Author Archives: Andy Boyer

Blackmail, Brazil, Betrayal and More – The Week That Was

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

I find it more difficult to sit and post my thoughts these days.   I don’t know if it’s a lack of time, or just an inability to process the absurdity around me into coherent paragraphs.

Take for a moment, the David Letterman Fiasco. For years we’ve been asking celebrities to own up to their mistakes.  To admit when they are wrong.  And to force themselves to the public humiliation they deserve.  And when some scum of the universe tried to “ruin” Letterman through extortion and blackmail, Letterman shocked his late night audience with an admission of guilt, preempting the tabloids.  He did exactly what we ask a celebrity to do when faced with the revelations of his impropriety.  And yet still, people want to find fault with him.  Good for David for coming clean.  The man didn’t commit adultery, didn’t harass anyone, and didn’t commit a crime.  He simply had poor judgement.  I hope this teaches extortionists a lesson.

Speaking of extortion – the IOC allowed Chicago business people to pour $54 million into wooing them into awarding them the Olympics, and then responded with 18 measly votes.  If there is any organization dirtier than the IOC (other than the NCAA of course) I’m hard pressed to find it.  How do I get on the IOC anyway?  I sure wouldn’t mind taking bribes from the richest people from 4 countries every 4 years, to award them the chance to ask their tax payers to build a billion dollars of new stadiums to host an event celebrating the achievements of athletes we couldn’t care less about the other 1445 days of the 4 year cycle.  But, is it really that shocking that one of the most overweight cities in America – where beer and brats reign supreme – wasn’t awarded an event that celebrates athleticism?

In the category of, “Can we finally kill reality TV once and for all,” I saw that the fat guy from the TV show with all the kids whose wife had a makeover and suddenly thought she was a superstar, allegedly took $200k from their bank account.  I’m sad that I know this.  But, I know this because it scrolled across the bottom of Anderson Cooper 360.  Mr. Cooper, I try to keep myself away from this nonsense, and I try to watch you to keep up with real news.  Please do not create a world where I cannot do both.    

All things being equal, I need to write more.  There’s just too much funny stuff going on these days…

A Few Thoughts From Ad Week

Posted by Andy Boyer in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media

To the faithful 49 of you, my apologies for my week away.  I headed out to New York for “Ad Week” and a bunch of interesting meetings and assorted merriment.  Anyway, I read an article a few weeks or months ago about some poor guy who told everyone on his blog that he was leaving town for a 2 week vacation, only to to return to a house devoid of all his valuables.  So until I get a Doberman, I think talking about leaving town, or alerting people to when I’m out fo town, is a bad idea.

Now, I’m no prolific blogger who is going to give you a play by play from all the evnts at Ad Week in New York.  Clay and I hung near the more social media related events and seminars, and here are a couple of things I took from the week.

1) I’m not sure where all the unemployed people are in New York, because every good restaurant in that town is still hard to get seated in, even at 10:00pm on a Monday night.

2) At the risk of annoying all my friends and partners in the Ad World, I posit this theory.  It’s possible that the explosion of Social Media is a direct result of consumer backlash against advertising.  People (aka Consumers) got tired of a one way communication channel.  Then things like blogs, facebook and Twitter appeared, and suddenly everyone had a way to talk to each other and ignore the advertising.  Only after the social media attack on advertising did the agencies decide to embrace Social Media.  In fact, the agencies did everything they could to dismiss it as a passing fad.  And so now, to hear all the agencies on stage talking about the power of Social Media and how they are integrating it into client strategy, is kind of funny to me.  It’s kind of like a coal or oil company suddenly recommending what solar panels you should buy.  It’s just my theory.

3) A quick note to all panelists and keynoters: Please dial down the hyperbole about “Social Media Revolutions” or “The Incredible Power of Social Media.”  The reality is that consumers have always wanted to tell companies what they think of them.  They’ve always wanted to tell the Slurpee Product Manager that Banana sucks and to quick wasting a spigot on such a dumb flavor.  Or that the battery life of their laptop needs to be as long as a movie, otherwise it’s worthless.  People have had these opinions forever.  And now they have a megaphone, and their friends have megaphones.  It shouldn’t be a gigantic revelation to think that people who spend money on a product they like would want to have interaction with that product and provide ways the company could make the consuming experience more enjoyable and effective.  I’m not saying your keynotes are wrong, you can just dial down the rhetoric a little.

4) Before I get accused of being negative, I want to add that I think it’s great that the agencies are now going full steam into figuring out how to build creative campaigns for customer engagement.  I’ve always believed the creative teams at the big agencies are more representative of Joe Consumer than Malcolm Corporation III.  And now instead of using their creative powers of good in a way that cost them part of their soul, they’ll be able to unleash themselves in ways that develop connection and goodness.  So I think we’re going to see some really cool experiments in the next 12 months.  

5) I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Ad week was going on the same day of the UN sessions where Khadaffi (sp?) and the Iranian President (whose name I won’t even attempt Spellcheck to fight with) went off on crazy soliloquies.

Overall, we had a great time chatting with partners, clients, friends and colleagues.  Lots of neat announcements and fun times.  Thanks to everyone who made it a good, fun and productive week.

