Marshall Creative / Multimedia + Marketing + Consulting

Just another example of why we’re living in the future

Sandy Marshall — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:38:45 +0000

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.

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How to make an MRI easy and comfy

Sandy Marshall — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:31:50 +0000

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.

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Your friendly Thursday ski movie trailer

Sandy Marshall — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:30:55 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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PERL Podcast 51 / Seller Trends

Sandy Marshall — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:08:35 +0000

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.

PERL Podcast 51 / Seller Trends

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Happy Tuesday / Progess

Sandy Marshall — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:25:09 +0000

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On the recent trend of transcribing voicemails

Sandy Marshall — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:18:30 +0000

Phonetag.com seems to be sweeping the real estate industry by storm. For the uninitiated, when you leave someone a voice mail who subscribes to this service, you hear a voice say “This message will be transcribed by Phonetag.com. Please speak clearly. (Beep).”The service emails transcriptions of voice mail messages to subscribers as fast as possible. Closed captioned for the “I don’t have the time to actually listen to the message” impaired. (And you know who you are). Sure, this would be great if you can’t take a call in a closing (but hey, when has anyone not taken a call in a closing?) — and I’m sure Phonetag.com is creating jobs — but it needs to calm down a bit and stress quality over quantity. This is a recent Phonetag transcription of a message I left for a client about an event later in March. Word for word. “Hi, How are you? Thanks so much for the call me invite and see that an (anti?). Sounds like a (blah?). Got March 18th in the calendar. I’m 90% confirmed that the secretary of state, make sure that is not something I’m forgetting on, but it sounds totally great and I got a down for a (Martiny?) Parks. Just let me know what time it is and we’ll lock it off. Looking forward to it and have a same task, okay? and I will talk to (Chinel?) if I could.” Now, I’m fairly confident that I speak pretty intelligibly in my voice mail messages, and would invite Phonetag to give itself an overhauling spell check. It’s a nice step beyond visual voicemail — so long as it make sense. So says Chinel.

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Sketches of an Architect

Sandy Marshall — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:48:36 +0000

Last week I saw “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” a cool documentary by Sydney Pollack about how Gehry does his thing. Some love Gehry, some thing his work is ridiculous. I’ll spare the super long post about the in’s and out’s of Gehry and what he does and what people think. Instead, I’ll simply offer this one quote from Gehry: “I’ll do what I do best. And if it’s no good, the marketplace will deny it.”

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Now Online! The Conlon Real Estate Blog

Sandy Marshall — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:56:13 +0000

In late 2009, PERL founder Ken Perlmutter and I approached the folks at Conlon: A Real Estate Company to create a new partnership by combining efforts in social media. Traditionally, the lender-realtor relationship is based on efforts through advertising and at open houses — and PERL, Conlon and MC took this a few steps further by collaborating on a series of online projects, the first of which was building and launching the new Conlon blog. Their blog incorporates a design by Desme and funnels Conlon’s active social media network in a variety of spots. They’re up and running on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube — and have an ongoing radio presence on WLS. Big thanks to Ken, Benjie, Drussy and Andrew for inviting us to join in on the fun. This project was actually the basis for a presentation earlier this week at Mid-Town Tennis. Congrats to our friends at Conlon!

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Looking for a Business Coach?

Sandy Marshall — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:23:48 +0000

Our friends at Hot Coffee Coaching are teaming with Flourish studios to host a free coaching fair this Saturday from 11-4 at Flourish Studios just south of Belmont & Lincoln. Check-out the FB invite and swing on by. Great opportunity for new businesses and entrepreneurs to win a 3-month coaching package. Think you might not need a consultant? Think again. Trust us.

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PERL Podcast 50 / Chicago Neighborhoods

Sandy Marshall — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:05:14 +0000

It’s the 50th episode of the PERL Mortgage Podcast! We started the show with PERL in the fall of 2008, in response to a growing need among clients (and folks in general) to know more about changes in our national economy. MC has produced episodes focusing on a lot of topics — and, amazingly, we’re just scratching the surface. This time around, I sat down with Barry Schwartz of PERL and Ryan Stavros of Jameson Real Estate to talk about trends in a few of Chicago’s neighborhoods: the uber-referenced Lincoln Park, up-and-comer River West, and historical Rogers Park. Sidenote: when in Rogers Park, hit the Heartland Cafe and tell Mike James we said hello. Go on a Sunday morning and enjoy “Live from the Heartland,” Mike’s weekly radio show. We in Schad were guests a few years ago and I’m not sure if it’s still on the air — regardless of the show, get the Buffalo Burger. Good times. For more podcasts, visit the PERL archives.

PERL Podcast 50 / Chicago Neighborhoods

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