Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Today: Home Invaders!

Chris Mercier tells me she saw the movie, Wait Until Dark, when she was twelve.  This movie starring Audrey Hepburn is about a blind woman battling three men who break into her apartment.  Chris said she and her friends kept screaming through the whole movie! EEEEK!

The Strangers is a top pick for Tim Coulon.  This movie with Liv Tyler is about a couple staying at a remote vacation home where they are tormented by three masked strangers.

Be sure to check every corner of your house tonight as you don’t know who might be lurking in there!

 

 

 

 

The two movies on our list today feature a common element:  isolation

Shawn Sorrells is spooked by the movie The Thing, the version by John Carpenter.  He says the isolation and the fact you have nowhere to go and you don’t know who has been taken over by the alien made for suspenseful, scary viewing.

Chris Lloyd apparently won’t be winter  vacationing at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado.  The fictional place where, his pick, The Shining, takes place.  Chris is especially creeped out by the two little girls that beckon little Danny in the hallway.  Redrum indeed!

 

 

 

 

Since Halloween is quickly approaching, I thought it might be fun to share what movies frighten us here at Coles Marketing.

For Barbara Coles, Kevin Moore and myself, no movie makes us shudder more than The Exorcist.  Just the thought of that evil, head-spinning, green vomit spewing posessed little girl will send us out of the room!  In fact, the three of us has only seen the movie one time.  No desire to see it again.  Once was enough.

And, I might add, I HATE pea soup.

 

In Mark Twain’s autobiography, he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” It’s a phrase that has caught on to mean numbers don’t always tell the full story. It always reminds me of a story I heard a few years ago that involved the statistics of major injuries that occur when snow skiing. The stats revealed something like 87% of all major snow skiing accidents happen on the last run of the day. Makes sense right …you’ve been skiing all day, this is your last run, you’re physically tired, maybe had a few drinks and you’re going to go out with a bang so you want to make that last run mean something.

You take some extra risks and sure enough, you get hurt!

But think about it, if you get severely injured at ANY TIME while skiing, isn’t that your LAST RUN of the day …unless you can drag yourself back on the lift and ski again with that broken leg, separated shoulder, etc!

That’s my long-winded intro to some interesting numbers that came out recently from themotleyfool.com

50 Amazing Numbers About the Economy

I’m not making a statement about the statistics about the economy but it’s an interesting  read.

 

I’ve lived in Indiana my entire life, and spent most of my time in the Indianapolis metro area and I’m proud to call it home. I see all kinds of lists based on all kinds of data that come out from time to time. These ranking lists can be “Top 10 …” – fill in the blank …”Best Places to Live, Best Places to Raise a Family, Worst Air Quality, etc. Somes times Indy makes these lists for good reason and sometimes for bad. The list I saw today is pretty bad!

America’s Emptiest Cities, 2011
Ouch!!! Indy is number two on this list for having the second highest rental and home vacany rates in the nation.

ESPN’s Jeremy Schapp narrates a well-done tribute to Dan Wheldon.

Congratulations to our client Russ Simnick, President of the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association, for being named as one of the “Who’s Who in Education” by the Indianapolis Business Journal. Way to go!

Just had to share this great bit of stunt marketing. Shawn Sorrells pointed it out to the staff.

This is a terrific example where the marketing/advertising team just went for it. They did something bold and brash that turned into an amusing and memorable commercial. What’s more, they did it in a way that’s almost impossible NOT to remember the product.

Click here to watch.

There’s much ballyhoo today about the possible impact of the Amazon Kindle Fire on the tablet computer market. Boiled down to its barest terms, people want to know: Will Amazon’s Kindle Fire put the deep-six on Apple’s iPad?

(I pause now to listen for a choking sound emanating from the office of my colleague Tim Coulon, aficionado — some would say cultist — of all things Apple.)

The Kindle Fire doesn’t even hit stores until Nov. 15, but tech observers are already opining on whether it could be the iPad killer. So far the consensus seems to be: No, but it could open up a whole new market of tablet users.

