Category Archives: Business

You still have a landline? Haw! The AZTECS had landlines!

OK, so I stole that line from Dave Barry, who said it once to make fun of people who had Betamax video recorders (“Beta?! The AZTECS had Beta!” — or something very much like that), which is made extra ironic because the triumphant VHS technology is now SO last century…

But you get the point. Landlines are rapidly going the way of buggy whips and, well, TV sets — at least in consumer’s minds.

TV sets? you say. Yes, TV sets. This from the Pew Center for Media Research:

Landlines And Television Sets Losing Importance

According to a new nationwide survey from the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project, reported by Paul Taylor and Wendy Wang with Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith, only 42% of Americans say they consider the television set to be a necessity. Last year, this figure was 52%, and in 2006, it was 64%.

After occupying center stage in the American household for much of the 20th century, says the report, two of the grand old luminaries of consumer technology, the television set and the landline telephone, are suffering from a sharp decline in public perception that they are necessities of life.

The drop-off has been less severe for the landline telephone. 62% of Americans say it’s a necessity of life, down from 68% last year, but 47% of the public now say that the cell phone is a necessity of life…

Note, first, that Pew, or at least the respondents, are using “need” and “necessity” in ways that would have puzzled our hardy pioneer ancestors. Note also that while fewer people see TVs as a necessity, they’re still buying them like crazy:

Even as fewer Americans say they consider the TV set to be a necessity of life, more Americans than ever are stocking up on them. In 2009, the average American home had more television sets than people, 2.86, according to a Nielsen report. In 2000, this figure was 2.43; in 1990, it was 2.0; and in 1975, it was 1.57.

The disconnect between attitudes and behaviors, opines the report, may be that the TV set hasn’t had to deal with competition from new technology that can fully replace all of its functions. If a person wants real-time access to the wide spectrum of entertainment, sports and news programming available on television, there’s still nothing (at least not yet) that can compete with the television set itself…

So don’t write the obit yet. But as for landlines — exactly why DO I still have one? So I won’t miss the telemarketing calls?

I see also that only 10 percent regard flat-screen HDTV as a necessity. It’s probably going to be in the high 90s before I get one. Mainly because, much as I want one, my sense of need is still pretty old-fashioned…

Mojitos: The best new thing I’ve tried lately

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Since I’ve become a Mad Man, I’ve branched out a bit in my eating out. Since for me every unknown menu is like a minefield, my usual M.O. is to approach eating out the way a cautious commander approaches a military campaign: Only on familiar terrain using proven tactics — in other words, going to three or four places where I know the menu, and only ordering one or two things from it. (And don’t even eat out, if it can be avoided. Mamanem know what you can eat.) Hey, it’s kept me alive so far.

But Lanier, Brian and Lora eat out pretty much every day, and invite me along. So I’ve come to try and enjoy new things at Al Amir, and Nick’s, and Doc’s Gumbo Grill, the Mouse Trap and other places. I still pull them toward my old faves — Yesterday’s, Longhorn and the like — whenever I can get away with it, but my horizons have been broadened.

Today, however, I must report having enjoyed the best new thing I’ve tried since starting at ADCO. It was at Mojitos Tropical Cafe on Gervais, a place that just opened a couple of weeks back. It was fantastic, especially what I had — the pulled pork with saffron rice, black beans, sweet plantains and yuca con mojo.

We also had a great chat with the matriarch of the family that runs this joint and Salsa Cabana, Jane Fishburne, whose mother was Spanish and comes by this sort of cuisine honestly (although it’s her daughter, Lynette, who does the cooking). I gave her a card and urged her to consider a blog ad. She responded by saying that the Shop Tart has brought them about half their business so far.

