Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 34 of 47)

My First Reactions To Being In Hong Kong

May 1, 2008 /

Here I am, first time in Asia.  And while I want to do some real storytelling in follow up chapters, this post is more about simple gut reactions from the first 5 hours.  Nothing to do with the flight or anything, but just a free flow of thoughts that went through my mind as I took my first lap around the city.

Some Preludes: 

1) Airport: Longer story here about my missing bag, but I spent about 90 minutes in the airport, and hoenstly, it didn’t feel like Asia.  There were no lines, no crowds and no mess.  And all the signs are in English.  It could have been LAX, except it was more organized. 

2) I step right out from the airport to the train that takes you straight downtown.  $12 from airport to cit center in 25 minutes.  Most disappointing thing – the trains have these neat tv screens and speakers in each head rest, so you can choose to listen or not to the program.  Initially, very cool, but they had about 2 minutes of content, then kept re-running the same ad and opening promo overand over and over.  What a waste of space.

3) But as soon as that train leaves the station, man, the 80 story apartment towers are in full sight.  I expected this from pictures, but I think I expected them to be nicer.  Goeroge and Wheezy wouldn’t live in most of these, even on the top floor. It much just be because we are out of the island and in a poorer area.

4) Land in the Central District and I can tell from the inside that it’s chaos on the outside.  My plan was to hop on the subway to get to my hotel, but the prospect of lugging this thing through people is too intimidating.  An $8 cab ride has my name all over it.  In a rare moment of genius, I have already printed out a map with where my hotel is, which I can show the cabbie.  It’s a eerie quiet cab ride as I gawk at the chaos around me as we zip down the road toward my hotel.  I have lots to ask, but I can’t flip through my Mandarin phrasebook fast enough to get say anything.  And even if I did, how would I know what he was saying back?  Only when I get out of the cab does he give any indication that he actually knows English.  Jerk.

5) Ok, I’m checked in to the smallest room that isn’t on a train.  Plus – we have a awesome view of the harbor, so no compaints.  Vittorio doesn’t get in until later, so I have some time to kill.

6) The subway basicall runs underneath my hotel – very convenient.  I hop on and head back to the Central District,the place I had earlier decided was too busy to be roaming around with a suitcase. I think I have a goo didea and bring my laptop with me, sure that I’ll find an Internet cafe.  Instead this ends up feeling liek a 65 pound weight around my shoulders.  Must rethink these "bright" ideas…  

Actual Hong Kong reactions:

1) Holy shiiiite.  As a guy I met in the Taipei airport described it, "Hong Kong is like New York on a couple of lines."

2) I keep switiching back and forth between being mezmerized and disgusted.  Down one road is a gorgeous office building, and you round the corner and it’s a 80 ear old selling cat claws and god knows what else.

3) My map is proving to be useless.  I think the lonely Planet gus just made it up.  When I think something is a long way awa, it’s around the corner.  And when I think it’s close, suddenly 16 streets that aren’t listed in my guidebook show up.  I can’t find anything.

4) I may have figured out a source of frustration.  Apparently, I apparently came out of the Metro station in a different place thanmy map says I should have.  This would explain why I have been turning my book upside down wondering, "But wait, I know I took a left on Queen’s Way?  How could I possibly be near the ferries?"

5) Yes, that realization solved one problem, but no, I am not getting any closer to being able to follow the directions I am actually writing down for myself.

6) Coolest thing ever – An outdoor escalator, covered of course, that takes you up the hill for 5 blocks.  Imagine one of these going from the Waterfront to the Convention Center.   

7) I cannot figure out the pace of the people.  Everyone is hurring, and then you have 4 ladies lazily strolling down the street, window shopping arm in arm and making sure no one can ever get by.  It’s like a mad sprint, and then you run into a human roadblock. 

8) Lots of cool little places to grab a bite on Wyndham / Hollywood. If I had waited about 30 seconds, I would have chosen one of these places rather than the crappy English place I felt spectacularly lucky to find at the time.  Doesn’t that always happen?  ou give up on finding something cool, have a bite and a beer, walk out the door, and fall into culinary nirvana.  Lesson learned – if no one is in the restaurant, there’s a better one close by…

9) I still can’t get over how I walk by a wine bar that I probably I can’t afford, and then trip into a street vendor selling trinkets and garbage for a quarter 25 feet later.  Then there’s a brand new hotel sitting right next to a apartment building that makes Cabrini Green look luxurious.   There’s no consistency.   It’s decadence amongst the squalor, or squalor embedded in decadence depending on how ou wish to look at it.

