It only took an extra week to get the Tivo rolling, I ordered 2 cable cards from my cable provider and had 2 cable boxes show up. Then a tech came and installed the cards, but one of them was dead. Verizon was good enough to send out another tech two days later, on a Saturday and now all is good in the hood. Carin has Masterpiece Theatre cranked up and I’m getting back episodes of Heroes and Galactica.
I had a chance last week to chat with Mac McIntosh last week, I first met him a few years back when he was speaking at a MarketingSherpa event, he came away as the highest ranked speaker of the event and stood ahead of the rest of the crowd. I stole one of his techniques immediately – he was on the second day of the event and he kept notes of the previous presenters and integrated some of their points into his slide deck on the fly. By building on the presenters before him he had a distinct advantage over a presenter who just showed up for their time slot.
The reason I bring this up is that Mac has been doing consulting for years and doing it for a living. A sharp contrast from “social media experts” who sheepishly admit that there is not enough going around yet to “quit your day job”. This ties into two things that I’ve seen bouncing around lately – one is the idea of Internet Famous, Dirt Poor. There’s a growing number of people who have thousands of followers and are well know worldwide, yet have no way to monetize this. Unless you are famous for a reason that is going to bring you some money all you are left with is an overflowing inbox and maybe even some stalkers.
On the other hand, there is some karma at work. If you have a network of thousands, there’s some benefits that indirectly can help you out. The next time you are looking for a job you won’t have to wade through a bunch of Monster Postings or spend a lot of time digging. You can also get most questions answered quickly by tapping into the shared wisdom around you. But again – nothing concrete to pay the mortgage and bring the box of Yodels home for the kids.
The other thing rattling around in my brain lately is the idea of things that are boring, or incredible difficult (better yet, both) as things that generate value. The theory is that the more challenging or terrible the task, the better you can be paid for it. Anyone who’s had to call a plumber on a holiday after 10pm knows what I am talking about.
So here’s something to think about – are celebrities only walking and talking media products? Now that the amount of media that can be created has been expanded to everyone and the cost of transmitting it near zero, will celebrities be devalued the same way music has?
It’s all about boring. Talking with Mac
As part of the sales/marketing lifestyle we’ve talked about travel before, I had a road warrior tip bail me out this week. I always keep a $20 stashed somewhere in my gear. I’m lucky enough know that the battery bay in my Palm Centro is large enough that I can keep one in there (and a bonus, it keeps the door from creaking like it used to before I put the buck in there).
This Friday we were running out the door so that the lovely Carin could make it to the early train and I forgot my wallet. Thanks to the phone trick I didn’t have to go without my morning iced coffee or have to bum money off anyone for lunch.
The same goes with the tradeshow booth, I keep a small bag filled with some random tools, you never know what you might need, or how you might be a hero to your neighbor in the booth next door.
The latest Marketing Over Coffee is up:
And, if you are a data junkie (as if there were any Marketers who weren’t?) MarketingSherpa has their latest online advertising report out:
So I ordered two Cable Cards over a week ago so I can set up the HD Tivo which arrived today. Instead of two cable cards I got 2 cable set-top boxes. We’ll see how long this takes to fix….
Lots of boring work this week, nothing exciting to report. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal dying is of no interest to me. There is a new M Show though –
And you can check out an hour of me talking about things like direct marketing over on the BeanCast.
The HD DVD Player has been pulled from the Studio N Media Center. I would have kept it in there because there are some great deals on HD DVDs with their limited lifespan, but there’s something screwy with ours that’s connected to the Xbox 360. I can put the discs in and play them but the eject button doesn’t work so I have to use a paperclip in the manual override. That and the fact that I can download HD content makes this drive prime for the recycle bin.
The past two weeks have been much crazier than usual. The good news is that the weekend is not out of control, the bad news is that I’m not really up for writing about hardcore marketing stuff on the weekend. Here’s some interesting points from the last week.
TIVO is Returning to Studio N! I have thrown in the towel on the Verizon FIOS DVD, which cannot manage a season pass and has failed to record anything properly. For 4 years of discussion on why it sucks you check out this thead. For the lovely Carin’s birthday I took advantage of a Mother’s Day package of an HD Tivo, lifetime subscription and Wireless adapter, all for $700.
Netflix is leaving Studio N! Between Apple TV, XBox 360, and now Amazon Unbox when the Tivo shows up, we have enough on demand HD options that there’s no need for us to get regular DVDs in the mail. The last saving grace had been HD DVDs from netflix for the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive which will be out in the recycle bin this weekend after a funeral ceremony.
Banking Woes Continue! Buying the Tivo was tagged as a suspicious transaction by my credit card company who shall remain nameless. Let it suffice to say they are a big City Bank. Just like the Western Union frigtard festival last week, I got to play the “Who Wants Their Account Back Open” Game Show. At least for this one I think I had 3 tries to verify transactions and managed to peg enough of them. My personal favorite was “Identify the charge 2 weeks ago for $3.05 for computer software. The answer they wanted was MP3 downloads from Amazon. These douchebags are killing me. As I said to LM “Like a terrorist or identity thief really wants a wicker patio table that’s backordered on Target.com for 2 months”.
Red Sox start paying me not to go to Fenway. Normally I go to one game a year, for some crazy reason I’ve actually been to 3 already. The new Sox stat to watch is GWJIA – “Games with John in attendance”, which is 0-3.
Many readers have sent in comments in regards to the slowdown here and on The M Show for the new secret project. Thanks for all the kind words, the good news is that the project involves expanding the Marketing Over Coffee project beyond just the podcast and I know it will generate a lot of great content for everything else I do, so fear naught, much cool stuff ahead!
I forgot to add this week’s Marketing Over Coffee over here…