I’m a fan of social networking sites. I’m not big on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace – but I have a presence there, largely because they’ve each reached critical mass. They are useful for keeping track of old friends. That’s all well and good, but I’m far more interested in business-oriented sites. Keeping in touch with business contacts and former co-workers is a networker’s dream. It’s something that’s really useful, especially when you’re looking for a job, or seeking a way into a company to grab and account. Read the rest of this entry »
NOTE: This is – ordinarily – a marketing blog. I try (sort of) to keep politics out of it. But today, I believe we are faced with something that is too important to ignore, for it trumps marketing, along with everything else. I am speaking of the imminent threat of Socialism in America. Therefore, I am temporarily suspending my moratorium on political topics to bring you the following editorial.
Another guy who "got it."
There’s something happening here. You can feel it in the air. You can see it on people’s faces, hear it in their voices. Change. And I don’t mean the kind of B.S. “Change” that we saw on Obama’s campaign posters. I mean the kind of change that changes the course of a nation. And the tipping point is this afternoon.
I’m a conservative. A proud conservative. And I believe this country is, frankly, going to Hell in a hand-basket. Sadly, this started long before Obama took office. While I believe that George Bush the Younger is a principled, Godly man, too many things that happened on his watch ran contrary to my conservative principles. That was bad. This is worse: since Obama took office, the country is on a toboggan ride, downhill towards Socialism. Spending like drunken sailors (no offense to our Navy, guys – it’s just an expression), Congress seems content to fiddle while the U.S.A. burns. No program is stupid enough, wacky enough, or costly enough to deny it funding, while even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warns that most of the “stimulus” they’ve passed will not only fail to stimulate the economy, but will in fact prolong the recession. Obama has acknowledged as such, even back as far as the campaign days. When asked about his plan to tax capital gains even when it’s been proven, time and time again, that this will have a detrimental effect on the economy, he replied, “But it’s the right thing to do.”
The following is a true story. The names have been changed, not to protect the innocent, but because the guilty are litigeous weasels that would like nothing better than to sue me for telling the truth.
Some time ago, I was the Creative Director of an in-house agency for a software publisher. We’ll call them…um…”MacroGraphics.” I ran a group of creatives known internally as the Creative Services Group. As the company grew, internal politics reared it’s ugly head. As in many companies, when sales don’t meet projections or expectations, the first people to get blamed are the marketing guys. At MacroGraphics, this took the form of certain people in the sales department suggesting that the company hire an external agency. (I say this with absolute certainty, because one of the directors of sales was a golfing buddy of Stan Richards – head of the Richards Group – and had them come in to do a dog and pony show for the company…without giving me any advanced warning.) After the Richards Group pitched us, I suggested that if we were really interested in outside help for Creative Services, that we shop around for the best shop to work with. I brought in Seth Werner (the guy that came up with the California Raisins Claymation spots) who was running the Dallas office of Bloom. (Might as well start at the top, right?) While I was busy setting up other meetings, the CEO of MacroGraphics asked me to interview a guy they’d worked with before, who ran a very small Dallas agency. We’ll call him “Jonathan Ricotta.” Read the rest of this entry »
As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of good advertising. Ironically, the “Super Bowl of Advertising” is…um…the Super Bowl itself. In fact, there are quite a number of people who watch the game, not for the game, but for the ads. This year, I have to admit, I’m kinda torn. While I’m a die-hard Cowboys fan (in spite of players like T.O. and other crybabies, and the embarrassment that is Jerry Jones), I’ve loved the Steelers since I was a kid. I grew up in Shreveport, the home town of Terry Bradshaw. While Terry is almost a decade older than I am, we both had the same high school history teacher (and consider this a grok shout-out to Martha Watson, wherever you are). Terry used to show up several times a year, to visit Ms. Watson, which, for a high school kid, was like having royalty descend on your school. By that time, he’d been with the Steelers for a few years. (I actually got to see him play an exhibition game at the start of his rookie year, in Shreveport, against the then-Boston Patriots.) At the time, he was still a couple of years away from the first of his two Super Bowl rings. So, for no better reason than I like my fellow Shreveporter Bradshaw, I have to pull for the Steelers. On the other hand, I’ve always felt sorry for the Cardinals. From the time when they used to be a part of the Cowboy’s division, the NFC East, the Cardinals have, historically, been a league joke/doormat/afterthought. Not today. With the “on any given Sunday” axiom in the NFL, it’s possible – although not likely – that the league’s perennial patsies Could Go All The Way. Stay tuned. Read the rest of this entry »
Sorry I’ve been a bit distant of late…I’ve been working (feverishly) on wrapping up the crafting of a business plan for the Amarillo EnterPrize Challenge. It’s a yearly contest to find – and fund – a number of worthy entrepreneurs’ ideas. I have one (www.guitarfurniture.com) that’s in the running. The winners will be announced in late March.
