Reaching goals or avoiding pitfalls? It's all in a day's work.

I had the pleasure of attending a meeting last evening of the Waterloo (NY) Business & Professional Association. It's the resurrection of an inactive merchant organization in the Fingerlakes community and, based on those in attendance last night, it has a much brighter future this time around. The folks there were passionate about their town and are working to attract new members and the Scotsman has pledged to help them do that. We put on a brief small business marketing presentation last night and will be doing a second installment in the near future.

When we do these presentations, the topic has little or nothing to do with our publications or products. We try to help local businesses find new ways to look at what they do and market themselves better. Sometimes that involves a Scotsman publications campaign and sometimes it doesn't. It's not about our success, it's about the business' success. In the case of a local Chamber of Commerce or merchant group, it's about group success because when the community thrives, everything thrives, including our business.

We give advice (ADvice, like the title above). I wish we had the chance to advise one radio advertiser that I happened to hear a spot from last Saturday. The date was September 10, the day before the tenth anniversary of 9-11. No explanation needed, I'm sure. The advertiser was a race track and they were hosting a demolition derby that evening. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this in a big booming radio voice:

"(Name of track mercifully omitted) will be ground zero tonight...the eve of destruction...!"

Ground zero? Eve of destruction? Really? Are ya' kidding me? If they were ignorant to what the date was, then someone in advertising should have reminded them. If they knew what the date was and went ahead with this anyway, then someone in advertising should have grabbed them by the ears and told them to stop! I shared this with a friend who is a race fan (I'm not) who tried to explain it away by saying racing is a different culture. Every race I've ever caught a glimpse of always seemed awash in red, white and blue patriotism. I think race fans deserve better and I think advertising people -- all of us, especially me -- should pray that we are on top of the situation every day for our clients. Helping them improve their marketing is our goal, but helping them avoid mistakes is our job.

We're not perfect at the Scotsman, but we're trying to be. That's why our Pennysavers reach almost 99% of the homes in our marketplace. Contact us if you'd like to know more: 315-472-7825 or info@scotsmanmediagroup.com. God bless America!