So I’ve been scooped. In fact, the Tart even wrote about the place before it was opened. An excerpt:

Speaking of good stuff, Tracie and the Shop Tart spent a while chatting with owner Jane, who is in the process of opening another business, Mojito’s Tropical Cafe on Gervais in the space formerly occupied by night club Hush. She is awesome and introduced them to her daughter Lynette, who will be the chef at the new place. They also met Jane’s son Gabriel and his girlfriend Crystal, who might be the best-looking couple in all of Columbia, if not the world. They noticed the Shop Tart’s empty glass and insisted on getting her next round. They asked what she was drinking. She hesitated, not wanting to be greedy. “Vodka soda,” she answered, not wanting to admit to the pricey Grey Goose she has come to love. (Thank you, Fergie.) Crystal’s response? “Grey Goose, right?,” with a wink. Perceptive lady. (And yummy vodka.)

So she was ahead of the curve on that. Not to mention being way ahead of me on the blog ad front. Oh, well — her success is well deserved.

And Mojitos is deserving of all the success the Vista can provide. I’ll be going back, for sure. And if — no, when — you go, be sure to tell Jane you read about it here. And try the pulled pork. It was pretty awesome. For one used to barbecue, the more subtle flavorings on the meat were a really nice change of pace, and a great accompaniment to the beans and rice.

Oh, and watch out — while the place wasn’t crowded when I was there, Columbia’s Mad Men are discovering it, so it’s liable to be jammed before you know it. David Campbell from Chernoff Newman came in with a couple of others just as we were leaving. Dang, just like that guy Ted Chaough tracking Don Draper — every time I look in my rearview mirror, there’s Campbell…

Tell Duncan and Scottie you saw the Yesterday’s ad here at bradwarthen.com!

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I hope y’all have noticed the blog’s new business model. See the new ad, at the top of the rail at right? Try it out; click on it…

Rather than relying on those fickle politicians, who come and go like people in the land of Oz, I’m now turning to the private sector. (Oh, I’ll still happily take political ads, and even pursue one now and then, but they’re not the blog’s future.)

Please welcome Yesterday’s, my first non-political advertiser!

I’m particularly pleased that Duncan and Scottie MacRae and the rest of the gang have bought my first non-political ad. It’s not all the meals and pints I’ve consumed there, and will in the future. It’s not just that Yesterday’s has the world’s only Warthen/Ariail Memorial Booth. It’s just that to me, Yesterday’s is quintessential Columbia, and the heart and soul of Five Points — and has been for over 30 years.

Duncan and I have been brainstorming about creating a “blog special” that my readers can ask for and that no one else can get — which would be a handy way for him to know that people are actually seeing the ad.

But in the meantime, when you go to Yesterday’s for lunch, or dinner, or to belly up to the bar — and you should, soon — tell them you saw the ad. I’ll be glad you did.

“Again with the negative waves, Moriarty!”

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Again with the negative waves!

Once again, the media are filled with negative vibes about our economy, utterly heedless of the fact that the central tenet of the Warthen School of Economics is that “the economy” is an utterly abstract and theoretical thing built from collective emotions, and that the greatest single cause of “bad economic conditions” is negative thoughts regarding the economy.

This time, my beef is with this headline in the Columbia Regional Business Report:

Final accounting for S.C. fiscal ’10 paints grim financial picture

Thing is, the story (by my old friend Jim Hammond) is actually about what already happened with the state budget, which is fine. What gets me is that the headline implies bad economic times ahead. At least that’s the way I erroneously read it. And headlines are enough to make things bad.

To end with the words with which Oddball ends the above serious of clips, Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

And yeah, I’m kind of being facetious here. I just wanted an excuse to run the Oddball clips from “Kelly’s Heroes.” This, by the way, was what I was looking for earlier when I ran across the Kerouac clip.

711, for your convenience

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Just to remind you that all the cool kids are following me on Twitter, just in case you still are not.

I mentioned last week that I thought I’d reach the goal of 700 followers by the end of the week, and I did. I’m now at 711, which of course puts me in mind of 7-Eleven, which seems meaningful because my dear wife’s late father was in the convenience store business, and her brother still is, in Memphis. 7-Eleven was a competitor of theirs, although I don’t think it’s been in that market for quite some time.

