Category Archives: Business & Marketing

Are radio commercials spam?

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A little preface here: Most of the food I ever put in my mouth was paid for –directly or indirectly– by radio commercials. My father was a radio guy and for many years I wrote and produced radio “spots.” Lots and lots of them. Some were good, some were just the right length, if you know what I mean.

So when Seth Godin –one of the keynote speakers at the recent Country Radio Seminar in Nashville– refers to radio commercials as “spam,” it’s a problem for me. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Godin’s blog and have purchased and read a number of his books. I think he understands marketing in the 21st century as well as anyone.

So what’s spam and what’s not?

When you get your hands on my email address and send me an unsolicited email trying to sell me something (or get me to give you money, or visit your porn site, etc) …without my permission, we call that spam. You invaded my inbox without my permission.

When I turn on my local radio station, I know there will be commercials. They pay for the music/news/weather programs for which I tuned in. I’m giving tacit permission for the the station to try to sell me something on behalf of their advertisers. Value for value. That doesn’t sound like spam to me.

And if every commercial I heard was talking about something I cared about, something of interest… I’d probably pay more attention and the commercials would be worth more to the advertiser.

This is how cable TV programs work. If I’m watching HGTV (House & Garden), there’s a pretty good chance the commercials will at least marginally relevant.

I’m sure a lot of radios stations attempt to do this when and where they can. But it’s tough. They’re trying to reach the largest audience they can and will sell a spot to damn near anyone (preachers and politicians pay in advance).

Given the choice, most of us will choose NOT to listen to a poorly produced or irrelevant message. Commercial or otherwise.

So are are radio spots spam or not?

Only the listener can answer that. And he or she does, every time they punch the button to another station. And keeps punching it until they find a song or talk show they like (at least more than the commercial). Or pull out the iPod.

We know where you are… and we’re glad you’re here

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Pal George flew into San Antonio for a meeting today (yes, his arms are tired). Shortly after checking into his hotel –and before posting a single tweet– he received the following email:

> From: Twitter
> Date: March 3, 2009 4:44:23 PM CST
> To: [George’s email address]
> Subject: Visit San Antonio is now following you on Twitter!
>
> Hi, georgekopp (georgekopp).
> Visit San Antonio (VisitSanAntonio) is now following your updates on Twitter.
> Check out Visit San Antonio’s profile here:
>  http://twitter.com/VisitSanAntonio
> You may follow Visit San Antonio as well by clicking on the “follow” button.
> Best,
> Twitter

Others will figure this out before I do, but it would seem that the VisitSanAntonio (CVB?) folks were able to access the hotel’s dB of guests as they register. Then search Twitter and start following any successful hits.

Anyone see another way this could be accomplished? Not sure I’d be okay with the hotel sharing even the fact of my registration. Reminds me of something similar that happened to Barb and me on a visit to Las Vegas.

UPDATE: The mystery has been solved.

Hi Steve,

I hope that your friend George was pleasantly surprised with our follow today. When he mentioned that he was “heading to San Antonio today. Waiting in the airport,” I thought he might have a few questions about what San Antonio has to offer.

As a part of SACVB’s efforts to engage individuals who are considering or on their way to San Antonio, I monitor Twitter daily. Through this monitoring, I have been able to help travelers find great margaritas on the River Walk, recommend which historic sites to see on a quick trip through town, and help one visitor find where a not-so-popular soccer game was going to be shown on TV.

We’ve really enjoyed the interaction that Twitter has allowed us to have with our visitors.

Hope you consider visiting us soon. You too can find out about all of San Antonio’s great sites by contacting me @VisitSanAntonio.

Have a great night,
Taylor @ SACVB

Why didn’t it occur to me that someone with the San Antonio CVB was monitoring the Twitterverse for references following? It was just coincidence he checked his Twitter feed when he hit town and got the message.

This is a great example of how to use Twitter and and the blogosphere. Taylor found my post and commented. Wonder how many other CVB’s are this clued in?

Google me business cards

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Guess this doesn’t work if you’re Bill Smith or don’t show up at all in a Google search. But I like the idea. You will learn a great deal more about me from Google than I could ever cram on a business card. Sort of a moot point since I don’t hand out many cards these days. If there’s a point to be made here, perhaps it is be in control –to the extent you can– of your Google footprint.

PS: I see that –for the moment– smays.com tops the results for “steve mays” (minus quotes) and number two with quotes.

50s and 60s new prime?

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Major U.S. companies are retaining workers over 55 even as younger workers get the ax. That’s the gist of an article in Feb edition of BUSINESSWEEK:

“Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tell the tale: The number of people aged 55 and up with jobs actually rose nearly 900,000 from the start of the recession, in December 2007, through last year. By comparison, people aged 25 to 54 lost nearly 2.9 million jobs. The share of older Americans who have jobs has risen during the recession, while the share of younger Americans with jobs has plunged.”