10) I see a few random American tourists running around, but I don’t see many Engilish folks at all.  I guess it makes sense that they’ve left by now, but I figured a few would stick around.

11) It’s 4:00pm or so now and traffic is reeeeeeeeeeeediculous.  

11b) Ok, side note here.  Literally, I knew nothing about Hong Kong 36 hours ago.  I bought a guidebook yesterday (or whatever day was the day before I left).  I read probably 3-4 hours on the plane.  And after 3-4 hours of walking around, all the maps made sense, kind of.  It’s amazing the steep learning curve there is for a foreign land, where all it takes is a little exploration and you start figuring it out. 

12) Stumbled into someplace called Pacific Place, which appears to be about the most grandiose shopping mall ever assembled.   Since my messenger bag with the laptop now weighs approximately 452 pounds, this will have to be explored later.

13) Compared to Seattle, I haven’t seen a lot of homeless folks, but those you do see…….well……they are noticeable and you want to avoid them.  I’m not saying you want to hug a Seattle homeless guy, but these Hong Kong homeless look like they would infect you with a whole variety of interesting diseases just by handing them a coin.  Really sad and scary.

14) Well I’ve been back in the hotel room / broom closet for a little while now, and the brain dump is complete.  I know there was no story there (and no spellcheck) but those were the "off the top of my head" thoughts, unfiltered and unedited.    Follow up stories will have some sort of plot and storyline.

 

Music from the Grave

April 27, 2008 /

Ok, so it’s an impossible list to create, but try to think about a few bands from the 80’s that you would NEVER exepct to get back together for a new album 20+ years later.  Either through death, drugs, arrest, conversion or whatever, there are bands you just don’t expect to see releasing a CD in 2008.

With this in mind I ask, how in the world did Whitesnake get a record company to greenlight a new project, cheesily enough called "Good to be Bad"?  Anyway, that’s what’s playing on my Rhapsody right now, and I made it through song 1 without shutting it off.  I have to listen to the whole thing just for the sheer shock value. 

If We Bought Cars the Way We Choose a Presidential Candidate

April 21, 2008 /

(Before anyone gets upset, most of this is tongue in cheek…)

So, the latest ABC debate was such a debacle, for just a second, I want to think about what would happen if we tried to decide which car to buy in the same way we think about who to vote for.

Let’s say the most important 3 issues in a car are cost, safety and style.  And let’s say the 3 most important issues in leading the country are the economy, national security and education. (You can argue this later, just go with it for now.)

Now let’s say I’m choosing between 3 particular cars.  And I know what the most important issues are.  But maybe I don’t really understand numbers so well.  And safety reports are really confusing.  The point is that I KNOW what the key issues should be.  But since I’m doing this the same way I pick a candidate, I’ll ignore them.  So what might I think and ask about?

  • Well, I will probably want to ask how much money each company is making.  I mean, I can’t support a company that is more successful financially than the others.
  • Next, I need to ask where the people who built my car go to church.  Who knows what kind of propaganda the employees might plant.
  • Which Hollywood stars think my car is the right choice?  They have nothing in common wth me, but if they would buy it, I should too.
  • Plus, I have to thnk about a bunch of minor details that really don’t affect the core issues of the car.  I need to look at what material the seats are made of, how big the steering wheel is, whether or not the parts were manufactured in the U.S. and how big the gas tank is.

So maybe this is gratuitous.  But think about these ridiculous arguments.  Is Obama’s preacher a crazy nut job?  Is McCain’s wife a gajillionaire?  Is Clinton more of a liar than every other politician? Who cares how we deal with China and Russia, will my gay friends be able to get married?  And border security is not nearly as interesting as whether Obama *really* thinks unemployed people who lost their homes are bitter.

The point is, why aren’t we focusing on making candidates come up with extremely well-thought out plans for Healtcare, Iraq, schools and  staving off the recession?  Who cares about the stupid stuff? 

