anyway. And the small business owner only needs a rudimentary sense of style and analytical skills to run a test ad for $75 in a neighborhood, so the cost to get started is minimal.
Fascinating concept, and I hope it does well.
If you ask me, the game that launched video games into the stratosphere was Tecmo Bowl. Other sports games were pretty good, but this was the precursor to Madden. This was the one that turned playing video games into an obsession for some people.
So, if you ever played, you will find this clip hilarious. Remember how Bo Jackson was the absolute MAN in this game?
I don’t throw any personal stuff on here, but I think it’s newsworthy in my circle that Liz Boyer completed her PhD in Sports Psychology from teh University of North Texas. It’s been quite a long road filled with sacrficies – the kind of uphill battle most entrepreneurs and start-ups face every day as well. These stresses were shared and assisted by her husban Rich who has been great through the whole process.
Anyway, let me be the first person in the blogosphere to congratulate DOCTOR Elizabeth Boyer. Nice work.
(also posted at http://myelectionchoices.wordpress.com/)
Hi all – we just got done with two segments on "The Air Americans" on Air America Radio.
We had the chance to speak with host David Bender, and saw traffic to the site spike during the period we were on. Unfortunately, the particular show we were on was not broadcast in Seattle – and we didn’t realize that until gametime. Also, to further confuse matters, we were moved from 7:00pm to 6:30pm to 6:00pm. So, if you received one of our emails and were hoping to hear the live broadcast on the radio at 7:00pm, apologies. But, we do have it recorded and will be posting it as podcasts as soon as we get the legal clearance.
So, we’d like to thank David Bender and the whole team over there for the opportunity. Hopefully we’ll get a few more shots on the radio.
Quick notice – The founders of MyElectionChoices.com have been invited to spend an hour talking with Air America radio host David Bender tonight, Wednesday, August 8, at (UPDATE AND EDIT) 9 or 930 pm Eastern / 6 or 630 pm Pacific. (UPDATE AND EDIT)
As you probably know, Air America is a national radio network focusing on progressive politics. In Seattle, its broadcast on AM 1090. You can find out if they have an affiliate in your area at www.AirAmerica.com.
This opportunity was facilitated by Ian Berman, and we appreciate his help.