| Hello: Here’s the fifth edition of MarketVolt’s Monday Mash-up. We’ll kick off every week with this quick collection of tips, recommendations, observations and other interesting, valuable stuff. – Tom |
| Monday, February 5, 2018 MarketVolt’s Monday Mash-Up Which Ads Did You Like? Each year following the Super Bowl, I re-watch the ads. Always good for a few laughs. Always good for a few marketing lessons. Here’s a collection of the “best” ads, compiled by Time Magazine. Which was your favorite? Click here for a one-question survey to vote for your favorite. If you haven’t watched the ads, you can see most of them here. I’ll report the survey results next week. My all-time favorite remains an unsung gem by Honda from 2010. I wrote about it (and link to the ad) on the MarketVolt blog where I also shared some important marketing lessons you can draw from it. Another February Viewing Ritual… Every February, I re-watch Groundhog Day. Here’s one of my favorite clips — featuring Phil Connors (Bill Murray) and his high school classmate Ned Ryerson. Check your inbox on Wednesday. I’ll remind you how Phil finally handles Ned, and I’ll share some marketing lessons from that scene. Great Music Resource AllMusic.com is my go-to resource for discovering new music or vetting recommendations. Search for an artist. Read the bio. Check out reviews of all albums. Discover related artists. I bet 20% of the albums in my collection came from research I conducted on this site. I especially love to search for the highest-rated albums for an artist I already know. I’m amazed how often I discover great stuff I hadn’t heard — even from artists whom I already know. I’m listening to… …5-star albums, as reviewed by AllMusic.com. This requires a subscription streaming service (such as GooglePlay, Apple, or Spotify). Most days, I click “Advanced Search” on AllMusic.com, pick a genre, and filter by 5 stars only. I then listen to at least three albums I’ve never heard before. In my opinion, some deserve the high praise (and immediately become keepers in my online collection). Others not so much. But disagreeing with the critics is half the fun. Quote we’re pondering… “It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best.” –Tim Ferris in The 4-Hour Workweek In business, we spend a lot of time spinning our wheels. Tim’s advice strikes a chord with those of us who need to off-load the work that someone else can do better or that we don’t find fulfilling. When we follow this advice, we’re happier and our business performs better. Reason we’re grateful… I got some great feedback from a reader last week who said my email last Wednesday (about Leonardo da Vinci) was too hard on Filippino Lippi. He was a great painter in his own right, she noted. The feedback prompted me to learn more about Lippi. He was a great painter. And as I noted in the email, he was a good businessman. I love the feedback. Please keep it coming! *** Any reading, listening, quoting, resourcing that you think we should share? Send us a tip. Until next time, enjoy the rest of this week and the weekend. Tom |
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