Marketing Magic to a Thumping Beat.

As talk of economic recessionary doom and gloom swirls around our businesses and everywhere we turn companies are cutting back, laying off workers and downsizing it is at these times we need to learn the lessons business history has taught us. Back in the great depression Proctor and Gamble marketed its “Ivory Soap” and made it a household staple dwarfing it’s rivals for decades afterwards. As the 1990’s recession griped the USA, computer-chip maker Intel launched it’s famous “Intel Inside” campaign featuring the multi-coloured hazard-suited dancing tech nerds pushing back it’s competitors and increasing its market share to the point where it dominates the entire sector today. As marketers, we need to remind our CEO’s of these lessons and encourage them to go against the grain, Zig while other’s Zag, as Marty Neumeier author of ZAG teaches us and have the courage to invest in marketing rather than cutting it. Now is the time to break out those Superman tights boys and be a superhero. T...

Is your Corporate Identity bland, derivative, dated, gimmicky or confused? You certainly are not alone. Many local companies and some national ones too, have corporate identifiers that reflect poorly on them and the people who work there. Asking your marketing person to design a new corporate identity on their PC using an off the shelf program like MS Publisher is most companies first mistake. They think, “How hard can it be?” Well it may be one of the hardest tasks you will undertake.   Let’s take a look at what a good logo needs to do and maybe you’ll see why this part of your marketing strategy deserves more of your attention and budget. A great logo needs to be unique. Using a variation of the Nike swoosh, the Apple apple, or the Pepsi beach ball won’t set you apart and may land you in court. You want something original, something that evokes a positive image of your company. This includes the photos, fonts and graphics. Be original. Keep it Simple. ...

Maturity in most musical genres signals the coming of the end, but in the blues it signals a new period of growth bringing an hard-won understanding that less-is-more and that speaking truth with wisdom and conviction is never wrong. On Rooftops and Satellites Colin James teams up with roots-rocker Tom Wilson to write and delivers a tight, cocky set of accessible and riveting tunes. “Johnny Coolman” struts while “More Than You Needed” smolders. Colin has always been a great guitar player but it is here where you really find the wellspring of his talent. Simple guitar lines, each with their own story to tell, are executed with brevity and power. Colin’s voice too has gained strength and range.

Gather brothers and sisters hear the word of the Reverend Horton Heat. Back with another shot of rockabilly/country-fried twang the good reverend brings tales of skirt chasin’, death metal guys, the rural point of view, crazy ex-boyfriends and cautionary tales of taking your child to the liquor store. The playing is frantic, fast, and fermented in reverb. Paul Simmons simple yet fabulous drumming propels the Heat to new heights adding hilarity and accenting Jim Heath’s aways-worthy-of-a-listen lyrics. If you like to have fun with your music add these low-brow hymns to your Sunday mornings

Gritty and down right dirty Rich Hope and his Evil Doers burn down the house on his second release Is Gonna Whip It On Ya. Rich wounds a few amplifiers in the making of this record crushing and twisting a few voice coils as he looks for his demented version of the distorted guitar. Drawing inspiration from 50’s rockers like Bo Diddley and blues players like Howling Wolf Hope brings renewal and, dare I say it…, hope to that simple bashing blues style that comes from playing hard until there is blood mixed with your whiskey and beer chaser.

The mix tape, is there anything more personal than selecting tracks for someone you think they will like? You try to be cool and find stuff they won’t have heard, you want killer tracks that will have them air drumming in the car. Maybe it’s a disc for your girlfriend or a buddy who’s living in another town there’s a lot to consider, time must be invested, and it has to be just right. So, maybe its been a while since you made one, maybe you need a couple of great ideas, maybe a little inspiration…listen to a few of these diverse tracks, you’re sure to find something here that will get your musical motor running. The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen abound and no one in The Gaslight Anthem camp is rushing to douse the flames. This New Jersey quartet puts a punk swagger on the Boss’s signature sound. Fu Manchu – Written in Stone Monster guitars lay down a huge pounding beat that feels as good as it sounds. This is the most under-rated heavy band on the pla...

