Andy Boyer

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Fan Friendly Ticketing

June 18, 2008 /

I promise, if the Seattle Sounders do something like try to move to Oklahoma City, or spend $117 million on players I wouldn’t add to a Fantasy baseball team, I’ll complain about it.  But as long as they keep doing things that impress me as a marketing professional, I’m going to keep sharing how impressed I am.

sounders.jpgThis week, I went through the pleasurable and fun process of selecting my 2009 season ticket package.  In comparison, I’ve completely given up on using Ticketmaster.com due to its inflexibility and 75% Convenience charge.  It’s amazing that you can’t choose your seats on that site, but instead are held hostage to a weak algorithm that supposedly gives you "Best Available" in a certain section.  Plus, I honestly don’t understand how I can order 5 books from Amazon Marketplace from 5 different people and pay like $15.00 total in shipping, but if I try to use Ticketmaster to buy 4 concert tickets, they want to charge something like $50 just to print out a couple of ducats and stick them at will call.  Why?  Are my tickets taking a limo from TM HQ to the arena? Is the paper laced with gold?  What could command $50 in service charges?  Anyway, now I just take the time to go to the stadium, pick out seats I want and leave happy.

But I digress.

The Sounders experience was as close to "Anti-Ticketmaster" as I can find.  Even if you don’t care about soccer, I encourage you to go through the process at http://tickets.soundersfc.com/   .  Choose whether you want to sit or stand during the game.  Or if you want to be in a section that sings or not.  Take a virtual tour of every row in every section.  It’s a very fan friendly experience, and trust me, the fans appreciate it. 

Let me know if you have found any other ticket places with convenient tools such as this. 

 

Paying Respects to Two Broadcasting Legends

June 15, 2008 /

If you had to put together a TV newscast, and could start with Tim Russert on news and Jim McKay on sports, you could pretty much add Spanky the Wonder Clown on the weather desk and still deliver top product.  So this was a rough week in the broadcasting world, with the death of both these standard bearers.

Anyone my age remembers the pre-ESPN days, when Wide World of Sports was this weekend sugar bomb of athletic events that you couldn’t get Monday-Friday.   Once cable took over, WWS lost its significance, but it was ESPN before ESPN was ESPN, and Jim McKay was its fearless leader. Plus, back in the day, Jim McKay was the voice of Olympic coverage, and I think even the current TV hosts would admit they have never quite filled his shoes.

Russert of course,  anchored the "Meet the Press" desk for the last 17 years, and was one of the few remaining level-headed, unbiased, voices of reason during the election coverage. Every eulogy I have heard over the last 3 days has proclaimed him to be a great mentor and family guy as well.  Hopefully those mentoring skills will pay off and one of his proteges will admirably take over his place at the desk.

Everyone who watches TV will feel the loss of these legends, especially when you consider the magnitutde of the upcoing 2008 Olymipcs in Beijing and November US Presidential Election. 

Proving Marketing Can Be Creative….and Cheap

June 13, 2008 /

I’m not one to think that Marketing is free.  I think you can be effective on the cheap, but you have to commit to at least spending SOMETHING.

I liken it to a party.  You need one of these to be extremely great – location, people, food or music – to make it worth talking about.  But no matter what, you need to spend some money on booze to loosen things up.  

Marketing is similar.  You either need extremely great product, creative, design or placement for a campaign to be noteworthy.  Take a boring product, give it a standard design, a few relevant pieces of copy and stick it in tradional media and you have something to put in your portfolio but not much else.

But I digress.

Here’s a company who is executing a very nice campaign on the cheap, but they are nailing the creativity and placement attributes.  They spend some cash on shipping, but have potential to have a lot of "free creative." designed for them.  Here is a copy of the email below:

———–

Hey fellow Magnifier –

We’ve had amazing response to the Mascot’s first week out and about in New York City.   He’s  been on the Subway.  He’s been to Columbia University.   He came to a Magnify.net board meeting.  He event had a night out with Obama Girl!

Now,  he’s ready to travel the world. So,  invite him to  your place – we’ll pay the way.

Magnify Mascot will travel first class (fed ex)  to you.   He’ll bring a gift (a brand new American Apparel Magnify T shirt),  and he’s ready to have a photo take with you.

We’re going to feature some of the best photo’s,  most glamourous locations,   and most creative channel admins on our homepage over the next few weeks.   So,  if you’re looking for a house guest who is flat,  and orange – we’ve got a guy who wants to visit you.

