A Lesson in Sports

Posted: Tuesday, August 17, 2010

In Phoenix, college sports has always taken a back seat to the big boys of the professional leagues.   It’s a phenomenon experienced in most big cities throughout the country.  Why would I want to go watch Northwestern when I could take the “L” to Soldier Field and watch athletes at the pinnacle of their career play instead?  In our city, fans will always pledge their allegiance to the purple and orange of the Suns, with the Cardinals quickly gaining momentum due to their recent success.  Sure there will always be times when everyone jumps on the ASU bandwagon (see 1996), but there is no sustained passion unless they are winning.  I can say this because I graduated from the school.

 

This all leads me to this story.  Click here to check it out: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5469343.  Unless you grew up in a state where the only game in town was college sports (which I did), you have no idea the passion that one person has for their team (and the hatred they have for their opponent).  The fact that a woman got FIRED for covering her head with the wrong logo (it was her alma mater) speaks volumes to how seriously people take this stuff. 

 

 

You are probably wondering why I am bringing this up here.  I think it makes for an interesting analysis.  If this happened in the business world, would it have gone down the same way?  If you work for Ford, would you automatically assume that driving a Chevy into the parking lot would raise the eyebrow of your boss?  If your client is Burger King, does that mean its grounds for dismissal if you indulge in a Big Mac over your lunch hour?  Would you walk into a meeting with Steve Jobs and present on your PC?

 

Most people think that Mrs. Gork was naive to think that this wouldn’t cause an outcry, especially since she worked for a radio station that was tailored specifically to the Arkansas football team.  I agree.  But was a warning or suspension in order before handing her a pink slip?  I’ll leave this for you to debate.  

The Greatest Business Solutions Don’t Usually Start with Money

Posted: Monday, August 9, 2010

Perhaps you’ve heard this story? Purple Cow at its finest.

In the winter of 1982, an unknown shoe designer named Kenneth Cole was trying to attract the attention of garment and retail VIP’s during market week in NYC. He knew renting the typical booth or hotel suite wouldn’t make him stand out from the other thousand companies. So he came up with what he thought was a great idea.  

Borrow a truck from a friend, turn the truck into a giant TRUNK sale and park it near the Hilton where the show was being held. Then he slammed into a proverbial brick wall because you couldn't just park a truck like that anywhere in Manhattan -- even before 9-11. Mayor Koch’s office told him the only two ways to get the required permits were to be a utilities company or a film company shooting a feature. 

Literally overnight, Kenneth Cole Productions' “The Birth of a Shoe Company” sprung to life.  With a 40 foot trailer, a camera, klieg lights, a director, models, some very prominent signage and all of his best designs on display, Cole became the ring-master of his own cinema couture circus. Who needed a script?



If there’s anything you can count on in life it’s that people will be seduced by the lure of celebrity. The buyers were drawn across the street to the bustling “set” like moths to a flame. The longer the wait behind the velvet rope grew, the more buyers wanted to know what was going on. It fed on itself, and over the next 60 hours, Cole sold 40,000 pairs of shoes.  Now that is ROI.



Staring down at my favorite gun-metal-silver Kenneth Cole watch today, I remember something an executive (who now runs a media conglomerate) told me at the start of my career. Ron said, “there’s always a hotel room when they say the place is booked, there’s always two tickets to a sold out show and there’s always a dinner reservation to be had when every table is spoken for.  You just have to know how to ask for it.” 

Cole's company’s name remains “Productions” to this day

Exactly What Makes a Facebook Friend, A Friend?

Posted: Friday, August 6, 2010

Every now and then isn’t it great to open up your Facebook and hear from someone after all those years?  I’ve even reconnected with a few people that I wasn’t very close to back in the day. After all, the passage of time creates bonds best honored with the occasional “poke.” So to speak. 

But what about the rest? Do you friend your:

• Clients?
• Co-Workers?
• Boss?
• Direct reports?
• Ex girlfriend?
• Ex wife?

And if they become something else in your life do you add/drop them? Plenty of time (and consulting fees) has been spent in corporate America developing social media “guidelines.”  

I’m much more curious how you handle these five murky personal situations.

1. You meet someone through business. It was a perfectly pleasant exchange.  You said "nice to meet you" when you parted. Do you request? Do you accept?  If you do become friends, but you severely restrict what they can see on your Wall, isn’t that saying you don’t really want to be their "friend?" Or that you have something really dark and twisted to conceal? And if you do, can you let me know what that is? david@davidandsampr.com 



2. Someone friends you because you share a bunch of common friends.  Do you accept out of courtesy? You wouldn’t want that person telling your mutual friends what a jerk you are, would you? Do you feel obligated to tell your friend, when you friend their friends?

