What do you think of when you think of Tokyo? Bright lights? Electronics? Robots? Lots of advertising?

Here are 12 things you might not know about Japan.

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Konnichiwa boys and girls! I was recently lucky enough to cash in some frequent flier miles and visit Japan. Along the way I took notes, giving me some pretty cool content to bring you 3-4 episodes on Japanese marketing and pop culture. While many of the things I saw were what I expected, there were quite a few things that took me by surprise.

Could Tokyo possibly be bigger, brighter, and bolder than New York City? Lets find out.

Here are the Tokyo 12.

1. Advertising Equality
If you picture parts of downtown Tokyo as one giant, brightly-lit neon television commercial, you’re not far off. For example, thousands of people cross intersections near Shibuya Station as billboards and LCD screens tower above them, pushing Coca Cola and cell phones. You’re a long way from Kansas.

But is it any different from New York or other major US cities? Not really. While the JR subway line might have little advertisements on the hanging straps and a small TV monitor in each car, I’ve seen the entire subway car on the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square or giant city buses wrapped in advertisements. There was definitely lots of advertising, but at a level was about what I was used to.

2. Electronics Letdown
One of the must-see side trips on my list was a visit to Akihabara, or Japan’s “electronics town.” I was prepared to see 3D television sets, $500 laptops I could fold up and put in my pocket, and of course, a land of robots. I couldn’t wait to bring back some type of secret gadget that no one in the US had even heard of yet. At the next party, everyone would gather around and marvel at this piece of next generation technology and ask, where can I get one of those? To which I’d smugly reply, it’s not available in the US.

So it was to my disappointment that the stores were more WalMart than Wired. In fact, it reminded me of the not so glamorous electronics vendors here in New York. The ones that tourists go to, but not residents. iPods? Same price as the Apple store down the block from me. Digital cameras? Talk to me when you can beat Amazon.com’s price. And Robots? We had to trek up four flights of stairs to get to the one building out of 50 that had robots, only to find the decent ones priced at hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

3. Baseball Blooper
If this isn’t a missed marketing opportunity, I don’t know what is. Since it was late October, Japan’s version of the World Series was going on, pitting the Yomiuri Giants vs. the Seibu Lions. I asked some people what I thought was a simple question… Hey, where could I buy a hat from one of the teams? Silence. People were stumped.

Seriously? If this were Boston in October, you couldn’t go 15 minutes from Pittsfield to Portland without seeing a Red Sox logo on every man, woman or child, be it on a hat, shirt, onesie, or tattoo. What kills me is that you can buy a NY Yankees hat in Japan in 12 different colors. But a Giants hat? You have to go to the Tokyo Dome. A Lions hat? About 20 minutes away at their stadium. Really? No one has thought of selling these in the city? Imagine if the only way a 7-year old boy from upstate New York could get a Yankees hat was if his Dad brought him the team store in the Bronx.

4. Sky high restaurants and bars
Here’s another difference in the way establishments market themselves vs. the US. Whether it’s bars on Bourbon Street or a Subway in strip malls, we make it pretty easy to poke your head in, see if you like what you see, and make your decision. Maybe it’s because I’m not a local, but don’t expect to find a cool bar or restaurant via foot traffic in Japan. Many of the pubs and restaurants are located high above street level, hidden in back alleys or behind unmarked subterranean doorways. You don’t know what you’re getting until you’ve hoofed it up 5 or 10 floors. Then again, that makes it that much cooler when you stumble upon a gem.

5. Cell phone chatter
Everyone in Japan has a cell phone, right? They use them to talk and text and play games and open their garage and pay their mortgage and cure baldness. But here’s the shocking thing they don’t do. They don’t talk on them incessantly. It took me awhile to notice what wasn’t happening. Thousands of people weren’t talking on them while they walked. They weren’t taking calls at dinner. They weren’t yelling over other conversations in a bar. They even adhered to the no talking signs on above-ground subways! I actually cringed when I landed in NY and the second the wheels hit the runway every person powered up their phone and began a conversation during the 3 minute process of unloading the plane. We could learn something here.

6. Celebrity vending machines
I wasn’t really sure exactly what else people would be buying from vending machines in Tokyo, now that I can buy an iPod from one here at a Macys. Do they have more vending machines in Japan? Yes. They have soda and drinks and types of food. They also have a giant photo of Tommy Lee Jones on them. But were people buying chocolate soufflés or getting their shirts dry-cleaned at them? Uh, no.

7. Thin is in
Nine. That’s about the number of overweight people I saw in 8 days of traveling. Single digits. Country of 128 million people. And to be honest I’m not sure it was that high. Oh, and zero would be the number of obese people I saw.

Look, maybe I missed the “Houston, Texas” of Japan, and there were a lot of people smoking, which surely isn’t healthy. But I didn’t see lots of ads for Weight Watchers or the Zone Diet or 8 minute abs. With reportedly 1 in 3 Americans obese and 2 of 3 overweight, it was stunning to realize that I can’t recall seeing a single person that made me think, hey, maybe he should lay off the fatty tuna at the sushi counter next time. I don’t know where all the Sumo wrestlers were hiding, but this was one healthy country.

8. Men’s Fashion (Speaking of Tommy Lee Jones)
Their fashion could be described as the same, but different. Picture the scene… waves and waves of businessmen pouring out of the subway in crisp dark suits like an enormous casting call for the movie Men in Black. It seemed that 9 out of 10 men of all ages I saw during the day, from executives to office workers to students, rocked a dark suit and crisp white shirt. Always impeccable. Never sloppy. No baggy jeans. No sideways hats. No oversized t-shirts.

Japanese Men in Black from Jim Hopkinson on Vimeo.

