When was the last time you gave yourself permission to window shop? I didn’t say hit the nearest big city mall or giant hardware store to purchase tools for the house, garden or to spend money because it feels so much better than channel surfing on the flat screen.
I’m talking 100% real window shopping. You enter a store, ask the employee questions, compare the product with cheaper or more expensive brands, bend it, pull it, roll it around on the floor, pretend that it’s already yours and figure out how you’re going to make it part of your unwritten chapters, thank the sales rep for their time then escape without purchasing it.
Spur of the moment impulse buying has crippled the country. We’ve allowed computer companies to continue making programs and pieces parts that instantly become outdated the moment they’re installed. Personally I call it the Doritos Big Business Act of the 1980’s where the advertisement always suggested, “Go ahead and eat one…we’ll make more.”
Look at what’s taking place at Taco Bell; nicknamed the Where’s the Beef suit they’ve been accused of allegedly not using 100% USDA beef. Like true leaders the fast food restaurant peacefully responded with a full page newspaper ad that stated their beef is no different than what you buy at the supermarket.
We as a people want things now. If it can’t be attained we put the car in D and move forward until someone or something delivers the product at the tremendously high rate of speed demanded. I’m extremely guilty of this; the heart doctor wanted my cholesterol down to an extremely safe 70; the product came with ear shattering side effects to which I ignored until I became a victim. Sharply questioning the pharmacist he calmly replied, “We fill orders then offer information on every bottle and package that suggests possible side effects the medication is connected to, we cannot tell you that a doctor has made an error.”
I can’t even warn you about the medication because they’re an advertiser…all I can say is do your homework. Read every package and ask questions until you are fully satisfied. Stand at the pharmacy and compare notes with other patients. The moment you stop searching is the day you’ll experience a reaction to the medication creating your new found reality.
Today’s writing isn’t a gripe session. It’s not to expose or undertake a mission to Free Willie. (You do remember the movie about the whale right?)
When was the last time you physically endured a moment of doing nothing more than window shopping? Not on the web or through other means of cut me free from human touch social networking but hands on I have a question about this product, can I please try a small sample before I pour what little money I make into the success of your business.
When is a situation or product worth criticizing?
Author Seth Godin writes, “A remarkable product or service is like a purple cow. Brown cows are boring; purple ones are worth mentioning. Those ideas spread; those organizations grow. The essence of what’s happening in the market today revolves around creating a purple cow.”
I’m far from being a political junky but in the past 48 months I’ve heard more about a Tea Party Movement than the D’s, R’s and L’s. A political writer shares, “Every election needs to be like November 2010; there needs to be constant change in leadership so that we don’t get bogged down with decision makers who’ve become professional takers and not giver's.”
Seth continues to write, “Boring ideas don’t spread. Boring organizations don’t grow.”
I see that quote and instantly think of four marketing geniuses; Madonna, Gene Simmons of KISS, The Beatles and Elvis Presley; true masters in the art of reinventing yourself during the days of post showmanship. Guess whose getting stuck with the bill? We are because everything’s a collectable. I have four KISS Jack n The Boxes for no reason other than the kid in me saw these cheap plastic objects in a box and said, “OMG!”
Not a single drop of blood or desire to window shop flowed through me. I’m the one circus people attact, “There’s sucker in every crowd.”
Rollingstone Magazine posted a story in 2010 that didn’t criticize but unveiled what’s taking place at concert venues and why you can’t find up close seats at a fairly decent price. The musicians are now in the ticket selling business. They’re allotted a certain amount of tickets per show…they send out a team to make them money. Legal or illegal?
Through the process of trying to create the purple cow the mothers and fathers of invention have mastermind a plan that feeds one of the seven needs of survival: want so that one can feel accepted.
By window shopping you learn to identify the purple cow in every crowd. Walk into your competitor’s office, study their web page and visit places where the product comes to life. Be a potential client. What makes you a great leader isn’t the money spent on the ingredients to make the product. In the book the Art of Selling unveiled is McDonald’s passion to keep family first; they don’t need a great burger to be the best; their secret; clean bathrooms.
Window shop!!!
I’ll always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Showing posts with label madonna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label madonna. Show all posts
Monday, January 31, 2011
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
I ate a booger in the first grade...
Spent some priceless time with Social Networking Guru Nathan Richie yesterday—his strength being the ability to look deeply into each presentation given on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and My Space and spot extreme weaknesses in the way we’ve elected to communicate.
Like any drug, if it feels good you’ll continue to use it until it kills you.
Conversation without face to face contact is the greatest invention since the birth of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich—to speak when not spoken to without having to visually change our attitude due to selling out to unexpected facial expressions is like walking into a jewelry store and taking home the most expensive diamond without paying for it.
