Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 33 of 49)

A Few Random Notes

June 26, 2008 /

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

June 24, 2008 /

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 

7 Final Words From George Carlin

June 23, 2008 /

No, not those 7 words. But in memory of Carlin’s passing, I want to relay a funny quote I heard today.  When asked how he wanted to be rememberred when he died, George replied, "Gee, he was just here a minute ago…"

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

June 18, 2008 /

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

June 18, 2008 /

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. 

 

Proving Marketing Can Be Creative….and Cheap

June 13, 2008 /

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.

 

Watch Great Soccer – Support Seattle’s All Nations Cup

June 4, 2008 /

2008%20ANC%20Poster%20Final%20Web.jpgIf you have not booked out every  Saturday or Sunday for the next 3 weeks, try to book some time to check out the All Nations Cup 2008. This is truly one of the most unique events in Seattle, and a great example of what makes the city a pretty cool place to live.

The All Nations Cup is an amateur soccer tournament where every player competes for their home country.  It’s like the World Cup, but for amateurs.  (This weekend’s schedule here.)

I’ve been sporadically over the last few years, and the soccer is always of high quality.  But the real fun is seeing the fans.  You have these small communities of people from Ethiopia, Bosnia, Gambia, etc….There may only be a few hundred in the whole city, but most of them come out to support this group of amateur players.  Everyone has their flags, songs, drums, etc…

All games are at Starfire down in Tukwila and it’s like $10 or $15 or something per day.   With 4 games going on at once, you can shift from field to field and see some pretty strong players.

If you get down there, let me know. 

Polls Made Easy, with Vizu

June 4, 2008 /

Vizu is a neat little app that you can use to add a touch of functionality to blog posts and the like. It’s probably been around for a while, but recently hopped on my radar screen thanks to a friend in the ad industry who uses it for quick polls. I don’t know how they make money, but for the rest of us, it’s a pretty slick little tool.

If I had to nitpick, I’d ask for a few more size options. In the case of a short blog post like this one, the Vizu poll doesn’t really fit. So, even after playing with table widths, I still need to drone on and on just to fill up some more space with copy so the poll fits in better.

But on the plus side, you do have plenty color options, so it can work it’s way design-wise into just about any web template. And it’s a breeze to use. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes.

Mariners Offer Apologies, Announce They’ll Work With Season Ticket Holders to Salvage Season

May 26, 2008 /

Don’t you wish you’d see a story like this come from Safeco Field?

Mariners Offer Apologies, Announce They’ll Work With Season Ticket Holders to Salvage Season 

SEATTLE – Seattle Mariners President Chuck Armstrong made a ground-breaking apology to Mariners fans today, promising changes will be made and optimistically promoting the 2009 season.

“On behalf of the entire organization, I want to let everyone know that the disappointment you feel for this team, is felt ten-fold in our offices,” said Armstrong.”

Armstrong acknowledged the 2008 season is officially over, and told fans that the focus is now on an AL West title in 2009.  “Given this unique opportunity to plan 10 months out, we really want to involve the fans,” explained Armstrong.  “Our scouts and talent evaluators will release a schedule of events, so that fans can provide input and feedback.  We really want the Mariners fans involved with this rebuilding process.”

Mariners ownership appears to be embarrassed by the result of the season, and realize that their customers have vastly overpaid for the tickets they have already bought.  “We set the prices, and released the product,” said a front office executive.  “Now we see our product is over-priced, and will compensate fans accordingly.  Our customers are our most important asset, and we want them to pay a fair price for what they are seeing.”

The Mariners also announced the forming of a “Fan Oversight Group” a committee of 11 non-employees, voted on by fans, who will have a seat on the Mariners Advisory Board and access to executives.  This group will not drive decisions, but will allow fans to have transparency into organizational matters that affect the customer base.

—————— 

So of course this is silly. But can you think of another business in which you can charge premium prices, provide a shoddy product, exhibit no competency to improve the product, hide behind a release cycle as an excuse for over-charging customers, and provide absolutely no insight into how you might fix the product’s issues?  I can’t think of anything comparable.  It’s just a shame – Beautiful stadium, fans who want to care, and a team that looks like the season is an inconvenience that breaks up their winter holiday.

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