Bringing together two of Seattle’s best brands…
Combining two local brands that a person loves does not happen very often. There is the Pyramid Brewery across the street from Safeco (I love the Mariners not the insurance company), but I haven’t been able to buy a Venti Starbucks Americano while shopping for jeans inside Nordstrom yet. Come September though two brands that I’ve been a fan of for many years will combine forces and offer something unique for each company.
Jones Soda won the rights to pour and sell their beverages inside of Qwest field, home of my favorite NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks. This is a huge deal. Jones is the first non Pepsi or Coke soda maker to earn the rights to pour their drinks at a NFL stadium. A 90 person company is taking out two companies that combined run almost all soda fountains in professional and collegiate sports. I don’t drink pop very often, but I will at the next Seahawks game I can guarantee you that. On top of the fountain drinks Jones will also be selling plastic bottles with pictures of the Seahawks and their fans inside the stadium and will print these same pictures on their widely distributed glass bottles as well.
I think this is a real win-win for both parties involved. The Seahawks get a unique product on the market and in their stadium which will help create an even better gameday experience. Jones will get the publicity, which is already HUGE for this decision, and will also be exposing their product to a potential 70,000+ people ten weekends a year on top of all the people who hear the news stories. Also, they’re both Seattle companies so all the better.
Google’s new look?
It’s weird to see something that is so familiar change, even subtly. All the Google pages (search, results, gmail, video, igoogle, etc.) have had a slight change to their look and feel. I think it’s for the better, but it’s just weird to look at.
What do you think of the changes? Did you even notice before I said anything?
Blog rumors: Now influencing market caps by $4B within 6 minutes
Today something amazing happened in the blogosphere. A rumor, started from a hoax email, drastically influenced the stock prices of one of the hottest performing stocks over the past few years AAPL. Apple’s stock dipped by 5% after Engadget reported that Apple’s hot new phone and their much anticipated new operating system would delayed significantly. The stock rebounded after the story was proven to be a hoax, but the activity during the dip was HUGE. I wonder who benefited from this activity, and I’m sure the SEC is wondering as well.
A few months ago the WSJ reported a story about Yahoo potentially losing a partnership deal with a cable provider. What happened? Their stock took a huge hit. I wasn’t surprised, this is the Wall Street Journal reporting the story, one of the most respected national newspapers with a heavy investor following.
Today though a blog that writes about gadgets proved it can now pull as much weight as the Wall Street Journal. Crazy.
Is Podcasting dead?
It seems like last year that Podcasting was the next great thing, the Twitter of last year (but without the crazy growth, just the hype). We are part of a web where you never know what the next thing as opposed to the next flame is. Podcasting provides(d) a way for people to host their own radio (or tv show) and push it out to everyone via the internet and iTunes. There are some great podcasts out there, but I’m not sure how many there can be, especially moving forward.
We’re moving to a more and more personalized web experience. That is what poscasting was supposed to give us, a radio show, that I can listen to, when I want to listen to it, about things I want to listen to. The problem here is time. Podcasts take time to listen to and time to create. Yes, I listen to tech podcasts, marketing podcasts, magazine podcasts, business podcasts, but they just take to long to listen to. I may listen to them in the background, but I only take away a few key points from every hour of content that I listen to. Is this the end of podcasting or am I just to picky?
Could we create more personalized podcasts? Podcasts that are relevant to your school or your neighborhood? Relevant to your business, your company, or your specific vertical (HR, marketing for X, sales for Y)? I don’t know, but I think if podcasting wants to become a bigger medium we need more segmentation and shorter shows. Is there a group out there that will create even smaller niche podcasts, and could it be sustainable at all? If podcasting continues in it’s current form I see it fading to black (does that work for an audio analogy?).
“You’re a Nothing Unless Your Name Googles Well”
It’s a headline from today’s Wall Street Journal. The story talks about a family who literally Googled potential kid names so that there kid Kohler Wilson would show up high in Google results. Wow, that’s going far.
It did get me thinking that I should start blogging some more so that when my name is Googled I show up as a “somebody” with some content on my page. I’m making no promises that this will be a long lasting trend as I am feeling so busy lately, but I will try to write some thoughts from time to time on this site.
I’ll try to keep my thoughts to industries and trends that I know, sports, tech, commerce, etc. Hope you “all” (hi mom and dad) enjoy.
About Otis
I live in Seattle, Washington. I am passionate about working with and interacting with others. My work experience includes marketing, account management, and sales.
I am a huge sports fan who on top of cheering for my favorite teams (Go Beavs!) also appreciates coaching strategy, as well as the marketing behind teams, players, and events.
Personally, I enjoys exploring new cities and areas (particularly small towns) and getting outside and playing.