PardonMyFrench

links for 2008-05-10

• 2008 TERC Math vs. 2008 National Math Panel Recommendations
  (tags: everydaymath)

links for 2008-05-08

• YouTube - Sen. John McCain jokes about his Vice Presidential candidate
  This is really funny
  (tags: mccain)
• List Websites by Audience Demographics with Quantcast
  (tags: online marketing statistics)
• John McCain 2008
  Funny video. Seems like a Justin creation
  (tags: mothersday mccain)
• Navy releases McCain's military record - John McCain News- msnbc.com
  (tags: mccain)

links for 2008-05-07

• Jonathan Martin's Blog - Politico.com
  Quite a switch from the fund raiser in NYC that Mary and I attended about a year ago.
  (tags: mccain fundraising)

Old School Facelift #8 - The (Lionel) Train Station

So today I received an email from a Lionel Train store in Mountain Lakes, NJ called The Train Station.  My father gave me his set of Lionel trains so I decided to clean them up, buy some new track, and get the engine repaired.  The closest train store was the one referenced above and I drove about 35 minutes to get there.  It is by the actual train station in Mountain Lakes.  It is also the site of Bobby Baccala's death in The Sopranos and the store is awesome.  Wall to wall trains, engine, accessories, and an extremely helpful staff who spent a ton of time with me.  So much so that instead of just waiting for my father's engine to get repaired, I bought another one just so the kids and I can test out our new track and cleaned up cars.

I loved this store, but haven't been back since.  It is on my short list of things to do but between work, soccer practice, travel soccer, and baseball  I haven't had the time.  That's why I was excited to get an email from The Train Station offering me 10% discount on any orders over $200.  The email was a plain text one, but I kept thinking to myself, hmmm if this is available on their website then why not offer it to more people than your email base.  What more could The Train Station do?  BTW - the URL is http://www.train-station.com/Pages/stimulus.html so clearly someone there believes this offer will stimulate sales:

OLD SCHOOL FACELIFT #8 THE (LIONEL) TRAIN STATION IN MOUNTAIN LAKES, NJ

1. Paid Search Ads - This is an absolute no brainer assuming The Train Station has some advertising dollars to spend.  Since the promotion is available for anyone and not just local residents, open it up to anyone searching on the internet.  Start out small with a few hundred keywords that are well organized because there is a lot of competition already for typical words.  Use the 10% off promotion in the text ad copy and have at it.  If you don't have enough dollars for a national campaign, geo target it.
2. Google Content - If possible I'd like to have some standard banner ads with the promotion, but if not that's ok just use your text ads.  Go into Google and search for sites that specialize in model trains and pick the ones you want to run on or if that's too expensive go off the keywords.
3. Blog Advertising - Now you can try going to BlogAds looking for hobbyist sites and then run some ads on it or you can try searching blogs on Google or Technorati (you remember that) and contact the blog owners to see if they'd write a post for you.  Or you could leave comments on a blogs, but before I'd do that I'd send a note to the blog owner so they realize you aren't spamming their comments.
4. The Website - The site does pretty much what you need it to do including offering eCommerce.  It does everything except give people reasons to continue to check back in often.  So what can you do?  Let's assume you don't have enough time for a blog, but how about video?  Grab a cam corder and create your own track layouts.  How about how to clean cars?  You could simply record a conversation with customers.  The content is endless and other than editing and figuring out your "video show" it will cost nothing.  Start a channel on YouTube and start promoting your store and promotions.  This will help you generate traffic to your eCommerce site.  You could host the videos on your site or just link to your YouTube channel.

That's it for now.  Happy train collecting.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

links for 2008-05-05

• Townhall.com::Blog
  (tags: mccain vp romney jindal)

Go See Iron Man

You long time blog readers know that I am a comic book fan.  I own almost every Amazing Spider-man comic book printed and as I tell my son I am a walking encyclopedia of comic books.  So Jacob, one of my best friends Jim, and I went to see Iron Man yesterday at 7:15 PM.  Now, I won't give you a big professional review, but let me tell you why I liked the movie besides the acting, music, CGI, and etc.

1. It stayed true to the comic books.  Sure Vietnam was replaced by the Middle East, but the story line was very similar.
2. Every character truly came to life just like Stan Lee's comic books.  Pepper the professional assistant who really has a crush on Tony, Happy Hogan in the background, Rhodes, and Stane.
3. Pepper was especially great starting out as the plain Jane, capable assistant but turning into the sexy, smart assistant Stark knows that she is (why else has he kept her around).
4. There were hints about possible upcoming movie tie in.  Rhodes (in the comic books) gets to wear a set of armor (War Machine), Shield and Nick Fury, Avengers, and really one thing that is a story line from recent books; Tony Stark's ties to the Government.
5. Hints of Stark's alcoholism.
6. Obadiah Stane's as the turn coat and real back stabber.  As I recall that happened around Iron Man #200 (for you novices Iron Man #1 is not the first appearance of Iron Man; that is is Tales of Suspense #39).
7. Robert Downey Jr. perfectly plays Stark as the playboy, brilliant inventor.