Remember when “7-Eleven” actually meant that the store was open hours and hours (from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.) before and after a regular supermarket, for your convenience? It sort of shows how radically our retail culture has changed since the ’60s. Now, a convenience store has to rely on location, more than longer hours, to get business. Except for those that are open 24 hours — but then, there are supermarkets that do that, too. And Wal-Mart.

Yes, boys and girls, there was a time when we had down time, when we weren’t running around buying stuff every minute for the simple fact we couldn’t. We just waited and bought stuff when the stores were open.

Hard to imagine, I know…

We also weren’t in touch with everyone we knew, every second, 24/7, via such media as Twitter… which brings me back to my new goal, which is to exceed 1,000 followers by the end of the year. Not a very ambitious goal, I’ll admit, because the number can be manipulated. I try to keep the number of people I follow close to half the number following me. When I fall short of that, I follow more until I get up to that halfway mark, and presto, there’s a sudden rush of new followers. Just the way social media works. But it’s good to have goals, or so I’m told.

Hope to see you there…

A closer look at Nikki’s idea of fiscal responsibility

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Turning from Nikki Haley’s foot-dragging on transparency regarding her taxpayer-issued computer and e-mails, let’s take another look at her problems with paying her taxes on time.

This is particularly relevant because of her oft-stated wish that government be run like a business, and her touting of her proven skills as an accountant.

Let’s take a look at Cindi Scoppe’s column Sunday. Cindi, a meticulous reporter if ever I’ve met one, didn’t think much one way or the other about Nikki’s failure to pay her taxes on time until she looked into it further herself. Here’s an excerpt from what she found, going well beyond what had been previously reported:

The problem wasn’t that the Haleys sought and received extensions. It is in fact quite common for people to get a six-month extension to file their tax returns. But as the IRS makes clear, the extension applies only to the return, not to the tax payment itself. Taxes are always due by April 15 — at the latest. The Haleys have not paid their taxes by April 15 in any of the past five years…

Even more significantly, the extension gives people only until Oct. 15 to file. The Haleys filed their 2005 tax returns on July 30, 2007 — eight months after the extended deadline. They filed their 2006 tax returns on July 23, 2008 — also eight months after the extended deadline. Their 2007 returns were filed Nov. 5, 2008, just a few days after the extended deadline. (Their 2004, 2008 and 2009 returns were filed after April 15, but before Oct. 15, so the IRS doesn’t consider them late.)

Now, in my book, anytime you have to pay the government a penalty, you’ve done something wrong, and the Haleys have paid the IRS $4,452 in penalties in the past five years — $2,853 for filing late, and $1,599 for paying late…

Still, the idea that paying your taxes late, and waiting eight months after the extended deadline to file a return, is doing “nothing wrong” is more of a stretch.

But the biggest stretch is the way Ms. Haley has sought to spin her income tax problem into a virtue. She talks about how she and her husband fell upon tough economic times and cut back on their spending and learned to live within their means, which she says demonstrates what a fiscally responsible governor she would be. It seems to me that her actions demonstrate just the opposite.

The Haleys didn’t pay their taxes late once or twice, when things were bad; they paid their taxes late in every one of the past five years — not just in 2006, when their income dropped by half, but also in 2005 when it was going up, and in 2007, 2008 and 2009, when it was going up substantially, topping out at nearly $200,000 last year….

… the fact is that part of her strategy was to avoid paying her bills on time, by essentially giving herself a loan from those of us who paid our taxes on time. A bailout if you will, albeit temporary, for the candidate who deplores federal bailouts. And since she failed to pay her taxes on time five years in a row, it raises questions about her stewardship of money….

I questioned Ms. Haley’s campaign several times to make absolutely sure that the Haleys had not somehow managed to get an additional extension, and her spokesman never attempted to give any sort of justification for their missing the extended deadlines. I’m not sure what the repeated delinquent tax filings suggest: Poor organizational skills? Inability to delegate authority — or, if delegated, to choose trustworthy people to whom to delegate? A disregard for the laws the rest of us have to obey? What I am sure of is that if it were me, I wouldn’t be bragging about it.

“Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing”

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This post is about one thing — the fact that that headline struck me as funny. I got if from the above video, done by an Air Force pilot (a guy you’d think would be used to noise) who is really fed up with noisy chip bags:

Frito-Lay makes a lot of noise marketing its Sun Chips snacks as “green.” They are cooked with steam from solar energy, the message goes.

But its latest effort—making the bags out of biodegradable plant material instead of plastic—is creating a different kind of racket. Chip eaters are griping about the loud crackling sounds the new bag makes. Some have compared it to a “revving motorcycle” and “glass breaking.”

It is louder than “the cockpit of my jet,” said J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, in a video probing the issue that he posted on his blog under the headline “Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing.” Mr. Heathman tested the loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded a 95 decibel level. A bag of Tostitos Scoops chips (another Frito-Lay brand, in bags made from plastic) measured 77….

I haven’t checked them out, but those must be some noisy chip bags. And as a guy who is hypersensitive to that kind of noise — it can drive me up the wall — I don’t think I ever DO want to check them out. Part of what amuses me about this story is the notion that there are people out there — such as the guy who made that video — who get more worked up about such noise than I do.

Here’s what I would love — chips that are guaranteed not to crunch, either when you eat them or when you handle the packaging. That’s something I’d be willing to pay for, and distribute for free to anyone around me who just has to have a snack.

Gee, I just can’t WAIT to buy me some of THAT

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As a newly minted Mad Man, I’ve really gotta hand it to the ad wizards who managed to sell Camel on THIS campaign. Mind you, it’s the sales side that’s impressing me here, not the creative.

I mean, you only come away from this item wondering two things:

Does “Snus” rhyme with “news” or with “fuss?” And whichever it is, what the heck does it mean? Where’d it come from (I get the “snu-” part, just not the “s”)? Does it describe or suggest something camels do?
Come on, can’t you GUARANTEE that I’ll suffer gum disease and tooth loss? That “can” seems a bit weak.

I mean, really — if the warning’s gotta be that bold and so much more readable than anything else on the document, why go to the trouble of crafting this item? Are you TRYING to lose market share? Or is it that you assume that anyone who uses your product is so amazingly stupid that they can be relied upon to ignore the warning, and be dazzled by the garish colors? Or, is it that you’re assuming that they know ALL such products will give them horrible diseases, but you think this will still inspire them to choose your product over the others? And if so, what precisely in this particular communication do you think is going to reel them in?

The coupon, perhaps. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s gotta be the coupon…

Cut out the swooning already and get it together

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I’ve just really been getting fed up with domestic and world markets the last couple of days, what with headlines such as this one in the WSJ this morning:

Markets Swoon on Fears

Stocks Pummeled on Signs of Global Slowdown; Money Flees to Dollar and Yen

Investors around the world scrambled for safe havens as fears of a global economic slowdown grew.

The yen briefly touched a 15-year high against the U.S. dollar, the euro suffered its worst selloff in nearly two years, and global stock markets tumbled.

A day after briefly cheering the Federal Reserve’s announcement it would buy Treasury debt to bolster the U.S. economy, investors Wednesday began fretting about the negative implications of the move: The world’s biggest economy still needs extraordinary government help…

And then there’s stuff like the stories I just put on my virtual front page about the three-day market slide, and the sharp upswing in foreclosures in SC in July.

Enough! No more bad news on the economic front!

Here’s the thing: I firmly believe that this whole business of the economy being up or down is all in our heads. Or if not our heads, in whatever parts of our bodies are extremely emotional and easily frightened about the future. (Yes, there can be conditions that are not in our heads — like a pestilence that wipes out our food supply. But I haven’t noticed anything like that happening. We just panicked back in September 2008, and we’ve been panicking ever since.)

If we have confidence, we will act in a way that justifies confidence. We’ll take risks, make investments, spend money; people will be hired and will in turn take risks, invest, and spend, and things will just be booming.

But if we’re all nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, everything freezes up. There’s no commerce, no jobs, no hope.

So enough with the swooning. The last two years have been more than enough for me.