To apply to be a stop on the Magnify Mascot World Tour:

1).  Send an email to:  WorldTour@magnify.net
2).  Tell us the name of your Magnify.net site(s)
3).  Tell us about some  great photo op (famous tourist destination he can visit?)  or neat photo location.
We’ve got a backlog of Channel Admin’s who have already invited the Mascot to come to their unique and wonderful part of the world –  so get on the bandwagon now.

 We’re excited about coming to you!

Best,

Steve,  Simon and the Magnify.net team

 

Here’s a picture from our latest Board meeting, with Board Member
David S. Rose giving the Mascot a ‘Hi Five.’


PS…  yes,  we know he needs a name… we’re still accepting suggestions for the Name the Mascot contest.  Expect  more news shortly on this.

 

5 (or so) Reasons Everyone Should Attend Monday’s Sonics Rally

June 12, 2008 /

This Monday at 4:30pm, the Save Our Sonics Organization is hosting a rally on the courthouse steps  (700 Stewart St., Seattle). Sonics legends Gary Payton and Xavier McDaniel are confirmed to attend and speak at 4:30 pm. Other Sonics Legends have been invited and are expected to appear.

Now whether you are a die-hard fan, casual observer or don’t even care and just live and work in Seattle, here are 5 (or 7) reasons you should show support.

  1. For the first time ever, a city and state did not bow down to a league that demanded a new tax-payer funded stadium.  You should show that a league should not punish a city for this appropriate action.
  2. Over 41 years, more than 20,000,000 people have watched Sonics games in person.  That’s a piece of history that should stay – and I bet it’s more than have watched the symphony, opera and ballet combined.
  3. You cannot idly sit by and watch an Oklahoma Oil Baron (who is also a Republican) come rob the eco-friendly Pacific Northwest of one of its assets.
  4. At least some of your friends care about this, so you should support them.  They contribute to your Sierra Club, Humane Society and kid’s school’s auctions.  This doesn’t even cost you anything.
  5. It’s happy hour in Seattle – what an excuse to kill an hour off your work day on a Monday?  
  6. David Stern is proving to be an arrogant, very bad man.  Don’t let him get away with this without Seattle making some noise.
  7. There’s about a 1% chance the team survives.  If that miracle occurs, 34 years from now on the Sonics 75th anniversary, don’t you want to tell your grand-kids, "I was at the rally that proved to be the turning point."

 Get there – do your part.  Make it a huge rally that gets on the national news. 

More NBA Image Problems

June 11, 2008 /

Ok, if you are the NBA, how do you address this PR nightmare?  You already have an NBA official who has admitted to taking money to throw games.  Now this official is naming other refs and other games that have been fixed – playoff games at that.

Anyone who has ever watched an NBA Playoff game has walked away wondering, "There were some weird calls in that game…"  In fact, I believe Mark Cuban even hired his own stats guys to chart how refs called games, and which ones were more inconsistent than others.

Contrary to opinion, it really would be easy to fix a game.  Consider that each team has the ball about two times per minute.  And you figure almost every player touches the ball at least once per possession.  And maybe 1/2 the touches result in some sort of light contact from the defender.  A couple of quick innocuous foul calls in the 1st quarter put a player on the bench.  A couple more in the second half keep him on the bench.  And most teams can’t compete when they have a starter on the bench all game.

But the question is, how does the NBA respond?  Do you believe the guy who admitted to being guilty?  Or do you believe the guy who is moving a basketball team from Seattle to Oklahoma City for what he says is in the "best interest of the league."   Who really has more to lose at this point? One guy who has no hope at ever getting his job back is trying to cut down the number of years he’ll be in jail.  The other guy is trying to maintain the image and value of his billion dollar enterprise.  Who do you think would be more willing to stretch the truth to protect their interests?

And just a side note – is there a coincidence that this allegation comes as the Lakers play the Celtics, a revival of when the NBA was great, and a chance to showcase the NBA’s heir apparent to Michael Jordan and coach of the century.  Plus, many people wonder how a GM who was vilified by press and fans for being inept, managed to get Kevin Garnett from his buddy Kevin McHale and Ray Allen from an owner who wanted to move his team to Oklahoma City.   Did the league orchestrate the move to bring power back to Boston?  Maybe that’s the next revelation….

Should We Revisit the Seattle Monorail

June 10, 2008 /

A few years ago, we had this crazy idea to build a monorail, that would start in downtown and brtanch out to two of Seattle’s far flung neighborhoods, Ballard and Seattle.

By most accounts, the whole plan was run by the guys who drive clown cars, and the money guys needed an abacus to count sea shells on the beach.  It was the little engine that couldn’t even though all of us have spent about $1500 in taxes for the train that never ran.

