This excellent repositioning idea came from Gene B. an occasional contributor.
It has terrific potential as a way to make bars socially acceptable again so that they can compete with Starbucks.
Super Parade Opportunity
Most holidays have parades. People like parades. They like to be in parades. But Superbowl Sunday doesn’t have a parade even though it is close to being our countries biggest holiday. This oversight seems like a big opportunity for a sunbelt city like San Diego, Albuquerque, El Paso or Tucson.
How would it work. Bands, Floats and Sponsors followed by a chance for all the participants to watch the game on the Jumbotron in the local enclosed stadium. I imagine a Rose Parade type event without the flower theme. Floats with fashion, entertainment, commercial and technology based themes. More high tech than Macy’s balloons and definitely more TV friendly than the Rose Parade. Each float and band would have three minutes or so in the limelight. Half of the time the camera would be on the parade entry and half would be on their commercial. Some examples:
- Victoria’s Secret no brainer
- Waffle House Tasting float
- Ace Hardware National band
- Whatever the hot new movie is.
- The State of Colorado Tourism bureau.
- Emirates Air
The main attraction for the sponsors would be a chance to have an affordable ad near the Super Bowl. The TV Network would have a very low cost but potentially high profit product. The bands would be delighted to march and the sponsoring city would sell 100,000 hotel room nights at very little cost after the initial roll-out.
The only question in my mind is why hasn’t someone thought of this before.
So far this year I have had three football ideas and two parade ideas and it is only February. You can see all of the ideas here.
Business Class Interstate Travel
It would be great if you could stop and get great food when you are driving between big cities like Los Angeles to San Francisco or Chicago to St Louis. Right now the pickings at the half way stopping points are pretty much fast foods, the Waffle House and places like the Cracker Barrel. It takes too long and the food is barely above tolerable.
What if there was a small chain of specialty restaurants that catered to up-scale travelers. They are situated at the best stopping places between the major cities, they have great food, served quickly and courteously and while you are eating they gas up your car and wash the windshield. The restrooms are delightful and the decor is elegantly local.
The trick to make it successful would be to use the new GPS and cell phone technologies now available. A customer leaving LA would access the menu on her cellular phone and pre-order lunch. The restaurant would track the phone via GPS so that as they pulled into the driveway the meal would be ready and the table would be set. The food would be great. Terrific young chefs who are struggling to find a niche in the high cost cities would clamor to be able to master their craft and build their reputations out on the highway.
This idea came up because I was reading a book titled An Appetite For America by Stephen Freid at the same time that I was driving a lot of miles on the interstate. Even I get tired of Beef Jerky and Starbucks Coffee. The book is about the Fred Harvey Company that for almost a century fed train travelers in the same way I am proposing feeding interstate travelers.
People driving $50,000 cars shouldn’t have to eat fast food.
World Football
The teams playing in the “Superbowl” this year are New England and New York. Which is hardly even a national game. Let alone an international game. Substantially all of American football is played in the USA. Which doesn’t sound like a problem until you start to think about the future of sports. Sustainable sports in the next fifty years will be ones that have a global span. The National Football League is trying a few things to grow the world audience mostly in Europe. The St Louis Rams are going to play a “home game” in London this next season. But their first attempt to have an NFL Europe league failed a few years ago and they have pretty much given up trying new things. But the Ideapreneur hasn’t. Following are three ideas for the NFL to create a world market for their product:
1. Go to the third world. Start children’s programs in India, China and Africa. Promote it as a way to get to emigrate to the USA. Use baseball in the Dominican Republic as the model.
2. Build Football programs at Universities in Latin America. Have a league. Bring the best teams to the USA for the final games each year.
3. Make every team in the current NFL do what the St Louis Rams are doing. Each team gets a sister stadium in another country and has to play five games there in say the next six years.
Football has many attributes that make it a better sport for mass consumption than soccer, cricket or baseball but it has to become worldwide. It is up to the NFL to make it happen by making real long term investment in building the sport internationally.
The Twelfth Man Plays Football
This is week two of the Ideapreneur’s football focus. This week we’ll look at getting fans more into the game.
Imagine that it is late in the fourth quarter, your team is behind by two points and they are driving. What they need is to be able to stop the clock but they don’t have any time outs left. What can they do? This is where the fans come in. Under this new proposal, that we call Reality Football, the fans can purchase an extra timeout for $50,000.
In recent years the football industry has been growing at about 6% per year. The Reality TV business has been growing at about 12% per year. We here at simonburrow.com/ want football to be more important than reality TV so we have come up with an idea we call Reality Football.
Meta World Peace on Dancing with the Stars
Reality Football will allows football fans to be far more involved in games and therefore will significantly improve ratings and revenue.
One of the reasons that Reality TV is gaining popularity is that on many shows the fans have a say in the outcome. In Dancing With the Stars for instance the viewers vote on who they want to stay on the show. Reality Football will allow football fans to have the same kind of participation in games and to possibly affect the outcome.
Under the Reality Football proposal the fans can purchase an extra timeout for $50,000. They can text in their contributions on a mobile phone and the maximum individual contribution will be $5.00. So if 10,000 fans will text in $5.00 the team can purchase an extra timeout and possibly win the game. The money will go to charity. The fans will be more involved in the game and the teams that have the best fan support will have a slight edge in close games.
Of course the actual cost for a timeout and the maximum contribution would have to be set by experimentation and the charities that would benefit would need to be worked out.