I can’t afford it, but I think I’m gonna run out and buy something. Of course, you other several billion people need to do the same thing. So let’s get on the stick.

Where could we go but up? We ARE the acorn!

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“Who could grow more than me?… Talk about massive potential for growth… I am the little acorn that becomes the oak!”

— Bill Murray as John Winger in “Stripes,” trying to stop his fed-up girlfriend from leaving him

Thought I might share with you this bit of good news from Mike Fitts’ publication:

Business Facilities magazine has given South Carolina a series of high rankings for its business environment, including being named No. 1 for economic growth potential.

The state also was ranked No. 3 nationally for auto manufacturing and No. 4 for best business climate.

In its coverage, the publication cites the coming of Boeing’s second 787 assembly line in North Charleston as the primary reason South Carolina was top in growth potential.

“We believe the selection of North Charleston as the manufacturing site for Boeing’s best-selling commercial jet cements South Carolina’s status as a top-tier aerospace player, providing the basis for tremendous growth potential in coming years,” the magazine wrote.

Three other Southern states ranked right behind South Carolina on growth potential: Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina…

After all, the way things have been going for us in SC in recent years, where could we go but up? We are that tiny acorn!

bradwarthen.coffee

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Who’d like to invest in a coffee shop in Surfside Beach that is designed purely as a place for people to take their laptops and connect via wi-fi?

There’s a real gap in the market there. And the public library that was my refuge last week has its limitations. For instance, my son-in-law, who is a economist/consultant, needed wi-fi in a place where he could simultaneously talk on the phone — so he ended up going to a Starbucks way up in Myrtle Beach. (Even there, I don’t know how welcome he was, talking into his cell phone in a public place, which suggests the need for a better place that is all ABOUT connectivity.)

OK, maybe “bradwarthen.coffee” is a goofy name for the place — maybe I should get my fellow ad wizards at ADCO to work on it — but I was thinking that it needs a name that tells people it exists for bloggers (like Tim Kelly, who also vacations there and has to go to McDonald’s of all places to get connected) and others who can’t get through their vacations without a reliable place to connect.

This is a bit of a throwback — a decade or two — to the old “Internet cafes” that existed before access was widespread. But I think that in a vacation spot like that that lacks a Starbucks or a Panera, it would have a real chance to catch on.

The money would be made from coffee and snacks, as one certain source of revenue, but they would not be the main attraction. And while my first instincts are that the wi-fi must be free, if it were inviting and accommodating enough (with amenities like LOTS of electrical outlets so you don’t have to jockey for those spaces, and maybe soundproof booths for those needing to teleconference and such) perhaps the market would bear a small fee for the access. I don’t know. This is just the beginning of an idea…

From Honest Abe to Opulence: awesome adverts

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First, unlike more typical folks here in the eighth-laziest state in the nation, I don’t watch all that much TV. When I turn the box on, it’s usually to watch a DVD (0ften of TV shows, but is that the same as “watching TV”? I don’t know). And when I actually do surf the broadcast and cable offerings, I have a very itchy finger on the channel-changer, and commercials are occasions for launching another circuit of my options.

So when I actually see an ad that makes me stop and watch it, and want to watch it again, and call family members in to see it — that’s a rare occasion.

There are currently two such ads on the tube these days. One is above, and the other below. Hats off to the ad geniuses who made these; every detail is perfect. I particularly love the conceit of making the Abe Lincoln clip old and scratchy, sort of stretching the facts of history to pretend moving pictures were available in the days of Matthew Brady.

But the Russian mafioso and his miniature giraffe — that’s also to bust a gut over. Who dreamed that up? Who thought of the giraffe, or his goofy paroxyms of joy as he smooches it? It’s so riveting you almost don’t notice the babes next to him, which is amazing.

So hats off to the agencies that I THINK are responsible for these gems: the Martin Agency for the Honest Abe (those guys are awesome — whoever heard of so many totally separate, memorable, highly creative campaigns going on for one client at the same time? And they keep it up year after year), and Grey Advertising for the “Opulence — I has it” advert.