So how did they distinguish themselves? One way was the shoes. Another is their hair. Without the diversified hair shades of blond, brown, and red, the cut and style becomes more dramatic. A 50-foot monitor at Shibuya’s busy crossing hypes “Moving Rubber” hair gel (my friend bought some and we weren’t sure we’d ever seen such a substance). Some of the hairstyles I saw could be classified as pompadours, spikes, and the 1990s Jennifer Aniston look. But it did set them apart.

9. Women’s Fashion Wonders
In a word, stunning. Like the men, most of the women, from students to store clerks, seemed to follow a “standard uniform” for fall. That was dark sweaters and jackets, skirts, knee-high socks and boots.

And they definitely like their brands. Several areas we were in had high end shopping, from Ralph Lauren to Louis Vuitton, as well as plenty of boutique shops. It’s interesting how major brands transcend different cultures. And again, the style was impeccable. Check out the photo I took of a group of girls all wearing the same outfit, but differentiating with their crazy shoes.

10. No Japanese spoken here
My last comment on fashion is that it was nearly impossible to find a single shirt with Japanese writing on it. At first it was just casual browsing, trying to find something authentic. But at the end of the trip, I was in full-scale tourist mode. Yes, I want to be the dorky – um, I mean cool – guy that has a t-shirt with Japanese writing on it to be different. Look, it’s not like I’m getting a tattoo that I think means “inner peace” and it actually means “bean curd.” I just wanted something that had Japanese writing.

But it got to be ridiculous. Yes, I know Japanese like fashion with English sayings. But I was in Japan, and I couldn’t find ANY shirts with Japanese writing. NONE. Nothing with their native language on it! Can you imagine shopping in New York or Boston or San Francisco and only finding shirts written in Italian or German? See the photo of me at a high-end department store holding up a $63 shirt with University of Pittsburgh on it!

11. At your service
The level of customer service is unprecendented. Astounding. Shocking. Breathtaking. And, worthy of it’s own podcast. Stay tuned.

12. Royal Flush
All I can say is that the Toto Toilet company should immediately be given a US Government contract to replace all the toilets in the entire country. A new law will make it illegal to install anything but their models. Yes, they’re that good. And yes, I am going to do an entire podcast about toilets.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes so you’ll automatically download upcoming topics about the land of the rising sun. Also follow me at Twitter.com/hopkinsonreport.

Thanks for listening, and sayonara.

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Today’s podcast is a bit of a rant. Quite simply, I want to buy new glasses. The problem is, the process of doing so is one of the few things in life that are NOT made easier by the web. Let me explain.

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I am the ultimate researcher. Give me any task, from finding the best digital camera to the best sushi restaurant in New York and I will give you a rundown of all the things you need to consider. In the past six months I have researched Blu Ray DVD players, pillowtop mattresses, external hard drives, portable thumb drives, ski houses in upstate New York, and traditional Japanese guest houses in Kyoto. Really, I’m a machine. Everyone asks me to do this.

All of this is made easier by the web. I type fast, am a Google god, and can open a new browser tab with a new source of information before you can blink.

But none of this matters when looking for new glasses. The system is broken, and I’m going to give you 7 reasons why.

<< Continue reading this post below >>

1. It’s an important purchase
Hey, maybe I’m over analyzing, maybe I’m vain. But most people are going to see me up to 16 hours a day, every day, for the next few years. People make incredible snap judgments on everything from attractiveness to intelligence to sense of style based on your look, and one of the first things they will see is your face. So the glasses you choose have a big effect on how you look.

2. It’s expensive and non-refundable
If we were talking a new shirt and the first day you wear it, your buddy says “Arrggh… What’s up pirate man?” you probable realize the frilly sleeves were a bit too much, you suck up the $100 loss and throw it back in the closet. Even a bad haircut is under $50 and grows back in a month.

But with frames costing up to $500 or more, and high index, lightweight, scratch-resistant, anti-reflective lenses running hundreds as well – customized for you and only you – you just can’t save your receipt and go back for a refund if your little brother’s first reaction is “Um, were you TRYING to go for the punk rock librarian look?”

3. The buying process sucks and is horribly inefficient
There’s no way around it. For just about everyone, the key to finding the right pair of glasses is putting in the work. Again, maybe it’s me being picky. My eyes are somewhat close together, so any frame even remotely wider than average makes me look like Bono crossed with Elton John.

But the way to narrow things down is speed. Show me that pair, that pair, that pair, and that one. How bout these? No. How bout these? No. How bout these? No. How bout these? Not bad… put those aside. How bout these? No way. How bout these? No. How bout these? Yes. Wait, no. How bout these? Oh, I like those better than the first pair. How bout these? Uh, you look like a moron.

And so it goes.

The way to go is to try on as many pairs as possible and narrow down what looks good, what the current style is, what feels good, and just find something that works.
However, how are most stores arranged? They have row after row of glasses for you to try, but they are locked behind glass cabinets, which can only be opened by store employees who need to go through a set of keys like a prison warden. Then you start the dance. Let me try that pair there. No, to the left. Below the rimless ones. No, the semi-rimless ones. And then you try it, and it’s a no. So you go through the charade again, and by the third time, it’s getting pretty old.

So why keep them all locked up? Why??? It’s not like a gangster is going to break in, and steal 30 pairs at once and go sell them on the black market like they could with CDs or leather jackets.

And it’s not like the average person is going to even steal ONE pair. How would that work? You talk with the person for an hour, settle on the right pair, and then when their back is turned you slip them in your coat and take off? Only to do what… track down another store, bring in your own frames, sit down for a comprehensive eye exam and consultation, and drop $300 on lenses?

Sure, lock up the Prada frames. Of course, lock up the sunglasses. But to me, I would have all my frames accessible and just hire a security guard or buy a surveillance camera that you can see on the way in. Wouldn’t that lead to a better consumer experience, and thus more sales?

