Back from Jamrock

I’m back from a week in beautiful Jamaica. It was for my honeymoon and we stayed at the Sandals Grande Ocho Rios. This was the first time I’d been to a Sandals resort and I can now see why they’re one of the leaders in the hotel chain business.

They run a really tight ship in terms of marketing and generating revenue. The biggest thing I noticed was all the ‘value added’ they give you. Before you book the vacation, they heavily promote that the scuba diving is free and that they have an extensive list of high quality restaurants. But once you arrive, they keep the value added going. Our suite was upgraded to an oceanfront suite and the next day we received a letter with a $250 credit for the spa, gift shop, etc. A few days later, we came back to our room to find a nice fruit and cheese plate, with a letter asking if everything has been alright. It’s little touches like this that make you feel like a VIP.

But it’s not all just customer service. The $250 credit encourages you to spend much more than that. And with the prices of things there, it’s very easy. But you are less likely to complain about the prices when you have a credit.

Similarly, they take your name and room number for virtually everything that you do. The restaurants you eat at, the activities you participate in, the things you buy. They have a strong retention tool in place (a points system, essentially) and all of this feeds into that. So because I play volleyball, I get 250 pts and when I get to 25,000, I get a free trip out of it.

I realize this stuff isn’t particularly new or different. But that’s sort of the point. It’s a consistent and simple level of customer service and retention that serves it’s purpose. Ultimately, we felt a little pampered, we felt like they cared about our experience and we felt like they want us back. And it’s that stuff that we will remember much more than the size of the pool or the nightly entertainment (which was also fantastic, by the way).

Monday Memo

What youtube clip I’m watching: this is an incredible goal.  You have to wait until the replays start up about a minute in, but this is already a goal of the year candidate.

What’s making me laugh: I already talked about these guys, but in case you missed it, check out Stop Podcasting Yourself.  I’ve caught myself a few times laughing out loud while at the gym listening to these guys.

What’s making me laugh, part 2: Check out this clip from the German Bundesliga – nice way to get the crowd going!

What I’m reading: there’s a nice article written by Dave Clark on Sounder at Heart about the importance of supporter groups in soccer.  Building supporter groups is a major project of mine and I look to TFC, DC United and Seattle as examples of teams doing it right.

Top 10 oddball foosball tables

What would a blog entitled ‘Will Work for Foos’ be without the odd foosball link?  Check out these 10 oddball tables.  In fact, I have a much nicer version of #10 on my desk (and I reign supreme on home turf).

PS – why don’t we have a foosball table in the office????

Friday Fantasy Forecast

This week I’m not going to talk about adding players. With the transfer window in full swing, it’s important to sit tight and see how things develop with the premier league teams. You never know when a big addition will ruin your star midfielders early season surge. Of course, if you pick up on any of this ahead of time and make the appropriate roster move, you will be in great shape for the second half.

With that said, it is important to look at trends and there are a number of players you should be considering selling. The main ones reside on the Big 4 clubs. We are entering the most difficult stretch of the season for these clubs. In addition to Premier League matches, they have Champions League and FA Cup ties to deal with. In Manchester United’s case, they also have the Carling Cup – and evidenced by their 1-0 loss to Derby County in the first leg, they will likely have to play more first-teamers than they anticipated back at Old Trafford.

If that isn’t enough, World Cup qualifying is set to resume in a few weeks. So with all these matches coming up, the Big 4 suffer the most, as they are most likely to advance far into the Champions League and FA Cup and they likely have more players on national teams. Other squads like Man. City, Villa and Spurs have the UEFA Cup to contend with, so they will succumb to the busy schedule as well.

What all of this means is that substitutions for the key players will come more frequently. Injuries may also creep in. Keepers, defenders and mids are a lot less vulnerable than strikers. Reina, Ferdinand and Lampard are not going to see much time on the sidelines, regardless of the match. But strikers on bigger clubs invariably see their playing time diminished over the next 10 weeks.

The situation is exacerbated when the team has the depth to rotate star forwards. Such is the case with Chelsea and Man U. That’s why I’m not hanging on to Anelka (especially with Drogba playing more lately), Berbetov, Tevez or Rooney. Robhino or Torres have less stellar backups, so their playing time is a little more secure. Regardless, I’m happy to cast them away at this stage and pick up a hot striker for a middling club.

So my advice to you this week: if you have one of those big names on your roster, especially at forward, you want to consider moving them for a player who’s main concern is the Premier League (and maybe an FA Cup match or two).

Attack of the funny

You gotta love the Internet.  Analysts and Marketing gurus praise the web for redefining the producer-consumer relationship.  In cyberspace, consumers have much more opportunity to influence a particular brand or create a new definition entirely.  A place like Wikipedia is the mothership of all of this.   But websites everywhere are putting power in the hands of their consumers and hoping they become evangelists for the product.

And don’t get me wrong – I love this stuff.  Product reviews, peer journalism – it’s all for the betterment of society.  But sometimes things can go awry (by the way, I only started pronouncing ‘awry’ properly like 4 years ago.  Before that I thought it was the same pronunciation as the last name of Robert Horry.  True story).  And while I’m not in favor of hackers messing up websites for the fun of it, some well-played humour can be just what we need to remember not to take everything at face value.

Here’s a great example.  Have a read of this guy’s Amazon book reviews.  Hillarious stuff.  You have to appreciate the effort, wit and intelligence this guy put into these entries.  I only hope Amazon doesn’t take them down, like big wig corporations are apt to do.

The times, they are a changin

Atheism in Advertising

Check out this story from the UK. Atheists, tired of the bombardment of messages from religious groups threatening eternal damnation have launched their own, softer, campaign.

Thank you Apple and Stop Podcasting Yourself

Thanks to a recent development, my iPhone has become even cooler.  And I’m not talking about their removal of DRM from their songs and new pricing model, which is very cool (and long overdue).  You can now surf your iTunes using the 3G network.  Previously, you could only use a wifi connection.  That was fine if you were sitting in a location with a wifi network nearby.  But what if you’re on the bus, or jogging, or riding your bike?  Thanks to this new development, you are always linked in to iTunes.

Now you may ask why it is so important to purchase songs while in transit.  Well, it’s not for that.  The best aspect is the podcasts.  With the 3G network you can listen to any podcast at any time, almost like a radio station.  Best of all, you don’t have the annoying process with regular iTunes of subscribing to the podcast, downloading the latest one, and then syncing your iPod.  As I said, it’s more like a radio station now – just click on the one you want and it starts playing.

The point I’m getting at, is that I now have more opportunity to listen to podcasts, which is a very good thing.  Whether I want to catch up on the news, listen to insightful commentary on popular topics or just hear people goofing around and trying to keep me entertained, I now have this at my fingertips.  The lesson as always?  The novelty of an iPhone never falls off, because it is constantly improving and adding better features and applications.

Which brings me to my podcast du jour.  Stop Podcasting Yourself is produced by a couple of local comedians/actors, Dave Shumka and Graham Clark.  I have a few friends in the stand-up comedy scene, so I’ve probably seen every Vancouver stand-up comedian perform several times over.  Graham Clark in particular is one of my favourites, with a slurred-silly-stoner delivery that I can connect with.

The podcast basically involves the two hosts and a guest in the film/tv/stage/stand-up industry talking for well over an hour.  That the range of topics falls upon tangent after tangent is an understatement.  It’s like taking the game 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon and turning into 73 degrees of pop culture and random thoughts.  In fact, their website that hosts their podcasts give you a good sense of this, as every podcast link is accompanied by a bunch of random images taken from the web that depict the comedic highlights of the show.

Alright, enough explanation.  It’s a good listen, so long as you’re up to this sort of thing.  Amidst the jokes and rambling is a some pretty witty observations about life, pop culture and anything else under the sun.  And the fact that it’s local and I’ve seen these guys around and I don’t have to pretend to understand what I’m hearing makes it a rather joyous experience.  In short, it’s perfect for morning commuting when you just want to hear some entertaining witty rambling to kick start your brain and give you a relatively pleasant outlook on the day ahead.  If you’re a supporter of local comedy like I am, you’ll like Stop Podcasting Yourself.

Monday Memo

Alright, I’m back from my holiday slumber.  No time to ease into things.  We have a big year ahead at Whitecaps Central and things are picking up already.  So as I comb through my emails and voicemails, I’m also checking out various lists.  You see, this is the perfect time of year for list lovers.  Every late December, websites come out with their ‘______ of 200_’ list.   Here’s some of my favs:

Top 10 goals of 2008 – the number one goals does it for me.  Wow, what a shot.  Steven Gerrard-esque.

Top soccer skill moves of 2008 – it’s a bit dizzying to watch, but pretty amazing what these guys can do at such a high speed (even if you have to put up with seeing Ronaldo in here a bunch of times)

Best and worst ads of 2008 – Nice compilation by the Washington Post.  Anyone that knocks Microsoft and praises Apple is alright in my books.

Top 10 media blunders of 2008 – Most of these are political-based and American, but still a fun read for anyone that works in or around the media industry.

Best and worst youth targeted ads – Not a lot here, but I’m glad they give kudos to Obama who really set the bar in youth targeting.