The good colonel

It's not often a marketing tie-in from the past makes you immediately cringed, but I just wonder what the nice family picnicking in the tijuana country-side makes of the charming colonel sanders and his wonderful chicken.

Let me give credit for the find to Ad Age Daily, which pointed out that retailers have always looked for tie-ins to co-market their products.  Examples like the 7-11/KWICKY mart promotion or the smorgasborg of movie tie-ins with fast-food restaurants still exist today.  Do I decide where to eat based on the toy my kid will get in their happy meal?  Absolutely, and so I guess do you.

Now, the real question is "how do I get my own Tijuana Picnic"?  Turns out it's not so hard - it's just hard to listen to.  Make sure your marketing promo tie-in holds up at least till you get it home.

Yom Kippur Blog - Full of

Luckily, I had nothing to eat today, so my stomach didn't churn as the market closed.

Had dinner this evening with a bunch of guys in the late-30's (like myself) in industries ranging from architecture to auto dealing to furniture building.  We all agreed that it may take a couple of months, but things really aren't as bad as wall street makes it out to be.  People want to buy stuff, they just need to get their swagger back.  That made me feel a little better.

As a marketer, how can we help inspire confidence?  The US GOV should invite a bunch of ad execs - if we can try to make Bill Gates cool, surely we can figure out how to inject confidence in the economy.  I think having a spokesperson under 60 might help (or maybe that's just the Gen-X in me talking).  But seriously, it is all a bit of a mind game, and the Boomers may be ready for us to pitch in and do what we did after the dot-com bust.  Maybe we can be the "greatest generation".  We shall see.

Cleaning the office

I spent the last 30 minutes procrastinating and cleaning my office.  I found a bunch of old tapes with television commercials and radio spots I worked on early in my career.  Sometimes, going back to what's been good before helps you think of what might work well in the future.  And sometimes you just realize how much trash you've got lying around.

Clean up your office, see what you find - old notes spark a new idea, re-organizing space re-orients your mentality, find those things worth saving and get rid of what's not.

Crumbling in the foundations

This really happened today.  Got a call from the missus telling me that our basement was flooded and she didn't know what to do and could I please pick up my son from pre-school so she could get someone out there.  Great, I thought to myself, just like our economy, my foundation is literally crumbling away.  (Long story short, it ended up being 75 wipes my son flushed down the toilet backing up the plumbing, and all that water was from our pipes.  Whew - at least it didn't cost me $700 billion to repair.)

If only fixing the economy was as simple as calling a plumber, a builder and roto-rooter - all our problems could be solved in a very hectic afternoon (assuming someone was available to pick up the US Gov from their pre-school class). 

Confidence

I promised I'd blog everyday, whether I had something to say or not.  So I find myself struggling with something interesting to say.

I guess like many small business owners, I'm anxiously waiting to see what the House does (I expect they'll pass the bill, which I understand is even worse than before) and then how the market reacts on Monday.  Really, how the banks decide to react.  It's all about Confidence. (A little thing called, con-fi-dence - thanks to Elvis Presley's immortal CLAMBAKE for the song.)

Am I confident in my ability to run a business and provide value for our clients?  Absolutely.  Are my clients equally as confident?  Yes - no doubt.  But, if they can't spend money because they need their cash to run their business, it can't help affect things like advertising budgets.

I'm not sure how we get the banks comfortable to lend to each other, but I've certainly learned that business stops without access to funds.  On the flip side, I guess we're ALL just living off our credit cards and at some point there is no one less to borrow from.  That's really scary. 

Great businesses succeed no matter what.  I think we'll find out shortly whether mine is or is not.

Enjoy your weekend.  ;-)

New York Times Gets it right

http://tinyurl.com/3vlbnw

I love the NY Times.  What a great investigative journalism story.  I only hope enough pay attention to the story that it makes a difference.

(In a side note, I also love the Times use of new technology - I subscribe weekends but get their feed on my iPhone, use their website all the time - they are figure out how to move beyond the printed page and I think that's important.

Politics

I continue to find it surprising who supports who when it comes to politics.  In a fairly heated discussion at the gym this morning (and yes, it was hot - hello, Cyrus - have you heard of AC??), I watched two guys I train with argue about Bill Clinton.  Interestingly enough, they took the opposite sides I would have expected. 

I also got a call from a business associate yesterday asking me to support our Democratic governor here in MD (and I'm a big Tommy Carcetti Fan).  Again, a guy I'd never really had a political conversation with, but who knew my local political leanings and didn't hesitate to ask.

My wife hates talking about politics, because it's always an argument.  But debate is the beauty of our democracy and I think it's important that we share different points of view.

Welcome to the blogsphere

Someone told me the other day they heard a high holiday sermon that was all about the personal life of the rabbi - and how while she may have had a moral to share with everyone, it came off as somewhat self serving.  So with that in mind, I ask only that you indulge me this one time in a post that's really all about me stumbling my way into a blog.

Hopefully you'll join me on occasion to hear the ramblings of a self-employeed adverting exec in his mid-30s, living 5 minutes from his parents while he and his wife raise 2 kids and a dog in their SUV.  It would probably make a good sitcom, if it was just a little funnier.

I'll work on thinking of something more exciting to say tomorrow - in the meantime, say hello to Mr. Havit.