It is with some sadness that I listened to the last ever episode of The M Show today. For over 5 years, my friend John Wall hosted a cutting-edge, concise, 10 minute podcast around marketing news and information, sprinkled with a little entertainment news. But like all good things, this one is coming to an end.

John is also the co-host with Christopher S. Penn of Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly podcast about marketing online and offline, which as a result covers all aspects of business. Recorded weekly at a Dunkin Donuts in Natick, Massachusetts, it is a very successful show with thousands of listeners/subscribers. With its success, John’s focus has changed, and thus The M Show has become a reality of that change.

The M Show set a standard for the perfect podcast. It had lively music, short in duration, informative, well-edited and human. Many podcasts out there sound like a never-ending monologue or duologue. This style has been carried over to Marketing Over Coffee, though it is about 30 minutes in duration, but is still packed with useful information.

If you never listened to The M Show, the feed remains live. His post on the end of the show on his blog Ronin Marketeer sums up the show well. I was honored to be a guest on a number of shows, and one was recorded in my home office a few years ago when John was here in the Windy City at a conference. He has said something new will be coming down the pike, so watch the feed as I am sure it will be great!

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The next likemind will be Friday, July 16, 2010 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Go Blackhawks! That, and many other cheers have been rippling through the Chicagoland area the past few months, as the NHL Blackhawks played hard to the ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup. As a one-time pro-hockey fan, I was swept up in the momentum and was there cheering along with everyone else. You know everyone was caught up in the Blackhawks when venerable institutions like Tiffany & Co. even sported the red and black on their storefronts, as pictured!

The ascent of the team is not just one for the sports chronicles, but for the business storytelling as well. Just a few years ago, nobody would have thought the team would even sellout a game, let alone win it all. Attendance was low, games were not on TV, the team owner was known for many years as “Dollar” Bill Wirtz, and their record reflected all of this.

Then Mr. Writz died, and his son, Rocky, inherited the hockey club. It seemed like it was within days of his death that his offspring was trying to get games on local television, and a handful of games were broadcast for all to see, something his father never believed in. One-by-one changes were taking place – among them a new team president and signing young players like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. The team adopted a mantra of “One Goal” – the play on words meaning everything they did was to win the Stanley Cup. And low and behold, as I write this it is now traveling back from LA with members of the team after an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Over the course of the last few years I have followed both sides of the team. In numerous interviews Rocky Wirtz talked about changing the culture of the organization, focusing on the fans and selling and marketing the team. What I heard was almost deja vu to me, sounding much like the transformation of the New England Patriots in the 90’s. Within a few years after Robert Kraft bought the team, they were in the Super Bowl, albeit a losing effort to the Packers. But the whole organization pressed on, both on and off the field. Today 3 Super Bowl banners hang within Gillette Stadium, which replaced the outdated-from-day-one Foxboro Stadium. And though I didn’t follow the story as closely with the Boston Celtics, they are now playing for their second NBA title since new ownership took over the team in the last decade.

Even though you are a pro sports team, just because you are there does not mean people will be interested. This is what happened with me, as I lost interest in the Boston Bruins over the years because of detached ownership and what seemed to be more attention to managing the bottom line than to winning. Granted, the Bruins have done well over the last few years, probably due to the son of the out-of-town owner of the team actually being in Boston. Where I wish them well, my heart and allegiance have transferred to another of the Original Six hockey teams.

The rise of the Blackhawks is inspiring on a lot of fronts, including business. It says there is hope for all of us if the commitment is there. Granted, according to Rocky Wirtz the team is currently losing money, but the long-term affects of this championship season have yet to play out. A look at the growing Patriot Place, which now surrounds Gillette Stadium, is a testament to that. With what looks like a solid organization, there’s no reason they cannot achieve their “One Goal” next season too.

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IT departments are often criticized for thinking only of technology and not about the end users in an organization. Where IT can be an easy target, in many cases the critique is correct. Here’s a perfect example in the form of following technical standards and missing the goal the technology is to be used for.

The other day I was walking through Block 37, a retail complex in Chicago’s Loop, and saw a sign as shown in the accompanying photo. The Disney Store is going to open in one of the many available retail spaces, confirming what I had read in the local media. As is often the case with a retail “coming soon” sign, there was a call for people to work at the forthcoming store, or as Disney calls it, a casting call. Though I was not interested in working there, I read the sign nonetheless, and almost choked when I got to the end of it, reading aloud at this point the email address listed, as shown in detail below.

If you cannot read the email address in the photo, it is: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Yes, this is correct. I have seen complicated email addresses in my life, but this one by far is the worst I have ever seen!

This email address is far from usable, and is prone to all kinds of misspellings and mistyping errors. From a usability standpoint, it is anything from memorable. If someone is walking by the sign and doesn’t have a pen or any other way to write it down or enter into a mobile device, forget the possibility of remembering it. From a data-entry perspective, an email address with mixed case and 5 periods will surely be typed incorrectly when used in an email address, or even if someone is jotting it in their device for later use. It is not known if the capital letters are case-sensitive or not.

This email address is more than likely in compliant with a corporate IT standard of The Walt Disney Company. Where that’s all well and good, marketing or HR should have stepped in and asked for a much more user-friendly email address. I did a quick search of domain names which could have been coupled with this email address, and disneyjobs.com and disneystore.com are names they already own, and have Web sites at them. An email address of .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) could have worked. A new domain names like disneychicago.com could have been registered for a few dollars and have email redirected to the complicated address. Or forget email – a link to the Disney Jobs site may be the preferred method of getting prospective employees.

And all this criticism is coming from someone who has worked his entire career in computers! What is needed is IT leadership who understands people need to use the technology they build and support, and this should be a joint effort with marketing or HR to come up with a unique, short, memorable email address or Web site to entice people to email their resume for a position. Granted in this economy people who are looking for jobs will go to extraordinary means to get one. But why make them do more work than they – or anyone else – should?

For the sake of full disclosure (and to satisfy the FTC), I do own a few shares of Disney stock, which makes this even more embarrassing for me.

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The next likemind will be Friday, June 18, 2010 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

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