Monthly Archives: June 2008

If you can’t make fun of a mass exodus, what really can you make fun of?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Personal

I suppose we all should have seen something like this coming.  With nearly every key executive who is not named Yang fleeing the sinking ship formerly known as Yahoo, a few enterprising young folks put togteher this web site to make it easier to write your resignation letter.  Ah, must be good times down there. 

Down the road it will be fasicnating to review the complete company history of Yahoo, and analyze their strategic decisions.  Can you think of any other company that had such a specacular rise and (possible) fall in just a 15-20 year period? 

A Few Random Notes

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

Nothing brilliant to comment on this week, though there’s a ton of odd unrelated stuff going on.  Here are a few things that made me stop and take note:

  • Here’s my friend Dan from Manchester making his national television debut on America’s Got Talent.
  • I really have to go back and figure out how Nick Licata gets elected to Seattle City Council.  I’m beginning to think that moderates and conservatives simply don’t vote in Seattle.  Either that, or there’s some weird transition that anyone who is moderate or conservative bolts for the Eastside as soon as they can.
  • For all the talk about Erik Bedard not speaking to the press, maybe with all his millions Larry Holmes can find a speechwriter, or at least someone who will keep him on some sort of consistent train of thought.  This could literally be a SNL skit.
  • The U.S. Embassy told Americans living abroad: "Be Wary of Soccer-Crazed Germans."  No word if the Germans responded by warning their people to stay away from stadiums in Detroit, Cleveland and New York, just as a general rule.
  • After months of hearing about how U.S. elementary, high scools and colleges are sub-standard, the graduate programs get blasted with this report from Business Week.  Apparently there was actually a Web site up for years that claimed to give people answers to the GMAT.  Yes, Years.  As in, for years the guys at GMAT never thought to Google "How to cheat on the GMAT" in order to fix the problem. Note to MBA grads – there may be job openings at GMAT soon.
  • After the purging of the Mariner front office this week, someone asked me an interesting question.  If all decisions had been left to the Wisdom of Crowds approach where fans could vote on all matters, could they really have done any worse than Bavasi.  In 4.5 years, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen where you look upon the body of work and see no success in the past, no success in the present, and no hope for success in the future.  How hard to you have to try to take an 90+ win season in 2003, and decimate the major league and minor league talent without replacing it with much in return? 
  • And of course, today could be the day that we find out for sure that our millionaires and legistalors all got out-hustled by an Oklahoma oil guy.

What a fun week.

The Best Seat in Pro Sports

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Personal, Seattle, Sports

This comes to us from the Stanwood division of Andy Boyer.com. 

This is what happens when your marketing team doesn’t check things out with the legal team. Or maybe they couldn’t reach the lawyers, since the whole legal team was in court trying to make sure the Seattle based Marketing team would be out of a job in a few weeks….

bestseat.jpg 

Are You Having Pool Parties That You Don’t Know About….

Posted by Andy Boyer in Personal

I don’t think Sergei Brin or Jeff Zuckerberg ever envisioned their companies could be used together like this…

pool.jpgWould-be revellers are using satellite images on the internet to find houses with swimming pools – and then turning up uninvited for an impromptu dip.The craze involves using the Google Earth programme, which provides high-quality aerial photos of Britain and other countries. Once a target is chosen, the organisers use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to arrange to meet, say police.

The whole article is here…. 

Fan Friendly Ticketing

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Personal, Seattle, Sports

I promise, if the Seattle Sounders do something like try to move to Oklahoma City, or spend $117 million on players I wouldn’t add to a Fantasy baseball team, I’ll complain about it.  But as long as they keep doing things that impress me as a marketing professional, I’m going to keep sharing how impressed I am.

sounders.jpgThis week, I went through the pleasurable and fun process of selecting my 2009 season ticket package.  In comparison, I’ve completely given up on using Ticketmaster.com due to its inflexibility and 75% Convenience charge.  It’s amazing that you can’t choose your seats on that site, but instead are held hostage to a weak algorithm that supposedly gives you "Best Available" in a certain section.  Plus, I honestly don’t understand how I can order 5 books from Amazon Marketplace from 5 different people and pay like $15.00 total in shipping, but if I try to use Ticketmaster to buy 4 concert tickets, they want to charge something like $50 just to print out a couple of ducats and stick them at will call.  Why?  Are my tickets taking a limo from TM HQ to the arena? Is the paper laced with gold?  What could command $50 in service charges?  Anyway, now I just take the time to go to the stadium, pick out seats I want and leave happy.

