Marketing Hipster

Blogging is all about community. This blog gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions as well as being able to read and hear other people’s opinions and experiences. The people who come to this web site and grant me precious minutes of their day should absolutely be recognized and thanked! Because without them, I would just be sitting around talking to myself and to be honest, I do too much of that already.

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Best,

Cord

As I do most days, today I was sitting here at my desk over lunch enjoying some nice soup while I check out my usual news haunts to catch up on what is going on in the world. I stumbled onto this little gem of a story from CNN.

Overall, a high school in Galesburg, Illinois is withholding the diplomas of five students who were graduating high school because at the graduation ceremony, people cheered when their names were called… I know, you might need to let that sink in for a second or two, so your brain can process the utter stupidity involved with this. These five students are all females and several of them are graduating with honors and now are being punished because people in the stands, not them, cheered when their names were called.

Now I know you won’t believe me when I say that we still have not reached the top of this ridiculous story. The schools administration met with these 5 woman and their families and STILL refused to give them their diplomas until they apologize…. APOLOGIZE?!?!?! So people in the stands cheer and it is their fault and now they need to apologize.

I like to officially nominate all the administration from Galesburg High School to be added to the newly formed, STUPIDEST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET HALL OF FAME. Ground breaking is expected to start early next year and I would like to officially nominate these administrators as the first official candidates to be entered.

But I would be remiss if I did not introduce you to the leader of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight…

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, here is the principle of Galesburg High School, Mr. Tom Chiles. In his spare time when he is not torturing the lives of young people, he enjoys continually banging his head against the wall. When asked why he does this, he responded, “Cause it feels so good when I stop.”

So do I get a second on my nomination?

Technorati Tags: CNN, Galesburg, Illinois, Galesburg High School, Tom Chiles

This Saturday night, I got home around 10:30 pm (I know, am I a party animal or what?) and turned on the television. I stumbled upon the movie Gladiator playing on TNT or TBS. I just turned it on when one of my favorite scenes came on. Just like TV always does, they cut right in the middle of a great scene for a commercial break. I was a little peeved that they went to a commercial right then when I remembered that I actually owned Gladiator on DVD! Who needs sticking commercials, I will go right to the DVD.

I immediately jumped out of bed and sprung towards my DVD case where an never opened DVD of Gladiator sat on my shelf. I got it as a Christmas present and just had never opened it till now. I had the lights turned off in my room so the only light was coming from the TV. I began taking the shrink rap off the DVD and then proceeded to take that tape they put on the top and sides off the DVD off as well. I was getting pumped to watch the movie when I ran into a problem. I could not get the DVD case open. I pulled and pulled on the thing, but it would not open for me.

So eventually in the dark, I got frustrated and just pulled the DVD case with all my might and I busted the thing wide open and the DVD came flying out of its case. At the time I did not care about the case and just grabbed the DVD from the floor and enjoyed an unedited commercial free viewing of Gladiator.

“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”

The next morning I found my busted DVD case on the floor and now that it was light out I was able to examine the case and saw what the whole issue was. The DVD case came with these two little latches that had to be opened to actually open up the DVD case. Now I do not know if this is standard these days, I have to be honest I download everything so I have not purchased a DVD in a while. But I need to ask why? Why would anyone add these latches to a DVD case?

Did people have issues with opening and closing DVD cases before? Were there actually people out there who just could not get the “snap” technique down? I just have never heard of any protests or rallies shouting, “Give me latches or give me death!” Who decided to add these latches to the DVD case and what was the reasoning behind it? It seems to be absolutely counter productive. By adding those latches, it must cost more to create these cases than it did before and how did it help?

My point on all this is that did someone add latches just so they can say they did something? They added something? Something new to sell? Or is there a legitimate reason behind this? If you have some answers or thoughts, please share because to me this looks like an absolute waste of time and money.