4. The salespeople aren’t much help
So they’ve made it so you HAVE to deal with a salesperson, which are usually part timers with no training. Just once I’d like to walk in, ask for a recommendation, and have them say, hmm…. I’ve sold 71 pairs of glasses this month. You’re in good hands. Based on the shape of your face, the color of your eyes, and your sense of style, you should be looking at THIS or THIS. Shouldn’t they get better at their job the longer they are there? Shouldn’t they be able to at least start with a recommendation instead of just randomly handing you frames?

I stopped into the store closest to me on two different Saturdays, and both times the store was completely empty, except for a girl behind the counter and a guy who was clearly her boyfriend sitting there keeping her company. I could not have felt less welcome.

And that’s when they’re open! It amazes me when service oriented stores are open 930 to 530. Do they think we’re taking a vacation day off to come see them? Can’t you stay open late one or two nights? Noooo… you make us all come in on a Saturday at the same time, when of course the crowds are too big for them to show you anything.

And even ones that DO try to help can tick you off. I was looking at frames with one saleswoman, and at one point, I asked her what the current trends were. Obviously I hadn’t shopped for glasses in a few years, and was wondering what was stylish and current.

Most websites now tell you with the crowd is doing… most popular blog posts, most downloaded songs, most emailed articles, and so on. But she responds in an insulting, dismissive tone, saying “I don’t follow trends, and I don’t care what others think.” For the person clearly looking to make a statement and not follow the crowd, that’s probably not a bad response. But for someone asking for a recommendation, she clearly read me incorrectly.

5. You can’t apply the best of the web to the process
• You can’t Amazon the process with ratings and reviews. What looks awesome on one person could look horrible on the next.
• You can’t Netflix it and let people receive 10 pairs it the mail and return the ones they don’t want… you still need to try on too many pairs to make that efficient.
• You can’t buy someone else’s prescription on Craig’s List on the cheap
• You can’t crowdsource it other than dragging your friends or family with you while you try on various styles and they give the thumbs up or thumbs down, but free coffee only goes so far
• You can’t really have a ‘free’ model where you give away frames and just charge for lenses. It doesn’t really scale.
• You can’t sell glasses on Facebook
• You can’t spread glasses virally via online video
• And you can’t find the perfect pair via Twitter!

6. They can’t even do the easy things right with the web!
Have you tried to use your company’s vision plan to pay for all this? If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to track down an optometrist that takes your coverage within a 30 mile radius of your home by using an outdated voice-prompted 800 number. Or hopefully you can figure out how to navigate their website. But if you think that mega insurance companies are up on the latest mapping mashups and recommendation engines, think again.

And it really doesn’t matter, because once you get there with your confusing notes to say you’re supposed to get 50% off frames up to but not more than $200 and then 20% of the difference and then 25% off contacts OR 35% off lenses but not the ones that – and the guy interrupts you to say that they don’t take THAT specific plan that YOU have, and that the only frames eligible are THOSE, as he points to a display case in the back of the office filled with the misfit grandpa frames.

7. It’s nearly impossible for companies to market their frames effectively
I think most people don’t care at all what company makes their frames. Their sole purpose is just to find something they like that fits their style. But there’s definitely a subset that is looking for a logo on the side of the temple that says Prada or Gucci or Dolce Gabanna. I’m not one of those guys.

But it’s useless to market these because every person is different! If Armani advertises a great looking jacket, and you like the style, you grab your size and you’re good to go. But if they try to focus on a specific frame? The target market is incredibly smaller.

What’s more, even if you do interest someone, the glasses are branded with tiny hieroglyphic style numbers on the inside of the frame, which are impossible to read. Of course you can’t read them, that’s why you need glasses!

In fact, in my research so far, there’s only one single style that everyone knows, everyone recognizes, that had full color photos and marketing materials behind it, and according to the person behind the counter, the style that everyone wants and can’t get a hold of across the country.

That’s right. The Sarah Palin glasses.

——————————
If you’re a researcher like me, then you definitely want to check out Wired’s Gadget Lab. We’ll give you the latest information any way you want it… you can read the Gadget Lab blog, listen to the audio podcast, watch the video podcast, or get an RSS feed.

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The person I interview isn’t a doctor, and doesn’t even play one on TV. But better yet, Cathy Conley is a senior pharmaceutical sales rep for a major drug company. She’s got a chemical engineering degree from MIT, she’s worked at one of the biggest consumer products companies in the world, and as a bonus, she’s an actress and singer and all around funny person.

Today she’s going to let us in on some of the secrets to how pharmaceuticals are marketed.

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View Interview highlights and take the “Name that Drug Quiz”

Cathy’s diverse background:

• Chemical Engineering degree from MIT
• Helped develop a body wash at one of the largest consumer product companies in the world
• Actress, singer, and recently did a pilot for The Discovery Channel
• Senior pharmaceutical sales rep for a major drug company (pushing drugs on the streets of Manhattan)

JIM’S “NAME THAT DRUG” QUIZ

Given a name in the list below, can you guess what each one is for, and which ones are fakes? Answers in the podcast.

Notes and questions:

• According to Wikipedia, global spending on prescription drugs topped $643 billion in 2006, with the US accounting for almost half that amount.
• How sales reps distribute samples?
• How pharma reps differentiate themselves to busy doctors
• How do health care insurance companies and pharmacists affect the marketing process
• The best way to save money on prescription drugs (you won’t like the answer!)

• Doctors or pharmacists… who can you trust?
• Are we overmedicating the American public?
• The greatest marketing success story in pharma
• How a media frenzy can twist how people think about prescription drugs
• Prescription drugs … what are the true risks?
• What does Cialis have to do with Chris Farley in Tommy Boy?

If you enjoyed this interview, you may also like:

Interview with Julia Allison - Queen of self-promotion, lightning rod for publicity, Wired cover story

Interview with Wired’s Jeff Howe, author of “Crowdsourcing”

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Is your college degree is a lot of BS? Last week I covered 10 things I taught my interns, but what advice would I give them before they even applied to college? Here are 6 myths about college and my plan to save 90% on tuition.

