Month: February 2008

Out of Touch Marketing

I can already tell I am going to be all over the board on this post.  This is mainly due to the fact the topic today is about commercials/advertisements and I extremely dislike them – normally I would have used the hay8 word but I am trying to narrow the use of that label to special situations (like Sprint) otherwise it tends to get watered down.  I should probably backup and put some perspective on this.  For probably 10 years now, every time I get a magazine, I take 2 minutes to rip out every double page ad in it.  This leaves a muuuuchh thinner magazine with very little distractions, including those ridiculous cologne samples.  Secondly, I rarely listen to any commercial on the radio – there are multiple (non-satellite) stations I listen to in the car and since the controls are now conveniently located behind the steering wheel, it is even easier to skip through the stations.  That is when I choose to listen to the radio instead of podcasts and audio books.  Lastly, I use a computer to PVR all of my TV shows and watch them later in the night or week.  That tiny little button labeled “skip” jumps 30 seconds ahead so a few clicks of that and I am back into the show adding productive hours to my week.  Getting the picture here?  As a note, when Ted Turner claimed I was stealing his money by doing this I swore to  never watch TNT again (and true to my word).

If you are in the marketing creation business, you might want to rethink your approach if you plan to sell me something.  As a suggestion, you might want to consider the in show product approach – if you are selling soda, you might want to push to have an actor drink from a can (with trademark visible) in the middle of a suspenseful moment or have an actress get into a specific SUV and hit the OnStar button before the villain raises up from the back seat — think the movie Demolition Man and Taco Bell (as you can see that worked)

 But I admit, there is a small window in the morning when I choose to sit (actually stand) through commercials.  That time is in the morning getting ready for work.  I need to know what to wear so the TV is generally on to get the latest updates.  Unfortunately, every once in awhile a commercial comes on that freezes me in my tracks – not because it is actually worth watching, but rather in the “What were they thinking” category. 

One of these moments happened yesterday.

Continue reading Out of Touch Marketing

Opportunity K[a]n[n]o[y]-ck-s

Yikes, I have to get back on the ball and be more diligent about my entries – my observations are backlogging.  In an attempt to at least knock one off the list (clever eh, title has the word knocks in it and I used it as a clever verb in the lead-in…okay weak – it was actually a complete accident).

 On to the observation – Last week we went to Chevy’s for some Mexican entrees.  Unfortunately, it was crowded as well, but we were tired of driving around having previously passed on the wait at the Irish bar and felt the China Palace was too crowded.  So we gave a fake name, grabbed our pager and tried to find a place to stand.  In the middle of all of this, were two ladies standing by a portable table with a cosmetic display on it.  They caught my wife’s attention and stated they were “Celebrating women tonight” and wanted to know if she would like to sign up to win a Mary Kay gift set (pointing to the table) they were giving away.  As expected my wife declined and we moved to a small opening against the hallway wall.  In our endless quest to stay out of the way from the wait staff, I looked over and noticed that someone was filling out the entry form.  For some reason this held my attention for awhile.  The lady returned the clipboard and moved into an even more cramped location in the now full foyer. 

What followed next totally caught me off guard. 

Continue reading Opportunity K[a]n[n]o[y]-ck-s

International Competition

Lunch today involved a very interesting discussion. I happen to have a very good friend who was actually born in Korea and moved to the United States when he was a young child. We both enjoy the same types of TV shows and movies which often involve some form of martial arts theme – As previously mentioned, I have spent almost 18 years studying martial arts and my friend has been immersed in the genre from his heritage. A significant portion of our lunch time conversations generally focus on critiquing shows/movies we have recently seen or our progress on Rock Band (yes, we are both hooked ever since he introduced me to Guitar Hero I on PS2). The conversation today started with my summarization of the previous night’s American Gladiator. Okay, okay, let me confess – I did my run routine on the treadmill and ended up pushing myself a little farther than I wanted to. I ended up laying down on the couch and was literally too exhausted to reach for the remote, so I ended up watching whatever station was on. To my disgust, it ended up being the new American Gladiator show.

After watching it for about 15 minutes, I figured out the formula – this ultimately led to a distinction between the Asian culture and ours – but first I’ll explain my observation.

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Book Recollection: Slash

After two weeks from reading or listening to a book, I like to reflect back on what actually made it to long-term memory.   I am of the opinion that most pages in a book contain fluff, drivel and generally boring material.   However, every few pages, there is generally something there that lights my bulb or surprises me.  If that specific piece of information stays with me past a couple of weeks, then it was worth my time spent consuming the material.  Unfortunately, there are many books that I can’t even remember a single fact or quote – that equates to once serious waste of time.  Anyway, I figured it might be worthwhile to start putting some of these insights to paper (figuratively).  This will also give me a way to quickly look back and recall the key points in a book – besides, you never know how long the ol’ long term memory will stay intact – every snowboard half-pipe crash I take keeps knocking some stuff loose. 

So, two weeks ago I read the autobiography of Guns N Roses lead guitarist cleverly entitled “Slash”.  He happens(ed) to be one of the guitarists I admire(d) and thought I would gain some insights into what makes him such a good musician and how he goes about arranging his leads.  Well, I was wrong on that pre-assessment since there was little to no information on those two topics.  Some information did stick, but in general, I was disappointed.   Beyond the glorified heroin abuse, non-stop drinking and desire to smash other people’s things there really was not much else.  I realize this is the stereotypical rock star life and this is what their marketing sector embraces, but I have not read a book yet (any Rolling Stones book, Scar Tissue, Hammer of the Gods etc.) where the author thoroughly enjoyed the experience of dependency…. and at least lived to write about it).  As a public figure, I can’t help to think that making a formal statement against the bad aspects of this behavior would have a positive effect on the individuals that look up to them (and why people think these individuals are worth patterning their life after is whole different post). 