But I digress.

The Sounders experience was as close to "Anti-Ticketmaster" as I can find.  Even if you don’t care about soccer, I encourage you to go through the process at http://tickets.soundersfc.com/   .  Choose whether you want to sit or stand during the game.  Or if you want to be in a section that sings or not.  Take a virtual tour of every row in every section.  It’s a very fan friendly experience, and trust me, the fans appreciate it. 

Let me know if you have found any other ticket places with convenient tools such as this. 

 

Paying Respects to Two Broadcasting Legends

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media

If you had to put together a TV newscast, and could start with Tim Russert on news and Jim McKay on sports, you could pretty much add Spanky the Wonder Clown on the weather desk and still deliver top product.  So this was a rough week in the broadcasting world, with the death of both these standard bearers.

Anyone my age remembers the pre-ESPN days, when Wide World of Sports was this weekend sugar bomb of athletic events that you couldn’t get Monday-Friday.   Once cable took over, WWS lost its significance, but it was ESPN before ESPN was ESPN, and Jim McKay was its fearless leader. Plus, back in the day, Jim McKay was the voice of Olympic coverage, and I think even the current TV hosts would admit they have never quite filled his shoes.

Russert of course,  anchored the "Meet the Press" desk for the last 17 years, and was one of the few remaining level-headed, unbiased, voices of reason during the election coverage. Every eulogy I have heard over the last 3 days has proclaimed him to be a great mentor and family guy as well.  Hopefully those mentoring skills will pay off and one of his proteges will admirably take over his place at the desk.

Everyone who watches TV will feel the loss of these legends, especially when you consider the magnitutde of the upcoing 2008 Olymipcs in Beijing and November US Presidential Election. 

Proving Marketing Can Be Creative….and Cheap

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Personal

I’m not one to think that Marketing is free.  I think you can be effective on the cheap, but you have to commit to at least spending SOMETHING.

I liken it to a party.  You need one of these to be extremely great – location, people, food or music – to make it worth talking about.  But no matter what, you need to spend some money on booze to loosen things up.  

Marketing is similar.  You either need extremely great product, creative, design or placement for a campaign to be noteworthy.  Take a boring product, give it a standard design, a few relevant pieces of copy and stick it in tradional media and you have something to put in your portfolio but not much else.

But I digress.

Here’s a company who is executing a very nice campaign on the cheap, but they are nailing the creativity and placement attributes.  They spend some cash on shipping, but have potential to have a lot of "free creative." designed for them.  Here is a copy of the email below:

———–

Hey fellow Magnifier –

We’ve had amazing response to the Mascot’s first week out and about in New York City.   He’s  been on the Subway.  He’s been to Columbia University.   He came to a Magnify.net board meeting.  He event had a night out with Obama Girl!

Now,  he’s ready to travel the world. So,  invite him to  your place – we’ll pay the way.

Magnify Mascot will travel first class (fed ex)  to you.   He’ll bring a gift (a brand new American Apparel Magnify T shirt),  and he’s ready to have a photo take with you.

We’re going to feature some of the best photo’s,  most glamourous locations,   and most creative channel admins on our homepage over the next few weeks.   So,  if you’re looking for a house guest who is flat,  and orange – we’ve got a guy who wants to visit you.

To apply to be a stop on the Magnify Mascot World Tour:

1).  Send an email to:  WorldTour@magnify.net
2).  Tell us the name of your Magnify.net site(s)
3).  Tell us about some  great photo op (famous tourist destination he can visit?)  or neat photo location.
We’ve got a backlog of Channel Admin’s who have already invited the Mascot to come to their unique and wonderful part of the world –  so get on the bandwagon now.

 We’re excited about coming to you!

Best,

Steve,  Simon and the Magnify.net team

 

Here’s a picture from our latest Board meeting, with Board Member
David S. Rose giving the Mascot a ‘Hi Five.’


PS…  yes,  we know he needs a name… we’re still accepting suggestions for the Name the Mascot contest.  Expect  more news shortly on this.