Easiest, Quickest Way to Help Health Care

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

I can’t take credit for this, since I head it on the radio.  But I think it’s the easiest and quickest way to make a dent in health care, so I’m forwarding along.

Every doctor, clinic and provider simply should have to provide a price list for the most common types of treatments.  That price list should show what they charge for the procedure / visit, what amount is covered by each of the major insurance companies, and what the end cost would be to the customers of those insurance companies.

It won’t cover everything of course, but the point is that if we see the price lists and what insurance is covering, consumers would have a way to look at the market of health care and make informed decisions based on quality, location AND price.   And I know this doesn’t solve everything, but if we start by developing a more competitive market where information is more widely available, we have a better chance to figure out the hard problems, such as how to cover people with low or no income.  

Making Trillion dollar upheavals to an entire system full of long established companies employing hundreds of thousands of people, is going to be hard if Joe American doesn’t even know how a slight change would affect how much he has to pay to fix his broken hand.  “Trust me, we’re the government, We’ll get it right” is not a very compelling argument… 

Sportsmanship Takes a Backseat

Posted by Andy Boyer in Sports

What a weird week in sports, eh? I had a bad feeling the stars and moon were misaligned when I watched the Little League World Series last Sunday.

Now, NO ONE is willing to write or talk about it. In fact, during the game, the announcers left it alone. But if you watched the LLWS Championship, you saw it. California was leading int he 5th or 6th inning, close to putting it away, and the Cali pitcher plunked the Taiwan player. It was about the 2nd or 3rd HBP of the game for the Cali kid. I don’t think he’s malicious, he just has a crappy curveball that has a tendency to act more like a heat seeking missile than a breaking pitch.

Anyway, the Taiwanese kid gets it in the back, and instead of trotting down to first base, kind of does a slow walk, Albert Belle style, glaring at the pitcher with that look of, “I didn’t fly 32 hours to get nailed by some George Bush loving surfer boy. You best not look at me punk.” Now, the pitcher may not have seen the look, but the one guy who DID, was California’s 6’2″ 220 pound first baseman. (Yes, those dimensions are accurate and quite stunning for a 13 tear old.) Now he’s pointing at the Taiwan kid to head to first, which he smartly does, and play continues. The whole thing took 5 seconds at most, but we almost saw the first brawl in LLWS history, and no one wanted to comment on it.

Which brings us to today’s 2 clips: First, we see the brilliant (sarcasm) GK from DC United, Josh Wicks, take his team out of real contention for the US Open Cup by stomping on Fredy Montero. Then we see the equally brilliant LeGarrette Blount sucker punch a player and then try to take on the Boise State fans, his teammates, the police and anyone else trying to calm him down.  Good times.

(Fast forward to about 3:20)

 

The New Medium for Soap Operas – Twitter

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

30 minutes after being sad about sorry email I read from that nearly illiterate teacher in the post below, I rebounded and was reminded how much fun the English language can actually be.  For the last few days, I’ve been following the real or fake exploits of “Steve” at http://twitter.com/shhdontellsteve 

It’s either the bored ramblings of a kind of messed up dude writing about another messed up dude.  Or it’s a brilliantly crafted soap opera playing itself out in 15 second intervals at no particular rhythm or cadence.  I lean to thinking it’s the latter, which makes it all the more better as far as I’m concerned.  I just hope one day the the writer doesn’t completely disappear, making us all wonder what happens at the end.

Check it out, an give me your thoughts on it.

I Might Be Asking Too Much From Teachers

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

I subscribe to a lot of random email lists. Democrat, Republican, City Council, etc… I won’t embarass the group or the person who wrote this email, but it made me sad that this person is a teacher. I mean, can we really expect much from the kids, when this is the kind of response that comes up from a teacher during a debate on health care? Or maybe I am just expecting too much.  I think if you are a teacher and going to write an email to an entire listserv, your thoughts should be a little more coherent than this.  Am I just being overly critical here?  Thoughts?

Tomorrow is <name redacted>’s and my 25th anniv. If this lady I’ve been working for pays me tomorrow (she was supposed to last Friday), we can go out. I work right by the Montlake Bridge. I know there is another rally later in the week. I signed up to attend the dem. meet up on the 14th. Originally it was the 15th and I couldn’t attend because that’s Ethan’s BD. But the 14th I can attend. Seems those holding out against the public option are receiving a lot of “bribe” $ from the insurance industry. I don’t know what they’re going to do about Sen. Kennedy. They’ll have to appoint an interim senator, but whom?

I just got home from a union mtg. We voted to accept a one-year contract, but a lot more work needs to be done on it over this next year. Here’s hoping the union works hard for us. I start classes (GCU) on Wed. Am supposed to start back at Ingraham same day but Joe and I want to spend the night at the 4 Seasons Olympic and I’m not rushing off to work first thing in the morning, so I guess I’m taking a personal day. They only gave us the phone call this morning to tell us we were to return to work on Wed. morning at 7:30. That’s kinda late notice, if you ask me. Just another example of Seattle Schools and their fine organizational skills NOT!