Good stuff, folks. As an aspiring ad man, I will try to emulate your brilliance.

Benjamin joins Ogletree, Deakins law firm

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Just got this release…

OK, never mind! I was going to copy a couple of grafs out of the release here for your perusal, but it’s a blasted PDF file, and you know how sometimes you can copy text out of a PDF and sometimes you can’t? This is one of those where you can’t, which is another occasion for me to say, as a blogger who values convenience and accessibility in information online…

I FRICKIN’ HATE PDFS, AND DON’T KNOW WHY PEOPLE INSIST UPON USING THEM!!!

OK, that’s out of my system.

Anyway, the release, which you can find here, says that Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms, has hired Steve Benjamin effective Aug. 1.

I guess it’s kind of hard keeping a small law firm (Benjamin Law Firm, LLC) going when you’re distracted by the all-consuming “part-time” job of being mayor. Maybe someday we’ll get all grown up and have a full-time mayor in this town, and then the mayor won’t have to make arrangements on the side to feed his family. In the meantime, this kind of move makes sense: Going with a large firm that can afford to give you lots of leeway on your time…

Mike Fitts’ piece on Sheheen and the Chamber

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The lead story in the latest print version of Columbia Regional Business Report was about the S.C. Chamber of Commerce’s historic decision to endorse a candidate in the governor’s race — specifically, Vincent Sheheen. I can’t link you to the full piece because for some reason it’s not online. But Mike Fitts shot me a copy of his piece to save me all that nasty typing as I give you this excerpt:

Chamber weighs in on governor’s race

Executive summary: Frustration with Gov. Mark Sanford has helped prod the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to give its first gubernatorial endorsement, to Vincent Sheheen.

By Mike Fitts
[email protected]

There was one overriding factor that prompted the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to make an endorsement for the governor’s race for the first time: the gridlock around the current occupant.

A large majority of the members of the chamber’s board, which is made up of more than 50 business executives from across the state, thought that it was time for the chamber to do its first endorsement in a statewide race. The view that Gov. Mark Sanford had failed to get things done for eight years was a major driver in that decision, said chamber CEO Otis Rawl. The business community “didn’t make much headway” with the governor’s office during his term, he said.

“Our board didn’t want that to happen again,” Rawl said…

Here are some things that interested me about the piece:

The fact that it was for the first time. That hadn’t fully registered on me. It seems to me a reflection of business leaders’ realization that sitting on the sidelines has led to stagnation in South Carolina’s political leadership. Rather than let another do-nothing governor get elected on the base of ideological slogans, they wanted to act to get some real leadership.
Although I’d read it before, I was struck again by the vapid immaturity of the Haley campaign’s response: Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey had said to the AP: “The state chamber is a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare, so it’s no surprise that they would prefer a liberal like Vincent Sheheen over a conservative like Nikki Haley.” I wonder if Nikki opened her secret meetings with business people with those words. If she truly believed in transparency, if she really wanted to let those people know what her campaign stood for, she would have. A response like this confirms that the Chamber chose wisely.
A factor in the Chamber’s decision was that Sheheen, rather than resorting to ideological slogans, had more specifics about what he’d do to build our state’s economy: “Sheheen offered better answers on keeping the state’s ports successful, building up the state’s infrastructure and improving the state’s workforce, which is vital to keeping such employers and Boeing and BMW happy, Rawl said.”
Sheheen also made the case — and this should truly be the measure of this campaign — that unlike Haley, who has built her brief career on fighting against the Legislature, he could actually get his plans acted upon: “It’s OK to rail against the good ol’ boy system, Rawl said, but a governor has to be able to get legislation thru the General Assembly.”
Then there’s the execrable Act 388, which distorted our whole tax system — putting an excessive burden on businesses and renters, and shifting the load for supporting public schools onto the volatile, exemption-ridden sales tax — for the sake of the subset of homeowners who lived in high-growth areas. Vincent did what he could to stop it; Nikki voted for it.
The vote of confidence by the Chamber’s board was huge and dramatic. They didn’t even wait for the GOP runoff to be over before 75 percent of them voted to support Sheheen in the fall. As for the broader membership, there has been “scattered pushback” from some individual members, but nothing to make the Chamber leadership (which has not been given to taking such risks) sweat. Which is truly remarkable with such a broad, conservative membership as the Chamber’s.

