Ok, so I'm fickle - my new favorite movie of 2008 - Gran Torino

I know, I know - less than two weeks ago I was raving about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and how great Brad Pitt was. Well I've changed my mind. Mike and I went off yesterday to see Gran Torino - and we both loved it. This in itself is a rarity when you consider that he refuses to see musicals because they're unrealistic and I've now seen Mamma Mia four times,and own both the DVD and the CD. But we did love it. And on a lot of different levels.

The movie opens at the funeral of Walt Kowalski's beloved wife. The pain on Clint Eastwood's face, the rage he feels at the death of his wife and the apparent disrespect of his grandchildren is palpable and breathtaking. Even a shot as siimple as the family lined up in the pew, with Walt putting several feet between himself and his closely clustered sons and daughters in law, tells you how isolated and angry this man has become through this loss. As estranged as he is from his family, Walt has also become estranged from his neighborhood, one of the few remaining old timers on a street of Hmong immigrants and their American born children. And then the trouble starts.

A gang is harassing both the neighbor's son and Walt himself. The son is relatively defenseless but not Walt. He still has his guns from Korea and he knows how to use them. Through one simple act Walt becomes a hero to the Hmong people and to his neighbors who take him under their wing and make him family.

I won't ruin it by saying anymore - everything above is fairly apparent in the TV commercials I saw for this movie. What makes it so great is Clint Eastwood and his face. That is a face that has lived. In an era where movie stars have botoxed every expression off their face (see Nicole Kidman) or distorted themselves with unnecessary plastic surgury (see Meg Ryan if you can bear to look for more than a few secords), Clint Eastwood's face is the most expressive I've seen. He rages, he threatens and on rare occasions he smiles - and it is just mesmerizing. All this is enhanced by a career spanning 50 years - all those times he said go ahead make my day and do you feel lucky are there in the back of your mind. Walt is not someone you screw around with, and everyone knows it.

Now I will warn, his character is a bigot - though one scene does explain that it is a form of masculinity to spout bigoted crap. In fact at one point all I could think is that he is the most loveable bigot since Archie Bunker - the bigot with a heart of gold.

So, I loved this movie. It also spoke to me, I think, because growing up my grandparents lived in the same sort of blue collar neighborhood in Orange New Jersey. Like Walt's neighborhood it gradually changed and devolved into a much more dangerous place with gangs and drug dealers on the corner. I haven't been back to that neighborhood in over 20 years but I got the feeling that I was seeing that old neighborhood while I was watching this movie.

As a footnote - I watched the Golden Globes last night and was horrified to see that Gran Torino was not nominated in any of the major categories. That Clint was excluded and pretty boy Leondardo DiCaprio was nominated was horrifying to me. I'm hoping that much like Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino runs over some of these pretty boys and makes it all the way to the Oscar.

My review: See it, take all your friends to see it.

PR Reps - Observations from the Fringe

While most people watch political scandals unfold with disgust and disbelief, when I talk to some friends who do PR our conversation often turns to what we would do. Take the case of the Governor of Illinois. Why we revile the man and his purported actions we just have to wonder about the poor PR flack who has to sit day after day in briefings attempting to advise someone like this. You often imagine the conversations go something like this:

GOV: Well I'm going to appoint Burris today. Who are they to tell me what to do. They can't stop me.

PR REP: Sir, I'm not sure now is the time to make an appointment. It could cause some problems.

GOV: I don't see any problems.

PR REP: Well sir, I'm sure that people will wonder if he paid you for the appointment. Perhaps it would be best to say just to be sure that no one thinks there's anything shady about the appointment that you have someone else do it.

GOV: But it's my job, I don't see any reason why someone would think he paid.

PR REP: The tapes sire, the ones the Feds have. Those might cause problems.

GOV: No, no, you're wrong.

PR REP: (Eyes rolling to heaven and mentally updating resume). Yes sir.

PR Reps do the best they can with a person they represent, advising more rehearsal time, practice Q&A's, begging them to think before they speak. But ultimately it is always the client's decision in the end what they will say.

In my job I find it much easier since I work on a team where everyone wants things to go off flawlessly. And most of the time they do. So yes, I do like being a PR rep. And I do pity the PR reps of the rich and infamous. Especially the poor soul who is running after Lindsay Lohan begging her not to get behind the wheel and to please for the love of god put on underwear.

Editing the Edits

When doing a newsletter there are two things I've learned are very important - the first is that you definitely need to have a second set of eyes read it and the second is that no two people will edit the same item the same way. Our most recent newsletter was sent for review to 4 people - and everyone came back with completely different edits. One wanted content added, one thought the piece was too long and wanted it shortened, one was horrified at my lack of commas and put more in, the other took commas out.

So my next step is to print all 4 sets of edits and sit down with the original and just make a choice. Do I add a comma or take it out? Do I hunt down new content? What does the overall piece look like? Should I rearrange the articles so they go long, short, long, short? At the end I'm satisfied that we have a newsletter that's informative, well written and relatively free of flaws. I know some who would be horrified at my unwillingness to strive for absolute perfection. But this newsletter goes out on Monday and on Tuesday I'll be asking what should go in the next one.

Generating Content

One of the challenges I face in marketing is generating content. The demand for content is endless. I currently do a newsletter and a call for action every month. Each has roughly 8-10 articles/notices. Then we have a blog that is on our website -which is open to all of our team to post to. We have a Fast Company blog that I edit for its two authors Telle Whitney and Caroline Simard. And we now have a monthly column that will run in www.cobolmagazine.com. And in addition we have press releases, info for the website, and articles that I submit to publications - one was recently published in Positively Magazine.

I look at this list and think yikes quite honestly. But yet we get it done month after month. And the question arises about what do we do for our website and what do we do for other organizations. I've thought on this quite a bit and I realize there is no right answer. My job in Marketing is to raise visibility and facilitate communications with both our existing constituency (hence the newsletter) and the world at large (everything else). So the content that is created goes wherever the need is.

I'm working on a content plan for the year so we can have themes for each month - enabling us to use the research and material already gathered in many ways. Suggestions are always welcome.

Setting Quantitative Marketing Objectives

As I mentioned several posts ago, 2009 has arrived and with it the looming need to figure out exactly what my marketing objectives are this year. For 2008 I had a series of baseline from the previous marketing person. I didn't know enough about what had taken place to know whether these items were going to be easy or hard to accomplish so I settled on increasing most of the baseline numbers by either 25, 50 or 100%. I knew I'd make press release numbers by the very fact that I control how many press releases get set out. So that one I just had to hope there would be enough to write about. There was more than enough so that one was done. With our number of newsletter subscribers making our target got a lot easier when I asked myself how were newsletter subscriptions getting from our website to the newsletter contact system. Answer - they weren't - and immeidately over a 1000 new subscribers went in the system. And now new subscribers register at a rate of 2-3 per day on average which is a great steady stream.

Then I got down to the tricky stuff - how do I get articles placed, convince other websites to link to us and increase media mentions. And there was one simple answer - Research. IN 2008 we published a research study on Technical Women in the Workplace and it took off like a bottlerocket. We got coverage from all the major press and requests came in for interviews and speaking engagements (which continue to today). I strongly recommend research as being key to any non profit's success in advertising. Even if it is internal qualitative research - if you can come up with a few key figures you have something to offer a fact starved media - and they'll cover you for it.

So as I look at my 2009 quantitative objectives I have to wonder - will lightening strike twice. Will our new mini research reports take off like our big one did? And will people keep signing up for the newsletter? And what number should I set as a target because as all sales and marketers know - once you write a number down it can haunt you for a long time.

Christmas Movies - A Marketer falls for the hype

Ok I admit it, I'm a movie junkie. I have been since I was a kid and saw my first movie - Mary Poppins. Then two years went by and I got to see Dr. Dolittle. Remember this was the 60's when there weren't new movies opening every week - at least not for kids. As the years have passed I've seen more and more movies - though these days I'm more likely to watch them on Netflix.

But every time I get together with my friend Kathy our first activity is to review all the movies in the newspaper and make our list. What are we going to see? Which movie will make the cut and which one will be left behind, so long The Punisher 2, hello Benjamin Button.

This year we found ourselves stymied - not that many movies we wanted to see. We were not impressed by the overabundance of Nazi/Holocaust movies that came out. I was not impressed by the Valkyrie preview in which I barely kept from yelling at the screen - hey all you Nazi's he's an American, he doesn't have a british accent; I'd read The Reader and knowing the twist (which is apparent to me from about page 20 of the book but takes the author years to figure out) it was not of interest. And while Kathy was enthusiastic about the Boy in the Striped Pajamas - it was only showing at 9:45 p.m. for two days then disappeared altogether - I could not quite bear to spoil the holidays sobbing about a child in a concentration camp.

So after much debate we settled on 4 movies - The Day the Earth Stood Still, Milk, 7 Pounds, and the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I was influenced by all the media hype, the stars and in the case of the Day the Earth Stood Still - great fondness for the original. Here are my reviews:

The Day the Earth Stood Still - Special effects were pretty cool, Keanu Reeves was not good (did he not see the original in which the fabulous Michael Rennie played an alien with charm and charisma?) and I'm sorry but in what universe in Jennifer Connelly qualified to be a scientist. Overall the movie was not good, had plot holes you could drive a truck through and we were very glad we had paid matinee prices. And being a New Jerseyan it was somewhat fun to see New Jersey get destroyed by Aliens as opposed to the long suffering LA, San Francisco and New York. My review - skip it and rent the original.

Milk - was a great movie. Not knowing anything about Harvey Milk I found the movie engrossing. And Sean Penn and James Brolin both did great jobs. I did have to wonder about Harvey's mental processes - you had James Franco and you let him go and ended up with some little crazy person? Not a good move. I have been asked by many why I didn't know about Milk. Having grown up in New Jersey and being a high school student at the time I was fairly sheltered from the happenings on the west coast. My review - see it.

Seven Pounds - ok Kathy was convinced to see it because it was Will Smith and he usually does good movies. He does great action in the summer and in the winter he does his Oscar movies and usually he does a pretty good job. Not this time. What a dreadful movie. You aren't given any context or knowledge of the characters' motivations until the end of the movie, you never really know what 7 pounds is about and I'm sorry but you can't convince me that (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) killing yourself with a jellyfish isn't going to render your internal organs somewhat useless for transplant. It was maudlin and beyond manipulative - you could tell that in the script conference Will Smith was saying they'll be crying here. Well I didn't cry - instead I want our money back. And the 2 hours of my life I spent watching it. My review - Skip it and make sure none of your friends see it either.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - best movie of the year. If it doesn't win the Oscar for Makeup there is no justice. I loved every minute of it - well except for the fact that it was set against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina and an old woman in a hospital narrating. Did the makers not know what happened to some of those old people - I found myself worrying in the scenes with the old woman that she was about to be euthanized. But the movie was so good I didn't fret during the scenes with Brad Pitt. I am dying to know how they got 40 something Brad Pitt to look like 16 something Brad Pitt. In this case the special effects were beyond good. I need those special effects myself. My review - I strongly recommend it.

So where does that leave us? You'd think given that two of the movies bombed and two were great that I'd be less influenced by hype - but no - I'm waiting for Clint Eastwood and Gran Torino this weekend.

A New Year's Resolution

My vacation is over and I look back on it with a great deal of satisfaction. My time in Upstate New York was terrific - we went to movies, shopped, celebrated and generally had a fabulous time. The movie reviews will be in my next post. Then I had 7 whole days at home to do whatever I wanted. And what I did was see friends and get organized. The getting organized is part of my overall New Year's Resolution - to make my life the best it can be in 2009. I realized when I was traveling home that I was both looking forward to seeing my house and dreading it. I knew the chaos that existed throughout the house but I also recognized that I had let things get a bit out of hand. So I spent part of each day organizing, yes those times were often 11 p.m. - 2 a.m. - no clue why - but I did get a lot done. And I felt good about it. There is something about accomplishing a goal that is very satisfying. And I'm looking forward to bringing that same sense of accomplishment to my marketing goals. And my first marketing goal of the year - to write my marketing goals.