Baby boomers that listened to loud rock & roll are more susceptible to hearing loss.

A recent study says baby boomers that spent long days and nights listening to blaring Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix records are much less likely to suffer hearing loss than their parents. Additional factors like gender and access to antibiotics affect hearing more than music levels.

Ever since I saw New Moon (yep, Twilighter alert!) at the ShowPlace Theatre last month, I have been highly recommending this new theatre to everyone—now including you, the blogosphere. Recently opened last November, the ShowPlace Icon Theatre is located in the hip new West End development at 394 and 100 in St. Louis Park.

How is it different from your standard movie theatre experience? Well, let me share with you the highlights of my experience:

-Tickets with an actual seat number so you can leisurely grab snacks without having to rush in and guard your seat. When you’re ready, an usher shows you to your assigned place.

-Choices galore—whether it’s the VIP section that serves cocktails, to real or faux butter (hello, always real!), to even how much ice I wanted—it was all about me! Talk about customer service. And did I mention the politeness of the staff? It’s second to none.

-No pre-film ads. Yes, I know I’m a marketer so I should take exception. But really, does anyone watch those? It was nice to simply enjoy my very comfortable seat and chat with friends before the coming attractions.

-Finally, the convenience and ideal location. There’s free parking and the Theatre is a short walk to great post-movie restaurants like Crave and Cooper.

The days of sticky theatre floors, fighting for a seat (maybe even placing your coat over the seat in front of you) and marginal snacks are most definitely over at ShowPlace. Now, when does Eclipse come out?

Have you visited the ShowPlace? How does your experience compare to mine?

-Jenny Silgen

NutshellMail is an application that allows users to track updates from a myriad of social networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, in one primary email inbox.

A few weeks ago, NutshellMail debuted a clever feature on Facebook. The Email Newsletter application gives Facebook administrators constant contact with fans by emailing a synopsis of the fan page using the existing feed. Bonus: The application is free and once installed requires no additional work for Facebook administrators. 

In just four steps, Facebook page administrators can add an Email Newsletter to their page:

1. Click “Add to my Page” in the NutshellMail Application
2. Add the application
3. Add the Email Newsletter tab
4. Promote the Newsletter with a wall post

Once signed up, fans will receive email summaries of the activity on the page, per their delivery preferences.

This is great on many levels. Now that Facebook has a Live Feed option, it is quite possible that fan page activity may get buried beneath Farmville crops and Mafia Wars crossfire. Rather than relying on fans to come to the page, administrators can invite fans to receive a summary, and determine how often an email newsletter is sent. Also, the email itself is interactive, with live links to the activity on the page. So, if the reader wants to get engaged, all it takes is a simple click.

-Joy Wagner

Have a stuffy nose? Grab a box of tissues!

Instinct may tell us to blow our nose when it’s stuffy, but research shows this does no good.

I’ve never been much of a winter outdoors enthusiast since graduating from the days of sledding down hills with my playmates as a kid. While I’m enjoying the beginning of the Winter Olympics this week like most, I prefer to cheer on the US contenders hearthside near the TV. So when members of my summertime golf league asked if I wanted to join them in last Saturday’s frozen celebration of winter, the 26th annual Chilly Open golf tournament on Lake Minnetonka in Wayzata, my knee-jerk response was, “heck NO!” But after a bit of coaxing I relented, vowing to give it a try as long as it wasn’t 20-below.

Much to my surprise, I’m glad I traded in my seasonal curmudgeon hat for winter-ready head gear and gave it a go. It was a blast. A scene like no other I’ve witnessed during my 10 years here in Minnesota. Pros and duffers alike swatting tennis balls with golf clubs and hockey sticks through narrow nine-hole courses carved out of extremely thick ice with plenty of natural and man-made obstructions. Getting caught in the rough took on a whole new dimension—I’ll never grouse again about lying off the fairway after trying to hit out of two-foot snow drifts.

