Andy Boyer

Blog

  • Oprah’s Flash Mob

    You’ve probably seen this, but this is a pretty cool Flash mob. I have no idea how they pulled this off.

  • Wild MLS Finish

    Whether you are a soccer fan or not, if you like sports in general, you have to appreciate the final weekend of the MLS season this Saturday and Sunday.

    An 8 team playoff starts next week, with significant advantages for the top 2 seeds in each division.  And going into the 30th and final game, 6 teams have punched their ticket, with 6 more teams battling for the final 2 spots.  There are about 1000 permutations for which 2 teams will sneak in.

    Furthermore, in the West, the 4 teams that have already qualified all have 45, 45, 45, and 44 points respectively.  What that means is that virtually any combination of teams could be 1,2,3,4.  

    TV wise, it couldn’t have worked out any better for MLS, as every game this weekend has playoff implications.  Since few of the teams in the race are playing each other, every team has an important game.

    I bring this up for our non-soccer fans, to ask you to imagine what the last weekend of November would look like for NCAA football fans, if 6-8 teams had to win to grab the final spots of an 8 team playoff….that would be fun…

  • Garys Social Media Count

    (Finally something somewhat social media related.)

    Here’s a fun little ticker from a guy named Gary Hayes and his blog Personalize Media. Who knows if the data is accurate, but it’s fun to watch numbers go up…

  • Thinking About Charlie Davies

    The name “Charlie Davies” was a trending topic today on Twitter.  That either means that Twitter is made up of the same nerds who watch soccer, or the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team was finally creeping into the national mindshare.  Or, perhaps it means that no matter who the athlete is, even if we don’t know who it is, we feel a need to forward the news.  

    There are two ways to think about Charlie Davies.  First, consider him as a member of the U.S. Soccer team, a man who represents his country on a world stage, who trains with International players in the top league in France, and is/was widely considered to be one of the top players for his country for the next 2 World Cups.  That kind of role assumes a level of responsibility.  Now think of him from another lens.  Consider him as a 23 year old guy making a ton of money, jet setting across the globe to play in the biggest cities in North and Central America, and then travel back for 40 games in France.  A kid just a few years out of college, seemingly indestructible, cockily looking ahead 9 months when he’d have a chance to go head to head with the top players from Italy, Brazil, England, etc…

    Is it a surprise that the second description of this 23 year old would get in a car 2 hours past his curfew, and be involved in an accident that caused career threatening injuries? So why is it shocking that the first description was involved?  Why do we assume that a guy who is on the verge of greatness, may not regress into being the stupid 23 year old we all were?  We all have a story in our closet where we realize we tempted fate and she spared us.  We all could have been the guy in that car, but the story wouldn’t have been on ESPN.com.

    I feel sad for Davies, whose World Cup 2010 run is over, and whose career will never be the same.  And also have to be sad for the families of the un-famous other folks in the car with him.  One person is dead an done person will have to live with the double guilt of killing one friend and crippling the career of another.   But we have to wonder, how can we make these people who we watch and cheer for – how can we make them not do stupid things?  Can we?

  • Our Own Personal Soundtracks

    One of my favorite parts of the new Internet Era is the “possibility” that music becomes decentralized.  That it’s not the same 5 guys in the same 5 ivory towers deciding what we should like.  

    We have such huge opportunity to personally evaluate and recommend music to our friends.  And as part of this evolution, I suspect we would each have a select list of artists who we dial up for our own personal pleasure that no one else knows.  With that as context, my personal soundtrack includes a steady dose of Bob Schneider, Alex Woodard, Reckless Kelly & Micky and the Motorcars. 

    We suddenly have these great opportunities to find music we like, without the interference of radio.  I encourage everyone to explore and share their favorite finds.

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

    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

    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.

  • Why TV Producers Don’t Build Airplanes

    (Thanks Jake Sikma for the link)

  • Fun with Inside Facebook Page Data

    So, what seems weird about the amount of fans Skittles has on Facebook, according to http://pagedata.insidefacebook.com/page/view/267629/

     

  • Wikipedia vs Joe Wilson

    CNN has a good recap of the battle between rival Wikipedians in their quest to paint Joe Wilson as either an Obama hating traitor, or Brave Truth Teller.  An interesting side effect of the Social Media world, in that now not only is the news cycle 24 hours long, but the “Comment cycle” begins 24 seconds after impact.