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I just got finished reading a feature article by Penelope Wang in the September issue of Money Magazine. The title was, Is College Still Worth The Price?

In the article, they explore whether it’s time to question if a college education is worth the price, since costs are soaring twice as fast as inflation while salaries for people with bachelor degrees are falling.

I’m going to highlight some of the marketing tricks the article points out that colleges are using to attract students, and give you my take of what’s really important in the digital age.

Let’s start with 2 quick points

1) The cost of college is going through the roof
Wow I’m really dating myself here, but when I entered college in the fall of 1987, total tuition, room and board was around $8,000-$10,000 per year, and by the time I graduated it was maybe $12,000-$14,000, meaning that the total I spent on my education was about $43,000. Well, I just discovered that a SINGLE YEAR at my college now is $43,000.

And the numbers back this up. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics chart in the Money article, the cost of a college education is up 439%, which is higher than medical costs, higher than energy costs, and four times the consumer price index. The cost of higher education keeps getting higher.

2) So you ask, where is this money going?
Of course, some of it is inflation, some is infrastructure improvements, and some is teacher salaries. But a lot of it is bling. The article cites examples of on campus skating rinks, Mongolian grill restaurants, organically grown coffee houses, 35-foot climbing walls, and 15 person hot tubs. I wish I was making this up. No, actually, I wish they had these things when I was in school.

But what’s really happening is marketing competition and one-up-manship. It’s sometimes difficult to measure the “quality” of an education… is a 32:1 student-teacher ratio really worse than a 24:1 ratio? But if College A has a 9,000 square foot state of the art fitness center and College B has a gym like the Holiday Inn off the interstate, that’s an advantage.

A similar thing happened in the real estate market. The average cost of an apartment in New York City is well over $1 million dollars (Correction: $1.7MM in April 2008). At that price, every listing is going to have granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.

To differentiate, builders are adding in-house gyms, spa amenities, and lap swimming pools. But even if you ARE an occasional triathlete that will get use out of the pool, the smart consumer will base their decision on things like cost per square foot and quality of neighborhood.

Let’s examine my 6 college myths.

Myth #1: The more expensive a college is, the better the education must be
There’s a great cartoon ad I saw in a magazine called “breakthrough ideas in business” It had a picture of a coffee cup with a price of 50 cents below it. Then it had an identical cup, but with the 50 cents crossed out and a new price of $4.50.

Isn’t that basically what Starbucks did? Yes, you can argue the coffee is better or comes in flavors and whatnot, but the fact is, people used to pay 50 cents every morning for a caffeinated liquid extracted from a coffee bean, and now they pay 9 times that amount for the same thing.

Well, that’s exactly the marketing trick that Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas did. Because their tuition was lower than competitors, they were perceived as a lower quality institution. So they increased their tuition in 2005 by 29%. 29%!!! The result? Applications soared and the freshman class increased 40%. Same education, higher price.

To their credit, the article notes they simply turned around and gave back the in the form of financial aid or merit scholarships to 99% of their students.

Myth #2: Your degree matters
Of course for some specialized fields, your degree matters. But ask around. For every computer engineer with a computer engineering degree and writer with a journalism degree, you can easily find a paralegal with a degree in interior design or a graphic artist that studied criminal justice.

Most people chose their major when they were a senior in high school. There are a lot of things you thought were a good idea when you were 18 or 19. It doesn’t mean you have to live with them for the rest of your life. Except for that Calvin and Hobbs tattoo of course.

Myth # 3: The college you attend matters
If you’re in the top 1% of your high school class or you’re clearly gifted, by all means, you should aim to be among the 1% of students that get an Ivy League education. The VP of my department? Went to Yale. The president of CondeNet? Harvard. Managing editor of Wired Magazine? Stanford.

But you’re listening to TheHopkinsonReport, not the Harvard Business Review here. I’m the voice for the other 99%.

Want examples?
• Case study #1. I went to Bryant College, a tiny little business school that almost no one has heard of. In fact, it’s located in Rhode Island, a tiny little state that people have barely heard of. But I think myself and all my friends have done ok.
• Case study #2. My interns. If you think I sorted the incoming resumes based on the college rankings in US News and World Report, you’re crazy. I went by desire and demonstrated experience.

And the data might back me up. A paper by a Princeton economist compared salaries of grads from top-tier colleges, with those that were accepted by these schools, but chose to go somewhere else. The research found that the two groups ended up with similar incomes, implying that bright students excel no matter where they get their degree.

Myth #4: Your grades matter
If you’re going on to grad school or competing in a highly competitive field, yes, your grades matter. And certainly they are a decent barometer of academic intelligence. But listen up kids, ask any adult in the workplace if it matters if you got a 2.8 or a 3.8, and believe them when they say the answer is no.

Do you even need to graduate? Yes. The stats still show that those with a college degree will far out-earn their peers without one.

But while your grades weigh fairly heavily when getting that first job, after that, I’d argue that grades have almost nothing to do with getting subsequent jobs. It’s all about networking and connections. Shouldn’t every senior be required to take networking classes? Heck, with 100 million people on Facebook and millions more on LinkedIn, it’s easier than ever to get a job from a friend of a friend that knew of an opening.

Myth # 5: Joining a fraternity or sorority will hurt your chances of finding a job
If you have a strong opinion on the Greek system, there’s probably no way I can change that. Full disclosure that not only was I in a fraternity in college, but Old School is one of my favorite movies of all time.

So let’s look at the facts, or at least the facts that the Greek system gave to us that I used to recite to parents and faculty when we got in trouble. But there were similar numbers on Forbes.com, so there has to be some legitimacy here.

