Archive for July, 2010

Beezid.com – A Marketing Review

By now you’ve probably seen at least one commercial for the Beezid online auction company.

The commercials commonly show outstanding deals that people have actually won.  We’re talking about supposedly top quality products being bought for literally pennies on the dollar.  The deals are presented as being that good.

But is this for real, or is Beezid one giant scam?

Let’s take a look at one of their TV commercials and follow that with the company’s website.

A Beezid commercial from October of 2009.  Today’s commercial is very similar.

The main theme of the commercial is scoring outstanding deals for next to nothing.  The phrase “too good to be true” fits this perfectly. Read more…

Last Week of Summer Break

Here in the Atlanta metro area, summer break is nearly finished.

Exactly one week from today is the first day of school — August 5, 2010.

Un-freakin-believable!  It’s still the middle of summer for cryin’ out loud!

This weekend will be busy with the back-to-school shoppers, though it’ll still be another week before people really get back into their routines of living it up on Friday and Saturday night and doing their grocery shopping and unwinding on Sunday afternoon and evening.

Right now the neighborhoods are very quiet.  Nobody hangs out at the swimming pool and the streets are empty.  We are forecast to hit 96 degrees tomorrow and 97 on Saturday, but still, you need to get out there and enjoy these last few days of freedom before it’s back to the daily routine of getting up early and spending all day in various classrooms, only to come home and complete homework and study for the next day. Read more…

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides teaser

Just the other day, the sneak teaser for the new Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides movie was released.

I love it how Captain Jack Sparrow himself tells us about the movie, all while sitting at a table and making his usual drinking references and tales of adventure.

It’s interesting how he claims that the “whisperings and rumors” about undertaking “a voyage to the Fountain of Youth” are not true.  Recent rumors claim otherwise.  Of course, Jack Sparrow is a pirate, so part of what he says cannot be trusted as he would easily mislead others in his own quest for treasure.  He references it again “even if it weren’t not true” and kind of assumes that we probably wouldn’t be interested in such a trip anyway.

No, of course not ;).

Jack Sparrow’s mentioning of zombies, cutthroats and Penelope Cruz just adds to the craze for the next Pirates movie.

The previous Pirates of the Caribbean movies were excellent (with the first one still being the best), and the Magic Kingdom boat rides are still outstanding examples of nearly perfect theme park rides.

It’s going to be a long wait until May 20, 2011.

Back from the Motor City

This past weekend I had the honor of spending a little bit of time in Detroit, Michigan.

Yeah, I’ve heard the jokes and know quite well about the city’s horrendous crime and corruption, but once you get out of the downtown area, things actually get quite nice.  Or at least they were nice and now the nicer areas are a few more miles away.  As the crime expands, many people simply move further away or out of the area entirely.

But let me tell you, being in the state of Michigan from late Spring through early Fall is simply amazing.

From the warm air to boating to cruising the streets to all of the usual summertime and warm weather activities, it’s tough to beat being in Michigan from May through September.  I love it up there this time of year.

One of the cool things about the people, apart from Detroiters being avid sports fans even when the teams have off years (or many years like the Lions), is that in general, they really appreciate the summer.  They are out and about enjoying everything from the local parks and Great Lakes to having BBQs and enjoying ice cream and lots of cold beer.  These are my kind of people.

It’s just a shame dealing with the crime & corruption along with the 8 month event known as winter. Read more…

Primary Election Day for Georgia Governor

At last!

The phone has finally stopped ringing with robocalls from politicians endorsing various candidates and continuing in a massive smear-or-be-smeared campaign!  The silence is wonderful!

But yes, today is primary election day to hopefully determine which of the Democrat and Republican candidates will be facing each other in the election this November.

It’s been assumed by the media and countless online polls that former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes (ousted in the 2002 election by current Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue) will win the Democrat primary as he’s been dominating the recent polls, while the Republican race will most likely have a special runoff election next month.  The general feeling is that the runoff will be between Karen Handel (endorsed by Sarah Palin, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Georgia Representative Tom Price) and either Nathan Deal (endorsed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich), John Oxendine or Eric Johnson. Read more…

EZ Cracker – A Marketing Review

The chicken egg — is it so easy to crack as we would like to believe?

They certainly look small and innocent, but ask anybody inexperienced with them and you may hear horror stories about how impossible they are to break cleanly.  I mean, these people will probably tell you about how nasty it is picking out pieces of shell or crunching on egg shells in their food, gagging on it and probably throwing up all over the kitchen or dining room.

Absolute horror!

Total madness!

One step away from being admitted to the insane asylum!

So is there an easy way for an average person to break an egg without making a total mess and going ballistic?

Why yes, yes there is!  Hooray!

Say hello to the EZ Cracker, a handy device designed specifically to address the problem of cracking eggs. Read more…

Selling the Containers or the Drinks?

1800 Tequila, Miller Lite and Coors Light all have something in common.

Besides making parties and social events more entertaining (I, myself, had a lot of great tasting PBR the other weekend – yeah, I know), all three have been running commercials selling the drinks’ containers rather than the drinks themselves.

Is this the start of another trend with the alcohol companies and various marketing campaigns, or are the companies reaching out in another form of “selling the sizzle and not the steak?”

1800 Tequila:

1800 Tequila shot top commercial

Up first we have one of the recent commercials for 1800 Tequila.  Read more…

Iron Maiden – Satellite 15 . . . The Final Frontier

I just saw the latest Iron Maiden music video, “Satellite 15… The Final Frontier,” part of The Final Frontier album which is due out on August 16, 2010.

All I have to say is wow, what an awesome video!  Space combat, explosions, Eddie, this video is action-packed from start to finish.  If you like movies such as Alien, The Fifth Element and anything with space combat, you’ll probably get a kick out of the movie.  Some of the ideas in it aren’t original, but it’s still a lot of fun.

Iron Maiden – “Satellite 15 . . . The Final Frontier”

I will admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of Iron Maiden throughout their career as a band.  I’ve got nothing against them, it’s just that I never really got into their music.

But now I’m hooked and I’ll be spending more time getting to know their previous music. Read more…

Imperial Stormtroopers in Action

It’s time for a Monday comedy break!

Ask yourself this:  What would the Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars do if they were shrunk to 1/8th of their size and ran around in today’s world?

Where would they go?

What would they eat?

How would they see the world as we know it today?

Wonder no more!  An extremely creative person solved this problem and did a superb job capturing the moments.

Imperial Stormtroopers in action.

Lots of awesome pictures at the above website.

Enjoy!

Total Pillow – A Marketing Review

One of the latest products to hit the as-sold-on-TV market is something called the Total Pillow.

Is this a scam, or does it look like an honest product?  Let’s take a look and see how it’s presented to us consumers.

As it states in the commercial, the Total Pillow is basically a 5-in-1 pillow that can be used in a variety of ways.  Whether people would actually use it that many ways is a different story.  The important thing is that it can be used in a variety of methods, and that alone can be a good selling feature.

The TV commercial starts out by going for people who suffer from neck aches, sore shoulders, or “a throbbing lower back.”  It doesn’t matter how you may have injured yourself, just that you suffer from pains in common areas of your body.  The commercial on the website then jumps to a scene illustrating how a simple adjusting of the neck while sleeping can greatly aid your posture and rid yourself of problems.

Total Pillow – www.totalpillow.com

And just how did that person adjust her neck on the regular pillow?  Did she buy one of those expensive memory foam pillows or mattresses?

Nope.  The Total Pillow can do that and more! Read more…