Whereas previous Kindles were largely marketed as e-readers used for reading books and magazines downloaded from Amazon.com, the Fire is a full-blown tablet computer with a ton of versatility. It includes a full-color touch screen, 3G speed WiFi, a dual-core processor and many other bells and whistles that the iPad and other tablets boast.

Much of the attention has focused on the price for the Fire: $199. That’s less than half that of a bare-bones iPad, a 16 GB model with no 3G connectivity, which goes all the way up to a whopping $829 for the 3G version with 64 gigs.

But from my perspective, the most interesting thing about the Kindle Fire is that it’s the first major portable product to fully embrace the “cloud computing” concept — wherein files, including everything from books to movies to games and music,  are not stored locally on the device, but on Amazon’s servers. Amazon is offering free, unlimited cloud storage with the Fire.

That’s a major reason why the Kindle, with 8 GB of native storage, can cost so much less. It also lacks the cameras the second-generation iPad has. But the truth is tablets are not the handiest device with which to take pictures, and video chat is still a challenging application that requires the heftiest of bandwidths to be feasible.

Of course, the Fire is all tied into Amazon’s ever-increasing offerings through Amazon.com, which in every medium but music blows away Apple’s iTunes library of products.

Personally, I have never been tempted to buy an iPad — which strikes me as an over-sized iPod Touch, which I already own — or any other tablet. They seem small and painstaking to use. I don’t even like to work on a laptop, preferring the speedy interface and splendid visibility of desktop computing.

When I’m on the go I have my HTC smartphone, and there’s not much it can’t do that the iPad or Kindle Fire can. (Streaming Netflix being a notable exception.)

But at a price point under 200 bucks, with never having to worry about filling it up with movies, music and books, the Kindle Fire will attract all sorts of customers into the tablet market who never thought about getting in for $500 and up. With millions more people accessing everything from news, games and websites through a mobile device, it has the potential to greatly accelerate society’s move from physical to digital media.

You would think that the president of a public relations company would understand the importance of perceptions. Maintaining a good reputation with clients and the public isn’t enough — you also have to strive for good relations internally within your firm.

They say there are three audiences: your clients/customers, external — meaning the general public — and internal — meaning the people who work for you.

In this day where there are multiple websites devoted to chronicling the foibles of bad managers and insufferable co-workers, not to mention ever-expanding social media, it’s simply unforgivable to behave badly toward your employees without knowing the word is going to get out about it. Even worse is to capture your transgression in the black-and-white (or digitized pixels) of an email.

Apparently Keith Zakheim isn’t clued in. The president of Beckerman PR, a multi-million dollar firm in New Jersey, was very nonplussed about people failing to replace the milk container in the office fridge. Zakheim likes a healthy shot of skim milk with his coffee, and can’t believe someone would put back the milk when there’s only three drops left in it.

At least he has a flair for descriptive writing, as he showed in an angry email to the entire office: “Literally 3 drops, an amount that would maybe fill the tummy of a prematurely born mouse.”

Zakheim went on with a promise to fire anyone he catches emptying the milk carton without replacing it:

So, I am gravely serious when I write this – if I catch someone not replacing the milk, or at least, in the case where the downstairs store has close already, not sending an email to the office so the first person that arrives (usually Christa or me) can pick one up upon arrival – then I am going to fire you. Im not joking. You will be fired for not replacing the milk, and have fun explaining that one to your next employer. This is not a empty threat so PLEASE don’t test me.

Within hours, his email had been posted on Gawker.com, with the inevitable headline: “PR Firm President to Staff: ‘You Will Be Fired For Not Replacing the Milk.’”

In a subsequent follow-up email with the Gawker writer, Zakheim stated that no one had been fired as a result of his memo, and insisted he never intended to actually dismiss anyone over milk. This only goes to prove that he was less than truthful about his threat, or that he was less than truthful in what he told Gawker.

For any company that works in a high-profile field, one has to be prepared for any bullying behavior bya senior manager to be aired — either in the break room, or on the Web.

The lesson here is that internal communications can instantly become external ones. Don’t say anything to an employee you would be embarrassed to have a client overhear.

Or better yet: don’t cry foul over (unspilt) milk.