Author Archives: Andy Boyer

Seattle Loses A Piece of Itself, What Does a Fan Do Next?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Media, Seattle, Sports

Well there you go. 

A region with Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, Washington Mutual, Safeco and Weyerhauser couldn’t find enough tax dollars to keep a piece of history intact.  An international talent pool of software executives, engineers, bankers and real estate moguls, with more college graduates per capita than anywhere in the nation, couldn’t find a few people to hammer out a suitable solution.

So who do you blame?  Sure, you want to blame Clay Bennett.  While he may be a liar, he’s simply a guy who is going to be given a hero’s welcome and key to the city in his hometown.  He never again has to fear taking a wrong turn and running into a homeless heroin addict drinking a latte on Broadway.   Given the chance to take your two-bit town and and make it a major league city, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

So now try to blame Howard Shultz.  He got snookerd into selling to Bennett.  But he didn’t want to sell.  He did everything but beg for some money to renovate Key Arena.  The team was losing money like there was a hole in the bottom of its bank account.  And here’s the dirty secret.  It wasn’t Howard that was getting killed.  His 50+ partners, the guys who retired from Microsoft and thought the stock market would never stop rising, were the ones who needed to stop writing checks every year to cover the losses.  So they went to Olympia, and Olympia gave them the finger.

So is it Olympia’s fault?  The City Council’s?  Well of course, but there is a bigger culprit in all of this.

It’s the fault of the fans who live in and around Seattle. It’s at least partly our fault.

We did the famous passive-aggressive Seattle shuffle.  We complained, but took no action.  How many of us vote regularly, or ever, in a City Council election?  How many of you know your District Rep or State Senator in Olympia?  One day we all looked up and realized some pseudo communist named Nick Licata, who starts meetings about the Police budget with a poem, was in charge of the team’s fate. And even then, we relied on the Save Our Sonics guys. (Great effort guys.  I exempt you from this.  You really did all you could, and we should commend you.)

But scroll through the list of successful executives who live in Seattle, and then match it to the backgrounds of the people on OUR City Council.  It’s a shame.  It’s embarrassing.  We voters have all been asleep at the switch.

Now let’s take it one step further.  It’s just basketball.  There are really WAY more important things than basketball.  Like Schools and  Transportation to name two.  These are complex problems with many variables.  The Sonics situation was a simple problem with a single variable – how do we creatively make a fiscally responsible decision that also helps the owners of the team?  Simple problem.  Give me and 10 friends a night at Dad Watson’s with all of the relevant data and we could come up with something.

But OUR elected officials couldn’t handle something this simple.  Now, what makes you think they can handle Transportation or Education?

The team is gone.  For most of us, it’s the first time we realized our leaders were so inept.  But it’s our fault for not paying attention.  We should have clued in after the Monorail debacle, and we all paid $500 for car tabs for a mode of transportation that didn’t exist.  We should have clued in when our gas tax skyrocketed and the roads got worse.  Now maybe we’ll get it.  Do some research.  Personally, I don’t know much about Drago, Godden, Licata, Curly, Larry and Moe, but I will certainly find out. 

If the loss of basketball in Seattle pains you, then realize this Council, this Governor, and this Legislature, WILL hurt you again.  Blame the first pain on your own naivety, but blame any upcoming pain on being inactive, and not working hard now to correct who is "representing" you.   

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.