In the long run Reality Football will mean that teams will have to think a little bit more about keeping their fans happy. So the owners, the coaches and the players will have to be more accessible and inclusive. They will have to be working extra hard so that they will appear to deserve the extra timeout from the fans when they need it.
Imagine a super bowl that is decided because Patriots fans bought a timeout for five million dollars to beat the Giants. Did I mention that the money will go to charity.
Let me know your thoughts about this idea and forward it to all of the NFL executives you know. I had the original Reality Football idea a few years ago this is the updated and improved version.
Making Football Better
It is week two of the NFL playoffs the perfect time for the ideapreneur to apply his right-brain thinking to the venerable game of football.
The NFL is constantly making lots of small changes to the rules. For instance, this year, they moved the kickoff spot forward five yards. The explanation was that this would reduce the number of injuries on special teams. I’m not sure if it worked but it gave Howard R. and me an even better idea for making NFL football more fun, faster and less expensive. Like many good ideas it is really simple: Do away with kickoffs completely. Instead have one of the cheerleader babes spin a wheel, a la Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune, and the result of the spin would be where the next series starts.
The advantages of the kickoff spin are obvious. Less injuries of course but also less personnel, a more important role for the cheerleaders who until this idea have been marginalized, and the game would be about five minutes shorter. All good ideas. It also gives a reason to leave the cameras on the cheerleaders during the spin and offers a great corporate sponsorship opportunity.
Naysayers will argue that the kickoff spin introduces an element of chance into a skill based game. The answer is that ultimately the game is about entertainment and if the kickoff spin makes game more competitive and fun for the fans then it is good for the game. It certainly is worth a try.
Next week: The twelfth man wins a game.
Sears and Kodak
The news this month has stories about the death throws of Sears and Kodak. Both were iconic American companies and both were done in by changes to their environments. Kodak was the silver halide film company and the digital revolution changed photography so much, so fast that they weren’t able to adjust. Sears invented the pre-Walmart, pre-internet retail environment but was unable to adjust its management style to the information age.
Change is…
ugly
inevitable
and
inexorable
but without change we’ll have no improvement
Get ready it is going to happen in your environment also.
In my opinion it should be allowed to go the way of Sears and Kodak.
But it will live on like Amtrak. stifling change and burdening taxpayers.
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I predict that one of the next big changes will be a massive shrinking of the retail bank branch system. People are getting much more comfortable with banking on line and via the ATM.
*******
I also predict that the television model of free viewing in exchange for watching advertising is in for a big change since the viewers, using dvrs, are not keeping their part of the bargain and watching the ads.
*****
What company do you think will be the next Sears?
Deer Population Control
In the last decade in the Northeast deer have gone from being an enchanting, occasional sighting to being a pest. They eat crops, invade gardens, eat small trees and keep wandering in front of cars. There are less sport hunters and “culling” services are expensive and unpalatable to the sensibilities of many suburban residents. What can be done about this problem?
The Ideapreneur has a potential solution. Allow commercial enterprises to hunt wild deer and process it into a high-end food supply. The enterprise would be issued a game management license for a region, perhaps Western New York, for a specific time period, maybe 10 years. This would give “Gourmet Venison” (working name) enough supply to justify the investment in the facilities and marketing.
You have objections, the ideapreneur has answers:
Would people buy “wild harvested” venison? They buy “wild caught” fish.
Isn’t it inhumane? Is it more humane to allow deer to overpopulate so that they starve to death?
Will people pay a premium for deer meat over chicken or beef? They used to in the early 20th century. People pay a massive premium for snails and abalone.
Why would politicians support this very non-green idea? Because it would generate tax revenue and jobs and would lower deer damage. The idea could be very popular with their constituents.
The Ideapreneur: You see problems we see opportunities.
What?
This has to be the translation of the year:
“It shoule be grateful to use the phone if the camera lens at the center, on the direct absorption in the Ring to use. (see chart 4)”
It is part of the instruction set that came with an add on lens for the camera on an iPhone. Good idea, nice gift, beautiful packaging, terrible translation.
In this the age of the internet there is no good excuse for bad translations. There is a business opportunity for multi-lingual people to work at home and do overnight translation confirmations for say a dollar a word payable through Paypal. The confirmation should be done by a person whose native language is the destination language.
So it has happened again. What I started as having a laugh at somebodies mistake has morphed into a business idea. This is why my new title is ideapreneur.
Somebody could also propose a word for “bad translation.” Naming rights available.
Geezers Coffee Shops
What we need is a coffee shop that caters to old people. It would be like Starbucks but would focus on an older clientele. Why because my guess is that it is an under-served market segment. Most Starbucks type coffee shops have clients who tend to be students, people on the way to work or shoppers. But the fastest growing demographic in the country right now is old people.
food court
How does Geezers (this is a working name only) appeal to an older clientele and as importantly keep the store from being over-run by students. It wouldn’t require much. Here are some ideas:
- Carefully select locations for retiree access
- Play classical music
- Have much higher quoted prices with large senior discounts
- Frequent buyer discounts
- Early bird specials
- No low or banquette style seating
- Milder coffee choices
- Small meeting spaces for book clubs and knitting groups
- Enforce a buy something for wifi ethic.
- Delicious small foods
- Super handicapped accessible.
- Afternoon Tea?
- Table Service?
- Buffets?
Would seniors pay for this service? Some would. Look at motor home communities, golf courses and cruise ships.