Yesterday I ended up having two very "Durham" experiences.  I didn't plan on either when the day started.

The first was lunch with a colleague at Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, a new bar/restaurant across the street from McKinney. It's not your typical sports bar - there are plenty of flat screen TVs showing games and SportsCenter, and there are great views looking down on the Durham Bulls Park just beyond the left field fence.  But the fare is more upscale and gourmet than cheap and greasey, and the interior design is more sleek than plastered with memorabilia. Btw, most reviews are pretty darn good. Like so many other "new" structures here (e.g. the Performing Arts Center and Nasher Museum), it's another symbol of Durham's modernity.   

Then last night, I went to see the Bulls play - not at their regular park but rather the old Durham Athletic Park, the site where so many scenes from Bull Durham were filmed.  The Bulls stopped playing there 15 years ago.  Though beautifully renovated for a variety of local baseball games, tournaments, and training purposes  it was a pretty big effort just to get the stadium prepped for this one game. Lines were long and seats were limited, but the near sellout crowd seemed to love every minute of it. 

It was a chance for many to remember what it was like going to Bulls' games as a kid.   For others, it was a chance to see a game at an iconic stadium.  For all, it was a proud moment of where our city has been and where it's going.

Check out the Nationwide Family Tree site and build your own tree! www.nationwide.com/familytree

It allows Nationwide to begin a customer relationship and raise brand awareness.

African-Americans know that their personal family history and the rich history of their community have prepared them to become history makers. They have their own stories to tell, futures to create and legacies to perpetuate. Further, relationships matter to this audience - how advertising reaches beyond the brand in community efforts and philanthropy is considered key to building and maintaining a trusting business relationship.

The goal of this site was to respect, celebrate, acknowledge, share history with family and friends, and present an invitation to do business with Nationwide by connecting with older/distant family members and strengthening the familial bond.  Nationwide understands you and the role of your heritage today and tomorrow. For future generations, it's a clear path of where they've come from and a strong sense of identity.

Here's a link to the news:

http://blacknews.com/news/nationwide_supports_black_history_month101.shtml

I love the ability to set multiple homepages in your browser. Love it. Call me nerdy, but I don't care.

I was browsing the web for a spell and noticed that I had quite the array of open items that I like to refer to on a regular basis, including - email, the essential iTunes playlist, NYtimes.com and local news, This Day in History, Webster's Word of the Day, Wikipedia,  and Pitchfork and Imeem (2 awesome sites for up and coming music). Who doesn't need to be tapped into the world, to start a collection of the soundtrack to their life, to know how NOT to repeat history, and to NOT sound like the village idiot? Tell me.

One would think that I would be the ultimate conversationalist, but not so much. Instead, I like to keep it in my pocket, get a little wiser and soak up that awesome playlist with my headphones. It's a way to expand my horizons and enlighten my day without leaving my desk. I don't have to go around the city, country or world to have a little taste of everything right at my fingertips.

"The best time of the day is in the morning. The possibilities are endless, and even though nothing could happen, the possibility was still there." It all starts with a homepage.

Interesting take on American history and what it means for immigrants today. I wonder if they'll put this in the school textbooks?

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/i-lift-my-lamp-beside-the-golden-door/

Hey GM:

There was once a pretty successful advertising guy. His name was David Ogilvy. He said a lot of smart stuff. Including this: "The consumer is not a moron."

You must have missed that little bit of advice. Otherwise, I can't imagine you'd ever produce the "reinvention" commercial Jeff mentioned in this entry.

If these spoofs are any indication, looks like you're learning it the hard way.

Ogilvy also said "If you tell lies about your product, you will be found out." These spoofs are being passed around precisely because they speak so clearly the truths your smarmy commercial was trying to hide underneath a bunch of montages with butterflies. Oopsies.

Sometimes I think all the hype about new technologies and emerging media platforms makes it easy to forget the basics. But I believe the old wisdom still applies: Find the truth about your product and go from there.

Maybe the truth doesn't always work. But, hey, it seems to have turned out pretty well for these guys:

I recently went to the Capital City Gun Show with my fiancé and very flamboyant male best friend.

Now I’ve been to some pretty strange places. But nothing could prepare me for this.

Antique firearms, shotguns, rifles, muskets, bayonets, machine guns, swords fit for a king and knives that would make Crocodile Dundee weep.

We were there for the next three hours.

While I didn’t buy a gun, I did realize a few things:

Women like guns. They ran the booths. (One even sold her homemade brownies right along side the semi-automatics.) They shopped for weapons. They brought their kids.

Guns are pretty. Seeing so many up close and personal, I looked past the “deadly-weapon” thing and saw rich woods polished like satin, detailed engraving and pearl handles. I saw the blinding sheen of pure silver and a pitch so dark it was beyond black.

Some guns are even adorable. Like the teeny-tiny Derringer, 2-6” of firepower that fits nicely in a woman’s purse or stocking.

Guns bring people together. Gay or straight. Rich or poor. Black or white. Guns can be a subject of conversation for hours.  How your father collected them and his stash will be yours one day.
How you first shot one in the woods in high school. If only people could get together and talk about guns rather than shoot them…

Guns are for kids. At least according to the Davey Crickett Rifle Company, whose “My First Rifle” is a single-shot, bolt action .22 perfectly sized for prepubescent children. Thankfully, the package warns, ”This is not a toy.”

Guns are easy to get. The permit application is shorter than the employment application at a fast food restaurant. Sheriffs at the gun show approve of your moral character on the spot. A quick background check, and that 1962 German Police Issue Luger 9 MM is all yours.

(I know this because that’s what my friend bought.) 

Guns are political. (Okay, I knew that already.) My favorite suggestion for addressing the whole guns-kill-people problem is from the brilliant Chris Rock.

what an extraordinary week!  and i'm not referring to the fact that we closed the agency for 2 inches of snow and the kids missed 1.5 days of school!  that's just crazy, but i'm adjusting to what happens when old man winter blows through the south.

i can remember three times in my life when i huddled around a television at work;  the OJ trial, 911 and Tuesday's inauguration of our 44th President.  thank God for Tuesday!

i voted for Barack.  but to be clear i also voted for "W" -- and i voted for Clinton.  but this was the first time in my life i really supported a presidential candidate and i'm not simply talking about money. 

in the fall of 2006 i read The Audacity of Hope, i picked it up initially (and probably hesitantly) as fodder for the strategy we proposed for Audi.  i never read that kind of stuff.  suffice it to say, we lost audi...but Barack won my heart.  i'm a sucker for the way he moves me.  and never before in my life have i ever been more afraid about the future for my girls.  it really hit me this summer on vacation and watching the Beijing Olympics.  it was an awful feeling that i think margaret and i had about the same time...that the US had lost ground, lost its way, lots its lead.  and that can not and should not be the case!

it was the first time in our 20 year relationship we realized that for our children to have all we want for them, our lives will need to be different.  we must recommit to the fundamental things in a whole new way.  it's also a spirit i've tried to bring with me to work as the year has begun as well.  a feeling of recommitting to what matters most in this business.  a recommitment to doing business the way it used to be done, without forgetting about the role we must play with respect to innovation and the digital world.  when i ran lbworks my creative partner called it "new tools, old school" and that's what i'm talking about.

i've also been struck by the fact that over the course of history many people have told stories about America that are exactly the stories that ring true to me about what we're facing as people, as teams, as an agency, as a member of society, etc.

in this uncertain world that we all face, the truth rings true...and i believe

i believe.pps (28.00 kb)