Finally, the thing that got the Chamber to take this unprecedented step was the fact that this election is so pivotal, a fact that I started writing about before I left the paper (which is normally LONG before I would focus on something like this). South Carolina simply cannot continue to drift while our elected leaders play ideological footsie (when you go to that link, scroll down to “Sanford on Fox 46 times”) with national media. We have to get serious. That’s a conclusion that the Chamber has reached as well.

Problems with “Mad Men” season opener

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Well, I don’t really know how to put my finger on it; I just found it lacking. As my wife said, if this is an indication of what the new season is going to be like, we’ve waited a long time for nothing good.

A writer for Advertising Age is much more specific in his objections:

I felt George’s pain in the opening scene of Sunday’s episode, however. Don Draper is at lunch with an Ad Age reporter, and our guy’s first line is: “Who is Don Draper?” Don doesn’t know what to say, so he asks how other people responded to such a question. “They say something cute,” our reporter says. “One creative director said he was a lion tamer.”

The Ad Age reporter is taking notes for his story in shorthand. He asks about a Glo-Coat ad that caused “a bit of a squeal,” then says he has enough for his story. “It’s only going to be a few hundred words. The picture may be bigger than the article.” At that point other members of the agency show up, including Roger Sterling, and when the reporter gets up to leave he turns his leg entirely around and explains he lost his real limb in Korea. When he departs, Sterling quips, “They’re so cheap they can’t afford a whole reporter.”

What’s wrong with this picture? No. 1, we never did interviews over lunch; No. 2, we didn’t take notes in shorthand; No. 3 we didn’t ask cute-ass questions; and No. 4, our pictures were never bigger than our stories.

OK, dude; lighten up. It’s a TV show. But yeah, it was lacking.

There was one part I liked. It was when Don Draper makes a pitch to unappreciative clients (or potential clients; I doubt that anything had been signed), and then gets so ticked off at them he storms out of the meeting. Then, when one of his associates follows him out to say something about trying to salvage the situation, Don essentially says Hell, no and marches back in to summarily throw the philistines out of the office.

My wife sort of went, “Whoa!” at such extreme behavior. Which was my cue to say, “That’s essentially what I do at ADCO. That’s my role.”

I can get away with stuff like that now. When I was at the paper, she could see what I did every morning. Now, I can be more mysterious.

A quarter of a million page views in one month

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Just an update on how things are going with the blog…

They’re kinda slow on the advertising front because I haven’t tried to sell any in the last few weeks. I really pushed on it during the primary, then slacked off. As y’all know, I do have a job, and while the folks at ADCO love the blog (I keep having to tell one of the partners that if she keeps sending me cool blog fodder she finds on the Web, I’ll never get to my ADCO work), I do need to set priorities. And ad sales have been low on the list. Also, I really want to find somebody to help me sell it for commissions — especially to non-political customers, with whom I am less confident. And I haven’t found anybody yet.

But while the revenue side has been slow, the circulation department is booming.

Last month was my best month ever for readership. I had 254,545 page views. (By the way, page views are the measure I use because that’s the only stat I had available to me on my old blog at the paper, so it’s a meaningful number to me. Other stats for June include 92,713 “Visits” and 1,347,519 “Hits” — but those don’t mean as much to me.) That pretty much stomps the record set the previous June — the month that the Mark Sanford scandal broke and people across the country were looking for SC blogs — of 168,995.

On the old blog — the one that I did as editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper, which meant I was able to promote it from that large print platform — it took me three years to reach a million page views. At June’s pace, it would take me four months.

The biggest month I ever had on my old blog when I was at the paper was 84,472 in January 2008 — the month that the eyes of the nation were on SC because of the presidential primaries. As you can see, I was blogging like mad that month, but back then I just couldn’t get the traffic I do now.