Great songs never hurt and DMB has a plethora on this disc. But for me DMB is peering through shuttered fingers at this musical high wire act. Starting with drummer Carter Beauford and his masterful hi-hat off beats and crazy-assed fills. Stefan Lessard is the twine that binds each song carefully together and gives Carter the freedom to move around the time signatures. Lerio Moore’s sax adds jazz solos and a funk foundation to the mix. Boyd Tinsley is the tinderbox setting tunes ablaze with his sparkling violin solos. Then there is the enigmatic Dave Matthews, acoustic guitar basher, stunning lyricist and one of rock’s premier emotive singers. Experienced, inspired, staggering, swaggering and delicious all fit. Immigrate into this GrooGrux Kingdom and bask in its glory.

Already Free is a slow burn, wisps of smoke an early indication of the flames just below the surface. Smoldering liquid notes seep out of Truck’s flame red Gibson SG sustaining and vibrating with intensity and heat. This is blues old school with it’s gospel and country roots poking through the tangle of bass, drums, B3 organ and its swampy surface. Trucks holds back some powerful guitar voodoo refusing to release the fury opting instead for that laidback feel that few but the most talented (BB King, Bonnie Raitt or John Hammond) can pull off. Let the new guitar stars go for the sky, Trucks is happy digging in and keeping it grounded.

Most records coming from Red House records in St. Paul MN fit into the earnest folksy singer songwriter mold and frankly Danny Schmidt is yet another in this long, long line. His voice is unremarkable and the songs sadly predictable. There is nothing terribly bad about this record it’s just the bland sameness that is numbing. Songs like Grandpa Built Bridges and Oh Bally Ho left me sleepy and bored. Schmidt manages to lower the bar rather than raise it. Take a pass.

Ok, who remembers Styx’s Mr. Roboto? I guarantee Ursula 1000’s Alex Gimeno does. Mystic mines that 70’s and 80’s spacey, trippy, funky place and gives us as much electronica fun as we can handle. One can only hope that some radio maverick picks up on Rocket and makes it the summer hit-single it so deserves to be. Gimeno’s glam, hip-hop and funk beats are infectious and wrap around these sugar coated melodies perfectly. Smile, it is finally summer in Winnipeg and Ursula 1000 has delivered your 2009 soundtrack.

We have all heard of GPS or Global Positioning System but how many of us understand what it is and how it works? Without getting to geeky let’s take a little look and then discuss how this technology will soon change the way we navigate, make photos and keep track of our kids. The U.S. Military developed a system of 24 orbiting satellites that orbit the earth twice each day on a preset orbit. At any one time, from any position on the globe, 4 of these satellites are above the horizon. Your GPS receiver locates them and using a mathematical principle called “Trilateration” pinpoints your location. It does this by establishing how physically far you are from any three of the four visible orbiting satellites. Each satellite sends out a low power high frequency radio signal. Buy comparing how long these signals take to arrive the GPS can calculate within feet, where on the globe you must be. Throwing in the 4th satellite improves the accuracy. Many devices are making use of GPS. We’ve all...

In my business, I talk with big and small clients all the time about their marketing and advertising efforts and specifically their websites. I am often surprised that a minority of these otherwise perfectly capable business people have trusted their website to the kid down the street, a brother-in-law or the cheapest developer they could find. The results have ranged from frustration to unmitigated disaster. I have heard of major corporations being held captive as the rights to their URL’s are owned by their web development company, that the software used to create their site was proprietary and can’t be moved, updated or repaired, that the servers hosting their site mysteriously vanished taking their site down with them or that the Brother-in-law, who has taken over two years to produce three pages, has found a new job and can’t finish their site. Would you trust your inventory control system or POS to anyone other than a professional, what about your accounting or sales management?...