3. What if someone won’t stop playing Farmville?  Is that grounds for FB divorce? If one more person tells me one more time how they need one more golden egg I just may go Office Space on my Mac. But what if they are a valuable part of your business network?  Will they hold the defection against you or will they even notice you’ve left the Farm?

4. What do you do when someone dies? If nobody is maintaining their page what’s an appropriate amount of time before de-friending them? Sure, it's a way to keep them alive in your mind but isn't it creepy if their last post is on the beautiful drive they are taking today, that they got T-boned on?

5.And what about all those aspiring soft-porn stars and pseudo-Tila Tequilas who pop up with a friend request?  Guys, you know what I’m talking about. Ladies, do mysterious beefcake boys try to friend you? How does it make you look if you add one of those “pros” as “friends?”  Maybe you accept their nefarious invite, just to take a walk on the digital wild-side. If so, how long does it take before you share a mutual friend? Is that awkward or funny?

Wouldn’t it all be much simper if it were just named PersonBook instead? 

Sweet Music To Our Ears

Posted: Monday, August 2, 2010

The media loves to report that the music industry’s “model” is dead.  Granted, it’s a lot easier to steal a Van Halen MP3 today online than it once was to shoplift an LP of Diver Down from Tower Records. Not, of course, that I ever tried.  

Since Elvis swiveled his hips, kids have been the pop behind music sales. That is, until the last 30 years, when Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Atari gave them new places to blow their allowances. Then the iPod irrefutably did for music what the digital camera has done for photography -- made it relevant to everyone, again.

Two more watersheds...

Repeatedly TV’s top-rated show, American Idol and its contestants have sold more than 50 million albums.  Gen Y discovered that making music with harmony, melody and lyrics -- besides hoes, drugs and guns -- can be a path to fame and fortune, or at least, personal expression and self fulfillment.

Guitar Hero et al has grossed more than two billions dollars. Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick, proudly boasts that Aerosmith has made more money on game sales than any of their previous albums. Now kids get carpel tunnel strumming their black, plastic Stratocasters and whacking some digital tom tom’s, rather than going blind fiddling their joysticks and red buttons. Yeah, yeah, I know.

So does it really come as any surprise that Best Buy started selling instruments in 2009?  Guitars, drums, keyboards - electric and acoustic. Pearl, Yamaha, Gibson, Fender. No, Todd, music doesn’t grow on Mac Book Pros or Bose headphones -- people pour their hearts and souls into actually making it.

If CD and video game customers now want guitar strings and amplifiers, is it really accurate to say music’s model is dead? Or are the tectonic plates of pop culture shifting so massively we can’t recognize evolution evolving right under our noses?  

With American schools downgrading music studies from requirement, to option, luxury and now dinosaur, you could be skeptical that the making of music is really gobbling up morsels of market share from the recorded version.

This is where technology gallops in like Sir Lancelot to the rescue. 

Search “free online music lessons” and you get more than 23 million results. Music editing software comes loaded for free on computers. MySpace is a free point of exhibition and distribution for musical talent, as is You Tube. 

With an instrument in one hand and a mouse in the other, maybe the next generation of Beethovens and McCartneys are coming of age, driving the old ”model” to extinction.

$250,000 for jeans. Seriously?

Posted: Thursday, July 29, 2010

Where would we be without jeans? Really, think about.  A world without denim. What would we all wear? Next weekend, stop and take notice how many people are wearing some derivation of good old-fashioned blue jeans.  At DSPR they’re business attire.

Since fashion is today’s topic, but pop culture is the mouse through which I write, I nominate jeans as the most influential garment in the history of the world.  A loin cloth made of stretched, antelope hide coming a distant second.

Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, Blue Jeans -- it doesn’t get more American does it? Actually, yes, sort of.  The term “jeans” was coined by the Boomers in the 60’s.  Contrary to popular belief, however, the fabric denim was invented in India and France concurrently in the mid 19th Century.  Since we only care about American heroes, let's cut to 1873.

German immigrant Levi Strauss and Nevada tailor David Jacobs developed their patented design for Waist Overalls, using metal rivets and double stitched thread. Worn mostly by construction workers and cowboys, blue was overwhelmingly the favorite color and a pair sold for the princely sum of $1.25.

How ironic that a little more than a hundred years later you could plunk down the unthinkable sum of $40-$50 to come between Brooke and her Calvin’s.

That was marketing/advertising at its finest. Other iconic, if equally overpriced, brands had their day in the sun-tan-bed like Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, Sasson, and Sergio Valente. Through it all Levi’s endured, although not without some tears and rips along the way.

Today, jeans are still worn by all. For those who fly coach, original Levi’s go for $35. If True Religions are what you worship, that’ll be $320. And if you work on a downtown Street defined by its greed and avarice, who cares if a pair of Dussault “Whites” runs $250,000 --- that’s not a typo.

I wonder what Levi would think?