I can still close my eyes and remember going with my mom to a gas station to raise money for charity. It was the late 70’s and she and a few friends were pumping gas and having the gas station donate so much money for every gallon pumped. Even though this was many, many years ago, I can still recall the price of gas which was less than $0.75 per gallon. Today the price of gas is over four times that! Probably at this point, words and phrases like ridiculous, crazy, out of control and "when will the prices stop going up?" are entering your mind. I do wish I could answer that question for you, but since I am not a politician, futurist or CEO of an oil company I have no clue!
As I type away and read this posting, the price of gas is getting very close to $4.00 per gallon–certainly a lot of money. I noticed a recent charge on our credit card that seemed out of whack. The charge was $101.35 at a Texaco station. When I stopped and thought about it, if you have an SUV and fill up a 20+ gallon tank and get a few snacks for the kids, guess what? Your charge will be over $100.00!
What are you doing about it?
- Are you not going out to eat as often?
- Are you going to different restaurants that are closer to your home?
- Have you changed your summer vacation plans?
- Have you changed your dry cleaner because it is 2 miles closer?
- Are you traveling a few miles to save $0.10 gallon on gas?
I am not doing much about it, but that will probably change real soon.
What about you?
His nickname is the "Rocket". Actually his first name is William but he goes by the name of Roger. He has very impressive statistics:
My opinion of Roger has changed. Here is a guy who has a ton of money (I assume) and could have the BEST legal counsel money could buy. Why didn’t he do that? I wish he would have admitted whatever mistakes he made! People forgive you when you stand up and you are man enough to say I MADE A MISTAKE! Pettitte and Giambi did it and people haven’t given them a hard time at all. Roger for some crazy reason decided he wasn’t going to admit anything. Maybe it is because he truly believes he is above it all. He is bigger than the game and thought he could get away with it.
I have probably made every mistake you could imagine with regard to this topic.
Last night while I was changing TV stations, I came across a show highlighting the best hot dogs in the United States. I watched the show long enough to hear of a place in Chicago called 
By now most fans have watched SportsCenter or the local sports channel and saw the parade in Boston yesterday. But just in case you missed it or have been traveling for a few days, the Boston Celtics pounded the Los Angeles Lakers Tuesday night by 39 points for their 17th NBA championship. And yesterday, Thursday June 19, 2008 was the victory parade. GO CELTS!
Boston should NO longer be called Beantown but more like TITLE TOWN since the city now has had six (yes I said six) championship parades in the last seven years. Just to refresh everyone’s memory, the Pats won the Super Bowl in 2002, 2004, and 2005 and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.
I get a lot of calls in my office to do surveys. All of the initial calls come in during the day and I always respond the same way: if you would like me to do a survey, please call me around 7:00am. I tend to get in early and would gladly make some time available to help out this great industry. About a year ago, this interviewer called me to do a survey and of course I gave her my standard answer. Her name was Abby and she was very pleasant. The study involved CEO’s and paid an incentive of $100.00. At the end of the survey, I asked Abbey how long it would take before they would send out the incentive. She responded less than two weeks and gave me a number and some type of code that would help me if there was an issue down the road.
Last week I was at a promotions conference In Las Vegas. Having never been to the conference I was looking forward to the speakers, networking and of course the gifts that you receive at a conference. This conference didn’t have an exhibit hall so most of the gifts or "chotchke" were in the conference bag that I received when I checked in.
Over the years I have attended lots of MRA board meetings. The first week of June was no different for me. I went to the annual conference and attended the MRA board meeting prior to the conference.
The topics for most of my blogs come from either the wacky way I look at things, contacts in the industry, readers of the blog or situations that happen to me that I think are a worthwhile topic. Today’s posting is no different.
Well it was only a matter of time that Major League Baseball would look to install instant replay. The other three major sports (NFL, NBA, NHL) all have instant replay in some capacity. One of the reasons they haven’t done it sooner is executives in baseball are VERY concerned with the average length of a baseball game. I believe I read that 65 years ago the average baseball game was completed in less than 2 hours (1:58 to be exact). In the past 20 years the average game has been around 2:50 consistently. Clearly the executives believe that by shortening the games it will keep the average fan more interested. That might be true, but if the games are 10 minutes shorter, doesn’t that translate to one less hot dog, one less beer or perhaps no ice cream for the little one? Maybe I am reaching a little bit, but if the games are shorter, revenues have to be affected in some way.
