Archive for February, 2007

Why I Hate Art (And How To Sell It)

As a marketer and copywriter, I hate art.
Why? Because usually it has no “real” inherent value when selling it. For instance, here’s a photo I took of a terrible (to my eye) painting from the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art last week:

At our local street fair, they sell paintings literally created by chimpanzees that [...]

Becoming More Dependent On Internet

I just got back from a vacation trip, and my hotel’s wireless Internet router was broken - So I essentially had no Internet access for several days. Blech.
From a business standpoint it didn’t really matter, I’m no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of my business, but it’s a strong reminder of the growing [...]

The Danger Of Giving Stuff Away Free

The word “free” is claimed to be the most powerful word in the English language. People love free stuff. The bad news is that they don’t assign much value to stuff they get for free either.
Case In Point:
A couple years ago I wrote a very specific, detailed report on how to take advantage of a [...]

Either Embrace Technology Or Step Aside

I was reading reviews on a music software program that lets you correct vocal mistakes through pitch and timing correction, and I had to laugh at some of the defensive comments given by some people, like:
Evil! This is evil. I say that as a trained vocalist. If you can’t sing in tune [...]

Tim Gross Is Irritating To Hang Out With

OK, so apparently I’m a little irritating to hang out with because I can’t help pointing out the bad, ineffective marketing and advertising I see all around me.
Whether it’s television commercials, mailers, marketing inside/outside a store, billboards, etc., bad ads drives me crazy, and I can’t help pointing out these marketing mistakes to my friends [...]

The Cause Of The Death Of Television: Suicide

I don’t usually watch T.V. in the morning but I flipped on The Today Show while drinking coffee today. They took a commercial break at 7:49 a.m., at 7:57 NBC did a 60-second news update, and then more commercials until 8:00 a.m.
7 1/2 minutes of commercials, 1 minute of news,
then 2 more minutes of commercials
Television [...]

New Free WordTracker Tool To Find Most-Searched Headlines

Are you familiar with WordTracker? It tracks how often words are searched for, which is very valuable information if you’re trying to get be found in the search engines for the most important related keywords to your industry.
They now offer Free Keyword Suggestion Tool in addition to their paid services which does quite a lot. [...]

American Idol Worst Auditions & Rejects: Being Overconfident

If you watch the American Idol preliminary auditions where they trot out the worst, most self-deluded, pathetic “singers” the country has to offer, you know how bad it is. It’s painful, laughable, sad, and scary.
I don’t mean the bad singing part (the world is full of terrible singers), I mean the level of self-deception that’s [...]