My brother showed me his Belkin voice recorder attachment for his iPod today. It is tiny. He used it to record a one hour meeting today. I bought one at CompUSA for $49.95. One of my companies, LDSaudio.com, was approved recently as iPod reseller. We told Apple that one of our marketing approaches to sell iPods would be to encourage people use it for recording oral histories, which is an important part of family history preservation. I’m going to start trying it out with my wife and kids to see how useful it is in capturing stories.
Fox VP Marketing speaks in Orem
Today at UVSC I heard a VP of Marketing at Fox (as in 20th Century Fox) speak to the business school at the Executive Lecture. It so happens that Brandon d. Miller grew up right across the street from me in Orem. He has always been a movie fanatic. At a very young age I remember how he used to set up little filmstrip or film showings in his garage; he charged a small fee for his friends and neighbors to watch (or maybe it was just for the popcorn and snacks). He is an Orem High grad and UVSC alumni. His career has been meteoric. He talked about all the in-theater promotion and buzz-building they do for new movie releases. His budget is between $1 and $5 million per film; the total marketing budget for most films is $15 to $30 million (most of which goes to media).
Wherever you live, if you’re close to a business school, check out the calendar of speakers and go listen to the pros tell you how they do things. Take copious notes. Save them in a searchable database. Refer to them later. Find keys to success by comparing experts in different fields. Find the experts and learn from them. It surprises me how few people take advantage of discovering who the experts are and then finding a chance to learn from them. BYU, UVSC, and the University of Utah all have excellent guest speakers. After the talk, go exchange business cards with them and find a way to make a connection with them that might actual lead to a future opportunity.
