Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

or JD^*, which is big fancy Latin for a law degree and my sister evidently just got one which is why I found myself outside the Marriott Center this afternoon, standing in a long line. BYU breaks their graduation over two days. Day one is the pep rally, aka commencement. Day two is the shout-outs, aka convocation. Today was the pep rally and BYU invited Dick Cheney, or he invited himself. In any case, I had a ticket and he was supposed to speak.

And because he was coming the not-so-Secret Service also came. They were milling about looking like standard cops except for the big patch on their arms which said “Secret Service.” Also, they brought airport-style metal detectors with them and it was because of that, that I was standing in the long, long line. A line that did not move fast at all.

That wasn’t a big deal, though, because it was nice and sunshiny outside and there were a lot of people to entertain me. I’m easily entertained, or so I’m told. Forty-five minutes and a double scoop of orange sherbet later, I made it to the front of the line. There at the checkpoint the very,very Secret Service man told me to turn on my digital camera. He then looked at the viewfinder while waving his hand in front of the lens. Satisfied, he waved me through the checkpoint. I guess when you make camera bombs, you break the viewfinder on the camera.

We arrived three hours before the scheduled start. That advance arrival scored us seats in the furthest nosebleed section, one row from the wall. (Fast fact: though we were in the nosebleed section, none of us actually contracted nosebleeds.) Normally, I might be miffed at our suboptimal seating, but the event planners had included a stylish, translucent gift bag under each seat. Inside was a bottle of water, a homemade brownie, a bag of pretzels and a card of BYU trivia.

You might have guessed that that got me thinking. How do you make and deliver 22,700 brownies? The logistics are tricky. Do you make the brownies yourself? If so, how many mixes and ovens and cooks do you need? Do you call ten bakeries and have then do the baking? Who wraps them in cellophane? Who puts them in the bags? Do you assemble the bags in a big warehouse and then truck them to the Marriott Center for delivery? How many trucks would you need? Do you assemble on site? How many people do you need for assembly and distribution? It was all very interesting.

Five minutes later, having finished thinking about the brownie bags, I got up and walked around the inside of the Marriott. People were still flooding in, not yet cognizant of the baked treats awaiting them. I walk down nearly to the floor of the Center and yelled at my sister, who was busily not answering my cellphone calls. She looks over. I snap a picture. She looks annoyed.

I return to my stratospheric seat where I am once again impressed by the event planners. This time they’ve organized a variety of entertainers for us restless seat-sitters. (Speaking of Latin, those Romans were on to something with their panem et circenses.) Vocal Point. The Young Ambassadors. Some dancing group. I would have found it all rather amusing were it not for the giant man in the next row down who insisted on standing up, right in front of me, obscuring my view completely with his hulkish frame. Fuming, I passive-aggressively brainstormed clever things I could lean forward and hiss at him. “Hey buddy, you make a better door than a window.” “Hey you! Down in front!” “Move, or I’ll rip your arm off.” As it was, I said nothing, largely because the man might take offense at my comments and then try to hurt me (ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem, but remember, I’m temporarily physically weaker from my recent bout of Top Stop food poisoning.)

The gods must have heard my prayers, because, as if on cue, Mr. Big and Tall decided to find another seat just as the ceremony began. We all stood. The deans filed in. Surprise! President Hinckley showed up! Then Mr. Cheney and his entourage of even-more Secret Service arrived.

Guess what? Cheney got an honorary degree complete with a nifty turquoise hood. Then he spoke and made us all laugh and like him. Did I record Cheney’s speech and transcribe it for you? Yes.

I understand that a few not-so-bright BYU democrats in the graduating class boycotted the commencement in favor of their own anti-commencement featuring the eminent Ralph Nader. Some choice immortal words for those geniuses, “[you] chose… poorly.”

* also, Doctor of Jurisprudence

[Applause]
Thank you very much, President Hinckley, university trustees, President Samuleson, Congress Cannon,BYU faculty and staff, distinguished quests, families and friends, members of the class of 2007.
[Applause]
Thank for the warm welcome here to Provo Utah, home to one of the finest universities in the United States of America.
[Applause]
I’ve enjoyed my time here today. I was pleased to meet with the First Presidency. I’ve been told it’s an honor to be in the company of this university’s chairman, a distinguished American, a recipient of the Presidential Metal of Freedom, Gordon Hinckley.
[Applause]

Continued…

My cellphone videos of the speech:

• 04-26-07_1707.3g2
• 04-26-07_1710.3g2
• 04-26-07_1711.3g2
• 04-26-07_1712.3g2

A marketing audit is a “comprehensive, systematic, independent, and periodic analysis that a company uses to examine its strengths in relation to its current and potential market(s).” It is “a fundamental part of the marketing planning process.” The audit “clarifies opportunities and threats”, and identifies “neglected marketing activity and under-utilized marketing resources [in order to] generate recommendations for ways in which more effective use may be made of these resources.” It constructs a “clear picture of its current services and products, the many customers for them, and the methods used to market the services and products.” It’s the “starting-point for most considered courses of managerial action in marketing” and it “provides a framework for ongoing decision making, evaluation, and long-range planning.”

