Andy Boyer

Month: October 2010

  • Support Prostate Cancer Awareness with “Mo-vember”

    Sometimes over here at AndyBoyer.com, we get to turn our pages over to someone else, espcially if they have a compelling story to tell.  So, we’re handing the content reigns over to our friend Luke Lawson, with a special article about Mo-vember.

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    What is Movember you ask? No, it’s not a political site or get out the vote pledge. While both are great motivators to visit the Movember site (and I encourage you all to vote Nov. 2nd!) Movember’s purpose “is to change the face of men’s health”.  How and why you might ask? Please read on! Taken from a great recent article written by Dan Zenka, Vice President of Communications for the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF).

    In ten countries around the globe, men will soon be letting their hair out to support awareness and raise crucial funds for finding better treatments and cures for this disease that affects more than 16 million men and families around the world. Since 2004, Mo’ bros and Mo’ sistas have raised more than $40 million dollars to support research for men’s diseases. What’s more, in the U.S. they are changing the way prostate cancer is viewed.  The Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG are the beneficiaries of Movember efforts in the States. In its first three years in the U.S., Movember raised $2.3 million to support prostate cancer research through PCF. This year’s goal is $2 million. That’s a whole lotta mo’s and mo’ola.

    Literally and figuratively, Movember is definitely living up to it tagline: Changing the Face of Men’s Health. The teaching moment starts the moment anyone asks a participant, “What’s that on your face?”

    The annual Movember campaign is fun, quirky and purposeful. It’s also proof that one should never be too quick to dismiss a good idea that might arise on a weekend afternoon while having a few beers with your mates. Interested? More information on Movember can be found at www.Movember.com.“

    For me, it’s personal. I lost my father to Prostate Cancer when he was only 51. That’s too young. My father stood a near 100% chance of being cured had he gone in for a check up earlier in life. If growing a mustache for a month or, posting to my Facebook page, or continuing to fund cancer research, or writing this email helps just one person- I will be satisfied. Please consider joining me and/or my team “El Bigote” (the mustache) at: http://us.movember.com/mospace/534202/  make a donation or help spread the word further by directing your friends and family to the site. You don’t have to grow a mustache to join (or donate) and we need Mo’ sistas just as much as Mo’ bros!

    Thank you for your time,

    Luke

  • Dallas TV Station Gets Its Revenge on Social Media

    Fox 4 in Dallas does a masterful job eviscerating uses of social media.  This was posted on their own Facebook Page.  Well played.

  • Busy Seattle Technology Marketing Week

    If you’re in technology marketing and advertising, this is going to be a busy week.

    Tuesday: Social Media Club October Event “Building Ambassadors Using Social Media” at The Canal in Ballard, 5300 34th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107 (6-9pm)

    Wednesday: TechFlash Meetup at Spitfire Grill, 2219 4th Avenue Seattle, WA (5-8pm)

    Thursday: NWIAG.com October Event at Havana’s Social, 1010 E. Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122.  (5-9pm)

    See you all there.

  • Trying to Cheer Up Kasey Keller

    I felt bad for Kasey Keller for botching that easy shot on Tuesday, which led to the Sounders losing their final Champions League game 2-1. Then I remembered this famous YouTube clip, so I hope he feels better and realizes it could have been worse.

  • Excellent Article on Parity in the MLS

    I was going to sit down and do a quick comparison like I did last year, comparing the records of the teams in the MLS to the teams in England.  If I remember right, the last year the EPL had a huge spread between the best and worst teams, while the MLS clubs were really pretty closely bunched together.  

    But before I spend time doing that, you should read this excellent article by Jeremiah Oshan at SBNation.com.  It’s one of the better researched and more interesting sports articles I’ve read in a while.

  • Incumbent Invisibility

    I’m not a big fan of paper.  I don’t like direct mail, flyers, and god forbid a company puts something on my windshield.

    So, as I walked to my front door the other day, I was startled to see the 3 – count ’em 3 – flyers placed at eye level, shoved into the crack of my front door.  Was it from another overzealous landscaper? Perhaps a local neighborhood insurance guy?

    No, I was blessed with three new pieces of literature from Patty Murray.

