Andy Boyer

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If I Ran the MLS

July 15, 2009 /

This seems so easy, I still don’t get why they don’t do it.  The day after the MLB All-Star Game is the only day during the calendar year in which there are no sports on TV.  

This should be the MLS’ biggest TV spectacle of the year.

Every rivalry game should be being played today, all at the same time, all at the stadiums that will have the most fans.  Joe Fan should tune into a pre-game show, then see 90+ minutes of high intensity soccer programming.  With 8 games going on, at an average of 2 goals per game, there should be about 16 goals, or one every 6 minutes.  You can pick one or two games to feature, and then cut in to the other games whenever a goal is scored.  There would be so many highlights, you wouldn’t even have time to go to the fridge.

In fact, if you needed to, you should pay ESPN so you can be on both ESPN and ESPN2 at the same time with different programming, so there is an East Coast game and West Coast Game on live on each channel, so by switching between channels, you get access to 4 games, and highlights from the other 4.

Once that framework is set up, there is really no end to the fun you can have with it. 

If I Ran the MLB All-Star Game

July 15, 2009 /

I have 2 requests.  

1) The broadcast crew would NOT be made up of the Fox National Crew.  Fans, press, players or some combination of the three would vote on 3 local crews, each who would do 3 innings of the game.  Or maybe it’s 2 crews that get voted in, and the host team crew.  Or maybe one current crew, a crew of retired guys and the host crew.  You can toy with the details.  But get me a couple of innings of Vin Scully.

2) On each league roster, the longest tenured MLB player who has never mad an All-Star game makes the team.  If you’ve been a backup catcher since 1996, or are a 43 year old left-handed middle relief curveball specialist, well you deserve one chance to see the big stage in your career. 

That’s all I’m really asking for.

A Good Article on Community Stadiums

July 13, 2009 /

With the Sounders selling out their entire season, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the MLS is not sharing the same attendance success.

BigSoccer.com has a good article about how Frisco, TX (suburn of Dallas), used their MLS squad as a way to get an entire community complex developed, and how everything works together in a nice synergy.  Perhaps there’s a way to do something similar with a basketball/hockey/concert arena type complex in Seattle? 

A Few Tips for College Grads Looking for Marketing Jobs

July 10, 2009 /

In the last few months, thanks mainly to my association with the UW Foster School of Business, I’ve been able to meet with a number of top flight students and recent graduates hunting for jobs in Advertising or Marketing.

I keep seeing a few common themes.  There aren’t that many new marketing jobs out there, many firms who have marketing jobs are cutting people, and many people who currently have these jobs are reinventing themselves so they can keep getting their paychecks.  This does not lead to a simple path to employment for a rookie.

So, as a person at a company who is hiring, not firing, at the current moment, here are a few things from my personal perspective that I think can help you. (Please note: this point of view is not necessarily endorsed by my company and will not necessarily help your resume get through our screeners.  It’s simply my opinion.)

  • If you are going after a job in marketing, first and foremost, you better be able to market yourself.  Think about the 4 P’s and apply them to you.  Your personal “brand” should be packaged professionally, priced appropriately, promoted in the right areas and you should come to the table with the proper set of skills to provide solutions to the problems that job is designed to deal with.
  • Remember that the job opening is there for the benefit of the company, not you.  Some executive, director or hiring manager has a specific and relevant problem that needs to be solved.  It’s not an opening for a “job.”  It’s a call for someone to provide a solution to an outstanding issue.
  • There is no such thing as “menial work” while you search for a career job.  The market stinks.  We get that.  But showing up every day for work at your barista job shows you understand customers.  Working as a deckhand on a fishing boat illustrates that you will work hard.  Spending 20 hours a week donating time to a non-profit proves you have a general interest in learning skills and networking.  Any of those things prove you are scrappy and worth hiring.
  • This environment favors the scrappy.  The Social Media world makes it easy to prove competence in the field you are interested in.  Take side projects, help friends, work on any marketing gig you can find.
  • Start a blog.  It’s free. It takes 20 minutes a day.  Write about anything professional you read and have an opinion on.  If nothing else, it proves you are reading the things I want my employees to know something about.
  • Know all the tools.  Basecamp, Google Docs, Office Live, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Digsby, etc… just know all the online applications that make collaboration easier.
  • Above all, remember there are two type of people who are distinctly different.  There are unemployed people who want a marketing job, and marketing people who aren’t currently employed.  Be the latter.  
  • Finally, for the non-recent grads.  If you are applying for a senior level role in a small firm, come with a book of business, or at leastthe willingness to build one.  Senior people are expensive.  Small firms rarely have a stack of cash sitting around in which to donate to a new person.  Show that you can generate clients, no matter how small, so that you can help the firm justify your senior level paycheck.

I Need a Place to get News

July 6, 2009 /

Ok, I’m throwing my hands up in the air.  We have all these sources for “News” but it feels like everyone is just writing Op-Ed pieces.  Is there anyplace where real journalists report real stories, by researching real facts and attaching them to real analysis, all in a single place?

