Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 36 of 49)

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.   

Looking for fun startups?

April 4, 2008 /

killer.jpgHere’s a neat little web site that you can get lost in for a few hours if you aren’t careful.

KillerStartups.com says they review 30+ sites a day, so that database gets pretty big pretty quickly.  The site prolies a wide range of companies, from the goofy to the geeky, and they mostly accentuate the positive.  After all, no start-up isperfect, but you have to root for someone willing to throw it all out on the line like that.  Plus, it doesn’t look like you need a +$10k a month PR firm, work at a VC firm or be a close friend of Michael Arrington to be profiled on KillerStartups.com, so it’s almost like the "anti-TechCrunch."

 

Dickipedia – Wikipedia with humor

April 3, 2008 /

I love when I run across something hilarious with a Google Page Rank of 1.  It makes me feel as if I have found something before anyone else.  Such is the case with Dickipedia.

Word of warning – If you start reading this site, you may not stop laughing for a few days.  Take in small doses…   

Join Team “No Runner Left Behind” at the Beat the Bridge Run

April 2, 2008 /

btb02.JPGIn the 2007 Beat the Bridge Run, our small but dedicated 10 man team got 90% of us across the bridge in time (full story here.) While that’s pretty good, that is still leaving one behind and we don’t want to do that in 2008.

If you didn’t join us last year, you missed out on a fun Sunday morning.  So now’s your chance to join the 2008 team.  It should be a blast again.  I mean, I hate running more than just about anything (except eggs) and I manage to get through this 5 miles and immediately start looking forward to next year’s race.

It’s easy to join "No Runner Left Behind."  Just find one of the links I’ve conveniently dropped all over the post.  A few clicks later, you’re on the squad.  6 weeks left – better start training.

Here’s a Business Plan I’d Like to See

March 31, 2008 /

Check out Trapster.  According to the site..

"When you see a (speed) trap, report it by pressing a button on your phone, or calling a toll free number. Other user’s phones will alert them as they approach the trap. Trapster™ learns the credibility of traps based on how many users agree. It also learns the credibility of each user, over time."

If it works, cool.  But I’d love to see the biz plan, who funded it and what their valuation was. 

People, You Cannot Control Social Media

March 31, 2008 /

One of my favorite things to watch is when businesses choose to ignore a technology or shift in human behavior, and honestly believe that if they ignore it well enough, it will simply go away.

We saw this in the music industry, where executives refused to believe that anyone would rather listen to thousands of songs on a device the size of a credit card rather than using a clunky cd player and devoting an entire wall for storing that same music. 

The newspapers were no better, refusing to consider that carrying a dirty glob of paper with old news was less appealing than simply logging on to a computer and getting the freshest info. 

This makes a story Garrett found even more humorous.  The Chicago Sun Times has some sports columnists who occasionally draw the ire of their readers.  Jay Mariotti is one such columnist.  Apparently, people were responding to his articles in a negative way, so the Sun Times made the decision to stop allowing readers to comment on his columns.  You can almost hear the conversation, "Well if we turn off the technology that allows readers to write negative things about Jay, then no one can write anything negative, and we won’t have to worry about it anymore. Problem solved!"

Except of course, that it’s 2008 and the world doesn’t work like that anymore.  Maybe in 1970 that was a good idea.  But nature abhors a vacuum, so if people want to write negative things about Jay Mariotti, and the Sun Times won’t let it happen on their site, the people will find a new home for their vents.

And they have, thanks to crosstown rival, the Chicago Tribune, who have geniusly embraced Social Media by developing a forum where readers can post comments about Jay Mariotti. And for that matter, other Sun Times writers. 

And guess what, two giant ads on the page.

So, you have one paper pretending that taking away the voice of the people would be helpful.   And you have a other that is profiting on the idea of letting people have their say.  By foolishly thinking you can control the voice of the people, you lose all control of the situation, because now you can’t even moderate out the particularly distasteful ones.  And your competitor gets the ad money. 

Lesson to be learned here: No one has 100% approval rating.  The only way to have any control of the situation is to let the people speak on your turf.  

How Would You Market the MLS?

March 29, 2008 /

mls_logo.gifOk, marketers: Here’s your project.

  • A sport with huge appeal to a small niche audience
  • One brand name that is more powerful than the league itself
  • A product that is sub-par in quality in comparisons to similar products in other countries
  • In other countries, history and tradition are built on rivalry and proximity, which your league does not have
  • Established round-the-calendar competition from 5 mega-sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, NCAA FF, NCAA BB) and 5 to 8 mini-sports (NHL, WNBA, Arena, UFC, Golf, Tennis, Boxing, Lacrosse)

Now you see what the MLS is up against.  It’s the equivalent of a European-wide Basketball League trying to compete against soccer in England.

