Andy Boyer

Blog

  • Remembering The Tuba Man

    To answer a question many Seattle fans have asked lately, “Yes, apparently it can get worse.”

    Losing a lot of games is one thing.  But the inexplicable murder of a Seattle sports icon is just downright nauseating.

    He was’t an athlete, owner or executive.  He never threw a picth or wrote a scathing article.  But chances are high that if you attended a Seattle sporting event, you passed Edward McMichael – though you only knew him as, “The Tuba Man.”

    He was a harmless street musician who sat outside stadiums and played a rusty tuba.  You didn’t know he was a classically trained musician.  Sometimes you threw him a quarter, sometimes you didn’t, but you always noticed him.   But unlike some of the unsavory characters walking around that area, he was not someone you ever feared.  Instead, the people you usually do fear, packs of street thugs wandering aimlessly through the night, proved why you should stay frightened.

    According to reports, 5 people described as “gang members” attacked the Tuba Man for no reason at about midnight on Oct 25..  They beat him mercilessly, and he died about a week later.  Speculation is that they did it to take whatever change he had in his tuba case. 

    It’s senseless.  Horrific.  It makes me sick.  No one took the Tuba Man to another town, and he wasn’t arrested and sent to Walla Walla.  Stupid little punks beat him to death.  They’ve caught two of them, but three are still at large. 

    There’s talk on some comment boards about erecting a statue of a Tuba in front of one of the stadiums.  I think it’s a fabulous idea.  I’ll donate.  

    I never formally met the Tuba Man.  But it makes me sad that one more piece of Seattle history and tradition has suddenly disappeared.

    Added Notes:

    The PI reports that Ian Newhall and his wife, Ailisa, set up a Web site Tuesday to announce a brass memorial for McMichael.  It will be held outside McCaw Hall at 11 a.m. Saturday. The repertoire: Taps, Tequila and the University of Washington Fight Song.  

    There is also a Memorial fund to help cover teh costs of the funeral.  If you want to help, you can visit any Bank of America branch, Box said, or send donations to:

    Edward the Tuba Man McMichael Memorial Fund 
    P.O. Box 4985 
    Federal Way 98063

  • Bonanzle on KING 5 TV

    Frequent readers of this column may remember Bonanzle, a fun young company that you should check out if you are selling or buying things this holiday season.  

    Most small companies believe they need huge expensive PR firms to get on local TV, but this story proves that an entusiastic customer base can bejust as  valuable for generating new PR opportunites

    Check out this Bonanzle company profile produced by KING 5 this week.

     

  • Insult to Injury

    I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t already know about Seattle Sports 2008.

    • One of worst teams in the NBA….
    • ….which then gets stolen by Oklahoma City guys. 
    • 2nd worst team in baseball……
    • ….featuring the worst trade in Major League Baseball in the last 10 years (The Seattle farm system for a guy who only wants to picth 80 pitches a game, for 3 months a season.)
    • A 1-7 WSU football team.
    • An 0-7 UW football team.
    • A 2-5 Seahawks team…..
    • ….where the first 7 receivers on the Seattle depth chart were on the injured list at the same time.
    • ….where An All-Pro QB has a back injury that affects his leg strength

    You might think, “Well, that certainly couldn’t get worse.”  And a little insult gets thrown on for flavor.

    1) The GM who the Mariners couldn’t get along with, wins teh World Series with the Phillies, thanks in part to a 45 year old pitcher that the Mariners didn’t think could compete as well as guys like, well, it’s just too depressing to name names.

    2) This weekend the Huskies, Cougars and Seahawks are getting 83 and a half points.  EIGTHY-THREE AND A HALF.  Huskies are getting 46 1/2, Cougars 30, and Hawks 7.  

    Let the pain end….

     

  • Conversations from years past

    I was down Tucson this weekend, where old storytelling and reminiscing eventually led to amazement about everthing that has changed in the last 8-10 years.  In fact, it lead a few folks to put this list together, and I’m sure it’s incomplete.  

    But on October 26 2000, if someone had shown you a newspaper for October 26, 2008, would you believe any of this could really happen?

    • US engaged in year 6 of a land war in Afghanistan
    • US engaged in year 6 of a land war in Iraq
    • Tampa Bay in the World Series
    • UW and WSU combined 1-14 record
    • The Sonics play in Oklahoma City
    • The US government pays $750+ Billion to US financial institutions – with Bear Stearns, AIG and WaMu basically out of business 
    • Gas at $3.09 a gallon – and that’s 30% CHEAPER than it was 6 months ago
    • 45 year old Jamie Moyer pitches game 4 of the World Series, while Freddy Garcia, Ryan Andersen and the rest of the “untouchable” Mariners minor league pitchers are out of baseball.
    • An unknown African American Illinois state senator is going to be elected President
    • The US President, Senate and House are all about to be a Democratic supermajority

     

  • Comparing the World Series to the US Presidential Election

    I’m sad to say, I have no allegiance to either team in the World Series this year.  Which really kind of stinks, since I am desperate for something to root for.  (BTW, thank you Arizona Wildcats for pulling together a respectable football season and keeping me from sports harakare.)