Technorati Tags: Gladiator, DVD

This morning I walked into a fury of articles and information regarding Kathy Sierra’s distressing post about her getting death threats and resigning from the blogosphere. At first, I really had a hard time believing this was real and initially thought it might be some kind of an early April fools joke, but it definitely seems to be on the level.

Overall, Kathy is pointing fingers at Chris Locke aka Rageboy. He has a post speaking specifically to this here. There are posts flying left and right including Scoble taking a break from posting because of this? Other stories can be found here and here.

Technorati Tags: death threats

I was thinking of starting a new series of articles called What Would You Change? I thought what might be interesting is each post choose a specific company and we could discuss what we would change if we were leading these companies. Who knows maybe one of the companies will actually take some of our advice. I am not holding my breath on that though.

So why don’t we start with the RIAA. This is the much maligned group of record companies who have seen their profits drop faster than Enron stock. They have tried everything up to and including suing companies, universities and individuals who were caught stealing licensed music. They just won the “Worst Company of America” award as voted on The Consumerist.

We might as well start at the bottom and work our way up so what would you change if you headed up the RIAA?

I would do the following:

1. Stop all lawsuits now.. For every person I sue, there are hundreds if not thousands who still are stealing music in ways that the RIAA cannot catch. If someone wants something, they are going to do it whether it is against the law or not. Might I remind everyone of this country’s fabulous unsuccessful war on drugs.

2. Realize that even though technology has considerably changed our business model, I still have a product people want. Good music will always be needed, but we need to devise new ways on how we can deliver that music because the day of going to buy CD’s in a store are over.

The focus needs to be to offer something that people will see the value in paying for instead of stealing. Let’s start with these ideas:

1. Each record company open up their entire library to be able to buy online whether that is through iTunes or their own web site.
2. Offer a higher sound quality through our online stores. If the CD is recorded in 192 kbps, double it online. The best sound quality possible is one click away through our online store.
3. Offer outtakes, videos, etc. when buying online, something they cannot get in the stores and cannot get by stealing. The reason why they cannot get it through stealing is we integrate these extras with our web site. A user will have to register and that person only will be able to get these add-ons. Very similar to how iTunes works.
4. Integrate the music with other offerings as well. For instance, buying directly from the publisher gives a buyer VIP access to the artists blog. They can chat live with the artists, get information before anyone else, etc. etc.
5. Partner up with social sites like MySpace where we can offer online concerts, live web chats, etc. Get our fans involved on their terms not ours!

3. Begin the healing process and all the bad blood that exists between us and our customers by truly reaching out to them. Start giving them a voice on what they like, what they don’t like and we will respond to their suggestions through communication and actions.

4. Take our lumps, admit we might of been a bit drastic by suing most of North America and that we are looking for ways to meet our customers wants and needs.

5. Begin educating users about how stealing music impacts a lot of American jobs and not just the artists. Many people feel that the artists make millions so it does not hurt them. Whether that is true or not is up to debate. What isn’t is a lot of workers behind the scenes that are losing their jobs because the record industry can’t afford to pay them.

6. Finally, a drastic initial statement is needed to show how serious we are. Have every CEO of the major labels reduce their salary to one dollar for a period of time to show how dedicated they are in finding a solution and not just being apart of the problem.

So what do you think? Any good ideas in there or are they crap? It’s your turn… You have just been promoted the CEO, the big cheese, the head honcho of the RIAA. What do you do? Put your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: What Would You Change, Worst Company of America, RIAA

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After speaking with several of my fellow bloggers, I found out I am not the only blog who has been getting absolutely hammered with spam recently. Over the last week or two, I have been averaging probably 20-30 spam comments or trackbacks an hour. For all you WordPress users out there, I can tell you that Akismet rocks. If you are not familiar with it, it is a spam plugin that comes bundled with WordPress. All you need to do is go to your plugin section and activate it and then configure it. It is incredibly easy and it has been perfect so far with catching all spam and allowing real comments through without issue. If you have any issues, let me know, be glad to help.