The most common connection we share is an addiction to where we’ve been.
We’ve developed a life and style around an assumed fifteen minutes of fame. While in the sixth grade I was the hall monitor at Ponderosa Elementary—it was during the week President Richard Nixon elected to help out the farmers and change Daylight Savings Time. To be a monitor protecting hundreds of children in the dark was an important position based on trust and leadership. That was 35 years ago! Surely I’m not the same person!
Why torture readers with chapters already written when it’s the future we’re trying to get to?
It kills me to see The Beatles outselling Jay Z, Jordan Sparks and Carry Underwood…it shows how lazy record companies have become in the art of discovering raw, unrehearsed, un-researched talent—they do what comes easiest, rely on the classics. Those rules didn’t exist in 1979 when a group of cousins and friends from Tennessee brought their four part harmonies to the forefront of Country music. I’ll never forget my radio station program director Lonnie Bell at a little daytime station in the armpit of the world screaming the praises of what he called the new kids on the block…Alabama ripped a hole in Porter Wagner’s glorified rhinestones generating enough pomp and circumstance to revamp a dying art. Can you imagine what the face of Country music would look like today without Randy Owens and Teddy Gentry having the guts to put a little rock guitar beside the fiddle in the band?
Your web page and Social Networking outlets are no different. They’re stuck in Beatles-mode. In 1983 blank blank blank was named best to succeed during a nationwide recession. Who cares? What does it have to do with those surrounding you today? What did you do then that could be utilized in 2009?
The one story I personally can’t stand to talk about is a weird event that unwrapped its pretty little face in late 1987 when Casey Kasum elected to leave American Top 40. At the age of 25 I was named one of the five finalists to replace him. Wanna know a secret…it’s never been a deciding factor in landing me a radio job. Sure! I wanted to be Ryan Seacrest years before he was pulled out of diapers! But why paste it to my history?
Social Networking is a tool. Former Vice President Al Gore predicted it would become a valuable source of communication but seems dumfounded by the fact that once we get a hit, laziness sets in. In the latest edition of Rollingstone Magazine he’s vividly clear about how the Obama campaign has totally missed the purpose of the medium. They dedicated their souls to its strength during the election and have done nothing since to keep American’s abreast of what’s going on behind closed doors.
To radio people Social Networking has become an open microphone ungoverned by program directors and decision makers. By being up to date and clear with reasons to stand on a box, the avenue described as broadcasting has hit a level of performance the masters before us didn’t have so they relied on two speakers to stretch their points across cities and states. Rather than saying, "Here's another four in a row without talk," listeners are seeing we're extremely human and go through everyday circumstances just like them. A thicker more meaningful bond is being created. But must be maintained everyday.
In theory Madonna is the greatest creation known to music—she never stopped reinventing. Maria Carey on the other hand has sold more CD’s scoring more number ones than Elvis Presley. Until she married Nick Cannon who the heck was she? Tommy Matolla a record company President vowed to make his wife the best thing since the invention of chicken McNuggets—once the divorce took place she totally disappeared having to reinvent a career that’s respected more today than the moments those incredible five octaves tore up your favorites list.
I love The Beatles! I can’t stop being inspired by Paul McCartney but they weren’t part of George Jetson’s life. We were supposed to be living in space by now working at Spacely Sprockets with our houses being cleaned by extremely friendly robots named Rosie.
How are we supposed to get to the future if our hands are Super Glued to a past we can’t change?
Nothing peels my potatoes more than hearing someone blurt out, “The music was better forty years ago!”
If that’s the case why do producers continue to re-master the Beatles collection? George Lucas rakes in millions every other year with added features or newly designed digital scenes in a movie series we’ve seen 16.9 billion times. James Camreon waited for technology to catch up to his dreams and next week we'll see it come to life in Avatar.
My brother Larry was wrong! Mighty Mouse and Howdy Doody were not the last of the great Saturday morning cartoons. The success of Sponge Bob Square Pants is a stolen page from the book that says, "Hey lets take a chance."
If you don’t think we live in the past…go back and count how many times I reverted back to its witchcraft in this short story? I’m cursed! I’m melting! Melting! All because my Facebook and personal web page have nothing in common with the future.
Nate might be onto something here…if you’re having a hard time landing a job or picking up new accounts—try allowing the power of Social Networking do its magical mystery tour…
If what you're screaming is, "Look at me!”
What’s in it for me?
Steal Nathan’s art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Like any drug, if it feels good you’ll continue to use it until it kills you.