But is it time to dust off the powerpoint, and re-run the Excel spreadsheet with new numbers?  Interest rates have never been lower, so the money would be cheaper.  Gas prices have never been hire, but will be tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after that, etc…), so you can assume ridership will skyrocket.   And now we have a real crisis, and you see how civic leaders (i.e. Steve Ballmer) suddenly appear in times of crisis.

Sometimes great ideas have terrible execution, or poor timing, and all it takes is a different team on a diferent day to turn a dud into nirvana.  Think the Smarte Car, which 25 years ago was a dog called the Yugo.  Or the iPod, which in 1997 was a dorky thing called Diamond Rio.  The Newton never made it, but pieces of it came back into every PDA sold from 2003-2007. 

So, what do you think?  Why not revisit this whole monorail thing, with a new team driving the project? 

 

Interview With Facebook Execs at “All Things D”

June 5, 2008 /

I found these interviews with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg & Mark Zuckerberg at FaceReviews.com. The interview was part of the All Things D Conference.

Very interesting interview that runs through the Facebook goals and vision, some insight into what they thought was important as they went from a 3 man side project to Media powerhouse, how FB applications will evolve, and some looks to the future.



Watch Great Soccer – Support Seattle’s All Nations Cup

June 4, 2008 /

2008%20ANC%20Poster%20Final%20Web.jpgIf you have not booked out every  Saturday or Sunday for the next 3 weeks, try to book some time to check out the All Nations Cup 2008. This is truly one of the most unique events in Seattle, and a great example of what makes the city a pretty cool place to live.

The All Nations Cup is an amateur soccer tournament where every player competes for their home country.  It’s like the World Cup, but for amateurs.  (This weekend’s schedule here.)

I’ve been sporadically over the last few years, and the soccer is always of high quality.  But the real fun is seeing the fans.  You have these small communities of people from Ethiopia, Bosnia, Gambia, etc….There may only be a few hundred in the whole city, but most of them come out to support this group of amateur players.  Everyone has their flags, songs, drums, etc…

All games are at Starfire down in Tukwila and it’s like $10 or $15 or something per day.   With 4 games going on at once, you can shift from field to field and see some pretty strong players.

If you get down there, let me know. 

Polls Made Easy, with Vizu

June 4, 2008 /

Vizu is a neat little app that you can use to add a touch of functionality to blog posts and the like. It’s probably been around for a while, but recently hopped on my radar screen thanks to a friend in the ad industry who uses it for quick polls. I don’t know how they make money, but for the rest of us, it’s a pretty slick little tool.

If I had to nitpick, I’d ask for a few more size options. In the case of a short blog post like this one, the Vizu poll doesn’t really fit. So, even after playing with table widths, I still need to drone on and on just to fill up some more space with copy so the poll fits in better.

But on the plus side, you do have plenty color options, so it can work it’s way design-wise into just about any web template. And it’s a breeze to use. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes.

Sounders Show Off New Microsoft Uniforms

May 30, 2008 /

sounders.jpgThere will be no jokes about the Sounders having to restart the game every 30 minutes to reboot.  Nor will anyone talk about them having a bloated team of 476 players.  And certainly no one will complain that every MLS team must have 10 players from the Sounders roster included with every installation.

No, we won’t make those jokes because despite getting Microsoft money, the Sounders now have the coolest sponsor in the MLS and the best uniforms in the league.

In fact, I may go as far as to say that the MLS has the coolest sponsor in all of Professional soccer, with the announcement of Xbox 360 deciding to be the face (or chest as it were) of Seattle soccer.

Think about the great teams in Euro soccer and then think about their sponsors:

  • Manchester United: AIG Insurance (On a scale of 1 to 100, they score 130 on the boring meter)
  • Arsenal: Emirates Air (borrrrring)
  • Chelsea: Samsung (boring, but at least they are technology)
  • RealMadrid:  BenQ Siemens (more technology, but from Taiwan)
  • Bayern Munich: T-Mobile (yawn)
  • Inter Milan: Pirelli Tires (ok, that’s pretty cool I guess.)
  • AC Milan: Bwin.com (online betting is pretty cool too I suppose)

But until I see Sony, Gucci, Rolex, Ferrari, Gulfstream, Prada, or BMW on the front of a jersey, I’ll take Xbox 360 as the coolest sponsor in soccer.  (How does Apple not get that they need to do this…) 

Even better, the sponsorship and company are here in Seattle.  And tell me it’s not a great looking jersey.  Just tell me how to order and I’m in.

(This photo was taken by Courtney Blethen of the Seattle Times, and I grabbed it from this article. Seattle Times: If you need me to take it down, please just let me know.)   

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