Some Random Notes from Ad:Tech SF

April 18, 2008 /

Well alrighty.  My first trip to Ad:tech San Francisco is in the books.  They claimed to have about 300 companies exhibiting, and I think I talked to more than my fair share.  So as promised, here are a few companies I thought were pretty interesting.

1) Without a doubt, the guys at AdReady.com were the hit of the show.   A well funded company with a simple solution for a common problem.  That’s a pretty good formula for success.  Plus, I got to chat with a Senior VP.  When a Senior VP is schlepping time on a show floor, it shows something about the caliber of people they hire.  Check them out if you have a few minutes.

2) Before I go into all the companies that I walked away from thinking, “Wow, that’s cool,” let me throw out a caveat.  There were a lot of future unemployed people at this show.  My bubble alert would go off every time a company claimed they were a “revolutionary way to optimize your ad budgets” and you talked to some 25 year old who had just cut his teeth as a junior media buyer at a 3rd tier ad agency.  I saw a lot of companies, none of which I’ll name, that seemed to have the strategy of, “Well we have a Series A, and we’ll get some Series B funding in 2010.”  Except, there may not be any VC funding in 2010.  Plus, everyone seems to have a strategy of selling to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft in 2 years.  I think the best job you could get right now is a M+A guy at one of those 3 places…  

3) Ok, some things I liked:

  • SeeSawNetworks – Rep firm for all types of weird ways to advertise
  • SproutBuilder – I didn’t quite get the full concept, but looked like a cool way to make widgets 
  • LSNMobile – Serving Mobile Ads, but in a cool way and they are profitable.
  • IdeaLaunch – There were tons of companies offering Landing Page Optimization services.  I can’t remember why, but I liked these guys.

4) Affiliate Programs and Networks – It was fascinating to me how many new affiliate networks are out there these days.  Equally fascinating was the fact that all the big guys didn’t bother to attend the show. 

5) Final shout of annoyance: I’m going to express a little displeasure toward the Rubicon Project.  Only because, I RSVP’d for their party and they didn’t have me in the database, so I couldn’t get in.  Probably my fault for not noticing the lack of a confirmation email.  You see, since they weren’t sure if anyone was going to come to their party, they invited EVERYONE in the world.  Then when more people showed up than they expected, they had to adhere to the RSVP list, which caused an issue of portraying themselves as an internet company who had a internet sign-up form that didn’t work.   Now, I’m a nobody, so leaving me stranded outside is no big deal.  And there was plenty of stuff to do so I didn’t really care.  But here’s where I thought they looked kind of unpolished – the door people even refused to admit an extremely well connected CEO of a pretty strong VC backed company, while their own Marketing Coordinators and their friends drank free Grey Goose.  Bubble alert – when your junior level guys are getting drunk at a party you are hosting, and you don’t have anyone senior enough at the door to let in a CEO of a company you should work with, you need to re-evaluate why you are throwing a party.  Let your guys get drunk at home.  Use Ad:Tech to talk to the CEO that wanted to talk to you. Or, I guess you can be that cocky and see if it works for you.  I guess I just wouldn’t be that cocky in a recession.

6) Final note: I can only hope the Seattle light rail will be as efficient as the BART.  I was off my plane, on the BART and in my hotel in like 45-50 minutes, for a $5.00 fare.  Compare that to the $50 cab ride I would need to take to get home from Sea-Tac today.  Love that BART.

Down at Ad:Tech This Week

April 13, 2008 /

I’ll be down in San Francisco this week at Ad;tech.  If you are going to be down thre, make sure to let me know.  And if you aren’t going to be down there, be prepared this week and next for tons of blog posts about new trend and companies in the Web marketing realm.  We might actually get some real 1st person content on this little collection of ether….

Kobe’s Big Jump

April 11, 2008 /

Ok, you are Kobe Bryant, And until you lead your team to an NBA Title without Shaq Diesel leading the way, what else do you really have to prove? Well, maybe you can try to jump over a moving car. I can’t tell if this is real or fake. Common sense says no one would risk their career for a YouTube stunt, but then, Kobe is no common guy. So, you tell me…

An Email from Mark Cuban to David Stern

April 11, 2008 /

So, here’s the email I’d love to see from Mark Cuban to David Stern…..

To: kingdavid@nba.com
From: mark.cuban@dallsmavs.com
Subject: WTF?