    So here I am, trying to decide who to support.  I mean, it’s 7 stupid games.  It shouldn’t be that hard to pick a team.  And through my logical analysis and emotional introspection I’ve used to try to pick a team, it suddenly dawned on me that this World Series is a microcosm of the US Presidential election.

    Let’s look at the Phillies.  They have been a part of Major League Baseball forever, but yet have never quite been a team that everyone likes – or hates.  They aren’t the Cubs, Yankees or Red Sox, even though they’ve been around just as long.  They have produced some great players (Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Tug McGraw), but also have some “not so special moments” (like Pete Rose crushing Ray Fosse in an All-Star game.)  And even when doing well, they’ve managed to annoy the press (Steve Carlton).  Basically, they’ve been around forever, and have gone through both good and bad years.  A few years ago, it looked like they had the big prize won, but then suffered an unexpected defeat to a team who ultimatley proved to not be worth supporting (Blue Jays).  Now they have a new squad with new people (Howard, Utley, Rollins, Hamill) but are still perceived as that “old” franchise with the ornery fans.

    Now let’s examine the Rays.  On paper, this franchise is way too young to garner baseball’s greatest prize.  I mean, it’s quite an achievement for them to even make it to the final two, but can someone show me anything they’ve accomplished before 2008?  I know they had a lot of draft picks and a few experienced advisors, but until this year, these guys were simply idealists with a dream, and where heaven only lived on a whiteboard.  They have no real history, save for a few veterans who have never achieved any similar level of success anywhere else.  And yet, now Tampa Bay has die-hard, almost obsessive, fans who will shave their head and other body parts to support their team.  Every young fan – plus old fans who love a fairy tale story about achieving greatness in record time – has become a loud, proud Rays fan.

    Now let’s look at how they got here.  While the Phillies breezed through their National League Primary, I mean Playoff, the Rays had to go to the late innings of Game 7, going toe to toe with an experienced, veteran, old school franchise that simply wouldn’t go away, even though it was apparent that they wouldn’t win.  In fact, the Rays had a chance to knock the Red Sox out in Game 5 – up 7-0 in the 7th – but then inexplicably the Red Sox had one huge run, and managed to make life complicated for everyone involved, until finally succumbing. 

    So what do you think?  Who do you vote/root for this World Series….

  • 5 Tips for Pitch Decks

    I’ve started reading the Seattle 2.0 blog a little more regularly, especially now that people that I know and am friends with seem to be writing the bylines on a fairly regular basis.  

    Anyway, I’ve been meaning to add the site to my blogroll for a while.  And this article written by the Alliance of Angels’ Rebecca Lovell is a good reason to send people over to check out the site.   Let me know if you disagree with any of Rebecca’s points.  

  • Should You Fire Your Marketing Agency

    Blatant plug here…but in an article written for Mediapost, Spring Creek Group’s Clay McDaniel provides five key questions to ask your agency. 

    I’m biased since the article came from the Spring Creek Group offices, but it’s worth reading if you are one of the 99% of companies who have tough marketing decisions to make in 2009.

  • Back from Federated Media Summit

    (I’m reposting this from our company blog at www.SpringCreekGroup.com/blog since I was on the road this week and haven’t had time to write as much as I would like.)

    >>>

    The Spring Creek Group returned today from the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit.  We’ll try to punch out a few posts commenting on specific news and insights we heard, but the general takeway is that people are desperate for some way to track the success or failure of Social Media campaigns.

    So far, the only thing everything can agree upon is that there is no right formula yet.  How much is it worth to have someone watch a YouTube Video?  Or to create a new one?  In fact, the value of User Generated Content seems to be a slippery crocodile for big agencies to grapple with.  What is the incentive for Goodby Sliverstein to launch a campaign designed to get 25,000 people to create their own ads?  While Agency Creative teams are desperately trying to control the message (and the work), there are tons of people with a camera, a laptop, an idea, and now a giant platform to talk from.

    All of this makes the ROI argument more relevant.  An agency needs to be able to justify why spending $xx,000 to have their NYU Art School guys build a MySpace page or YouTube video is better than the company giving a couple of film school kids a handycam and a credit card.   And since there is no way to value the return yet, it’s hard to quantitatively make any kind of argument.

    What does this mean for firms who specialize in Social Media?  Well quite simply, it means the industry is growing up.  People don’t care about ROI on having a salesperson buy someone coffee.  But they care if they are going to send her to New York for 4 day conference.  ROI only matters when you identify a place you want to spend a lot of “I” in.  When that “I” was a few hours of an intern’s time to build a Facebook page or write a blog post, no one cared.  But the fact that ROI is becoming so important indicates Social Media is becoming a real line item on the Marketing Budget, not part of the “Other Channels” bucket.  And no matter what, that is good for everyone in the space. 

  • And You Think the Pac 10 refs are Bad…

    Here’s a clip of a ref who actually seems to be making a tackle in the South Carolina vs LSU game Saturday.

  • Random Music Review – The New Keane CD is Great

    I’ll remind everyone that I have no musical ability, and my tastes are rarely shared by others.  With that said, I think the new CD from Keane, Perfect Symmetry,  is going to take them from their current status of “Someone I have heard of and kind of like,” to “Total World Domination.” Check it out on Rhapsody or your mp3 download of choice.  I’m on my 3rd run through the CD.  Good stuff.