That’s an awful lot for one tool to do. Fortunately, here’s a rather good marketing audit template for you to start with.

The last word fact entry received a positive response, so I was encouraged to post again on the same topic.

• The word perk (as in, “your job has lots of perks”) is actually a shortened version of the word perquisite.
• Berserk, meaning violently or destructively frenzied, comes from Norse warriors who fought with frenzied rage in battle, possibly induced by eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Such warriors wore hides of bears, which explains the probable origin of berserkr as a compound of *bera, “bear,” and serkr, “shirt, coat.”
• Mesmerize is named after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), Austrian physician who developed a theory of animal magnetism and a mysterious body fluid which allows one person to hypnotize another.
• The term counterproductive has nothing to do with rating fast-food employee efficiency
• Irregardless is a word, albeit nonstandard. Nine out of ten smart people will think you’re stupid if you use it however. Impress them instead by using “irrespective”.
• The word carpet has little to do with either cars or pets.
• Tranquility is often considered the most beautiful word in the English language. Runners up include lullaby, gossamer, gracious, mother, sycamore and lovely. The ugliest words? Cacophony, crunch, flatulent, gripe, phlegmatic, plutocrat, treachery, fructify, kumquat, crepuscular, and gargoyle.

Sources: dictionary.com, thefreedictionary.com, google, my brain

It’s curious to consider what your mind focuses on when you are severely ill and flitting between the conscious and subconscious worlds.

For me, it was an old skate boarding video that my brother would frequently watch. He had a favorite part which humored him endlessly; it was a brief vignette of one of the featured skateboarders eating breakfast. The cameraman asked the skater what he was eating, and the eater replied, his mouth full of food, “ham and eggs.” At that my brother would burst into a wild fit of laughter. Laughing is contagious and though I didn’t find the clip intrinsically funny, I often found myself chuckling along with him.

Like our VCR that played that video again and again, so too my mind, as if stuck in some infinite cycle, has looped that old video for my review since early this morning, when it all began.

I’m ahead of myself, no?

As is sometimes the case, I arrived home at 6:30am Wednesday morning after a long night of troubleshooting my company’s software release. I crashed into bed and slept for an hour or two before my phone began ringing; there were problems with the release which required my attention. Half of an hour later, fires extinguished, I surveyed my situation. I was really, really tired, but sadly, once awakened, I cannot fall back to sleep. I laid in bed, silently fuming over my predicament. There I was, robbed of precious rest with the looming reality of my marketing class that evening I had yet to prepare for. Somehow I needed to get up, study and drive to school. I walked into the kitchen and drew open the refrigerator door and peered inside. Nothing. I was long overdue for a food shopping trip.

hungry. tired. irritated.

Can this living nightmare get any worse? Astute reader, I was soon to discover that the answer to this question is an unequivocal yes.

I shuffled back to my room, took a brief shower and then set about reading my class textbook.

4:30pm came quickly. I piled my books and laptop into my carrying bag, tossed it over my shoulder and headed out to my car. A few minutes later I was cruising down Foothill Blvd when I spotted a Top-Stop convenience station. I pulled into the parking lot and headed into the store. I grabbed two bottles of soda and made my way to the register when I spotted a variety of wrapped lunch food in a small side-cooler. I fumbled through the selection before choosing a ham and cheese sandwich. I would later severely regret that decision.

7pm. I eat my sandwich in class

10pm. Class lets out, I head home and upon arrival, quickly fall asleep

1am. Awake suddenly. Something is not right. Stomach experiencing knife-like pains. I stumble in the bathroom and vomit four times into the toilet. Sitting against the wall, I wonder what could be wrong. My roommate who is still up playing World of Warcraft peeks into my room and asks if I’m ok.

I walk into the living room and collapse on the Love Sac. For the next ten minutes I watch a bit of the History Channel. Still feeling a bit uneasy, but hopeful that the vomiting episode was only a brief stomach upset, I returned to my room and lay back down to sleep.

3am. I wake up again. Another dash to the bathroom. Another string of body tensing vomiting episodes. I decide to go to Smiths grocery store and pick up some Pepto-Bismol. I drink a cup or two of the pink stuff and again try to catch some sleep. But from that time forward, sleep would not come to me for many, many hours. The Pepto-Bismol did stop my vomiting temporarily but only at the expense of a new aliment: trips to the bathroom. For the next 15 hours I would have upwards of thirty diarrheal episodes.

7am. In addition to visiting the bathroom, I’m now experiencing massive stomach cramps, hot sweats, the chills, a pounding headache and full body soreness. I call my parents for advice. They seem concerned.

9am. Vomit six more times

3pm. Dad comes over to house and brings me Gatorade which seems to help somewhat.

5pm. Mom comes over to check on me. With all the water I’ve lost, I’m beginning to become delusional and no doubt my conversation with her is filled with confusing rambling. Charlotte stops by at 5:30

9pm. Mom and Dad come over. My condition has grown ever worse. They drive me to the emergency room at St. Marks Hospital where I am admitted and treated for massive dehydration and stomach pain. Two liters of intravenous saline, several morphine drips and an anti-nausea injection later, my condition at last begins to stabilize.