Anyway, like I said, there were some things that I remember:

Continue reading Book Recollection: Slash

The Build Up to Deflation

I was in Best Buy today to pick up some more external storage.  As is always the case, I have to traverse all the way to the back of the store to get the only item I was in there to acquire.  This tends to annoy me, but has the side benefit of giving me lots of opportunities to make other observations.  One that stuck out on this trip occurred as I was passing by the Rock Band display.  For the 1% of the population that might not be aware of what this is, think of it as a console game (Xbox 360, PS2/3 etc.) that allows the players to simulate being a musician or singer through a plastic controller that at least looks like an instrument – the guitar plays nothing like a real guitar, but tries to emulate fretting one string while strumming with the other hand – the drums are a little more realistic in the sense you have a kick pedal and four contact pads.  Walking slowly past the display, I noticed a guy excitedly talking to his wife (assumed) about the game and how fun it looked.  His eyes were as wide as Christmas day as he tried to explain all the things you could do with it.  His enthusiasm reminded me of the Red Rider BB gun plea from Ralphie.  Just before I went beyond earshot, I heard her say “Well, ask him” in a much less enthusiastic voice.   I pondered that a few more paces while finally reaching the storage isle. 

My assumption was he wanted to ask the clerk something but it turns out I was wrong about that.  I actually took about 20 minutes trying to decide how many gigs of storage to buy – do I go with the Terabyte for convenience and accept the risk of losing a greater amount of data, or do I go with twin 500Gs and cut the loss risk in half…. My IT career has trained me to assume the worst on anything computer related so I went with the 500s… but I have strayed from topic.. Retracing my steps back to the front, I once again passed the display and sure enough they were still there, but this time their child (probably 10-11 or so) was with them.  The Dad tried to keep his excitement in check as he asked if he “would like to get Rock Band”.   While he reached down to pick up the box in anticipation of the answer, the kid replied with a firm “No”.  In that split second, I saw the man go from real excitement to complete devastation – his face lost color, the eyes drooped and the shoulders shrugged under the now heavy weight of the box.   To be honest, I haven’t seen a high to low moment like that in awhile.  Clearly the excitement was based on the fun he was going to have, but he needed the child’s assistance to make that happen.   It actually made me wonder back on the times my Dad may have needed an assist and I failed to deliver.

The worst part of it all…. I know exactly how much enjoyment he is missing out on since (sad to say) I am completely addicted to the Rock Band drums.

Thundersnow

Sorry for the delays between posts, work has made for some rather long days as of late.  In fact, I have some reports due tonight so I only have time for quick entry.  Last Sunday, I witnessed something I have never seen before.  No, it wasn’t the overconfident Patriots being overwhelmed by the 12 point underdogs.  At around 3:15pm central, thunder and lightening rolled in.  This seemed a bit odd, but panic soon set in because we were having people over to watch the “Big Game” – rain has the potential to disrupt our satellite signal and that is the very last thing I wanted to happen.  The good news is it did not rain… nope.  it starting snowing.. that’s right, I’ll let it sink in.  So the cloudy sky was lighting up, the thunderclaps were shaking the house and the snow was coming down so hard you literally could not see more than 50 ft.  – not to mention it was accumulating fast.  We ended up losing half our guests (some even had to turn back after half way here – we live in the country and the roads were blowing shut), but we luckily did not lose our HD signal the entire game (ended up using an antenna to pull in the local over air signal (Dish doesn’t carry local HD stations yet).

I am not sure how much we ended up getting that night (at least 3-4 inches), but we did learn by example from my nephew,  when added to the 5.5 inches already on the ground there is no way a rear-wheel mustang is making it through – ended up having to push him 300 feet out our neighbor’s driveway (long story, don’t ask 8^)

Anyway, it is the first time I’ve ever experienced Thundersnow – and do not bother commenting on Global Warming since it is currently freezing outside.

 Oh, and my vote for best “Big Game” commercial…. the stock trading baby who bought a clown…. the “understimating the weirdness” line killed me since I absolutey dislike clowns!

A Kindergarten Refresher

Today’s topic is all about spatial relationships.  Since the source of the observation probably never took an ACT or similar competency assessment, I will try to generalize the key point with an image of a familiar toy everyone hopefully had as a small child.  Yes, I am talking about the Shape O Toy which apparently Tupperware decided didn’t need the most gimmicky name to market – at least they didn’t use Stickie One Thingy into Another Thingy.  I fired up Paint Shop Pro and created some quick images to help everyone out.  Ironically, this is about spatial relationship and some of my bevels are a little off, but I was rushing it.  Anyway, let’s say this is our toy:
Shape O Toy

The object of course is to get all of the shapes into the center of the toy.  To do that, you locate the object, match up to an opening on the ball, align the shape to the direction of the cutout, slip it through and clap your hands while proclaiming your mastery of all things geometrical.  I think you get the picture, but unfortunately, there are people out there that apparently don’t understand it.  I am not sure if this is just arrogance on the part of individuals or we have a kindergarten epidemic that must be addressed immediately. 

Why have I come to this conclusion, well, let me tell you about the same observation I have had over and over and over. 

Continue reading A Kindergarten Refresher