A mere 8.5% of full-time university undergraduates are members of either a fraternity or a sorority. About 2% of the overall population. Yet some statistics show…

• Fraternity members have higher grade point averages than non-Greeks
• Fraternity members have a higher graduation rate than non-Greeks
• Roughly 75% of US Senators and Congressmen were in fraternities
• 40 of the 47 Supreme Court Justices since 1910 were in a fraternity
• All but 3 US Presidents since 1825 were in a fraternity
• 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives were in a fraternity
• Greeks contribute more community service hours give back more money to their colleges than non-Greeks

So what does this mean? My take is that these organizations thrust you into leadership positions, force you to relate to your peers, teach marketing and sales techniques as you encourage others to join your group, and even act like a small business, complete with an executive board and a budget. Even if the largest line item on the budget is “social expenses.”

Myth # 6: With the cost of college continuing to rise unabated, parents should focus on saving a huge portion of their income so they can pay for their kids’ education
Here’s my take from a financial standpoint. By the time I have kids in college, it’s not out of the question that I would need $500,000. Do you know how much money I’d have to save every month to have five hundred thousand dollars put away? I’m sorry, but I work hard. I rather have a vacation house in the mountains and a new Porsche to get there.

So do you know what my plan is?

No, it’s not to have my kids take out loans. That’s an even bigger problem. The Money article states that the average student leaves college over $20,000 in debt, and the default rate on those loans is nearly 20%. That’s no way to start your post-grad life.

Here’s my proposed idea:

You don’t have to pay for college. You can get a fully paid scholarship if you play your cards right. That’s the ultimate target here.

I’m not saving $500,000. My plan is to save only $50,000.

There’s a few ways I could go with this. Call it the long tail of college planning.

Example 1 is sports.
I’d never push my kids into activities they don’t enjoy, but say little Johnny tries half a dozen sports and it turns out he throws left-handed and has a promising curveball. Look at John Franco of the Mets. He played for 21 years until he was 45 years old. 45!!! You’re telling me that the position is so scarce, that thousands and thousands of minor league players couldn’t beat out a 45 year old man for a roster spot!

So I’m finding a sports niche, whether it be football long snapper, javelin thrower, or the guy that sets it in volleyball. I spend my $50,000 training Johnny to be one of the top 100 high school students at that position, and then we target those sports scholarships.

Example 2 is music.
I started playing the drums in my 20s. Am I good at them? Hell no. I’m pretty terrible actually. But I was still good enough to play in a couple of bands. Did I have a great drum kit growing up? No. Did I take a lot of lessons? No, I took about 10.

So what if my son or daughter wants to play the drums, and I buy them a $5,000 drum set. Then, rather than spending $100 a week on drum lessons, I find the drummer from some washed up 80s band, like Twisted Sister or something, and offer them $25,000 to teach my kid drums. He becomes a mini prodigy, and there’s still $10k left over to have Twisted Sister play at our backyard graduation party.

Best case scenario, he gets a scholarship as the drummer in the college band at USC or something and gets to travel to Bowl games, and then he can have a rock band on the side and have some spending money from that.

Worst case, I really have to specialize, and make my kid play just those two big cymbals, or maybe the tuba. Every college band needs a tuba player, right?

Either way, Johnny or Susie are going to college on a music scholarship.

Example 3 is academics.
Some time in high school, we determine what Johnny’s strengths are, whether it be electrical engineering or marketing or writing. Then we set about getting a 100%, fully paid scholarship in that area. Here’s the plan:

I give Johnny $10,000 and I give a highly-specialized freelancer $10,000. Their only goal? Get Johnny that full boat scholarship. Whoever succeeds gets the remaining $30,000 cash.

The summer of his junior year in high school? He doesn’t work 40 hours a week as a lifeguard, getting $20 an hour and socking away a measly $10,000 toward school.

He works 40 hours a week researching and applying to scholarships, still gets that $10,000, but the ultimate prize is that half a million dollars. There has to be thousands of crazy scholarships out there that the average high school student is too lazy to go after. And you only need one.

So he reads every piece of fine print. He checks for every loophole. He becomes an expert at filling out these forms. And by August, he finds the hidden scholarship at NYU for redheaded blogging drummers with 9 letter last names, and I save 90% on his college tuition.

Am I the only one that thinks this makes sense?

Well, it’s time for me to go. I promised I’d give Dee Snyder a ride in my 911 convertible.

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Over the past several months I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring two fantastic interns here at Wired. Here are 10 big picture things I tried to teach them.

But first, I’m going to start with a lesson learned when I was an intern. Right after I graduated college, the country was in a recession similar to now, so unable to find a job, I took an internship at a very small independent film group. I was going to learn about multimedia! The group was run by the ego-centric director of these films, who was a bit of a jerk and a dictator.

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One of the street smart guys that worked there was an African-American I’ll call Marcus. The director once told me that Marcus was a recovering crack addict. Hmmm. Not sure why he decided to tell me that piece of personal information.

One day he asked me where Marcus was, and I said I didn’t know, so I tried him at home and got no answer. The director then said, try him at Susan’s place – another coworker — and handed me her number. Without thinking I called the number, Susan answered, and I said it was Jim from the office and asked for Marcus. She was clearly thrown off guard and said he was busy.

About half an hour later, Marcus arrived at the office. He told me to follow him, and we went for a walk outside. He calmly put his arm around my shoulder and said,

“Jim, I know the director told you to find me and you were just following orders, and he put you in a really bad position, and believe me, I’m going to have a talk with him next. But if you ever, ever, call me at Susan’s place again, I’ll kill you.”

That’s because Marcus and Susan were secretly sleeping together, and that was a little bit of information that they didn’t want anyone else in the office to know.

So I learned a valuable lesson that day. Also that summer, I learned:

• How to use a Mac for the first time
• How to apply for a grant for a non-profit film
• How to use a character-generator to add subtitles to a foreign movie
• How things worked in the film industry … that you suffered in very crappy production assistant jobs for years that paid little or nothing in order to pay your dues before moving on to the next step.