The Chilly Open was no place for regulation golf. Twelve-somes, eight-somes and the occasional four-some like us teed up for bad golf and lots of laughs. And boy, were there laughs. In keeping with this year’s Olympic-inspired theme “All Around the World,” participants donned costumes, elaborate (mostly Nordic) headwear and even decorated sleds full of beer to celebrate the occasion. Even a few rugged pooches were adorned for the day. Special homage goes to the Viking ship “caddy” that was towing enough libations to last through 36 holes (we only played 9).

Scores aside, the Chilly Open opened my eyes to the potential for winter fun and mayhem here in Minnesota. I’ll still take playing 18 on Minnesota’s many beautiful golf courses on perfect summer days, but in the meantime the Chilly Open is a good excuse to get back in the swing as winter draws near its close and spring closes in.

-Steph Haugan

Tennis ball in the "rough"

A Viking "caddy" ship navigates the frozen Lake Minnetonka

The recent Toyota recalls have placed doubt and anxiety where quality assurance and reliability once resided in consumer’s minds. This, in part, has much to do with the way Toyota initially handled the recall crisis—opting to keep quiet, blame others, and deny when they should have immediately stepped up, taken responsibility, and addressed consumers.

Time after time, the value of a public relations crisis management strategy has proven to be critically important for both companies and celebrities to have in place. An article in Fortune compared Toyota’s crisis management to the way Tiger Woods handled his scandal, making statements such as, “Like Toyota, Woods refused to make a public appearance to apologize for his misdeeds (and still hasn’t), preferring to issue press releases instead.” And, “Like Toyota, the news about Woods’ missteps was allowed to trickle out day by day without being effectively refuted.”

Thankfully, Toyota has finally sprung into action, releasing TV, print and radio ads, posting updates on the company web site, leveraging social media, putting the president of U.S. sales, Jim Lentz, on the Today Show, and issuing a news conference in Japan where Toyota’s CEO apologized for the safety problems and vowed to regain consumer trust. But is it too late?

If there’s one lesson we can learn from the now famous Tylenol recall, it’s that quick action and transparency can go a long way in repairing and reestablishing trust in a brand. While Toyota’s actions were slow to start, how they handle the crisis going forward will determine whether their reputation has been irreparably damaged.

Will you buy a Toyota after the crisis is over?

-Mary Nhotsavang

Olympic gold medals are made entirely of gold.

The last entirely gold medals were reportedly awarded at the 1912 Olympics. Today, gold medals are required to be plated in only 6 grams of gold.

Over the weekend my boyfriend and I introduced our cat, Harry,  to a new member of our family, an eight-week-old kitten we named Tilly. We (well…I) thought it necessary to bring a kitten into our lives so that Harry would have a playmate, friend and partner in crime during our working hours. I searched far and wide—on websites, in newspaper ads and through Craigslist postings. Then I came across a local organization called Pet Project Rescue. 

 Based in Minneapolis, this organization rescues dogs and cats from high-kill shelters in the Twin Cities and even brings dogs from Mexico, where the adoption rate for stray dogs is a meager 1%. Animals taken into the care of Pet Project Rescue are given high-quality veterinary care and housed in foster homes until a sound permanent home is found for them. After submitting an in depth application (questions range from your workplace to your ability and willingness to exercise your new pet to describing a typical day in the life of your pet) you are able to meet your potential new family member. Because animals stay in foster homes, volunteers at Pet Project Rescue are able to provide deeper insight into the personality and needs of the individual animal, which is very helpful, especially when introducing a new animal to an already established pet. 

Only 5 days into our family, Tilly is adjusting very well. Harry on the other hand, well…I think he may need a few more days to adjust. She had her first round of vaccinations and came with certificates to get additional vaccinations, spayed and micro chipped, standard for all adoptions through Pet Project Rescue. Despite Harry’s uncertainties about our new kitten, I’m happy to have in her our family.  And I’m sure my colleagues will love hearing about their antics.

