It’s a great read, but if you are going to read this post, you should also read his post “10 reasons to go private” post about why companies should go or stay private instead of doing a public offering.
Some of you may be wondering why I keep plugging Devin’s blog when the deal was that he had to plug mine when BYU won. Here’s why. I didn’t play in the BYU game, so from that standpoint, I didn’t make the plays to win the game, yet I am benefiting from the win. That being said, I’m a firm believer that greater wealth occurs when two parties make an exchange opposed to one party doing all the receiving, which in this case could be me. Devin has great things to say, and it would be a shame for me to not take his loss (Go Cougars) and turn it into a win for him as well.
The MidMarketMaven (Devin Thorpe) has kept his word after his team (Utah Utes) lost to my team (BYU Cougars) in the holy war on saturday in football.
The deal was when BYU won, Devin would do the following . . .
“- Buy me lunch at whatever place I choose in the State of Utah.
- Write a post titled “5 ways the Cougars dominated the Utes in Saturday’s game”, and last
- Post a Y his lawn for a week and start it off with singing the BYU fight song with the Y in the background.”
He lives in a condo, so instead of putting a Y on his lawn, he is going to sing the BYU fight song with the real Y in the background. He made a similar deal with Paul Allen.
Here’s the thing. If Utah won, I was going to plug his blog everyday for a week. Well, I’m going to plug his blog anyway because Devin has a lot of good financial advice to offer.
“To be clear, my thought is that in proportion to the number of technologists we have in the state we are greatly lacking in marketing talent, which cause problems - not enough marketing people to keep up with the stuff technologist keep pumping out.” (see my other post to get up to speed),
You don’t ever tell the press that “A bad situation actually turned out to be somewhat of a good situation because of the bodies we recovered.” And, you don’t tell the press “I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason,” after someone drowns and then you find other bodies in the process. (front page of CNN.com)
I understand the intentions of this well-meaning sheriff, but you can usually tell which sheriff departments have extensive media relations experience and training and which ones don’t. Take the Elizabeth Smart case as an example (the media relations part), which was coordinated amazingly well by Chris Thomas of the Intrepid Group. No matter what the media asked, the message they always heard was . . . “we just want to find Elizabeth.”
In the case of this sheriff I really believe he should have talked about how the families can now have closure and left it at that. Instead, he speculated (which you should never, ever do with the press) on why this tragedy happened.
Chris Knudsen and I had a great lunch today in Provo where we talked about a number of issues surrounding business, including the state of marketing talent in Utah.
Chris made the comment that he believes there is a serious shortage of qualified marketing people in this state, which I hadn’t thought about before. I know a number of PR and marketing folks who are really good at what they do, but I dare say that I know many more technologists and sales people who are perceived as “the talent.” Now let me be clear, I think there is a ton of marketing talent here in the state . . . for example:
Josh Steimle and his crew at MWI are very good at marketing in the web, seo and branding sense.
David Allen, Jeff Smith, Andy Dischman and Todd Shepherd of Studeo . . . well, I don’t know them, but they have made their living as direct marketers.
David Politis is a master at PR (my Jedi trainer . . .)
And, Tim Ormond at WebEvident is a great internet marketer.
But, who could fill the executive role that oversees all of these functions at a startup or a big corporation? Probably all of them, but I am starting to see what Chris means. Who are seen as the marketing big dogs in Utah? Is it just perception? Are they here, and we don’t know who they are? Did I name any of them here? Who is the Phil Windley, the Jason Calacanis, the Mark Cuban or the Tom Stockham or marketing in Utah?
I’m still trying to figure out who in the Nintendo chain decided to release the Wii on a Sunday? Somebody didn’t talk to the PR department on this one because Sunday isn’t a day I would pick to release big news. In fact, companies usually release news on weekends or near holidays when they have bad news to let out.
Whatever the case, I always counsel clients to avoid news announcements and product launches on weekends. Somebody enlighten me here. Why do you think Nintendo released the Wii on a Sunday?
A group of seven newspaper chains consisting of 176 daily papers across the country says they are forming a partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology . . . whatever that means. News.com positioned this story from the angle of struggling print media. (Utah newspapers buck national circulation trends).
On that thought, do you ever find yourself questioning the authenticity of a story by a journalist?
“. . . The long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.”
Ute fan and financial and capital guru Devin Thorpe is keeping his part of the bargain by writing a post titled “5 ways the Cougars dominated the Utes in Saturday’s game.”
You don’t ever tell the press that “A bad situation actually turned out to be somewhat of a good situation because of the bodies we recovered.” And, you don’t tell the press “I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason,” after someone drowns and then you find other bodies in the process. (
. . .)