More and more folks are buying Apple laptops as stats from the end of 2008 indicate. Apple’s laptop fleet including the MacBook, MacBook Pro 15” and 17” and the thinnest and lightest laptop the MacBook Air have vaulted into 3rd place behind corporate giants Dell and HP. Apple commands 17.6% of the market gaining 2.2% in 2008 while most of the rest of the industry struggled to maintain their existing share. A big reason for Apple’s success has been it’s bundled iLife software package purchasers receive free with the purchase of their laptop. There are five applications in the iLife suite iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, iWeb and iDVD. iMovie lets you import video footage from your camcorder and create mini movies on your Mac. Garageband is a music creation program that is addictive and fun even for those who don’t play a real instrument. iWeb helps you create your own website and iDVD helps you create DVD’s in minutes. But it is iPhoto I want to concentrate on today. iPhoto all by itself is...

If you drive a vehicle that’s a few years old and you’re thinking about looking for a new one you will certainly be amazed at the newest and latest electronic toys to be found in the modern auto cabin. High-end Audi’s, Lexus and BMW’s boast a host of jaw dropping technology that makes your next ride safer, sound better and provide more information than ever before. Today’s vehicles only need the key to be in your pocket as you approach to unlock and start your vehicle. There is no longer a need to actually insert the key into the ignition any longer. Sports cars now come with big buttons you can push to start the engine once they have sensed the key on your person. Tiny sensors in the bumpers warn you with an audio sound or a light on the dash or rearview mirror when you are about to back up into an obstacle and some will apply the brakes before impact. There is even a system that will parallel park your vehicle for you without any input from you other than turning it on. Just take you...

Have you ever been put in charge of arranging a meeting, conference, event or concert where you where expected to provide some sort of audio amplification? Most of us in the corporate world reach for the phone book and get in touch with our favourite meeting planner or audio/visual company who look after all the technical details and equipment for us. If you volunteer or sit on the board of a small charity with limited funds this may not be an option. I recently had this thrust on me and I had to rent a public address system and operate it myself. I used to play in bands and had some exposure to sound reinforcement, but had not touched a board in many years. Here’s how I approached this challenge. I knew I needed some microphones, a mixing board, amplification and speakers. I also knew that A/V firms charge a small fortune for their rentals so taking the DIY route I headed over to Long & McQuade, a local music store that rents audio gear to musicians who know how to watch their pen...

Websites are becoming as commonplace as the business card and are no longer the exclusive domain of those with deep pockets or the corporate world. Not-for-profits, associations, special interests, and the average person are all online looking to advance their interests. In 2008 according to the International Telecommunication Union 84.3% of Canadians use the Internet regularly. Canada is right at the top of the list of countries whose population has access to high-speed connectivity. Online shopping has felt the economic downturn but expectations of growth continue. With millions of web sites all struggling to be seen, how can you ensure your site is noticed? My clients ask me this question weekly and there is no single answer. Google is still the world’s largest and most used search engine and the way it finds, ranks and displays its search results is a closely guarded secret and one that is forever being refined and modified. There are a series of things you can do to ensure your s...

Many of us are claiming our little corner of the internet, launching a website for our company or our pleasure. Over the last dozen years I have helped many clients launch their website and I have worked hard to ensure they achieve their ambitions. Along the way I have learned a few things I thought I might share. The first thing to remember is to keep it simple. Winking, blinking and moving icons should be avoided at all cost. Clutter only confuses the visitor so use the KISS Rule liberally. Use images and graphics keep text to a minimum they won’t read it anyway. Hire a designer and don’t do it yourself. The navigation needs to be intuitive and the site needs to look great when you are out there competing with the whole world for attention. Code is king. Elegant web designers adhere rigidly to the clearly established web coding principles and standards, your web savvy nephew may not. Why should you care? Because Google looks for properly coded sites and places them higher in the rank...

For the last few years Apple’s GarageBand application has allowed musicians to plug in their keyboards or electric guitars, process the sound and record their ideas on their Macintosh computers. Because it comes free on every new Mac as part of the iLife suite (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand) it has gained a foothold with professional musicians looking for an easy way to record to basement musician wannabes who enjoy being mad scientists and creating everything from jingles and podcasts to rough garage band demos to ringtones. Apple’s latest version of GarageBand in iLife ’09 has a very interesting addition allowing you to learn to play a real instrument like a guitar or piano. Both my kids, my wife and I have all taken music lessons over the last few years and I have found that while some teachers are outstanding there are others who give you the distinct impression that they are only looking to make a little extra spending money. There seems to be no standards and what pr...

