Happy Anniversary! Happy Anniversary!

It's a page right out of history.  Fifty years ago tonight, ABC launched The Flintstones.  Seeing the first episode about this modern stone age family from the town of Bedrock was one of those great TV "Oh wow" moments for this Baby Boomer kid.  I remember that first show so well.  It was basically an animated version of the hit fifties show The Honeymooners.    For six years we loyally followed the adventures of Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty, and saw the addition of Pebbles and Bamm Bamm.  I even remember when they had a national contest to give Pebbles her name.   If you know who Mr. Slate, Joe Rockhead and Gary Granite are, you were a fan of The Flintstones too.  Although I thought I recalled everything about The Flintstones, a look at some Ultimate Flintstones Trivia here put me in my place.  Trivia expert or not, we all had a Yabba-dabba-doo time!   So-o-oh, Happy Anniversary!

Nothing To Sneeze At?

Sneezy

Pollen!

Is it my imagination, or has this season been the worst for allergies?   This curse goes back to my childhood when I'd camp out or play in the cornfields behind our house and end up paying for my love of the great outdoors with sneezing, itchy eyes, sinusitus and stuffy nose.  It started out as a late summer thing and then evolved into different allergies throughout the year.  I got tested positive for reactions to dust, cat dander, mold and an assortment of allergens like the magnified offenders above.   If it's a hay fever medication - Benadryl, Zyrtec, Claritin and the rest - I've tried it.   I went through countless sessions of allergy shots with visits that continued for years.  Has it made me better?  It's hard to prove a negative and know how I'd be without all the treatments.  I do know this has been an especially nasty allergy season, mostly in the morning.   Is it worse for allergens due to global warming or more enclosed environments?  I'll leave that to the experts.  If you are among those affected, I feel your pain.  Oh yeah, I've tried the local honey too - still sneezing.

The Two Bells

Many political leaders seem to count on their constituents looking the other way.  That seemed to be the case in Connecticut's "Belltown" of East Hampton.  Town Manager Jeffrey O'Keefe resigned this month in a storm of controversy after town residents angrily protested his sudden firing back in June of town Police Chief Matthew Reimondo.  Most of the Town Council backed up O'Keefe, citing financial cutbacks as the reason for the firing, but most townspeople saw it as payback for the chief’s role in investigating three sexual harassment complaints lodged against O’Keefe by three female town employees.   This looked fishy to incensed citizens, and they had every right to feel that way.   Shame on the majority of the seven Town Council members for allowing this to happen and compounding the impropriety by giving O'Keefe a $170,000 severance package after the tide of raucous town meetings turned against him.  We haven't heard the end of this, as the council still has not listened to the voices demanding the police chief be given back his job.

Across the country in embattled Bell, California, it's being described as "corruption on steroids."  The city's manager was pulling down a salary close to $800,000 a year while the police chief was getting half a million and part-timer council members got $100,000.  This happened as the small city's unemployment rate hit 16%, services were cut back and taxes were oppressive.  The revelations made national news and "people power" again came to bear on their local leaders who were bleeding the Los Angeles suburb dry.  The tale of these two "bell towns" makes me wonder how many other leaders across the nation are hoping their constituents will look the other way.  If we fail to watch our leaders, who can we blame but ourselves?  

Three G.O.B. Observations

You don't have to go far in eastern Connecticut to find empty storefronts, and that didn't just start with this recession.  After nine straight years now (and a few years in the eighties and nineties) of prospecting small businesses about direct mail advertising, I feel like I can often predict whether or not a venture will make it.  That is not based on any psychic powers or superior knowledge of most businesses' products and services, and I'm sure there are others who would be able to foresee a store's survival or demise.  And believe me, I'm nowhere close to being a guru on financial success.  To this humble observer, preventing or minimizing failure boils down to three basic things.  First, and foremost according to more expert sources, is lack of capital.   Money doesn't usually start flowing in the day you open; enough said on that.  The second: distraction away from the customer.  I'm constantly amazed how many businesses ignore their clientele's needs.  They complain at length about their own problems.  Their store has, shall I say, a less than "welcome" look.  They're never open consistently.  They don't supply what the customer looks for.   Finally, it's nice to do what you like, but many simply don't do their homework.  As I learned in radio, it's not about what you think will "sound good."  It's about gathering information and going with what objectively makes sense.  In advertising, I see it all the time when someone spends all their money on media that have a very inefficient reach way beyond their actual market while failing to start with the local basics.  We all make mistakes, but if you ignore these three warning signs you depend too much on pure luck to make it through the long haul or even short sprint.  

So Long, Summer

Summer is over, no matter what the calendar says.   If summer's your season, the weather certainly didn't disappoint.  As for myself, summer seldom has ever lived up to the hype.   The commercials always tell us it's time for "summer fun."   I'll decide that, thank you.  While I have boyhood summer memories of something vaguely similar to those beach movies from the swingin' sixties and managed to fit in a few nice vacation trips as an adult, I rarely feel sad about its passing.   The time between Labor Day and Halloween is usually my favorite.   There's still plenty of daylight and mild weather without the ragweed, sunburn, mosquitoes and shoreline crowds.   Call me a Summer Scrooge.  Give me a crisp September day at a fair over midsummer air quality alerts anyday.   I remember climbing Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire in October 1995 and thinking it doesn't get any better than this.