Brian Feener

“Thirty-three million Chevy owners are NASCAR fans – it’s huge. That’s a very important base of customers that we need to continue to appeal to” – General Motors North America VP/Chevrolet Ed Peper, on hoping to continue having a strong presence in NASCAR [SceneDaily.com, via Sports Business Daily]

…or maybe you can just make better cars.

Apple doesn’t do brand placement in television shows - the set designers simply have a loyalty to the product works for them.

Google didn’t take out ads in order to make their search engine become a verb - it just kept working and people started putting into the vernacular.

Asics barely has a presence in television, but I know that I will buy their running shoes forever because they have given me customer service that was respectful and honest, and then delivered on their promise of a great sneaker.

If you have the chance to yell at in a room of people in which every other company has the same opportunity to yell, don’t. It’ll make your voice hoarse and may or may not make an impression on people.

Putting a pretty girl in front of a car makes me notice the pretty girl.

Unless there’s a content-sharing, or link-sharing agreement, I don’t see the point behind the Blogroll.

I do understand that it’s important for your site to be linked from other sites, but I’d rather see my content on a single blog post rather than on the site’s blogroll.

Why?

Because it means that I’ve done something signficant enough that I deserve commentary.  It means that I’ve gotten enough steam behind an idea to keep other people thinking about it.

When I’m on your blogroll under a site that gets 10mm hits a year, I’m literally buried underneath the weight of traffic going to that site and not mine. It does not say anything about why you should go to my site instead.  In fact, if I weren’t me, I wouldn’t go to my site either if it came down to me or Seth Godin’s page.

And what’s it mean to you to be in my blogroll if I’m not getting paid to put you there?  Are Larry and Sergey going to thank me for putting Google in my brianfeener.com blogroll? Probably not (though they seem like pretty grateful individuals).

I’d rather be successful for the fact that I do a good job than be successful on the basis of association.  Those are the movies that tout the “writers of hit comedy X” and the rap albums that have all the “Featuring Lil’ ____” after the song titles.  Maybe it’s a way to build a business, but it’s not a way to build a career.

There’s a new release of my blogging software, Wordpress.  And while I’m yet to install it, I have a couple of comments about it’s release:

1- I got notified EVERYWHERE.  From Facebook, to my RSS feeds, to the notice on the top of my 2.5 dashboard, there is no where I could miss the update.

2 - There’s a layman’s terms blog posting about the new features.  That’s good for me as sometimes I just don’t want to read 30 pages on new features.

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Having the right answer is great, but having the right question is better.

For the people in the back row….

Having the right answer is great, but having the right question is better.

If I have a e-newsletter, what am I trying to achieve with it?  Is that goal even worth achieving?

How many of my customers am I reaching with my television advertisement?

Is it worthwhile to take resources away from our core competency in order to do this side project?

Why am I bothering with a full page ad in this magazine?

What value does this extra feature ad?  What’s the point of adding an extra button if it takes away from the overall look of the machine?

What aspect of this product speaks to its success?

What questions do you ask of your projects/campaigns?  Do they help you get measurable answers?  (Don’t play if you can’t keep score.)

Good post about the difference between getting a pitchman and making an advertisement.

I’d rather spend 20 minutes solving a problem for a customer than $2.3m to air a borderline racist advertisement.

Seems like Careerbuilder knows how to build everyone’s career but their own.

(Do the Chinese have an anti-defamation league? I bet someone’s on the phone right now trying to get one started if there isn’t.)

No, I’m not boosting their “viral marketing” stats by linking to YouTube and I ask that you not visit the site.  For those who haven’t seen it, it’s Pandas speaking in indiscernible, ‘generic’-Asian accents, eating their bamboo supplies, and doing everything but saying “no ticky-no shirty.”

The part that I’m flabbergasted about is that this is an online business using the megaphone of traditional media to try to reach people - - AND! this online business is convinced that the one who yells the loudest will be the one to “win.” How does this keep happening? I expect this sort of stuff from Bob Parsons, but not from you, Matt Ferguson.

I love cooking. I think it’s a great way to be creative, experimental, take calculated risks, and get some complex carbohydrates.

Last night, I was cooking with some onion, garlic, green pepper, and a jalapeño. I was all done and relaxing on the couch, watching t.v. when I casually rubbed my eye.

From Wikipedia:

The jalapeño rates between 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units in heat. Handling fresh jalapeños may cause mild skin irritation in some individuals.

They ain’t kiddin’.

The jalapeño justifies the need for an eye-wash station in every kitchen. In speaking with my roommate, he said, “Yeah, you maced yourself.”

We can all learn one two lessons about marketing and business from this event:

1. Just because you’re done, it doesn’t mean your audience is. What promotion, advertising campaign, or “viral” marketing campaign did your company run that is no longer updating its website? Remember Terry Tate, from the old Reebok campaign? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzToNo7A-94] The URL at the end of the ad http://www.reebok.com/terrytate is now a 400 error. When will WhopperFreakout.com stop being updated?
2. Wear latex gloves when handling hot peppers.