Conversation without face to face contact is the greatest invention since the birth of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich—to speak when not spoken to without having to visually change our attitude due to selling out to unexpected facial expressions is like walking into a jewelry store and taking home the most expensive diamond without paying for it.
The most common connection we share is an addiction to where we’ve been.
We’ve developed a life and style around an assumed fifteen minutes of fame. While in the sixth grade I was the hall monitor at Ponderosa Elementary—it was during the week President Richard Nixon elected to help out the farmers and change Daylight Savings Time. To be a monitor protecting hundreds of children in the dark was an important position based on trust and leadership. That was 35 years ago! Surely I’m not the same person!
Why torture readers with chapters already written when it’s the future we’re trying to get to?
It kills me to see The Beatles outselling Jay Z, Jordan Sparks and Carry Underwood…it shows how lazy record companies have become in the art of discovering raw, unrehearsed, un-researched talent—they do what comes easiest, rely on the classics. Those rules didn’t exist in 1979 when a group of cousins and friends from Tennessee brought their four part harmonies to the forefront of Country music. I’ll never forget my radio station program director Lonnie Bell at a little daytime station in the armpit of the world screaming the praises of what he called the new kids on the block…Alabama ripped a hole in Porter Wagner’s glorified rhinestones generating enough pomp and circumstance to revamp a dying art. Can you imagine what the face of Country music would look like today without Randy Owens and Teddy Gentry having the guts to put a little rock guitar beside the fiddle in the band?
Your web page and Social Networking outlets are no different. They’re stuck in Beatles-mode. In 1983 blank blank blank was named best to succeed during a nationwide recession. Who cares? What does it have to do with those surrounding you today? What did you do then that could be utilized in 2009?
The one story I personally can’t stand to talk about is a weird event that unwrapped its pretty little face in late 1987 when Casey Kasum elected to leave American Top 40. At the age of 25 I was named one of the five finalists to replace him. Wanna know a secret…it’s never been a deciding factor in landing me a radio job. Sure! I wanted to be Ryan Seacrest years before he was pulled out of diapers! But why paste it to my history?
Social Networking is a tool. Former Vice President Al Gore predicted it would become a valuable source of communication but seems dumfounded by the fact that once we get a hit, laziness sets in. In the latest edition of Rollingstone Magazine he’s vividly clear about how the Obama campaign has totally missed the purpose of the medium. They dedicated their souls to its strength during the election and have done nothing since to keep American’s abreast of what’s going on behind closed doors.
To radio people Social Networking has become an open microphone ungoverned by program directors and decision makers. By being up to date and clear with reasons to stand on a box, the avenue described as broadcasting has hit a level of performance the masters before us didn’t have so they relied on two speakers to stretch their points across cities and states. Rather than saying, "Here's another four in a row without talk," listeners are seeing we're extremely human and go through everyday circumstances just like them. A thicker more meaningful bond is being created. But must be maintained everyday.
In theory Madonna is the greatest creation known to music—she never stopped reinventing. Maria Carey on the other hand has sold more CD’s scoring more number ones than Elvis Presley. Until she married Nick Cannon who the heck was she? Tommy Matolla a record company President vowed to make his wife the best thing since the invention of chicken McNuggets—once the divorce took place she totally disappeared having to reinvent a career that’s respected more today than the moments those incredible five octaves tore up your favorites list.
I love The Beatles! I can’t stop being inspired by Paul McCartney but they weren’t part of George Jetson’s life. We were supposed to be living in space by now working at Spacely Sprockets with our houses being cleaned by extremely friendly robots named Rosie.
How are we supposed to get to the future if our hands are Super Glued to a past we can’t change?
Nothing peels my potatoes more than hearing someone blurt out, “The music was better forty years ago!”
If that’s the case why do producers continue to re-master the Beatles collection? George Lucas rakes in millions every other year with added features or newly designed digital scenes in a movie series we’ve seen 16.9 billion times. James Camreon waited for technology to catch up to his dreams and next week we'll see it come to life in Avatar.
My brother Larry was wrong! Mighty Mouse and Howdy Doody were not the last of the great Saturday morning cartoons. The success of Sponge Bob Square Pants is a stolen page from the book that says, "Hey lets take a chance."
If you don’t think we live in the past…go back and count how many times I reverted back to its witchcraft in this short story? I’m cursed! I’m melting! Melting! All because my Facebook and personal web page have nothing in common with the future.
Nate might be onto something here…if you’re having a hard time landing a job or picking up new accounts—try allowing the power of Social Networking do its magical mystery tour…
If what you're screaming is, "Look at me!”
What’s in it for me?
Steal Nathan’s art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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