And a “mature” dude such as myself, who is comfortable on the Internets… let’s get us some of them!

Job interviews

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Lots of folks looking for jobs and many more will be. I’ve been trying to remember the last time I interviewed for a job. I blush to recall that Clyde recruited me 25 years ago and “insisted” I accept his offer.

In 1972 I got a job at the radio station where my father worked so there was nothing that resembled an interview. If I was willing to work 10p-6a, the job was mine.

The short-lived gig as a postal inspector was more of a pass the test, fill out the form kind of thing. Another instance of me “falling into” the job.

I can only recall a couple of job interviews: one for the Memphis TN police department; another with a community theater in Kansas City. I wasn’t qualified for either and was damned lucky I didn’t get hired.

During my Management days, I interviewed lots of people for jobs but don’t think I ever got very good at it. And I wouldn’t be very good at applying for a job now.

I wish the very best to those now “on the bricks.”

Tom Peters: This is not a recession

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“Don’t think of our current economic crisis as a recession. Instead, think of it as a recalibration. Everything is different now. If you think of it as a recession, you may be tempted to “hunker down” and wait for the economy to cycle back.”

“One thing I’m convinced of is that the world I am working in today is different from any world I have ever done business in. The world has been reset. We can no longer look at the “LY” column on reports to use last year as a benchmark for what will happen this year.”

“You’re not clever enough to be cute. Just be honest.”

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Seth Godin explains (by the numbers) how to send a personal email. My three favorites from his list:

  • Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.
  • Don’t mark your email urgent. Urgent to you is not urgent to me.
  • Be short. The purpose of an email is not to sell the person on anything other than writing back. If you don’t have a personal, interesting way to start a conversation, don’t write.

Do I have the balls to forward Seth’s list to those who violate these simple rules? No, probably not.

A career in radio prepares you for (new career goes here)

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Missouri’s new governor will be sworn in tomorrow and, as part of the transition, about 150 people working at state jobs under the previous administration were terminated. This happens with every four or eight years.

A few days before the state ax fell, I had a routine meeting with the chief public information officer for one of the state departments. Like many in that line of work, he had –I believe– started in radio or spent a number of years in broadcasting. The years of consolidation in that industry had left this person weary from new owners, pay cuts, job elimination… and happy to have a more stable job in state government. Two days later the person is, once again, looking for a job.

It’s only a rumor but I’ve heard many of these communications positions will be filled by attorneys under the new administration. Our new governor was formerly attorney general, but I’m not sure why one would want/need a lawyer in these positions. As I said, that’s just rumor.

All of which reminded me of the dozen years I spent working in local radio. They were more fun than I can describe. Whatever skills I acquired during that time (talking on the radio (??); writing commercials; covering a news story (sort of) seem so… irrelevant now. Okay, it’s a quarter of a century later, so why should this surprise me?

If I had stayed in radio, what would I be doing now? Programming a “cluster” of stations? Managing? (unlikely) And what would those years have prepared me to do?

I have no idea why so many radio people go into public relations or become PIO’s for some association or state agency. I always suspected they were hired for their communications skills. Comfortable in an on-air interview; familiar with writing news releases (?); good voice?

Still a useful skill set. But what else do you need to know how to do in 2009? Blogging? Podcasting? YouTube? Social media? Couldn’t hurt.

I hope everyone that lost their jobs last week finds new ones. And better ones. Free advice every morning from 6:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. at the Jefferson City Coffee Zone.

Forrest Gump on the bailout

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This showed up in my in-box and I don’t know the source or the author but will be happy to properly attribute if anyone knows.

“Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide.”

“Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank’s buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.”

Mama always said: ‘Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest’.

Quote of the day from a fund manager: ‘This is worse than a divorce… I’ve lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife..’

And one more perspective:

“Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?”

Fortune: “The genius behind Steve”

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Steve Jobs gets a fair share of the credit for the cool products Apple produces. The company is also extremely efficient and well operated and much of the credit for that goes to Chief Operating Officer Steve Cook. For a look behind the scenes of the well-oiled machine that is Apple, check out this article in the November issue of Fortune. The following excerpt will get you started:

“Tim cook arrived at Apple in 1998 from Compaq Computer. He was a 16-year computer-industry veteran – he’d worked for IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) for 12 of those years – with a mandate to clean up the atrocious state of Apple’s manufacturing, distribution, and supply apparatus. One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia.

“This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”

Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date, according to people familiar with the episode. The story is vintage Cook: demanding and unemotional.”