And because of that, the most important thing I learned, was that the film industry wasn’t for me.

And really, shouldn’t that be the purpose of an internship?

It should be a combination of practical work skills, a picture of what it’s like to work in a certain industry, with a few life lessons throw in along the way.

Super intern #1 was Brandon, who couldn’t have been a closer replica of myself back in college if I tried. Great work ethic, unending thirst for technology, and a love of cars and computers and gadgets.

Super intern # 2 was Anuja, a double-major, pay-her-own-way-through-college, graduate-a-year-early talent, also with an unending thirst for knowledge and a ridiculous work ethic.

Here are the top 10 things I tried to teach them:

1) Misuse of Reply all, BCC, and mute: Don’t be that person.

Let’s start with the practical ones. Thankfully neither of them had a problem with these, but clearly SOMEONE isn’t getting the word out on this so I told them anyway.

We’re in year 10 of ubiquitous e-mail communication in the workplace, but it’s still a common occurrence for someone to “reply all” to an all-encompassing company e-mail, usually with embarrassing results. Don’t be that person.

Ditto for composing an email in your work life or personal life and putting 30 people on the “To:” line. Not only does this expose everyone’s email to every other person on the list, which gets into privacy issues, guess what? It sets the stage for some moron to hit reply all with a dumb comment.

Lastly, if you don’t know how to use the mute button, you are not allowed to participate on a conference call. Really? You can’t hear yourself breathing like Darth Vader having an asthma attack? Everyone knows the first words ever spoken over a phone line were Alexander Graham Bell saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” This was quickly followed by “Um, is someone on the line typing? Can you please put yourself on mute if you’re going to be typing!”

2) If you’re doing a presentation, something will go wrong.
Here’s the typical corporate conference room: a beautiful mahogany table surrounded by Eames chairs, a giant monitor at one end, and a rats nest of various wires poking out of a little trap door in the middle.

Even with modern advances, getting everything to work right is still very difficult. Every laptop has a different set of key commands to change from the laptop screen to the overhead monitor. There’s never the right dongle to connect to a projector. The speakers are always too loud or non-existent. The internet connection doesn’t work or is too slow.

I once did a presentation in front of 250 people involving a laptop hooked to a miniature camera on a tripod that was focusing on the beta version of live features on a prototype cell phone being held in vice grips. I was there an hour ahead of time, and checked everything over 5 times, and believe it or not, I was good to go. That was, of course, until 5 minutes before I went on, when the setup went dead. The unknown cause? The lamp on the projector overheated.

How can you overcome a nightmare presentation?

Preparation and alternatives.

• The more important the presentation, the more time you need for setup time before the meeting starts.
• Always bring paper copies, just in case.
• If giving internet presentations is a major part of your job, invest in a standalone internet card;

In my case, I quietly pulled the conference director aside, asked him to move the next speaker ahead of me on the agenda, and by then the fan kicked in, the projector cooled down, it came back to life, and I was good to go.

3) Learn about every part of the business.
My first internet job was in Seattle, as a technical producer building the product online. It was all about the product. Any interaction with the sales team was to fight them against putting banner ads that would take away from the user experience. Then I moved to New York, where I found, it’s more about the money.

I got to know the sales team, and gained a whole new respect and understanding of the business. I mean, these account reps walk into Chevrolet and without blinking an eye, asks them for hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a little picture of a Silverado on a 300 pixel wide banner. That takes moxie.

So get to know editorial and design on the west coast. Get to know sales and marketing and finance on the east coast. Read the weekly updates from the engineering meetings. The more you know about the entire business, the better you’ll be.

4) Numbers count.
It’s great to come up with creative ideas, but ultimately it’s the numbers that count. If you’re talking content, it’s uniques and sessions and page views. Drill deeper and you’ve got page views per session, time spent on site, and other analytics. Ask to see the marketing budget and learn how funds are allocated across various programs. And if there’s one lesson we learned from the dotcom bust, it’s to ask the question, so what’s the revenue model? Oh, and another place to have good numbers? Your resume.

5) Fail fast and test often.
This is one of the greatest strengths of the internet. Most everything can be measured. At my last job, a few of us were arguing over some language to put on an ad banner. I was strongly in favor of one message, and two other colleagues had different ideas. Finally, the director stepped in and said, you know what? It doesn’t matter what your gut feeling says. Don’t spend another second thinking about this. Do all three banners, throw them up, and see which one performs.

Of course, this doesn’t work as well for something like print ads, which have long lead times. But in the digital age, changing a layer in Photoshop to test Click Here vs. Learn More vs. Take our Tour takes about a minute, and with any basic analytics program you can get the results in a few days or less.

6) Keep a list of personal accomplishments.
This is a practice I’ve done throughout my career that has paid dividends. I simply keep a text file on my hard drive, and every week or so or every time I complete a major project, I jot down a line or two. At the same time, I make sure to take a screenshot if it’s a major project or marketing program. This comes in handy in a few scenarios:

• Most obvious is that the interns need to report back to their professor what they learned during their internship. Taking quick notes throughout the year is a lot easier than trying to remember at the end of three months.
• Next, it’s good to go back and do a quick review every once in awhile. Sometimes the projects that ended up having the most success were not the ones that took the most time or had the highest budget.
• It also comes in handy at review time, as it makes it a lot easier to print the file and run down the list of accomplishments with your boss. Call me crazy, but when there’s money on the line, I’m not leaving it up to my supervisor to keep track that we increased online subscription sales 14.5% in Q1.
• And if your fantastically organized performance review doesn’t go so fantastic? Well, you’ve got 80% of your resume done when you’re ready to start your next job search.
• Lastly, and I think this can be true not just for marketing, but for most any other field, putting together a solid portfolio of your work is the best interview technique I can recommend. For example, my previous portfolio contained magazine print ads, screenshots of web programs, offline collateral, marketing plan documents, project timelines, and sample spreadsheets.