What sent me over the edge, was a snarky blurb on a local Seattle technology pub, which backhandedly complimented Microsoft for “finally” getting a corporate twitter account.  If would have been a perfect opporunity for any of the following stories:

  • How a Fortune 100 decides to build a Twitter Account.
  • An analysis of Microsoft’s individual business units run their Twitter accounts, and the similarieties and differences between them. 
  • Comparison between other other Fortune 500 companies’ use of Twitter.
  • A conversation with the major marketing and advertising agencies about how Twitter is affecting brands.
  • An interview with Starbucks and Alaska Airlines Social Media and or Marketing?PR folks.
  • How companies are profiting from their twitter campaigns.

Instead, we got a few lines about how Microsoft PR is late to the Twitter game, with absolutely no rationale or arguments about why a corporate Twitter account has to be well thought out, or even a list of the potential risks.

Now, I understand stories like the ones I hoped for require research and interviews that go deeper than gettign an email shot to you, and it’s hard to write them while at the bar watching a sporting event.  But where are the journalists who would write stories like this?

So my question:  Where are you guys actually getting real news these days?  What journalism sources are stimulating your brain more than a John Grisham novel?

U.S. 2 – Spain 0

June 26, 2009 /

Why was this win important to Mexico fans? When the World Cup rolls around, they place all the competitors into 4 “seeding” categories, from 1-4. It’s kind of like the NCAA Tourney, where you know the Big East, ACC and Pac 10 reps will get the best seeds, while the mid majors will argue for a spot at the top of the bracket. Think of Europe as the Big East and ACC combined, South America the Big East or Pac 10, Concacaf a weak Big 10 or mid-major, and Asia and Africa the small conferences with automatic bids. Traditionally, it breaks out something like this:

  • #1 seeds (8 total): 6-7 from Europe, 1-2 from South America (Brazil and Argentina)
  • #2 seeds (8 total): 4-5 from Europe, 2-3 from S. Am, 1 from Concacaf
  • #3 seeds (8 total): 2-3 from Europe, 2-3 from S. Am, 2-3 from Africa, 1 from Concacaf, 1 from Asia
  • #4 Seeds (8 total): 1-2 from S. Am, 2-3 from Africa, 1 from Concacaf, 3-4 from Asia

Usually, Mexico gets that Concacaf entry into the #2 seeds, and the U.S. gets the #3 or #4 seed. So you get to the World Cup, and while Mexico has maybe England (#1), Paraguy (#3) and Australia (#4) in their group, the U.S. gets Italy (#1), the Czech Republic (#2) and Ghana (#3/4). Since only 2 teams go to the next round, the U.S. already needs an upset to survive, while Mexico just needs to avoid being upset.

But, a U.S. win in a sanctioned tournament over the #1 ranked team in the world, coupled with general dominance over Mexico over the last decade or so, then combined with the U.S. winning Concacaf over Mexico, may be enough to flip-flop the places in the pecking order. And if that happens, the chance to get seeded in a reasonable group becomes more likely.

Some fun pics from the game. Looking for more that I can repurpose…

 

 

 

What Does It Mean that Don Fehr is Retiring?

June 24, 2009 /

Donald Fehr was the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (aka Union).  In my career, it’s been difficult to find anyone more frustrating to work with than anyone with “Major League Baseball” anywhere in their business card or title.  However, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to deal with the Players’ Union.

Fehr’s announcement today has touched off a firestorm on blogs about whether he was good for baseball.  Under him, player contracts went through the roof, so he certainly did his job for his employers.  Every time that they had to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, Fehr took the owners to school.   Heck, they cancelled the World Series and he still got his clients darn near everything they wanted.

So this isn’t a piece about whether he should have allowed MLB to test for steroids, or if player salaries have created franchises with no hope of ever winning.  This piece raises the question, “Why retire now, and what does it mean?”

My quick, unsubstantiated take:  Here’s a man who uncannily knows when the time is right.  I think he knows that MLB revenues are in a lot of trouble.  The TV networks who broadcast games are getting killed, and are going to need to cut costs.  All the cities already have their shiny new taxpayer paid stadiums, so there’s no new revenue there to grab.  And it’s become embarassing that Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Washington, San Diego, etc… will never compete.  The league is losing revenue, needs to change and only one group has the power to allow that to happen.

The Players.

Next bargaining round, the MLB Players are going to be forced into a quandary.  The game is taking a hit, thanks in equal parts to the U.S. economic meltdown, players taking steroids from Pez dispensers, players making $12 million a year to not play, and the general ability of the NFL to continue to beat the heck out baseball everywhere it matters.  So the players will have to admit this when they sit at the table.  They’ll have to at least take a modicum of blame for abusing the lack of drug tests to the point that the great joy of comparing 100 years of baseball statistics has been rendered into a useless and meaningless exercise.  And if they admit any of this, they’ll be forced to give concessions on rookie salaries, guaranteed contracts, Free agency, arbitration and/or collective bargaining.  

So my synopsis is that Donald Fehr sees that the MLBPA is about to get crushed in the next round of bargaining.  And quite simply – he doesn’t want to be the guy who gets crushed.  So he leaves the hero or the villain depending on your take.  Let’s see if the next guy is rational and cares about the game, or like Fehr, is simply a brilliant and high paid bulldog representing a completely spoiled client.

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