New Orleans

Creating a personal website takes a lot of work these days, so much of my creative time is going to that.  Though fear not, when I do have my personal website up and running I will keep this blog opperational and imbed the RSS feed onto my website.

On Sunday I returned from a trip to New Orleans for the AMA Collegiate Conference where me and my team took third place in the case competition sponsored by Nintendo.  At the conference I attended 4 seminars, the good, the bad, the ugly and the who paid you to be here (fist full of dollars).

The Good:  Nintendo's promotion manager gave a presentation on different promotional events that Nintendo has done, their impact and how they show success.  He also talked about the way Nintendo thinks and how that impacts what they do, this included a red ocean/ blue ocean analogy.

The Bad:  I am to blame for seeing this lecture, called mental toughness.  I thought it was going to deal with the aggressive nature of marketing, no it was a motivational speaker.  This man was convinced that by thinking good thoughts, fairy dust and sunshine and past success you can win at everything.

The Ugly:  A marketer, and now producer of the show White Noise gave a short lecture on what she was doing.  While this was not bad, she did have a solid plan, and her talk was derailed by people asking her about working with Whoopi Goldberg.  She talked about leveraging new ideas to advertise and when she was not pitching the show to us, it was informative but not very much.  *On a side note I do want to see this show (and did before I heard her talk about it), I hope it comes through Cleveland.

Fist Full of Dollars:  The class was called "Internet Marketing Strategies" and was put on by a recruiter from Enterprise rent-a-car.  I was excited by this, as E-marketing is one of my developed specialties.  For the entire 45 minutes this recruiter proceeded to give bad, misleading and downright wrong information about subjects like pay per click advertising, Google Adwords and Analytics.  When she was asked questions that she did not know an answer to she just made up an answer and then moved on, it was terrible.

Moving on from the conference I made sure to enjoy my time in New Orleans. After presenting to Nintendo, our entire group went to Pat O'Briens for their famous hurricane and some gator bites.  On Thursday night I went to a few little clubs to relax and listen to Jazz.  Friday morning I woke up early and went for a run, with proper planning, my run led me to Cafe Du Monde which is a must to anyone who travels to the Big Easy.  The last time I was in New Orleans I did the full experience, coffee with chicory and beignets, this time I went with just an order of beignets for myself.  This faux french pastry is wonderful, light friend and then murdered in powdered sugar, not the best for you health wise, but if you are traveling then you have to live a little.  Friday night started with a bit of disappointment, Deanies which last year was great, it was however poor service and low quality food compared to other seafood I had.  After this was my fated journey to Bourbon Street.  If my blog where about stupid people, I would follow with an in depth description of what I witnessed that night, because it is not I will sum it up with New Orleans cops are useless, and people should not use drinking to justify acting stupid.  I spent Saturday walking about, sampling some food from the street party that was going on in the French Quarter and going to the airport hotel to let me get to my morning flight on time.

*A side note, most cab drivers in New Orleans feign nice, but will rip you off. If you go to New Orleans call Earl at 832-884-5684, he is part of a limo service that has better rates, more options and is a much higher class of service then a standard cab.

Because I was so close, I choose to drink only Abita products, and I was able to get my hands on a few pints of Andygator which always makes me happy.  This high gravity beer has a very smooth, hoppy taste, and I recommend anyone who can get it try it, you won't be disappointed.  The other Abita brew that I was happy to get, and ship a few home, was Restoration, a pale and all American beer.

As a last point, This Ad Age Article talks about how Facebook advertising works, which includes a part talking about how you don't sell on Facebook, you build brand awareness and equity, something I have been saying for some time, its good to see CEOs of E-marketing firms and me think along the same levels.