7) Always keep learning.
As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. That’s why it’s so important to keep up with the latest trends in your industry.

• I start each Monday morning by visiting every one of Wired’s competitors and reading the latest industry news.
• You should attend at least 1 conference in your industry per year to see what other companies are doing and to make connections
• Subscribe to industry newsletters and emails. Two that I recommend for online marketing are MarketingSherpa and Website Magazine.
• Subscribe to or read publications in your field. Since I work on Wired Magazine, I often pick up an issue of Fast Company or other competing magazines. If you work in finance, I’m not saying you need to subscribe to “Accounting Illustrated,” but you might want to take a peek at Fortune or Money or The Wall Street Journal.
• Take at least 1 class per year in a subject you enjoy that is related to your job. Chances are, the company might even pay for it.
• Stay in touch with old co-workers and go to lunch with a different one every week or two. Not only does this help you with your current job, it builds a strong network in the event that you are laid off.
• One old co-worker when I was just starting out told me he tries to go on a job interview every six months. Even if you’re happy where you are, it’s good to know your value in the marketplace. And if your company shows signs of problems, it’s much better to be among the first people to leave, then to be the last one stuck with all the work when people start jumping from the sinking ship.

8. Connect with people.
It really is all about communication. Yes, if you’re an accountant you need to balance the budget or if you’re an editor you have to write the column. But the most important skill you can develop is dealing with your co-workers.

There’s going to be some office politics, guaranteed. There will be people that you can’t stand and others that become lifelong friends. You might even meet your future spouse at the office. But most every single “moving on to a new job” farewell email contains the line “The thing I will miss the most is the people I worked with.”

And don’t think that connection ends at 6:00pm. Sometimes social interaction outside the office is just as – if not more – important than what happens during the day. Don’t underestimate the importance of grabbing a beer with the department on a Friday night.

9. Do something you love.
You might not get your dream job right off the bat, but early in your career, make sure that every company you invest your time at contributes something toward your ultimate goal.

Let’s face it, a lot of people – too many people — will spend 45 hours a week for 45 years doing their “job,” maybe even hating their job, so that they can eventually retire and do what they really want to do.

I call these people morons.

But maybe that’s a little harsh. Phrased positively, I have been fortunate enough to make a living doing something I enjoy. Whether you’re a 20-year-old intern or have been in the workplace for years, it’s never too late to go after your dream job.

Take the pillow test to assess your career satisfaction. When you take your head up off the pillow in the morning, are you excited about going to work, or dreading it? And when you lay your head down on the pillow at night, are you happy about what you have been able to accomplish, or are you still carrying the stress of the day? The answer will not always be positive, but if it is consistently negative, it may be time to move on.

I once read a book titled Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.

I think that sums it up pretty well.

10. Go Home.
Life is short. Impress me by working hard during the day, asking questions, challenging me, and doing quality work. Impress me more by knowing when to shut off the computer and go home to spend time with family and friends. Did you use all your vacation time this year?

Technology has almost made it too easy to stay connected to work, with cell phones on 24×7 and a Blackberry or Treo to check email at any time. Resisting the urge is difficult. I know. I worked plenty of 18 hour days or 60 hour weeks trying to prove myself when building my career in my 20s.

Ask any retiree for advice at the end of their career. They probably have a few regrets of things they wish they had done or trips they wish they had taken. But I challenge you to find one that looks back, reflects, and says “I really wish I had worked more hours.”

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It’s the best time of year… football season. Not looking forward to getting angry looks from the wife or girlfriend when you want to sit on the couch all day Sunday? Turn her into a football fanatic in 10 easy steps.

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Hello and welcome sports fans – um, I mean marketing and technology fans. Before I came to Wired to immerse myself in the latest gadgets, technology, and innovation, I spent 8 years at ESPN.com marketing my first love, sports.

So as football season 2008 kicks off, indulge me and I’ll tell you how to turn your wife or girlfriend into a football fanatic in 10 easy steps – think of it as marketing the game to her.

And as a bonus, I’ll give you my 7 rules for scalping tickets – think of that as a tutorial in business negotiation skills.

Note that this was based on a true story, and if you have any feedback, send your comments to: MarketingGuy@Wired.com.

Let’s get right to it:

1.    Start with an open-minded participant
Let me start by saying this isn’t for everyone. Only you can evaluate your relationship to see if your significant other is open to basking in the glory that is the National Football League. Maybe your wife HATES football and LOVES the fact that she knows that you’ll be on the couch all day Sunday, freeing up an entire day for her to do her own thing.

Or maybe it’s the other extreme. My college buddy got married in Vegas in February. That’s pretty cool. By an Elvis impersonator. That’s pretty cool too. On Super Bowl Sunday. Now, I’m sure you’ve all heard stories about the guys at a wedding or another social function sneaking off into another room to watch a big playoff game to the horror of friends and family. This is different.  They actually planned to have the post-wedding party BE the Super Bowl Party. Dress code? Football jerseys required. Best of all? It was the bride’s idea.

But if they’re somewhere in the middle, proceed.

2.    Get a great TV
If you can afford it, there’s nothing like watching the NFL on a giant high-definition flat panel television. You’ll be able to identify the players better, follow the action better, and you’ll feel like you’re almost at the game.

Getting resistance?

Here are some marketing tips to making the sell:
A) Refer to it as a “home theater,” saying that you’ll actually save money because you can avoid paying for $12 blockbuster movies and instead curl up at home and use Netflix. Throwing out the name of some romantic comedies will help your cause.

B) By buying the largest TV you can afford (I personally have a Samsung 46″ 1080p LCD HDTV in a studio apartment), you are combating “planned obsolescence” and won’t have to buy another one for years to come.

