Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

Super Bowl Poll Proves Point

A Harris Online Poll, whose results were published in WSJ today, says that 65% of adults polled planned to watch the Super Bowl.

Of those who planned to watch, 90% liked the commercials.

So, we aren't the only party who stops everything for the commercials.

Abnu from Wordlab commented on the orginal post that some TV exec should apply the same principle to the Oscars. You have an incredible worldwide audience for the event. Why not cater to marketers and help them launch products and ad campaigns?

MONDAY! MONDAY! MONDAY!

Have you gotten the idea yet?

The Business Blog Book Tour starts here on Monday. You can find the other tour stops on the top of the sidebar.

In the meantime, go check out startup skills.com. Rich is taking a very "how-to" approach to the blog and is building a great storehouse of content.

NBC's The Apprentice - Episode 4

Score - Women 4 Men 0

The challenge this week was running the Times Square Planet Hollywood Restaurant. Each team ran the establishment for one evening and their revenues were compared to the revenues earned during that evening the prior year. The women's team raised revenues 31.3% ($16537 vs. $12592) on the first night. On the second night, the men only raised them 6.8% ($14069 vs. $13186).

This week's lessons were subtle, but important:

1. Don't Sell a False Bill of Goods - Kwame signing Planet Hollywood basketballs was not ethical. I think the scene was edited to make the situation gray rather than the black and white that it was. I am with Nick on that one. Troy moves down a notch in my book.


2. Sex Sells, but Only So Much - The PH Shooter Girls seemed to move a lot of drinks on their way to the win, but were later reprimanded by Donald and Carolyn. Carolyn said they would not get a job at Trump acting in that matter.

Buoy got the axe for no great reason. I think Donald took the opportunity to remove someone who he would never hire.

The promo for next week showed a reorganization for the apprentices. If you can keep up with it, it is back on Thursdays now. I think they were getting trounced by Idol and were looking for a safer spot. I wouldn't think going against CSI would be any better. You can also catch reruns on CNBC.

Business Blog Book Tour - 5 Days Away!

Since the BBBT is going to be talking a lot about small business, I thought I would share a recent decision.

Two and a half years ago, I joined our family business, one that my father started 22 years ago. I had worked for GE since graduating from college and decided I needed to go a different direction.

The business is a sheet metal fabrication shop that my dad built from nothing. It is small with only two or three employees, depending on volume. The niche for the company is short run production, specializing in one piece to a couple thousand pieces.

I joined the business knowing I would have to grow sales. The business was small and fixed costs made up a large percentage of our cost structure. A small change in sales would bring a large portion of those additional dollars to the bottom line.

We worked with existing customers increase share. The company started offering a wide range of products through partnering with other firms. We ran a successful direct marketing campaign and acquired a number of new customers.

Even with the success, we couldn't move the sales number much. Whatever growth we got was offset by softness in the existing customer base. I could give a lot of theories on why we couldn't get the growth, but I am not sure I will ever know exactly.

Two weeks ago, I decided it was time to move on. The business is better than when I came, but not good enough for me to stay. I am going to be phase myself out over the next month. My dad is going to keep doing it as he always has.

My new mission: stay home and take care of our 11 month old son.

New PR Tool: Sex Tapes

Driving home from work last night, I heard a radio advertisement for Fox's "A Simple Life". This is the reality show that puts Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton on a farm in Arkansas. If you haven't seen it, I guess you would call it Park Avenue meets dirt road.

The ad called it "The Lost Episode" and said, "They had a tape of never before seen footage of Nicole and Paris...[insert record scratching]...Not that kind of tape."

Enter the latest tool for public relations - sex tapes. Paris Hilton's tape surfaced just prior to "A Simple Life" hitting the airwaves. I thought it could be a coincidence, but with Fox now referencing it in their commericials, it was clearly a PR tool.

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba of Creating Customer Evangelists have as one of their six tenets - Napsterize Your Knowledge. This from their Discussion Guide:

[Companies] who spread this Napsterized knowledge quickly and efficiently to their own networks, thereby building more loyalty with existing customers and increasing the company's pool of prospects. [pg9]

I may be stretching their definition of "knowledge". In this case, the images and the idea of Paris became Napsterized. The idea was virusworthy because people are fascinated with the Rich and people are even more fascinated with sex tapes.

Business Blog Book Tour - 7 days away!

We will be starting the Business Blog Book Tour here at A Penny For... next Monday.

I am going to post some "start your own business" material this week as lead-in to Barry Moltz's "You Need to Be A Little Crazy"

I want to start with Loic Le Meur's series on how to start and grow your own business. I orginally saw it at Joi Ito and Jeremy at Ensight linked to it a couple of months ago.

1. The Idea Has No Value - Only Execution Counts
2. Find the Best People and Trusy Them
3. Work Long Term Rather Than Short Term
4. Respect and Talk to Your Competitors
5. Raise Funds or Not?
6. Networking is Key

In December, Loic posted an entry in December with a Table of Contents and ideas for additional columns.

Check it out!

The capitalists' carnival

Check out the Carnival of The Capitialists at Winds of Change.

Always good stuff!

Jack's Four E's

Jack Welch wrote an editorial that appeared in today's WSJ. He talked about the important characteristics of leadership and applied them to the Democratic presidential candidates. Barry at The Big Picture has already written a great summary of the article and pulled out the interesting material on leadership.

I spent seven years working for GE. I joined the company right out of college and spent the first two years in one of their leadership training programs. I spent multiple weeks at the corporate training center in New York listening to Havard business professors and GE executives. I spent a year in classes at the work site talking about everything from hiring to team building to performance assessment. I was also put into situations early on that tested those skills. The classes continued with my progression up the management chain.

GE is very committed to building leaders and they are very good at it. Its hard to argue the success of GE leaders inside and outside the company.

I am in the wrong profession

From my 2004 Black Labrador Daily Calendar:

In the 1950's, Lassie's salary was $5000 per week.

That would be approximately $37,400 a week in 2004 dollars.

Souvenirs

I really like the idea behind DiscLive.

This company will drive up a truck to the concert you are holding, hook into your sound board, and record the concert. Nothing special there, but the unique part is they can have CD recordings of the concert available within 5 minutes of its end. Concert-goers can leave with a professionally mastered copy of the show they just saw (they will also provide pre-concert and post-concert sales support).

I think about going to a Barenaked Ladies concert. They are really great and each one is unique. They tell stories of things that happened to them in town. They create these hilarous raps about random events that happen during the concert. They were here in Milwaukee in December. I would have loved to have left the concert with a recording of it.

Musicians make the majority of their income from performances. I think this would be an outstanding way to increase their revenue stream.