Twitter, heard of it? No, it’s not the return of the local Robins or Blue Jays to your back yard, although I can’t wait for that to happen, it’s a software program designed to stay in touch with friends and family. It is really a micro-blogging site that is restricted to 140 characters that you can use from a cellphone or via your favourite instant message client. If you want to have a look, surf over to www.twitter.com where you will find a simple, pretty site with a great big green button inviting you to “Join the Conversation”. Punch the button and fill out a few questions. Now you need to add the folks you want to communicate with. You can search for those who are already Twitter members by typing their name or invite them to join via email by typing in their email addresses separated by commas into the box provided. Now sit back and wait for a few friends to reply to your invitation. Once you have a little group to talk with you can post your first update. Select the “home” link a...

Digital cameras have made sharing photos by email simple. But if you have more than a couple of images to show email has its limitations. I don’t know how many times I have received a message that my email box is full only to discover that one of my clients has flooded it with a couple of huge image files. I have also started my day wading through 20 emails with one or two emailed images attached to each one. There are better ways to share your photos without the email problems. Online services like FLICKR offer shutterbugs the perfect place to upload your vacation photos and share them with family and friends around the world. You can find FLICKR at www.flickr.com and at the top right is your create an account button. The next page has a bunch of stuff but really you only need the top bar of navigation. Select the YOU button and create a profile for yourself. You’ll need to set your privacy levels and add your “Buddy Icon” which will be your identifier in the world of FLICKR. You can ...

Getting great digital shots requires a bit of thought and a couple of useful gadgets so let’s take a look which camera features will take your photographs to the next level. Cameras The MEGA PIXEL Digital photography continues to advance but many consumers have become fixated on the mighty pixel. Mega Pixels seems to be the biggest concern and really if your camera delivers 7 mega pixels or better you have more than enough for most applications. Unless you plan on printing huge poster sized photos, most digital cameras now provide enough pixels to produce great detail and sharpness. Really the cameras digital sensor’s physical size and it’s level of “noise” should be a bigger concern than its mega pixels because the larger the sensor the more light it can process and the better its quality the lower the noise or “fuzziness” it will produce in your images when stressed with low light situations or very fast shutter speeds. DIGITAL ZOOMS Many digital cameras offer optical zooms augmented...

Digital storage is exploding. Our computers are packed with photographs, music, movies and email. Consumers are moving away from their desktops with huge hard drives to smaller, lighter laptops with much less storage capacity. These intensive libraries require back-up and an external hard drive is an obvious solution. We discussed back-ups in these pages before so all I will say is please back-up your files and ensure your data remains secure and intact. In this weeks column I want to talk about using an external hard drive as a storage location for your media files. Recently Apple released the new iLife 09 software package with new versions of iPhoto, and iMovie. As I played with these new versions I realized that our families photo collection was spread over two or three computers making finding the photos we wanted to find more difficult. I have an external hard drive kicking around that I used to use as a back-up disc and decided to put it back into service as my photo storage driv...

Recently Marketing Magazine published a survey of where Canadian advertisers are spending their advertising dollars in 2007. The three Prairie Provinces account for 17.6% of the ad dollars spent in the country that’s 381.2 million out of the total pot of 2.2 billion. Canadian advertisers spend: 23.2% on Television spots 18.1% on Daily Newspaper ads 11.9% sending catalogues and direct mail 10.3% is invested in radio ads 9.3% goes into Yellow page ads 8.7% heads off into internet 5.1% ends up in Magazines 2.9% is sent outdoors 10.5% goes into the Misc. category TV advertising grew only by 7.5% in 2007 over 2006 The internet saw big gains scoring a 37.9% increase Newspapers held their own dropping just 2.4%. Radio went up 5.7%. Outdoor rose by 14.1%. If you are not investing 1 to 3 percent of your gross sales or are wondering what the perfect mix is for your business please call me. I can help you invest your marketing dollars where they will make you money.