    Now, I’m no Patty Murray hater.  And I know it’s election season and the “book” says to canvas liberal neighborhoods like Wallingford and make sure each one of the residents has talking points and material to share in the office.  I get the whole thing.  And there’s nothing wrong with candidates employing 1984 marketing tactics.  Most of these folks, including Murray, are politicians not business majors.

    From the headline of the collateral, which was the only thing I read, I learned that these flyers were going to tell me about all of the reasons to vote for Murray.  But something suddenly sprang to mind in my head.  

    After 18 years in the Senate, shouldn’t everyone in Washington be able to name 18 things Patty Murray has done?  Heck, let’s say she accomplished ONE thing every TWO years.  Shouldn’t I be able to name 9 things?  5? I’m pretty well educated, I listen to KIRO 97.3 and both the right wing and left wing AM stations.  I should be able to rattle off a litany of things she’s done, right? After all, I can tell you 10 things Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln have done, so why not Murray? 

    It suddenly made the idea of Incumbent Marketing so ludicrous.  Think about other product purchases you might make every 2-6 years: cars, vacations, furniture, computers, etc… Each time, you can explain in pretty uncertain terms the benefits and weaknesses of the product you chose.  Shouldn’t it be the same with politicians?  Isn’t an incumbent’s NEED to market with door spam a pretty telling story about how much she grabbed my attention the other 17.9 years she’s been in business?  It just made me wonder.

  • Pics of Nick Foles Injury

    I happened to be shooting pics at the UA/WSU game this weekend, on the exact play Nick Foles had his knee rolled over. When you zoom in on them, you see it unfold frame by frame.

    Watch the left side of the defensive line. One of the lineman loses balance, and then seems to dive and roll directly into the knee. You can see Arizona’s #6 start on top and cut across the field making the pass reception. He’s already turning to run upfield by the time Foles gets hit.

  • Poor Liverpoool

    Let the mocking begin.  The Boston Red Sox have purchased the proud English franchise.  And to commemorate the occasion, a T-Shirt company has already suggested a new uniform look and feel – “The Fenway Edition.”

     

     

  • Rich Barton Explains Online Marketing in 3 Sentences

    So, my friends and colleagues have been working in the online space for a long time.  Going back to driving downloads and pushing POS items, all the way now to Facebook Apps and QR codes.  We’ve seen a ton of fads and fixtures.  I bet I’ve signed up and tried out hundreds of programs.

    Last night Rich Barton spoke to a group of alumni from the UW CIE.  He ran us through a list of his new projects, and a history of Zillow.  But he framed all of his companies under 3 simple tenets, which pretty much sums up the entire history of the internet, no and forever.

    1. If it can be found, it will be found.
    2. If it can be rated, it will be rated.
    3. If it can be free, it will be free.

    Find me a company that has been able to break this.  Anyone?

  • Commitment to Content

    I have a confession for my few loyal readers who I’ve been neglecting lately.  In the spirit of true transparency, I have an admission…….. I have been cheating on you with another blog.

    Yes, it’s true.  

    I did a little test last month.  In addition to the places I write for professional purposes, I developed a side project as a psychological experiment.  There were a number of reasons for the exercise, but one of them included measuring how much content I could produce, if I was doing so in true anonymity.  And the answer is that I created quite a lot.  More than 50 posts in fact.  

    There was something freeing about writing without anyone knowing who I was, on one of the simple 33 million blogs out there that will never be found.  Now that content has been hidden away, and I’ll roll it over to a new url, just to make sure I can control who sees it.

    But, I learned a few things that will make this blog better.  1) Writing quick posts about everyday life is probably a good goal.  2) There’s really no way to write interesting material without at least sharing a little personal feeling and insight.  Sure, there are some ugly people out there who you don’t necessarily want to see inside your life.  But, you might as well just be transparent and honest online as offline, and just let people make their own decisions.  And there’s kind of no way to avoid it, so you might as well ignore them and say what you want.  3) It’s time for a whole new look and feel to this property.

    So, I’ll make a commitment to content.  Starting 7 days from today (So starting Thursday 10/21), I’ll write one post per week for a week.  If I see 25% growth in traffic that week over the previous one, I’ll keep it up.  If I don’t, I’ll scale back to 3x per week.  We’ll see what kind of community develops.