David:

Hey long time no talk.  I really miss our meetings in New York where we talk fines.  It’s my fault – I’ve been busy with the kid and all.  Hopefully I’ll be more feisty in 2009 and get to see you a little more.  

But anyway, quick question for you.  We’re in the middle of the most fascinating "End of season" in NBA History, at least in the West.  We could have NINE 50-win teams out here this year.  It should be the golden age of NBA Basketball West of the Mississippi River.  But when I opened ESPN.com this morning, the lead NBA Story was "E-mails suggest Sonics were thinking OKC in ’07."

Now, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but………………….. WTF?!?!?!? 

Ok, look, I know Clay Bennett is an oil guy and oil is like $2000 a barrel right now.  And I can’t disagree that having some oil money would be good for the league.  Look how well it worked for the English Premier League when they got that Russian Oil Baron, Abromovich.  Now Chelsea’s payroll makes the Yankees look like the Devil Rays.  Win-win all around, except for all the former KGB agents walking around Stamford Bridge these days and that goofy radiation murder.

But I digress.

I need to have a heart-to-heart with you about part of this whole Sonics hijacking.  I mean, let’s look at this on its surface.

  • We lose market #12 for market #50
  • We leave the entire Pacific NW to Portland
  • Our Northwest Division now has a team whose natural rival is Dallas.
  • We could be embroiled in a 3 year lame duck situation, where attendance falls to 254 people a game.
  • We gut a team with a 41 year tradition.
  • We have to induct Gary Payton into the Hall of Fame in a Miami Heat jersey.

I could go on and on. But I think you get the point.

EXCEPT……….this whole thing now has you in an awkward situation.  You see, dear Mr. Bennett has forced you into a corner.  I read all of those emails the Seattle Times and  ESPN published.  Not pretty.

So, from what I gather, one of two things happened: 

1) Clay-Clay and you have some kind of buddy-buddy thing going on, where you and he basically lie through your teeth all day long.  Which makes of you guys both liars, and I’m not sure how I feel about paying big fines to a liar.  Plus, you would be willingly letting a dishonest ownership group into our little clique.  I’m not sure how I feel about guys with more money than me looking for ways to screw me over.  Especially when they are under the watch of another guy who wants to screw me over.

2) OR – Clay-Clay lied to you about this whole Seattle stadium situation.  I know from experience, you don’t screw with King David.  So, I would expect you to fine or punish Clay-Clay the same way you would if any of us tried to pull something.  I mean, you went ballistic over the Kevin McHale / Joe Smith deal, and he was lying to make his team BETTER (at least he thought he was.)  If Clay-Clay really lied to you, well, you better nail him to the wall, because there are 31 other sneaky owners in this league, and we can smell weakness.  Wait till my spin machine gets going if I find out lying to David Stern is not a capital offense, but one that is remedied with a simple apology.

BTW, that wasn’t a threat.  The point is, we have a problem.  Either you and Bennett are be the slimiest people alive, which makes me question my investment in the NBA.  Or Bennett is a liar that is going to go unpunished, which makes me wonder why I get so skewered by you.  I mean, I’ve said a lot of inflammatory things, but they are all TRUE! I questioned the integrity of your refs, you fined me, and your ref ended up in jail for fixing games.  Shouldn’t I get my money back?  I mean, you fined me for being right!  And now we have this Oklahoma yahoo running around telling you lies.  If he doesn’t get punished, well, then I just have to wonder about this whole thing.

Maybe I’m just bitter about Dirk’s injury, but I am really concerned about this whole situation.  I haven’t even asked about how you could possibly ignore the desire of Steve Freaking Ballmer to join the NBA.  Good god!  He’s like the 6th richest guy in the world.  Why the hell wouldn’t we BEG for Steve to join our club?  A guy with lots of money who knows nothing about sports.  HELLO!?!?!? It’s like letting a blind samaratan sit down at a poker table.  C’mon man…This is the kind of money the NBA needs.  Clean, technology money from a global titan.  You want to expand internationally?  I think Steve might know one or two heads of state.  This guy is going to be CEO of Microsoft in 4 months.  The man has some pull.