-Whitney McIntosh

There is widespread concern that the recent 5-4 Supreme Court Decision to roll back restrictions on corporate spending in federal campaigns could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming elections.

On behalf of the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence.”

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of judicial activism and attacked the use of corporate personhood in the case: “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.”

Good arguments can be made on both sides of this issue in regard to whether it captures the spirit of the constitutional mandate to protect political speech. But personally, I don’t think advertising is the problem. A strong case can be made that there is not enough spent on political advertising in relation to how important these election results are and how almost completely inept our political leaders have been at responsibly managing the approximately $3 trillion federal budget. Larger communication budgets to promote campaigns should help us hold political officials more accountable for what they promise during their campaigns and for their actual behavior in office.

Much has been made about the rising cost of campaigning to become President. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a total of 148 candidates for all parties and candidates who ran for President in 2008 raised a collective total of $1,644,712,232 and spent $1,601,104,696 for the primary and general campaigns through the 2008 election. The amounts raised and spent by the two major candidates, according to the same source, was:

Candidate (Party)   $ Raised               $ Spent                  Votes              $ per vote

Barack Obama (D) $ 532,946,511    $ 513,557,218      69,498,215           $ 7.39

John McCain (R)     $ 379,006,485    $ 346,666,422      59,948,240           $ 5.78

These expenditures, in part, led to the highest turnout of voters (63%) since 1960. Not a bad result. Including all the candidates’ expenditures, around $20 per vote was spent on the 2008 Presidential campaign. By commercial standards, and given the importance of the purchase decision, that doesn’t seem unduly high, especially when compared with the amount we each spend to fund the government.

Political marketing suffers some structural disadvantages that the commercial world does not. First, in general elections, voters usually see only a pair of realistically viable candidates to choose between. That’s a key reason turnout is low. In just about any other product category, there are many more choices. As a result, consumer interest—and consumption—is higher than political interest and consumption.

Second, the voter’s enthusiasm is episodically crushed by having to accept what the majority decides, no matter how far out of alignment that candidate’s values are from the voter’s.

Additionally, in the U.S. we can only cast a vote on a specified date once every two, four or six years, except by absentee ballot. Given the vagaries of voting, there might be a line to wait in, foul weather, a sudden crazy schedule to deal with or even a level of mistrust over whether an outdated voting machine will actually work. The commercial marketplace is vastly more efficient and convenient. Consumers cast their votes in millions of purchase decisions every day, increasingly online. We still operate under voting laws that existed when you might have had to ride a horse two days to get to the polls.

Finally, many politicians understand that they need to develop a personal brand with a distinctive, appealing message, delivered consistently over time. But it is often difficult to be this consistent and actually win. Politicians have to win a majority on Election Day, and doing so often makes them believe they need to parse words, trying to have it both ways, and thus become perceived as flip-flopping on issues. In addition, our win-lose system often forces candidates to undertake destructive tactics such as negative advertising to tear down their opponents rather than promoting their own virtues. When both candidates participate in this approach, both brands suffer, as does the entire political category.

What’s needed in politics is not less advertising but better marketing and branding: focusing on current and emerging “customer” needs, developing “product” and credible service solutions, informing interested citizens about them and making themselves easily accessible in person and through social media and other communication channels. But the real key is for politicians to understand that making unkept promises, while common, is what is hurting them most.

Perhaps a good starting point would be for politicians to view citizens not as occasional voters, donors and taxpayers but as their “customers” who are much, much more intelligent than most politicians seem to think. Voters remember what you say and if you keep your promises, especially if you are running for President.

President Obama won the past election, in part, with much better marketing than his opponent. But his brand strength and place in history will ultimately be defined by how well he delivers on his campaign promises. The brand promises are half the brand, keeping them is the other half. If politicians want to know why they are held in such low regard, they need look no further than their trail of broken promises. That is the problem, not advertising.

-Patrick Strother

The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible in space.

Astronauts have reported many objects are visible at a low level orbit, but once in outer space, no man-made objects can be seen.