In Help Me Over Teresa Levasseur sings that she is looking music that she “wants to dance to” and Low Fidelity certainly has more than it’s share of smoky dancehall numbers. Her voice is strong, yet feminine, and can hold it’s own in this bluesy mix of Toronto’s finest. Paul Reddick’s distinctive electric harp work, Derek Downham’s killer keys and David Gavan Baxter and Sean Cotton’s tasty guitar stand out for me. Low Fidelity begins with a horn blast that will part your hair and plays Treasa’s vocal scolding off Paul’s back talking harp. Yum!

Dido likes to offset her delicate, fragile voice and strummy acoustic guitar with big bass, synth and drum lines that create a sonic depth to her rather sparse recordings. All the songs on Safe Trip Home keep the beats-per-minute safely under 80. Loss of love and heartbreak are familiar themes and Dido is back with a pile more. Safe Trip Home is just that, a safe journey that does little to advance Dido’s diming career. She needs to get out of bed and do something exciting.

Glasgow band Travis is back with a new disc of rock lite singles. Guitar or piano driven with moody and earnest lyrics Travis has scored repeated hits in the UK. Ode to J. Smith is a bit edgier than some of their previous efforts, but still is closer to Dido than Oasis but is a step in the right direction. Guitarist Andy Dunlop carries most of the load and some of his work, especially the choppy, overdriven solo on Last Words, is worth a listen. Travis seems to be taking few risks and going with what got them success in the past. If you like Snow Patrol, Dido or Coldplay you’ll like most of Ode to J. Smith.

Any great music collection has to have a corner dedicated to the Blues. There’s electric blues, acoustic blues, Chicago, Delta and Southern blues but regardless of the label all blues begins in the southern USA and so will we. Blind Lemon Jefferson known as the “Father of the Texas Blues” back in the 1920’s had a high-pitched voice and picked a flat top acoustic. Pick-up “Black Snake Moan” for a taste of this pioneer. Robert Johnson’s legend has him at a dusty rural crossroads in Mississippi where he met the devil and traded his 27-year-old soul for blues fame. Try “Sweet Home Chicago” for a sample of his Delta Blues percussive acoustic style. Bessie Smith was one of the earliest women to record the blues and “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” makes me blush, even 80 years later. By the 1950’s the Blues was moving from the rural south to the urban north and artists like Sonny Boy Williamson 1 (aka: John Lee Curtis Williamson “Good Morning Little School Girl”) who brought the harmonica to...

A new year is always a good time to take stock and make a few resolutions that will make your life easier, more organized or enhance your skills. Let’s look at a few ideas you might consider in this a shinny new year. Back-up If you have no back-up system in place yet the new year is a wonderful time to start. You can burn files to CDs or DVDs, make a copy of the files onto a flash or thumb drive, add a separate hard drive dedicated to this purpose or use an online storage site. It does not really matter what you use it just matters that you do it….right now! Clean out the corners If you use a laptop with a smaller hard drive its not a bad idea to have a look at what’s on it that you can chuck or remove to storable media. The biggest space hogs are applications, videos and photos. You can open your Applications folder, video or photo folders and sort by size to see which are taking up the most room. Start a Blog Hey you’ve got opinions and thoughts why not share them online? Blogging i...

Many of us have a digital camera and are perfectly comfortable shooting all our images on the simple, easy and convenient AUTO setting. For 75% of our picture taking needs this setting gives us acceptable results but once in a while our images would improve if we took a little time to discover what the other settings on the dial will do for us. Let’s take a look. I am working with a Canon PowerShot A590 but many of the features we will be taking about will be available on Nikon, Samsung, Pentax, Kodak, Casio, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, and Panasonic point and shoot cameras. Many modern digital cameras have two types of specialized programs Scene Specific and Manual Modes. Scene Specific Scene specific settings like Portrait, Landscape, Night, Kids/Pets, Indoor, Sunset, Snow, or Fireworks. You may have more or fewer of these settings than this, but these are the most common. Each of these settings places a difference emphasis on either the shutter speed (how quickly the lens opens and closes)...