C) Congress has mandated that in February 2009, all television stations will have to broadcast in digital only. Sorry honey, it’s the law.

3.    Teach the basics of football through watching TV
For the newbie, start with Football 101 by explaining offense and defense, some of the key positions such as quarterback and running back, and how points are scored. Move on to higher level topics such as down and distance, penalty flags, and replay challenge flags.

I found the yellow first down indicator graphic to be very helpful for this. What was a challenge though, is explaining just how they get that line to appear on the field without it overlapping the players like the other graphics on the screen.

Another helpful thing to have is a DVR or Tivo that lets you rewind the plays to explain what just happened. I found myself pausing the game, then rushing up to the screen and pointing out various elements of the play like a mad football professor. Laser pointer is optional.

4.    Explain Fantasy Football
While this might add another layer of complexity, you might as well cover it while you’re at so she understands why you’re screaming only at the Eagles kicker or a Dolphins receiver.

Like any good social networking site, fantasy football adds the element of community, as you and your buddies talk trash on a weekly basis and everyone in the league shares a common bond.

Tell your wife that it costs you $100 to join your league and she gets angry. Tell her that if you win you get $1000 that can be used to go on vacation, and suddenly things get interesting. (But of course we all know gambling is illegal).

This is where you also start to tread on dangerous ground.
-   Showing her the players on your team and having her cheer along while you watch the games can build camaraderie towards a common goal. This is good.
-   Bringing your wife along with you to your live draft at a bar filled with cigar-smoking fraternity brothers as a co-manager, will probably provoke a lifetime of abuse and the automatic team name like the Washington Wussies or Pittsburgh Pansies. Not so good.
-   Inviting your wife into your league – to manage her own individual team – may seem like a good idea if she really knows her stuff. Just be prepared for the fact that she just might kick your ass. And win the title. I’ve seen it happen.

Since playing Fantasy Football online is usually free, it’s best to take baby steps, grab a team at one of the 4 major sites, and jump into a beginner’s league if you’re just starting out.

If you like listening to my podcast, check out ESPN’s Matthew Berry on Fantasy Focus Football for a really entertaining show that has great fantasy tips mixed in with conversations about Beverly Hills 90210.

And don’t worry, there’s plenty of advice out there to help you along.

And my friend Roger Rotter, the Senior Fantasy editor at FoxSports, really knows his stuff too and advises you on who to start, who to bench, and who to pick up off waivers.

5.    Get out and play
When you’re not watching the games on the weekends, grab a football and head out to the park to throw it around. In the past, most guys would have a jersey or two and can let their girlfriend borrow one for the look of a real game experience.

But to prove how much buying power women have now in sports, and to show how much the NFL is targeting this market, head over to the women’s section of NFL shop.

I fully expected to find the same game jerseys, t-shirts, and hats that the men had, but in girlier colors and cut differently for a woman’s figure. The women’s Patriots page alone has 201 items.

What I wasn’t prepared for was:
-   $80 titanium rings
-   $60 suede and crystal bags and other purses as seen on Rachel Ray
-   An entire line by Alyssa Milano, including football-branded jeans
-   A $3,000 glittering purse containing 5,300 Swarovski crystals.

My best advice? Do yourself a favor and skip the fluffy expensive stuff, and get yourself a pair of Wide Receiver Gloves. For about $20 it will accomplish three things:
-   The sticky palms make it much easier to catch the football, so you’ll have more fun playing
-   It keeps hands warm in the cooler weather so there’s less complaining about the cold
-   It cushions your hands and protects against small scrapes from the ball, not to mention manicured nails

6.    Apply your learnings
Now that you’re out tossing the ball around, don’t just play catch, apply what you’ve learned from watching the game. It’s no revelation that people learn by doing, whether it’s putting together a marketing plan, learning Adobe Photoshop, or throwing a football with the perfect spiral. In other words, you can sit in driver’s ed class for 100 hours, but the fact is, you’re never going to learn how to drive until you’re behind the wheel of car.

My girlfriend at the time was probably the exception, but since she was genuinely interested in learning as much as possible, I would do things like sketch out simple pass patterns. Post pattern. Down and out. Button-hook. Fly route.  Get that down, and you can graduate to fake handoffs, going in motion, and misdirection plays.

We’d go out to the park and practice. Then, when watching the game together later on, she would be able to see the receivers running various routes and be able visualize what the quarterback was trying to do.

7.    Cover the game through stories and drama
This one is actually very important across the entire process, and actually a lot easier than you think. It’s obviously what the Olympics tries to do to attract female viewers, because if there are three words that I have found to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt in my life, it’s these:

Women. Love. Drama.

Think of anything that networks target to a female audience, from Grey’s Anatomy to Sex and the City. Or look at TNT’s slogan: We know drama.

Let me give you an example. That year, the Indianapolis Colts started out 9-0, and two months into the season, my girlfriend turned to me and said,

“Hey Jim, has any team ever won every single one of its games?”

Pull up a chair and let me spin a little tale and tell you about the 1972 Dolphins. They are the only team to go undefeated and win the Super Bowl, even though their QB broke his leg in the middle of the season. However, there is some controversy in that, statistically, they played one of the weakest schedules in NFL history. Every year the record carries on, the players from that team get together and light a victory cigar to celebrate. Then she asked,

“Has any other team come close?”

Well, let me tell you about the 1985 Chicago Bears, one of the best teams in NFL history. They were 12-0, but had to play Miami – the team with the record – to keep the streak going. You have to know that some of the old Dolphin players that were on that undefeated team in 1972, went into the locker room before the game and said, “listen, good luck, do your best, but you better not lose this game.” It was the unlucky 13th game of the season for the Bears, as they were defeated by Dan Marino, who wore # 13. It ended up being the highest rated Monday Night Football game in history.

Other ways to tie in drama involves linking the players with celebrites…