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:
Categories
Author: themshow
Categories
Cable Company
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.
Categories
RIP HD DVD
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.
Categories
Weekend Update
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!
Categories
Marketing and Pregnancy
I forgot to add this week’s Marketing Over Coffee over here…
Categories
The Next Writing Project
I’ve started a new project and as a result I can see that this blog will suffer. Hopefully you’ve been entertained thus far, and the good news is the next project has much more structure and won’t just be the ramblings off the top of my head.
As the quarter kicks off we’ve covered the new messaging and it’s time for me to execute. The same goes for Marketing Over Coffee, the program continues to accelerate, but the bad news is that means there’s more work to be done to lift it to the next level. Suffering through all of it is The M Show, it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last show, and there may be something else coming out this week, but the return on that investment is getting smaller all the time compared to the value that MOC is generating.
So, it’s time to put my head down and fade away for a while. Don’t worry, when I’m back there’ll be plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.
Categories
Back to Normal
The WU alternative has been found and the Secret Project is back underway. Have a good weekend and enjoy the warmer weather. Next week is the Sales Kickoff, but this quarter it’s only one day and I’m not able to make the dinner out so it may actually be a quarter start without a lot of insanity!
Categories
Pushed too Far
Categories
Gaming on the Rise
Longtime readers know that gaming is a subject close to my heart, but it is relevant to any marketing discussion given the rapid growth of this market. Microsoft’s Halo 3 made anywhere from $150-170M depending on what numbers you believe. Bigger than the initial take Spiderman 3 or the final Harry Potter book. Enough for the movie industry to use it as an excuse for a bad week.
Give credit to the Nintendo Wii from changing the market from “Gamer/Non-Gamer” to “Wii and up”. Everybody in my family has played with the Wii and enjoyed it, they may not be standing in line for the release of Starcraft 2 (I’ll may even pre-order, but no line for me) but they at least see some of the entertainment value.
I’ve been lucky enough to see the GuildCafe, a startup here in Boston from prior to first funding at one of the WebInno events before they started hitting Comdex-like attendance.
Last week they announced an additional round of funding and a name change to gamerDNA. Led by Jon Radoff (who did a recent presentation on startups here), they have experience at the helm and are moving into an exciting new market.
Categories
The Price is Right
I really enjoy Drew Carey, we always used to have a stack of “Whose Line is It?” on the TiVo (no chance of that now because the Verizon FIOS DVR is a POS).
Here’s some weekend fun, even though I’ve seen this show all my life I only appreciate it as a product placement showcase now: