Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Two Skies
So, if I didn’t want to use a cliche that perfectly conveys my meaning, do I just choose a different series of words? My, there can be such a big change in conditions from one day to the next. [see “what a difference a day makes”]
On Saturday morning, I checked my weather app before stepping out the door to see what we would be walking into. It indicated a 12mph wind, but looking outside, I could see there was none. The air was still.
However, when we got to the barn, our local conditions caught up with the data being reported on the app. The wind picked up with gusto.
As the day wore on, the sky became filled with a remarkable depiction of the waves blowing the air, shaping the clouds in the upper atmosphere.
Yesterday couldn’t have been more different. Even though there was nothing up there to focus on, I felt drawn to snap a photo of how it looked when I lifted my eyes to the sky.
It doesn’t look like the kind of sky that matches a holiday gift season that advertisers are trying to persuade all of us is in full swing. It’s a never-ending beef of mine. I saw Christmas gift-giving prompts before Halloween.
Seems like we should probably be seeing Valentine’s ads pretty soon based on that timing. Get ready to buy chocolates, flowers, and jewelry soon!
The skies won’t look too friendly this afternoon based on the forecast. Cyndie aired out the horse blankets yesterday in preparation for chilly precipitation due to arrive. Wearing blankets is not one of the horse’s favorite things so we try not to put them on sooner than necessary.
At the same time, we’d like to get them on before the mares get soaking wet. It becomes a challenge of timing it just right to keep all of us happy.
Unlike the timing of certain holiday advertisers…
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Not True
Just because it is written, doesn’t make it true. When it comes to marketing literature, there seems to be no art to false claims anymore. How about an asterisk? Tricky wording?
No. Just make a bold claim and bury the details on page 29 of the owner’s manual.
Zero oil? Zero maintenance!?
I love my Greenworks electric equipment, all of the multiple tools. There are way more pluses than minuses. However, what product doesn’t have something users find annoying?
In the case of my riding mower, I would be doing it a disservice if I offered it zero maintenance. The grease nipples staring at me from the front wheels beg for attention. Less visible is the level check and drain plug for gearbox oil.
If one is thorough enough to make it to page 29 of the manual, the “Lubrication” information is perfunctory at best. They offer a rough diagram pointing to the drain plug on the left side of the mower. The level check knob is clearly visible looking from the rear.
A less inclined individual, such as myself, might not make the assumption that there is a separate drain and level check flipped around on the right side which is much less visible. Thank goodness for the helpful YouTuber who pointed this out.
I have now drained and replaced the 180 ml (x2) gearbox oil (OIL!) on the zero oil, zero maintenance riding mower.
Harrumph. The thing is, I still love the machine to death.
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Not Christmas
Not yet. Don’t fall for it. Everyone is not buying each other new cars to put a ribbon on for Christmas. If you happen to pay any attention to the barrage of commercials on broadcast television lately, that is an unmistakable impression advertisers and auto dealers are attempting to convey.
That, along with the perception of needing to stress over an increasingly oppressive societal pressure to outdo all of history by striving in October and November to come up with a better gift than ever before on an ever-earlier date for that one holiday near the end of December.
Somewhere I dream there are people starting a new trend of cultivating a mindset of purposely NOT seeking to buy more things, despite the onslaught of sales pitches bombarding us at every turn.
Maybe it could also include a focus on striving to full-heartedly love all others each and every day throughout the entire year.
Imagine us all exchanging a ubiquitous greeting of “Happy Between Holidays!”
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New Home
I am overjoyed, and it came about much sooner than later. Our old lawn tractor has a new home. Buyer found seller and last night my urge to declutter was fulfilled, while someone else no longer needs to borrow a mower to cut their lawn.
Is this because I visualized just such an outcome? Hmmm.
I’m not going to argue with success.
Now I can change my answer to “No,” for the rest of the calls that come through asking if the tractor is still available. I received four such queries that led nowhere. The eventual buyer was the only one who actually followed up with additional questions upon receiving my “Yes” response.
I have no idea what that’s about. Maybe it was other people selling similar lawn tractors checking on the competition. Well, I’m out of the game.
However, I am feeling inspired to carry on with further decluttering. Sure, there is new space in the garage, but it actually reveals another level of items simply being stored.
A declutterer’s work is never done.
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Somehow Nothing
Somehow, I have nothing to report in terms of storm related damage to our property. We survived relatively unscathed beyond the quick return of runoff rills in the paddock lime screenings. After having just bladed and filled the rills last weekend, the chore now needs to be done all over again.
As tornadic weather goes, the impact can be very localized. We were lucky. Jackie reported that the property where she boards her horse, just a few miles down the road, suffered a much sadder fate. Two sheds were blown over, one of which killed a horse.
Our trees wiggled a little bit, but we hardly lost leaves or branches.
The soil is now like a soaked sponge, so I chose to stay off it with any wheeled vehicles. I’m gloating over having gotten the main drainage ditch mowed last week when it was good and dry, providing a clear path for the flash flood runoff from Thursday’s storm.
Instead of driving tractors around, I occupied my time cleaning up the old lawn tractor and accessories and taking pictures to advertise them for sale on Craigslist.
It feels really good to have this finally done, because I have been neglecting it since last November when I bought the new replacement. Now, if I could just reach the desired fruition of someone seeing the ad and giving us some money to haul it away, I’ll be overjoyed.
I will appreciate the space it will free up in the garage, on top of the decluttering sensations of ridding ourselves of unused equipment that is just sitting idle.
If I actually end up with financial compensation, that will be icing on the cake!
The post was published last night and soon after I received the first text query asking if it was still available. I was tickled by the attention happening so quick and gleefully responded in the affirmative.
The response… somehow, nothing.
Really? Why wouldn’t they follow-up after finding out it was still available?
This is not my favorite phase of the process of selling things we no longer want or need.
I am going to focus my visualizations on the moment when the lawn tractor is loaded and rolling down our driveway and then on down the road. Hopefully, it will happen sooner than later.
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Marketing Crunch
Here is a peek behind our Wintervale curtain. Cyndie’s two months of pent-up energy while out of commission with the bum shoulder has now exploded in a barrage of hyper-active efforts to do a year’s worth of planning and execution in a span of a few weeks.
In addition to our recently getting a Wintervale Ranch presence on Facebook and updating our website, Cyndie has now pumped out more than a half-dozen flyers promoting specific workshops with times, dates, and registration fees.
She has quickly made things real.
With our precious friend, Dunia, planning to come from her home in Guatemala to help, they have plotted an impressive series of workshops with a variety of areas of focus, planned one-after-the-other, for the last few weeks of August.
Now all they need to do is get the word out while also enticing some learners to leap at the chance. That effort started small, with some posts on the Wintervale Facebook page, but after it became obvious that choice provides a rather limited reach, the next logical step was, paid advertising.
Stop. Picture John and Cyndie suddenly switching hats to [untrained] Marketing Specialists in 2017. I have already submitted our business information and location to Google maps. I have also manually ventured to update search engine optimization for our website. Dipping toes into the world of social media paid advertising is a whole ‘nother thing.
It’s a jungle in there.
We not only need to increase the number of viewers, they need to be enticed to make some pretty prompt decisions about committing to participate. That’s a tall order.
Good thing Cyndie and Dunia like to dwell in positive possibilities. And, we are guaranteed nothing would happen if they didn’t at least try.
This week we are ordering new logo’d shirts for facilitators, and a flag for the end of the driveway.
We can lead people toward what we have to offer, but we can’t make them drink. Or something like that.
Give it a couple of weeks and I’ll let you know how things are turning out.
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Additional Steps
You might think the title of today’s post refers to walking, after all the promotion we have done recently for our World Labyrinth Day event, but that’s just me being cute. The added steps to which I’m referring are in the realm of expanding the promotion of Wintervale Ranch and Retreat Center. We are slowly updating the pages of our Wintervale Ranch web site, and we have now launched into today’s world of social media.
If you are on Facebook, you can now follow Wintervale Ranch there, because we have our own page. That is where we will regularly share news on upcoming events and workshops.
Those of you willing and able could help us out in our quest to grow our online presence by “Liking” our page and sharing it with your Facebook world.
I’m told, this is how it works. We solicit others to like our page. Honestly, it feels a little contrived to me, but my sources have assured me this will be a familiar and accepted request to regular Facebook users. So, if it makes sense to you, we would love to grow a wide pool of followers from near and far.
“Relative Something” fans, do your thing…
And thanks, from Cyndie, me, and all of our animal family at Wintervale!
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Nostalgia Happens
Nostalgia. I can’t help it. Against my own wishes to deny the inevitable chronological orientation of my being, which fits precisely in the place where nostalgia begins to dominate ones attention, I am powerless. For years and years I enjoyed living in defiance of marketers who flooded the airwaves with attempts to bait and hook the primary buying demographic.
My tastes and interests were usually out of sync with the times or just far enough from center to be of little consequence to the purveyors of must-have products and services. My hobbies and interests leaned toward the years of my older siblings more than they matched what was aimed at me and my peers while we were coming into our prime.
Or so I like to think. In reality, there is every likelihood that the cunning advertisers of the products that I did fall for were deftly plying their trade to make me think I was forging my own bold path on the journey of maturation. I blindly wandered directly into the cross-hairs of their financial machine which worked its grips for brand loyalty deep into my unconscious.
With each passing year I have to work harder to deny that my value as a consumer is fading fast from the ever-changing entertainment industry and flying headlong for the entry gates of the AARP and pharmaceutical marketers.
During this wonderful NCAA basketball tournament month, my primary radio station for music has decided to run their own playoff bracket pitting match-ups of record albums from the 1990s. Yawn. How come I don’t care about any of these artists? I get the hint. I’m getting old, thank you very much.
In the same week that I was going through that realization, Cyndie turned on the television in our bedroom to see what was on and landed on a mesmerizing review of my home state, Minnesota in the ’70s. Produced with the Minnesota Historical Society Press and inspired by authors Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor, the incredibly familiar scenes dredged up completely neglected memories of the world I experienced as a teenager.
I couldn’t look away for fear of missing something. I wanted to soak in every last morsel of what was appearing on the screen.
Did these images trigger my latest re-fascination with long-lost music memories or is the timing incidental? Again, just last week, I was pulling out old vinyl albums that weren’t to be found anywhere in digital form, hoping to feed the hunger to listen to songs from my collection that I haven’t heard in decades.
There was an old Loggins & Messina album in the bunch that I realized was totally available for download, and after giving it a spin on the turntable, I went right to the iTunes store and bought it. That should definitely be in rotation on my iPod.
The advertising genius of showing other similar albums at the bottom of my screen found me powerless to its allure. I hadn’t thought about Seals & Crofts for so long that I’d forgotten they existed! I bought that, too. Jim Seals and Dash Crofts’ voices together are a spectacular combination.
Since I hadn’t listened to that harmony for what feels like forever, it sounded good as new to me again.
It also makes me feel like I might be getting a little old.
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Relative Something 