QUICK HITS: Uniform Advertising

The allure is there. The commercialization of sports. The money grab. The spontaneous dismissal of tradition.

I've heard it all this week in response to the National Basketball Association’s announcement that they will soon sell advertising on their jersey—a move the league says could generate an additional $100 million.

The outrage is borderline comical; after all, we live in the land of product placement. You can’t go through an hour of television without seeing an iPad or Pepsi inserted into every third scene on Modern Family or Two and Half Men.

I say, “What took them so long?”

No one seems to mind all of the sponsor logos in NASCAR or the English Premiere League. So let the Wells Fargo Celtics and the Sbarro Knicks and the Target Timberwolves reign supreme.

Branding is king, so don’t get yourself in an uproar.

As someone who appreciates a smart advertising campaign, I salute the NBA as a (once again) trailblazer being the first of the major sport to sell jerseys as walking billboards.

In a decade, as the crowds roar for the Dallas Mavericks brought to you by Citibank, you most likely won’t recall that anything was ever different.

Sheesh!

Random thoughts from the road…

For the tenth summer in a row it’s the summer of super heroes at the box office. We’re right in the middle of it now…Avengers ($1.5 billion worldwide so far), Spiderman ($140 million domestically so far), and Batman coming in a week. With all of this this box office smashing record business, it brings the debate, just who is the best super hero.

If there were a March Madness kind of round robin, who would you go with? Thor vs. Captain America vs. The Hulk vs. Batman? It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t go with Aquaman as your number one choice. Remember that story arc in Entourage where Vince Chase is freaking out that James Cameron is directing the Aquaman movie? He should have never worried because Aquaman is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to battling the bad guys. This brings me to the standard bearer of all super heroes: Superman.

The only people that like Superman above the others are the front runners of the world. I have a news bulleting for everyone…he’s made of steel. That’s a stacked deck if I ever heard of one. He’s faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. His top rival is a bald, middle age guy with a 180 IQ. The only way to stop this indestructible man is with Kryptonite. Where do you get this stuff? I mean it blew up decades ago in some super nova blast from another galaxy. Where is everyone getting this stuff anyway?

As far as super heroes go, he’s the safe choice. Sheesh!

Even Dana Gordon knew Aquaman was the worst...

Back to reality…I have been awaiting feedback from book chapters that were submitted to the publisher. Now keep in mind that I was told that when I started submitting chapters the feedback would be spotty and slow. I would get it when I get it and that’s the way the cookie crumbled. However, with the first round, I received instant feedback. When I asked why my editor got back to me so fast, they said that since the writing was flowing so well he just couldn’t wait to get information back to me. I thought, well that’s nice and it allowed me to get into the next batch of writing which I submitted soon thereafter.

Weeks went by and I heard nothing, so I sent an email to my editor, Maggie, saying something like, “Did you get the chapters? Any new feedback?” and of course I got nothing. Then when I spoke to my agent a week later, I asked him if he heard anything. He told me he sent an email and heard nothing back. And then we waited another three weeks. At that point I called my editor’s assistant and asked him to see what’s up. A few days later—now remember this is now five weeks since I sent in batch two of chapters—I get an email forward to me through the assistant from my editor:

From: XXXXXXX [mailto:xxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 12:42 PM
To: 'Michael Lloyd'
Subject: FW: Lloyd Book Feedback

New titles department. No need information on Lloyd book.

I know how desperate Michael is to get this information.

There should be something soon, Maggie

That caught me a little off guard. I really dislike when people ignore you for a while and them make it seem like it’s you who is anxious and in this case “desperate”. From the side of the sanity perspective, it seems desperate because my first few communication attempts were not replied to in any timely fashion. I know she didn’t mean it to be negative, but still….”desperate”? Sheesh.

It’s like that thing people do in a retail setting when you need help. You know that person behind the cash wrap who is fiddling with the straws or straightening cups or something and they are half turned away from you. You wait, but then you give the little, “Pardon me” and you get no reaction so you go with the “Excuse me…” And you still get nothing so you say, “uh, sir..” and there’s finally a sharp burst of “I heard you!”

More great customer service

Meanwhile you’re standing there thinking “I’m not impatient; a grunt or a moan or some type of acknowledgement would have served me just fine.” Really, the mental “I’ll be with you in a minute” doesn’t cut it because I’m not a mind reader. Sheesh!

Thank goodness the Kardashians have been pushed back to page three of the gossip hound and replaced with of all things the shocking TomKat split. I was listening to the radio while stuck in Los Angeles traffic gridlock when the great escape was described something like this: “A determined Katie Holmes plotted her escape from domineering hubby Tom Cruise like a “Mission: Impossible” operation — using a pal’s disposable cellphone to talk to lawyers in three states so Cruise couldn’t trace her calls or location.” Whatever happened to letting this all play out on Divorce Court. Sheesh!

Finally, since the second-to-last-episode of this season’s Mad Men revealed that Peggy was due to make a cool $120,000 a year managing accounts (Sheesh!), I wondered what other characters would be making today. Luckily there are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and these same people came up with this handy chart: