As you may know, we have a lot of fun buying stock photos to make fun of lazy advertising. These stock photo bits are becoming our Absolut “non campaign” campaign — we don’t really market what we do, aside from sending these bits via email and posting them online every now and then. Anyway, my buddy Adam in LA found this article featuring a rant about a Big Oil campaign coincidentally using the same photo we used to make fun of this concept last winter. Check-out the comments on the blog — some folks have gone to pains to point-out which of these print actors have actually had their faces removed and replaced to represent diversity. Thanks, marketing.
Time was, kids on a ski hill or mountain bike would buy a helmut and attach a small (or sometimes huge) camera to the side with a wad of duct tape. Sometimes they’d balance the lopsided weight of the camera with an actual, real weight on the other side — carrying a literal sack of potatoes while ripping up the mini back bowls of Southern Minnesota. Now, Liquid Image is offering a pair of goggles for about $150 designed to serve this very need with a built-in camera above the nose piece. These goggles, nearly identical to my first pair from 1988, are about two steps away from a built-in blue tooth to answer phone calls or offer a heads-up GPS-generated virtual trail map on the inside of the lens. An alpine version of StreetHawk. No more icy cameras, glove juggling, or sacks of potatoes.
Full disclosure — the photo to the left is not of me. It is a stock photo that I downloaded for the internet, and features actors playing medical professionals and a patient. Yesterday, I had an MRI taken of my wrist — might have broken a bone in my hand. No big deal. A few years ago, after a shoulder break, I had a full-body closed MRI and swore I’d never do it again. So I called Streeterville Open MRI and can honestly say I haven’t had a better customer experience since whenever the last time I ordered shoes at Zappos was. Streeterville gets it right — and for you MRI centers out there (and Doctors, even more) — here are some tips. 1.) Minimal Paperwork. Over the phone, they kept telling me that it’d be easy to sign-in and “just get here 5 minutes early.” I think I signed two forms and the entire registration process took about 45 seconds. 2.) Be nice. Nobody wants to get an MRI, and no Doctor or Nurse wants to call an MRI center to precertify a patient to meet health insurance guidelines. The guys at Streeterville are so nice I might just take them lunch. 3.) Make the MRI easy. My last MRI was at a MRI location via DePaul on North Avenue. Totally sucked for several reasons. Streeterville has comfy beds and I actually took a nap throughout the banging and clanking. 4.) No more tubes. An open MRI lets you look at the wall or the boombox or the flowers on the desk for the full 40 minutes. If you don’t think that’s a huge improvement, spend 40 minutes in a closed MRI tube. 5.) Free Parking. Parking is one of the biggest rackets in the city. After your MRI, Streeterville gives you 3 more hours in the big lot for free. So you can get an MRI and work remotely for 3 hours in the Corner Bakery down the street or just walk around. For free. In the open.
Amidst some company transition and expansion, I’ve taken advantage of some sporadic downtime by watching bits of ski movies online. Ski movies are great: 90-minute music videos interspersed with comedy bits and slow-motion helicopter shots of gorgeous mountain powder. You probably know by now that I’m a huge fan of the uber-popular underground flick “The Blizzard of Ahhh’s.” And what better than a ski movie trailer featuring a remake of Rush’s Tom Sawyer? Well here it is. Bonus points for filming in Colorado.
Everyone’s focusing on first-time homebuyers these days — and for good reason — the $8,000 tax credit expires in a few months and most real estate agents attest that first-time homebuyers are in the housing market’s driver’s seat these days. On this episode of the podcast, I sat down with Matt Cochran at PERL and Regine Norgle at R. Hawthorne Group to talk about seller trends and what sellers are realistically expecting these days. For more podcasts, visit the PERL archives.
As you may know, we have a lot of fun buying stock photos to make fun of lazy advertising. These stock photo bits are becoming our Absolut “non campaign” campaign — we don’t really market what we do, aside from sending these bits via email and posting them online every now and then. Anyway, my buddy Adam in LA found this article featuring a rant about a Big Oil campaign coincidentally using the same photo we used to make fun of this concept last winter. Check-out the comments on the blog — some folks have gone to pains to point-out which of these print actors have actually had their faces removed and replaced to represent diversity. Thanks, marketing.