I put this film right up there with Spider-Man #1 and #2 which is saying a lot since Spidey is the comic book I collect the most.  Unlike Spider-man #3 which drifted too far from the comic book (Sandman involved with Uncle Ben's shooting, etc) Iron Man delivers in a huge way.  I think I'll go to see it again.

BTW - I wonder how much Burger King paid for the awesome product placement in the movie?  When Stark is brought home he wants an American burger before his press conference and the burger he eats is from Burger King.

My only wish for Marvel is to always remember when making movies - STAN LEE is a GENIUS.  DO NOT TRY AND DRIFT AWAY FROM HIS STORY LINES.  Just update them.  Some things are just better as the original.  Stan Lee the inventor of these stories really is a genius. 

Excelsior,

Eric Frenchman

links for 2008-04-30

• "Roulette" opens the Greensboro show - NJ.com: Bruce Blog
  Now That's a Show!
  (tags: springsteen)

Old School Facelift #7 - The Valley Shepherd Creamery

On Saturday May 3rd The Valley Shepherd Creamery is having their Annual Sheep Shearing event and I started thinking about how they might use the web to drive more traffic to it.  Now I'm not 100% sure they need to because last year's event drew so many people and cars that it took about 10 minutes to get down the mountain into town.  However, assuming they could still use more traffic....

Old School Facelift #7 Driving Attendance to Valley Shepherd Creamery's Event

1. Google Paid Click Ads:  Yes a lot of my old school facelifts start here, but what the heck?  It works, it is cheap, and you can zipcode target it with a mileage criteria.  Now The Valley Shepherd Creamery has a website and searches around artisan cheeses, nj brings them up #1 so their web designer actually knew what they were doing.  However, people searching for a term like that actually know what they are looking for, but probably forgot the name.  Cheese, NJ has them further down the page  as does sheep shearing, nj.    Perhaps in order to push even more traffic through they should buy NJ event words, NJ words, weather, and etc to capture people who are looking for something to do this weekend besides the obvious sheep, cheese words.  Plus, they should be zipcode targeted with a 75 mile radius to capture as much traffic as possible.
2. Photo or video strategy:  This tactic will generate a lot of cheap buzz for them.  Try posting videos of last year's sheep shearing festivals on YouTube or photos from Flickr.    There are not a ton of video on YouTube for sheep shearing, but some interesting videos could get huge views as could pictures on Flickr.  Also, try encouraging visitors to load up their own videos on a new YouTube channel or Flickr page to generate more buzz.
3. An Artisan Cheese Blog: I'm sure people would love to know how you care for sheep, make cheese, food pairings, maintain a cave, and etc.  Instead of posting static content on the site, how about a weekly blog so people want to visit back to the site.  While it may not be able to help with this year's traffic, but having a regularly updated blog will encourage your customers to visit back often and you will have the search engines visiting your page more frequently.
4. Social Networks:   OK, so you can join a local network and post about the event or better yet find some of the best social networkers in town or  in your targeted area and politely ask them to pimp the NJ event for you with a post to their friends and family.  See what NJ.com, The Daily Record sites have for you in the way of local content and message boards.

That's about it for now on cost effective tactics that The Valley Shepherd Creamery can employ.  Sure, they could try some do it yourself banner ads and run them across geo-targeted ad networks, but that still costs some money.  If you need something great to do on Saturday May 3 in NJ, I hope to see you at the Sheep Shearing Festival.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. Welcome to The New Local Market.

I read the following Business Week article called Good-Bye, Cheap Oil.  So Long Suburbia? and I kept thinking to myself something is missing.  According to the article James Kunstler hypothesizes that the automotive age is almost history and will destruct McMansion living.

It reminded of a Yahoo Money conference a few years back when one of the speakers said "we told people to move out to the suburbs and now with the price of oil we are going to tell them to move back?"  Simply put, that's basically what the article implies.  Here are some quotes from the question and answers in the article:

• Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages
• It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.
• I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.
• Of course, I'm a self-employed author and don't have to commute to work.

We'll come back to that last quote in a second.  What was missing for me are questions and answers about our digital society.  As broadband in the US increases (currently at 58% among US households and 90% for internet users) I can't help wondering if there isn't a new local market.  The local market of your home or local business center.

How many actually commute 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year?  Is that declining now?  How much of your work can be done locally?  Haven't big companies been pushing for telecommuting for decades now?  The more I spend working from the home office the more I find other people just like me.  It isn't just for the sales person, but many executives, managers, and consultants power their businesses from their local area. 

So why does suburbia have to die with rising oil prices?  Can't it still survive at a very local level?  Where is the impact of broadband penetration on Mr. Kunstler's analysis?  How many people in the US just need a wireless connection, a PC, and a phone and they can conduct business anywhere? 