In conclusion, I hope I haven’t said anything that will cost me another check.  But really, we need to talk about this before we look any stupider as a league.  I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but oil guys are only slightly ahead of steroid dealers and Iranian prime ministers in popularity contests right now.  And the country is in a recession.  Is this really the time to bully a bunch of unemployed people who just lost their houses, to buy a stadium for an oil tycoon while 50% of their kids aren’t graduating high school? Maybe we need to look around and pay attention to what is happening around the rest of the country….I’m just saying….maybe we can think of a way to show why we’re such a smart league, and not a bunch of billionaire morons.

Regards,

Mark Cuban 

 

Mickey Mouse Marketing

April 8, 2008 /

So, I was down in LA this past weekend for the wedding of an old college friend.  A beautiful beach ceremony and a long day filled with great people who know how to have an even better time.  So on Sunday, we had a day to kill and were looking to do something that would be much less destructive on our livers.  And suddenly, we were in Disneyland.

Now you may laugh, as I did when we were heading there.  Disneyland?  What a cliche.  Do the rides even still work? 

But for the purposes of a marketing blog, Disneyland could not be a greater case study, and it’s time we all took a quick look at their marketing machine to pick up a few tips.

So, think about Disneyland as an amazing trendsetter back 50 plus years ago.  But today, their image has morphed into one of family entertainment.  Somehow along the way they realized they could not compete on a basis of building the world’s greatest roller coasters every 3 years, so they took their established product line and expanded it to the next generation.

I remember being much much younger and seeing Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn, Pirates, plus all the tried and true Disney characters like Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Pluto.  Well now you walk around Disneyland and those same rides are still appealing to dads and moms in my generation, while their kids are all over the newer characters walking around and the Buzz Lightyear ride. 

You see this devotion from Yankees and Red Sox fans. Disneyland has doen such a great job of being cross-generational, that the revenue stream can almost be considered recurring.  The brand loyalty is just amazing.

But what are some other aspects of this marketing plan:

  • Price:  $66 for a day at the park.  Spendy, yes, but you get 10 hours versus the 3 you get at a football game.   And for families who live in LA, spending $129 for a year long pass is almost a gimme.
  • Product: Realistically, in those 10 hours you are on rides for about 20-30 minutes.  But the detail is in the way they hide you in buildings and give you things to look at while you are waiting in line.  Very few people walking around the park leave with images of long lines.  And those 20-30 minutes are packed with cool stuff.
  • Place: Close enough to a major destination that you randomly pick up folks like me.  Far enough away that you need to spend all day there.  Tons of hotels across the street, and for some reason $11 for parking if you drive there doesn’t seem ridiculous.
  • Promotion: The brand is ubiquitous.  Every Disney movie promotes a Disney theme park which promotes another movie.

So since this post has taken no real shape or form, here are a few fun Disney facts we learned from riding with a Disney employee on his day off.

  • Disneyland can hold 70,000 people, at which point they stop letting people in.
  • Total # of "Cast members" is about 5,000.
  • Every ride in Disneyland has at least one "Hidden Mickey," meaning if you look hard enough, you can see a Mickey Mouse face in every ride.  True story – this guy showed us the one in the Indiana Jones ride.
  • The Disney Pillars (in this order) are Saftey, Courtesy, Showmanship, Efficiency.
  • Best time to go is late January and February.  It’s the only time when all kids are in school, and all parents are paying off Christmas debt.  The park is empty.
  • People do get hurt in rides.  What they do is shut the ride down, tell everyone it’s broken, get the paramedics in quickly and quietly.
  • There is also quite the underground city which includes a full cafeteria, and other rooms for cast members.

And now here’s something else I found amazing.  I’d estimate the crowd was 30-40% Hispanic.  Remember, this is LA.  Yet Disneyland does not have a single sign in Spanish.  This is a park wher Safety, Courtesy and Efficiency are three main pillars, and they are making it difficult for a sizeable percentage of their audience to understand what they need to do onthe rides.  i couldn’t decide if the company is telling Hispanic Americans to learn English, or if the company is just too ignorant to realize how much of their audience base may not be English speaking.  I can’t believe it’s the latter.

Anyway, I had a blast there, despite the prices, the lines and the amount of strollers that were trying to knee cap me.  There’s just something about the Disney model that works.  They aren’t the best rides, it isn’t the cheapest thing to do, it isn’t the most convenient place to get to, and you have to wait around a lot.  But it’s great.  So there must be something to learn from them.   

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