This is a big honkin’ deal, people…the winners will receive a check for $75,000. (!) If my idea is selected, it means that I could, in one fell swoop (or one swell foop) get enough funding to launch our products, and not have to go out and get a loan or shill for angel funding. That’s HUGE. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve been a little lax in posting to the ol’ blogs.
The contest deadline is Monday at 5PM, so bear with me, please.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to shed a tear that 2008 is
one for the history books tonight. Been a rough year, any way you slice
it. Enough said. It’s time to look forward, and not agonize over the
immediate past.
To all the readers of this blog, may you have a
happy and prosperous new year, filled with success, security, and
sanity, in an insane world.
Every so often, the media latches onto the Next Big Thing. It’s usually hearalded by some book (which has a P.R. firm working overtime), with an author making the talking head TV show circuit. These writers prognosticate in grave tones about the future, and predict Where The Planet Is Going.
Feh.
Most of these clowns are wrong, in that they use the local TV weatherman as their performance model, as opposed to, oh, say an Old Testament prophet. (For those of you not hip to Bible prophesy, the Bible itself offers a one-stop litmus test to determine if a prophet is the real McCoy or a fraud. The Bible standard is 100% accuracy. Given that this is something of an exacting standard, it’s easy to see why the scribes would seek out a little less demanding spec.)
I’ve seen books on future trends (“Futuretrends”), books on the environment (“Earth in the Balance,” by that noted environmental scientist, Al” I invented the Internet” Gore), and even prophesy (“The Late, Great Planet Earth.”) All have proven to be a mixed bag – a mixture of outright mistakes, exaggerations, missed cues, distortions, and a fact or accuracy thrown in for good measure, just to see if we’re paying attention.
The sad part is that the media (and that portion of the general public that lets the media do their thinking for them, which at last count would be “most of them”) run around after these authors like the crowd Chicken Little gathered after he began loudly proclaiming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” (Much of what is wrong with this world can be attributed to the fact that the leaders of New Education scrapped reading classics in empirical thinking like “Chicken Little” and instead foisted upon our youth such scintillating fare as “Heather has Two Mommies.”) They latch on to the latest trend like a life ring thrown to a man overboard upon the Seven Seas, and cling to it like white on rice…that is until the next trend comes along. Which is why we were all worried about Global Cooling in the 60′s (along with “nuclear winter”) and Global Warming in the “aughts.” Sigh…
I’m here to tell you, however, that there ARE trends you can latch on to, but they are driven, not by authors wanting to make a buck, but consumers wanting to save a buck. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently (four days ago, to be exact) updated the software this blog runs on, to the latest and greatest version – i.e., WordPress v.2.7. The upgrade was surprisingly easy to do, and by all appearances, went off without a hitch. Um…ALMOST without a hitch. Seems that one of the things that got trashed along the way was the settings for my Google Analytics code. Whoops.
I usually check my GA stats on a daily basis, just to see what’s going on. Check more often, and it will drive you nuts. Less frequently, and you stand to miss a trend…or a problem.
It had been four days since I’d checked my GA account. Color me “surprised” to learn that I’d (according to GA) gone from a significant readership to ZERO hits for the last four days. That’s like going from 60 to zero in, oh, about 0.0 seconds.
Once I saw the stats, I knew something was wrong. I dialed up the New! Improved! control panel, and found that my GA settings were pooched. No code – no tracking. No tracking – no results. No results – unhappy blogger.
I’ve restored the tracking code, and all should be right in my world.
But I’ll keep checking. As Joe Bob Briggs (Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas) says, “Without eternal vigilance, it can happen here.”
A lot of folks would have you believe that the inauguration of Obama heralds the dawn of a new Age. Fiddlesticks. I’ll tell you what hearkens to a new age – the global financial meltdown. With gasoline here in Amarillo hovering at $1.65 a gallon for the last week or so (and likely to head lower, if you believe the forecasts), financial markets in turmoil, and the stock market circling the drain, it’s a Brave New World out there. So what’s a marketer to do? Read the rest of this entry »
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