1am. Twenty-four hours later, I am again in bed, but this time I am soundly asleep.

(AKA copy platforms) are integral to any marketing campaign. They outline the message to be conveyed and identify the target audience and the message’s tone. That provides the guidelines for those who create and develop the ads (copywriters, art directors, etc.)

Here’s a sample Creative Strategy for a health beverage, chosen because I was myopically described as “slow and sluggish” on the soccer field on Monday night.

Creative Strategy for SLIM & TRIM

• Key Fact (Marketing driven, not communication driven)
• Although consumer conversion (product approval and repurchase) is very high, limited distribution and the lack of quality P-O-S presence (facings, displays, reseller endorsements) severely limit the growth of SLIM & TRIM sales
• Advertising Objective (quantitative, relates to sales info)
• To create greater top-of-mind awareness among customers who frequent current distribution outlets (primarily health food stores), and encourage first trial of SLIM & TRIM
• Target Market (demographic, psychographic (activities, interests, opinions))
• married women between 30 and 49 years of age; household income between 35,000 and 75,000; one child; some college education; works outside the home; has a wide variety of spare time activities; reads a wide variety of magazines including new weeklys, health magazines, shelter books and women’s service books. she is neither a “health nut” nor a “driven exercise buff”. she diets and exercises to FEEL BETTER ABOUT HERSELF rather than look like her husband’s favorite movie star. she isn’t fat–just wants to lose a few pounds (under 20).
• Competition
• In the mass market: Slim Fast and Ultra Slim Fast
• In health food stores: Gregory’s Slim Drink
• Promise (big broad statement)
• SLIM & TRIM will not only help you get the feeling and figure you want, but you make getting there effortless and enjoyable
• Reasons Why (supporting details)
• SLIM & TRIM has a taste so good, we guarantee you’ll love it–all four great flavors!
• because SLIM & TRIM tastes great and is very satisfying, sticking to your weight reduction program is easy (a complete 225 calorie meal).
• SLIM & TRIM is smooth and creamy and mixes instantly with water
• SLIM & TRIM is all natural and formulated to be nutritionally balanced, healthy and very safe to use
• Legals/Givens
• given: SLIM&TRIM uses navy blue color scheme in all ads
• legal: comparative ads not legal in some areas

What does your creative strategy look like?

Sincerest condolences to those affected by today’s senseless killings at Virginia Tech, the deadliest shooting in US history. In the days to come there will be certainly discussions about gun control (and guns on campus), the second amendment and about causative factors like the increasingly violent media. There will be many heated polemics over these and other controversial topics soon enough. But today is for silent pausing and praying for those whose lives were taken and for those whose lives are forever altered as a result. May God be with them.

I’m doing a marketing audit of Apple for a class I’m taking at the U, so in order to gather some data, I sat outside the Gateway Mall Apple Store this afternoon (April 14, 2007 from 2:30pm until 2:45pm) on a bench jotting down quick demographics of those entering the store. I had a clipboard and I recorded gender, age range and whether they happened to look like a hippie. Here, below, are my results.

By the way, I really wanted someone to stop and ask what I was doing, because then I would have said, “counting hippies” and that would have been really, really funny. At least to me.

Have you taken my PC vs MAC Survey yet? If not, I would very much appreciate if you would because the survey gives me some insight into PC and Mac users’ views which are important for my marketing audit. Thank you in advance!

A 2003 report by the Quality Planning Corporation, a San Francisco-based company, ranked 40 different occupations based on the number of traffic tickets each received during that year. Interestingly enough, Law Enforcement came in at 38th, bested only by homemakers and librarians. Cops must be AMAZINGLY safe drivers! or …

My brother once worked as a paramedic and he told me of the times he would be pulled over for speeding, or running lights, only to be let go once the officer saw the paramedic sticker in the back window. It is common knowledge, he claimed, that police officers never gave moving violation citations to other officers or to emergency medical personnel. I suppose that’s just viewed as convenient fringe benefit of the badge.

Introduce red-light cameras. Those are the annoying devices that take your picture if you run a red light. Computers being the disinterested technology that they are, take *everyone’s* picture, regardless of occupation. And according to a Dallas Morning News article today, these cameras are beginning to catch a number of police officers running lights without just cause. Those officers are being fined as if they were regular citizens. Oh, and the officers are upset over this. Obviously.

Lesson learned? You can’t outrun karma. It will always catch up with you.

An anonoymous tipster just emailed in this sweet nugget. A new executive at a growing local backup company wrote this on his personal blog:

I’ve initiated the mindset … to think, work, and act in a matrix so that we can be more cross-functional and efficient. I think if we start now and grow up that way we’ll see economies of scale with individual’s bandwidth and utilization.

If we were playing Business Buzzword Bingo, I might have won with just those two sentences!

I’m thinking of getting a tee-shirt made with the words: “let’s act in a matrix!” It would be motivational to everyone.