Friday, December 21, 2007

Holiday Greetings

& other updates on life, business, love, and marketing - not necessarily in that order!

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!
Happy Kwanzaa! Blessed Whatever!

The solstice is here, and it's time once again for my biennial year-end holiday update on life, the universe, and everythingTM, to coin a phrase. As always, I ask you to accept my apologies for this seemingly impersonal format for my "holiday" message; viz a group email [or an entry to a blog on the "internet" for that matter! -Ed]. Rest assured that I do this only out of respect for our great e-postal workers, who must be up to their virtual eyeballs in electronic greetings at this time of year. It is in their honor that I refrain from introducing individually formatted and addressed missives into the POP or SMTP streams.

There are simply too few full-motion-capable beverage dispensing machines (for now!) to reach each and every one of you with my personal best, and other than my sister, Kay, I didn't think many of you would appreciate a greeting running on Gas Station TV (oh - the odor, oh - the humanity!).


As you know, this has been a momentous year for us here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC. Not only have we been quite successful in a business sense, but it has turned out quite nicely for most of us personally as well (Pat's been sacked!).

With the writers' strike dragging on, there had been some talk about moving the air-date of the "Who Wants to Be a Pent-Athlete?" up to fill some potentially dead air. While many of my friends and family seem fit to burst with waiting for this program to air, it's still a bit unlikely, given the program's tie-in with the Olympics in Beijing (Peking to me!), none the less, we'll keep you apprised of any changes.


On a somewhat personal note, I'd like to congratulate my sister, Kay, on her marriage this year to her long-time sweetheart, J. Alden Miles. (As an aside, I urged her most strongly to hyphenate her last name, but she decided to go with Kay Miles, rather than my preferred Kay Miles-Standish - there's no accounting for taste, it seems!) We are fortunate to be able to say that the wedding went off with a hitch (it wouldn't be much of a wedding without one, now would it!?), and we look forward to many more Miles as their family grows.


It's been some time since we've had a national tour of our marketing seminars, and we're planning to remedy that in the upcoming year. In fact, we're looking to expand beyond these United States (!) and to share our thoughts and guidance with our friends to the North (that means Canada for those of our readers not in the geographical know). Current thinking puts us in Camden, Alpharetta, Madison Heights, Ada, Breckenridge, Fullerton, and Sammamish, returning via Chilliwack, Lethbridge, Brandon, Sudbury, and Halifax!

As always, we'll be looking for some forward-looking marketers as co-sponsors of the tour, and we'll keep everyone informed as we make progress with our tour dates and venues.


Finally, speaking of forward-looking, we're looking forward to receiving holiday notes, wishes, updates, and (dare one hope?) goodies for some or each of you. Please know that Jody and I (and all of us here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC! - including Bailey in Finance, who was somewhat upset at being referenced simply as "my bookkeeper" in an earlier newsletter - sorry, Bailey! hope this can help clear things up as the year ends!) wish you and yours the very Happiest of Holidays.

Excelsior!
Jay

Last week, Jay wrote about product integration in comic books:
Steve Kirby responded:
"At first, I was outraged at the idea of one of our heroes 'selling out' to The Man, but then I realized that we've all sold out to The Man in some way. Maybe letting Luke Cage have a favorite BBQ sauce for his ribs isn't such a bad thing, still ..."

Thanks for the kind words, Steve. I know these product integrations can be a difficult hurdle over which to leap: especially at a single bound! Still, once we realize that readers look to these characters for guidance, it seems even worse to tell them to buy generically-named non-brands of anything, doesn't it? I thought you'd see it my way!

-- Jay

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A real American hero like Ron Paul wouldn't pander to left and right alike by including every off-brand celebration - why do you? Are you afraid of the whiny, intolerant tolerance nazis?
Don't be a whimp or a chump, vote Ron Paul and save America.
That might deserve an exelsior - certainly more than your lame newsletter ever does.
Bum.

Jay Standish said...

Friends, please don't reply to this fellow (gal?), as he (or she!) seems to be a troll.
No, not (as many of you are - no doubt! - thinking) one of those hairy and unpleasant characters from the "Fairy" stories (another unfair moniker, don't you think!?) going around and terrorizing goats and such.
No indeed.
We here on the "internet" have come to use that word [viz. "troll"] to describe persons (of whatever stripe!) who simply stir up trouble, much as the motor on a small fishing boat (hence "trolling," you see) might stir up the muck at the bottom of one's favorite fishing "hole."

Responding tends only to encourage further baiting, sometimes eventuating in what has come to be known as a "flame war" where each calls the other worse and worse names until one finally cries the proverbial "uncle."

There will be no knuckling under (apparently a variant or corruption of uncling under by way of the Frisian tongue - isn't wikipedia a spectacular resource?!) to such "trolls" here in the Jay Standish "blog" spot. None what-so-ever! Don't even consider it, lest you fan the flames (!) and continue the trolling until the waters are so muddied that even the pipes and tubes of the "internet" will no longer be able to deliver the clear and incisive information and data for which its inventor so mightily strove!

Anonymous said...

I am not a troll - I am a real, honest-to-God American Human!!!

For that matter, has anyone ever actually met Jay Standish? I don't know anyone who has, and I know a lot of people, let me tell you.

Ron Paul has been seen in public by many people, as has Jimmy Martin (at least before he died), but who has seen Jay Standish?

If he exists, I'm pretty sure he's a bum.

Jay Standish said...

- sigh -