Perhaps Mr Kunstler just didn't get to answer a question like that or perhaps he did and it didn't make the final article, but I'd like to know why can't suburbia be transformed by millions of small business, telecommuters with broadband increasing at a high rate?  Aren't there more people like Mr Kunstler who describes himself as a self-employed person (author) that doesn't have to commute?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

La Cense - I Thought I Saw Every Online Ad Type Until Now

On Friday I was reading a Wall Street Journal article on possible Iranian weapons being sent into Iraq when I saw this surround session online ad buy by La Cense Beef.  Yes a Montana cattle ranch is using banner ads combined with search ads to sell their premium beef via the internet.  I think I've seen it all now.

What originally caught my eye was not the creative which was tastefully done, but the fact that the media purchased was on the Wall Street Journal which historically has very high ad rates and given the assumption that it wasn't contextually targeted (Iranian weapons may not have been the chosen content for a beef campaign) you have to assume that they have a pretty savvy media buyer.  I didn't see a print ad in the WSJ (I could have missed it), but assuming there isn't one you have to make the assumption that La Cense Beef made a brilliant decision to go online instead of wasting dollars on a newspaper campaign.

The website is well done with great imagery and great information including some good promotions to get you going.  However, what kept me thinking was - how much is the cost per acquisition in order to afford an ad buy on the Wall Street Journal?  Well one look at the price of their products you can see how they can afford this ad buy. 

12 steak burgers weighing in at 4.5 pounds for $40.46 plus shipping is quite high.  How about a ribeye at 9.5 ounces for $18.88 plus shipping?  Yes I understand from their well designed site that grass fed beef is better for you as well as the open ranged cattle and I seriously considered buying it just because I wanted to test it out.  However, I spoke with my father who told me that it might not taste as good as what I can get locally because they need to freeze it to ship it to you and beef cells lose something when frozen.  I looked on their FAQ for something to combat this, but didn't find anything other than their guarantee.

I hope La Cense's online advertising campaign produces results for them.  It is great to see a non-Fortune 500 company using their ad dollars so wisely.  Clearly targeting the readers of the WSJ was a key segment for them and going online where you can track it and get demonstrated results is the way to go.  Personally with my father's advice I couldn't pull the trigger because it is a little expensive to test out and waste by keeping it in the freezer.  I really hope they succeed.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

links for 2008-04-26

• index
  Going to be interesting in Denver
  (tags: democrats)
• Wash. Twp. man getting Googly-eyed over McCain | Daily Record | Daily Record
  (tags: frenchman google)

links for 2008-04-25

• The New Yahoo: Sticky, Viral, And Most Of All, Friendly
  (tags: yahoo socialnetworking)
• MediaPost Publications - Court Rules For Blogger In Subpoena Dispute - 04/25/2008
  (tags: blogging)
• The Hill’s Pundits Blog » HRC Needs to Clear Debt
  The debt is real....
  (tags: politics clinton)
• Declarations - WSJ.com
  (tags: politics obama)

Will Yahoo Have Any Bench Strength Left?

Got a phone call the other day from my friend Richard Kosinski who wanted to let me know that he was leaving Yahoo to pursue a senior position with WestwoodOne.  I've know Richard for many years, back to his Forbes.com sales days when he met with me while I was at Harrisdirect trying to get me to buy a brokerage package from them (he wasn't able to close the deal).  Richard ended up at Yahoo about 4 years ago as the Finance Category Director trying once again to get me to buy something from him, but he sadly couldn't (I was already buying millions from Yahoo).

Recently Richard was running Yahoo's Political Advertising and that's where he really cut his teeth.  Richard was the political evangelist that could meet with any person at any level (President, Senate, state level) and convince people why the internet should be an important part of any political campaign.  And while his time was short lived in this job, he had an impact as he met with many political organizations to push online advertising including tough groups that still believed direct mail is the way to go.  Basically he gave us cover while he did the education heavy lifting.

(NOTE THE REST OF THIS POST IS ABOUT MANAGING A CAREER DURING ANY KIND OF TAKEOVER AND NOT SPECIFIC TO RICHARD.  I'VE BEEN A VETERAN OF MANY TAKE OVERS AND MERGERS SO I HAVE MY OWN OPINION).

While Yahoo is making inroads into politics, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold on to talent at all levels, not just the CXO level.  With the looming MSN deal or any other deal that Yahoo might undertake to stave off the Microsoft take over, they are suffering the fate that all companies do when they are in the process of being changed; good people don't see a concrete future and when something good comes along there is nothing holding them back

Its a funny thing about politics.  There is a definite start and end date.  Once November rolls around it is over for a few months until the next cycle starts again.  Throw on top of that uncertainty about your own personal job and that causes you to start to look around. 

I've lived through quite a number of acquisitions and finally chose not to survive one when E*Trade swallowed up Harrisdirect, so I understand what goes through a person's mind when you realize the path you are going down is ending.  It is hard to keep talented people around when you don't have a clear long term path with a definite end date staring at you in the face. 

It reminds me of a part of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Inside the book is an image that I've never forgotten even though I probably read that book 10 years ago.  It is a picture of a guy climbing to the top of the ladder with the caption "what happens when you climb the top of the corporate ladder and realize the ladder was leaning up against the wrong building?"  You too should check to make sure your ladder is up against the right building.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric