Exploring the Art & Science of Marketing
Archive for March, 2006
Gmail is down
Mar 8th
I think Paul Allen forgot to knock on wood the other day when he wrote on his blog that he switched to Gmail from Yahoo! because of problems he had with Yahoo!.
Gmail is now down. 
They didn’t vote for it
Mar 6th
Ang Lee, director of Brokeback Mountain, seems to be the only person around with a logical reason as to why his film didn’t win the Oscar for best picture.
“They didn’t vote for it.” Ang Lee. But for some reason, the press feels that it is necesary to try to explain in 50 different ways why the film didn’t win. People aren’t ready for a film like this to win. Crash took place in L.A., and most of the members of the Academy live in L.A. Every response is wrong. People acted on their prejudices in the voting booths.
Only director Ang Lee gets it right. “They didn’t vote for it.”
SuperDell needs a PR guy
Mar 6th
“All the media in Utah are liars and murderers . . . . I would not want to be in your shoes having caused this. You are agents of Satan and you need to repent.” – Dell Schanze to the media on Friday night.
If you look at the photo in the Deseret News you will see one of the KSL reporters laughing because they don’t get to cover this kind of thing everyday.
Crash deserved best picture
Mar 6th
I was hoping that Crash would win best picture. It’s an incredible film. And despite what the media writes about upsets and such of Brokeback Mountain, I think it’s only an upset because the media took the film on as a pet project for promotion.
Un met expectation always leads to disappointment. The fact that Crash won best picture last night was by no means an upset to me. Keep in mind that the people who selected Crash over Brokeback are those that are members of the Academy. They are the ones who pick the films every year. They picked Crash, not Brokeback Mountain as best picture.
Here’s an example of Brokeback media promotion from CNN.
“The Los Angeles social drama ‘Crash,’ which interwove plots and characters from different racial and economic backgrounds in Los Angeles, won best picture honors despite favorite “Brokeback Mountain” winning virtually every other major award it had been up for leading up the the 78th Oscars.”
This may have been true for other awards ceremonies, but the film didn’t even win in very many categories besides best picture. Best picture? (we already talked about this). Best actor? No. Best supporting actor? No. Leading actress? No. Supporting actress? No. Cinematography? No. It won for best director, best adapted screenplay and best original score, which was a hard one to believe, but I will have to give it a listen.
LCD or Plasma
Mar 2nd
“Plasma TV sets use tiny pockets of gases to display images, while LCDs use crystals sandwiched between glass. LCDs last longer than plasma screens but are not as bright, while plasma has a wider viewing angle but consumes more power.”
Way to go CNET for explaining the simple difference between an LCD and a plasma screen.
“In the race for an edge, panel makers are also investing in organic light emitting diode (OLED) display, viewed as a promising next-generation technology.
Self-luminous and paper-thin OLED screens produce brighter images, respond faster and consume less power.”
Question is. Which do you prefer?
Top 10 Entrpreneurial Schools
Mar 2nd
In no particular order . . . according to CNN Money. Somehow, I get the feeling that this is like any other news story out there . . . these schools all have good PR people who knew how to pitch this reporter on what makes their school entrpreneurial. Read the description paragraphs that give reason for the school being on the list. Let’s take Harvard’s paragraph description as an example:
“Harvard has 17 endowed chairs in entrepreneurship. (This means that they have a lot of money to endow chairs. An endowed chair is often sponsored by a company or organization so the professor can focus on researching that topic. This means they have good research on entrepreneurship, but 17 endowed chairs happens because of quantity ‘money’ and doesn’t equate quality. . . not that I am questioning Harvard’s quality.) All 900 MBA students are required to take an entrepreneurship course in their first semester. (Required to take a course . . . enough said). To teach new-venture development, Harvard uses its classic case-study format — with a twist: CEOs of the companies under discussion are invited to participate. Recent visitors: David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, and fashion designer Kate Spade.” (Involving high-level CEOs in case study discussions sounds different to me.)
You could probably find 10 schools for each one listed that has the same stuff happening on their campus. Something tells me that if you actually ask entrepreneurs what the top school is, they will tell you that the actual experience of ‘doing’ is the best schooling of all. How do you teach Shawn Nelson to start LoveSac? How do you teach Ryan Money to start HireVue. How do you teach Brock Blake to run Funding Universe?
Even better, how do you teach a guy with a degree in library science to start one of the most successful Internet subscription businesses in history? (Paul Allen – MyFamily.com) You don’t. The system and the people teach him when he immerses himself in it. I have yet to hear of a very successful entrepreneur who has a degree or who has some form of formmal education in entrepreneurship. Can you name one? Here are the schools.
DePaul University, Chicago
Florida International University
Harvard University
Howard University
Simmons College
Sitting Bull College
University of Arizona
University of Colorado
University of Texas
University of Rocherster.
So much to do. So little time to blog.
Mar 1st
What more can I say? Work has been very busy this week. Very busy. Sounds like I am not the only one with a lot to do. Tough assignment ahead.
