Jump in and Hang on

The Hoopsnakes were a great local Twin Cities band and one of their great songs was titled "Jump in and Hang on" and that's what I'm doing with this new blog. I picked the title Mill City thoughts as I'm sitting here less than a mile from the birthplace of Minneapolis (i.e. Mill City).

My purpose with this blog will be to provide some perspective on marketing and I'll throw in some sports and entertainment comments. While I've been active on Twitter for 18 months I've not jumped onto the blog bandwagon yet. It really seems like Twitter as a micro-blog service is easy to add content to - so we'll see how the blog works.

My hope for this blog is to make 1-2 posts a week. I'll shoot for a Monday and one other day during the week. I also hope to spark conversations with people about a variety of things, topics that impact the areas that I'm most interested in.

For those of us in the advertising/marketing business this weekend with the Super Bowl is a big deal. It's truly become more than a big football game. It is where brands have the opportunity to reach a huge segment of the population with a message to ignite conversation and hopefully create a strong brand impression/connection.

For me the ad that started it all was back in 1984 when Apple launched the famous "MacIntosh" commercial. Truly this commercial impacted the world in many, many ways. From getting personal computers truly on the stage to making the Super Bowl a forum for ground breaking TV spots. I had the opportunity in the summer of 1984 to hear the VP-Marketing from Apple and the team from Chiat Day talk about how this ad actually came about. The back story from how Ridley Scott produced the spot to the spot almost not running is legendary and highlight the drama of big time marketing.

So as we are on the eve of the Super Bowl some 26 years later - my how times have changed. You can see many of the ads before the game, the PR machines are running frantically and most consumers do enjoy the TV spots. This Sunday I'll be watching the game with some family members who aren't involved in advertising. I'll let you know what they think of the spectacle that us in the business watch so intently.