Target Invades the New Yorker
Maybe the red and white beach ball on the cover of my August 22nd New Yorker should have been a clue. Since I missed that clue….flipping to the content page left no doubt as the familiar red target played ring toss on the Empire State Building. Further flipping revealed the truth: Target was the only advertiser in my
New Yorker. I quickly turned to Google for further investigation.
I must have missed the news! Slate has the James Michener version for any of you Targetophiles out there but the announcement was available from Stuart Elliot and the New York Times, Media Week, Yahoo News, and other usual media suspects. And of course people blogged about it here and there.Even Target Employees were up on it.
OK..now let me just say that I AM a Target shopper…no Seinfeld Tar-zhay pronunciation necessary. Target is fun. Wal-Mart is not. Enough said. And I know that Target now has NYC locations. When I lived in NYC pre-Target I missed Target. I am sure many New Yorkers are happily pushing their carts up and down the aisles at Target at this very moment. No doubt, Target should advertise to New Yorkers and New Yorker Magazine readers. No pun, Target should target.
But, I love reading the New Yorker. I look forward to it. I was just thinking the other day when a renewal notice came for Newsweek that I really didn’t read it any more….that the New Yorker was the only print publication that I still did read. So….all that said, I really found the Target advertising in the New Yorker intrusive. Intrusive. Not artistic, not compelling or interesting. Intrusive.
Back in my early days in brand marketing, someone at Ralston Purina said, if I may paraphrase by memory, that if you wanted a high recall score you could just put a cat through a meat grinder. This came to mind as I was deciding what to read first and kept getting intruded upon by red circles. Or, am I just being a grumpy aging Baby Boomer, again?
Andy Milonakis
My kids and I have several TV shows that we watch together with some regularity but with no particular rhyme or reason. I will confess them now: Roseanne and Murphy Brown on Nick@Night and Saturday Night Live. I never watched Roseanne when it was on prime time and Murphy Brown I never missed. Saturday Night Live and I go waaay back together although there were many seasons that were just plain b-a-d. My kids and I have found the last several seasons really funny. Go figure!
Now this post is about Andy Milonakis who I know nothing about other than one day my youngest son, Sam was watching him and I stopped because Andy was singing a song with a cutout pancake on his head…for whatever reason I found him hysterically funny. Andy is a very funny guy if you like his humor. We have been watching ever since….actually Sam was watching before as was my older son Forrest. Now, we all love Andy! I am not sure why.
Andy is in Wikipedia. Andy has a blog. Andy gets mentioned on other blogs. Andy is in USA Today. Andy is everywhere. What do you think?
Blog Power
Hugh at Gaping Void, under the directive, "if you care about blogging", suggested reading a post by Rick at The Post Money Value which illustrated clearly that blogs have "main street" influence. The post mentions a conversation between two bank tellers overheard at a food court that chronicles how a blog post by Scoble, who the tellers called "cobbler" cost Dell "at least two sales". The warning: Pay Attention! The end (of the old media) is near!
To paraphrase Mark Twain, When the end of the world comes I want to be in Cleveland because everything happens ten years later there. This seems to be the attitude of so many people I talk to who should care about blogs…they would rather be in Cleveland.
More Useful Info We Learn From Blogs
From BL Ochman’s What’s Next On Line comes a useful directive to ICE Your Cell Phone. ICE stands for In Case Of Emergency. Add an entry, ICE, in your cell phone contacts with the contact info for that person or persons you would like contacted in case of emergency. Emergency personnel look in a person’s cell phones for clues to identity. Adding ICE should speed up the process. Sounds like a useful precaution to take. Easier than getting the address changed on my driver’s license which I keep meaning to do…
We are in Ice Cream Heaven
Following the 4th of July dusting off of the ice cream maker with the vanilla caramel pecan ice cream recipe courtesy of a Diva Marketing post we have been including our ice cream maker in our daily routine. Today’s email brought another heavenly picture and two divinely inspired ice cream recipes from 101 Cookbooks. One is titled Batch Family Mountain Cherry Coconut Ice Cream and the other is simply called Cherry Ice Cream. We will be trying one tomorrow night.
101 Cookbooks is the source of our new all time favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, posted in April….this recipe surpassed even our former all time favorite chocolate child cookie recipes from December 2003 and December 2004. Now, I know the exact definition of the perfect chocolate chip cookie varies greatly among aficionados…but for us, the measure is degree of chewiness and the April version is it.
Yes, searching for the perfect chocolate chip cookie is a winter pastime and searching for the perfect ice cream concoction is our summer pastime….and just like my Silver Palate cookbooks were for many years the source that never let me down, 101 Cookbooks has become that place in recent times so I have high hopes for the cherry ice cream, although I have not yet decided which recipe to try. The definition for our perfect ice cream concoction is different than our definition for chocolate chip cookies….it is most everything we try that starts with Vanillia Ice Cream and moves on from there.
If You Need Another Reason To Love Blogs
Well, I was all ready planning on homemade ice cream to complete our 4Th of July dinner but was still trying to decide on a flavor. The ice cream maker belongs to my son and for several weeks we have been talking about getting it out and cranking it up…..since he has been preoccupied with his snow cone maker lately, it has really been me talking about it and him shaking his head in disinterested agreement versus the constant reminders to get on it Mom signaling real interest. However, we have adult guests coming over for dinner and I’m thinkin’ ice cream….the kids can try the new root beer flavor snow cone syrup
So…as I perused my Blogline feeds I noticed that Diva Marketing had a post entitled Ice Cream which was raving about a certain ice cream recipe that was available at the Amateur Gourmet. The picture of the concoction was enough to convince me of what we would be having post fireworks tonight.
So, Happy 4Th….I am off to the store (for the 92ND time today). This recipe has our name all over it! Thanks Diva and Amateur Gourmet!
Women Owned Business
Today’s WSJ StartupJournal notes that Sheri Redstone, 51 is expected to be named CEO of Viacom in an article entitled Biz Talent May Blossom After Kids Are Raised. Ms. Redstone was a stay at home Mom until she divorced and her father dissuaded her from getting a social work degree and convinced her to join the family business. The family business was Viacom, and Ms. Redstone’s father is of course Sumner Redstone. Although this isn’t the midlife career path most of us can count on, nonetheless the article is making the point that Ms. Redstone did not discover her business acumen until midlife.
The article notes that there are 10.6mm women owned businesses today employing 19mm women and that 2 out of 3 new businesses being launched are owned by women. There are a number of interesting blogs/blawgs being written by women business owners and work at home Moms such as, Build a Better Blog, Bad Mother, Midlife Mama, My Shingle with an interesting post here today, Shortcuts So You Can Benefit From Blogs, Deborah’s Proposal Writing Blog, Small Business Trends, who’s most recent post highlights another woman owned business owner at Small Biz Sense and notes her inspirational post about Finding Someone to Help when we are stuck. There are many many others. Do you have a favorite?
Easy Bake Weblogs - small business blogging - internet marketing � Andy Profiled on Lipsticking Blog
Link: Easy Bake Weblogs - small business blogging - Andy Wibbels Profiled on Lipsticking Blog.
Great interview on Lipsticking with Andy Wibbels, whose courses I can personally endorse as the greatest! Also, Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff from Build a Better Blog System hosted a call on June 1st with Yvonne DiVita from Lipsticking on marketing to women online as part of their Conversations with Experts series
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