But here’s the thing – For the first time in the 10 or 15 years the MLS has been around, I am actually aware that this is opening weekend.  I actually am somewhat interested in catching a few games.  I am going to be in LA and actually looked to see in the Galaxy or Chivas would be in town.  Why?  Several potential reasons.  Let me know if you can think of others.

  1. jozy.jpgSince Seattle is getting a team next year, i want to learn about the league.
  2. I’m growing tired of the other sports(?)
  3. I’m watching enough English League Soccer, that I recognize more players on more teams, some of whom who played in the MLS.
  4. I’m following the US National team enough, that I want to see them play a few times on their MLS teams.
  5. Fifa 08 for Xbox has consumed enough of my leisure time, that I want to see who these guys really are.

Anyway, the point is that I am fully aware that this sport has HUGE marketing and logistical issues in front of it, but I am slowly coming around.  And really, I’m the sweet spot for their marketing.   A small % of the country would come watch them play in a high school stadium.  And you have a huge percentage of the country that wouldn’t watch if they served free beer and pizza all game long.  But people like me, who spend too much money on the Mariners, who irrationally go to a bar to watch a college basketball game, and don’t think it’s weird to take a charcoal grill out of a pickup truck when there is a restaurant right across the street, we’re the guys the MLS needs.  Sports fans – people who are there for the experience more than the result.  And I’m coming around, even though I know the product will not be as good as one I could see on channel 401.

Anyway, MLS starts up this week.  Take a peek if you get a chance.  And if that doesn’t grab you, start with some EPL and Champions League Games on TV, or even better, at the George and Dragon.   

Progress vs Tradition on Capitol Hill

March 23, 2008 /

So I woke up Saturday mornig, pleased that the sun was out for a change.  So I slapped on my tennis shoes and went for a long walk down Broadway and around Capitol Hill.

I’ll admit being more than slightly displeased with myself for having an extensive internal argument about whether I should spend about 6.5 million of my alloted 2,500 calories on a Sourdough Jack when I arrived at the Jack In the Box.  I knew I’d be getting there in a few minutes.  Of course,  after much deliberation, common sense prevailed and I had decided I would pass the restaurant and leave all the Sourdough burgers in there where they belong.

But it turns out the decision was moot,  because the building was shuttered up.  That’s when I started looking around Broadway, and I begane to understand what people are talking about when they discuss "The Death of Capitol Hill."

Now to be clear, I am a fan of progress. I think the people who contribute the most to the economy ought to be able to live comfortably in areas closest to where economies are driven.  And to be fair, there is no reason a single Jack in the Box restaurant should take up place on a thriving street corner just blocks from the downtown core. But, that’s what makes Capitol Hill interesting, and makes it not Belltown. But with all these new condos going up, the ability to grab a quick bite disappears a little more each time. 

Now, the more I walked, the more bums I wandered across.  A homeless guy trying to trade jokes for quarters outside Dick’s.   A few collections of folks loitering in odd places.  I thought about Capitol Hill, this odd mix of rich and poor, business people and artists, hipsters and tech nerds.  Maybe progres should slow down, and allow some of the old landmarks and apartment buidlings to stay up.

I was following two bums, one guy pushing the other’s wheelchair.  Suddenly the pusher stopped, reached down by a tree, picked up a discarded beer bottle, and drank what must have been a few remaining sips. That swung me the other way.  Just like anything, neighborhoods go through stages.  It can’t stay the same forever, and renters don’t get to dictate the way it gets shaped.  Some people will be able to say they lived through Capitol Hill’s golden age.  And a lot of people will complain how the new Capitol Hill will be devoid of soul.  But a new neighborhood will spring up, and while Cap Hill pushes out some of it’s poor and most colrful people in favor of richer more corporate types, someplace else will welcome them in.  That’s just how it works.

“Stuff White People Like” Gets Unfair Criticism

March 20, 2008 /

A few weeks ago, a friend pointed me to a blog called "Stuff White People Like." If you have a sense of humor and can understand wit and sarcasm, you’ll find the site hilarious.  White people making fun of all the stupid things white people do.  Instant classic.

It’s also obvious that it’s just a site where a few guys like you and I started writing a few gags for friends and family, and it kind of went viral.  The site is still hosted on the WordPress.com domain, meaning they don’t even make any ad revenue on it.  It’s just people writing because they like to write, like most of the other 40 million blogs out there.

Well maybe they are a victim of their own success.  Or maybe the whole race issue has really gotten out of control.  But a Houston Chronicle article says, "Race-related Blog Causes Controversy." The article gos as far as to say, "It’s the latest in a string of racially charged blogs that act as a virtual shrink’s sofa for those tackling the tricky topics of race and class.’

Good god.  Are you kidding me?  When did white people making fun of white people become "racially charged."  The article’s author, Corilyn Shropshire, is really stretching when she makes claims that the site is anything more than what normal, well-adjusted people would find funny.

Check it out and tell me if you disagree. 

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