In the world today, there are so many different opinions on issues that at times it seems like no-one can agree on anything. Though there seems to be one issue that we all can agree on without hesitation, our hatred and loathing for spam. I have not seen to date anyone stand up and say, “I am a fan of spam!”. A little over two years ago, Bill Gates got up in front of the Davos World Economic Forum and said that “Two years from now, spam will be solved”. Yea, you seemed to miss the mark big time on that hey Bill? Especially since in my Hotmail account, I get easily 10-20 pieces of spam to every one legitimate email.

No matter what Bill says, the amount of spam that is being sent out right now is at an all time high. There has already been legislation put into place which includes fines and even imprisonment for spammers. The problem is that lawmakers don’t realize that the web has no boundaries while our laws do. So a spammer is Russia is not going to be too concerned about US laws.

The war on spam reminds me of another absolutely failed war which is the war on drugs. We have spent billions upon billions of dollars to lock up drug dealers, but never coming to the realization like spam, that it all comes down to the simple rule of supply and demand. If there were no people interested in purchasing drugs, there would be no drug dealers because they could not make money, no customers. I believe spam is very similar. If people would begin educating themselves on spam, learn the basic rules of how to recognize and handle spam and not click on their spam links that they get in their emails, spam would go away as well.

Supply and demand, if the spammers cannot make money on what they are doing, they are not going to do it. So the next time you are complaining about spam, ask yourself are you really deterring spam or are you just part of the problem?

Technorati Tags: spam, WordPress, Akismet, Bill Gates

Recently my feed reader has been filling up with all these new and great blogs that I have been discovering. While this is great news, it is also taking a toll on my reader. Presently, I am using Pageflakes as my feed aggregator and reader. It’s good, but it is not great. I was using Google’s homepage before Pageflakes and I was not crazy about that either.

So I am asking my fellow bloggers and readers alike out there to comment and let me know what you are using as a feed reader and whether you like it or not? I appreciate all opinions and thoughts. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: feed reader, blogs

MEDIA CRITIC SPOCKO, WHOSE BLOG was shut down last week in response to Disney’s complaints that he violated its copyright by posting audio files from right-wing San Francisco talk radio station KSFO, is once again online. Examples of KSFO right-wing talk show hosts spewing vitriol at a variety of politicians, journalists, minorities, and Muslims.

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I begun getting calls, IM’s and emails Friday afternoon and that continued through the weekend. A number of great people who I worked with at MarketSmart Interactive was reaching out to me in regard to MSI pretty much closing it’s doors on Friday. It has already been widely blogged about the MSI dramatically reduced their workforce to about 8 or 9 people and those people left will be officially moved to MarketSmart Advertising. This is from a high at one time of more than 150. I have been reluctant to write about this to say the least. My feelings are torn between seeing incredibly talented and wonderful people I use to work with now out of jobs versus my own opinions on several different facets of the company and it’s management. While there has been many posts in the blogoshpere focused on demeaning and bashing certain individuals right or wrong, I am not going to do that here. Everyone has an opinion, what separates a true individual from an immature child is how and in what form he or she expresses that opinion.

What I do want to say is that with all the issues, mistakes and missteps made at Keyword Ranking / Websourced / MarketSmart Interactive, I feel absolutely blessed for the opportunity to of worked with such a group of dedicated, talented and good hearted people. I have never seen a group of people come together so quickly and for a time, create an environment that you woke up everyday excited to come to work because of the people who were sitting beside you. I left with the understanding that I learned a great deal, worked with great people and was lucky enough to walk away knowing that I can call many of you my friends.

As I have already spoken to many of you, I will do anything and everything in my power to help with your job search and find a position that will treat you as you absolutely deserve to be treated. If you have not gotten in touch with me, please feel free to shoot me an email.

Technorati Tags: MarketSmart Interactive, Keyword Ranking, Websourced