Of course, I don’t expect to get a quarter of a million every month — so far this month (since we don’t have the primaries — and Alvin Greene and alleged scandals about Nikki Haley — driving interest in political news) I’ve had 101,585 so far. That’s more like May, with 148,391. But the trend is ratcheting upward.

Just in case you wanted to know.

Eat your heart out, George Costanza

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Sorry I haven’t posted today, but I’ve been busy.

I’m just branching out into all sorts of new fields of endeavor since becoming a Mad Man and joining ADCO — exploiting latent talents I didn’t even know I had.

Here’s the latest: Hand model. Soon, you might be seeing my hand on a billboard down in the Lowcountry. That’s because we needed background art — of anonymous hands operating office equipment — for a board we were doing for a client. Karen and I ran over to the client’s showroom to shoot it earlier this week, and she shot a bunch of exposures of my hands pretending to push buttons. I shot some of her doing the same, but it was Karen’s camera (a very nice Nikon SLR) and she’ll be picking the image we use, and in my experience, when given a choice, photographers prefer their own work.

So this is my big shot. A number of years ago I pressed The State to include in a billboard campaign several boards highlighting the faces of my associates Cindi Scoppe, Warren Bolton and Claudia Brinson. I thought then that someone in Marketing (The State actually had a marketing department back then) would say, “We need one of Brad, too!” But they didn’t, drat the luck. So my colleagues got famouser and I didn’t.

But this is my big break. And I’m going to be really careful with my hands. I’m not going to mess them up the way George Costanza did his. (Yes, now I, too, have “hand,” George!)

And in a way, this kind of notoriety is sweeter than having people know your face. I won’t be pestered for autographs. I’ll be able to sit in a restaurant, for instance, undisturbed and overhear women at an adjoining table:

FIRST WOMAN: Have you seen that wonderful new office equipment ad?

SECOND WOMAN: Those hands! They’re so… so hot!

FIRST WOMAN: Yes! They make me all quivery…

… while I smile enigmatically, perusing the menu.

Just please — don’t hate me because my hands are beautiful.

Here's pointing at YOU, kid...

Go see ‘Inception’ — even I plan to do so

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Why am I recommending a movie I haven’t seen? Because of this: It’s being held up as a big gamble on originality in a time when studios don’t want to bet on anything but mind-numbing sequels to proven money-makers:

The $160 million surreal thriller, based on an original screenplay about dreams and a group of thieves who steal them for profit, represents something of a rarity in an era when movie executives are choosing to base their biggest summer films on remakes, comic book characters, videogames and toys.

If “Inception” succeeds—and a lot of people in Hollywood are rooting for a hit—it could mark a new turn for an industry that loves to think of itself as delivering fine art to the masses. The film embodies Hollywood’s aspirations of melding high-concept art and high-flying commerce, with all the risks and potential rewards such a combination can entail.

“I think everybody is looking to this movie as proof of concept that new franchises can succeed and you don’t just have to re-tread old material,” says Stephen Prough, co-founder of Salem Partners, a boutique investment bank with a specialty in media and entertainment.

Never mind that the movie might not be any good, as this review indicates in the same edition of the WSJ in which I read the above. The thing is, if studios are thinking, “If this makes money, we’ll take a chance on original scripts more,” then I want them to make money. It’s a rather simplistic calculation, but hey, we’re trying to influence fairly simplistic people here (the backers of movies).

I figure, if they make money on this, maybe we’ll see some original flicks that are actually good. It’s worth the price of a ticket to try, anyway.

Normally, I don’t go to the theater to see anything — I wait for Netflix. But I figure, if we can encourage the studios in this, maybe the choices on Netflix will get better.

Nikki’s business meeting in Greenville

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Still haven’t heard from anyone who attended Nikki’s meeting today to shore up her business relations, but The Greenville News took a stab at finding out what happened at a similar meeting up their way.

An excerpt:

Republican gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley has met privately at least twice with Greenville business leaders and assured them she would seek a better relationship with lawmakers than Gov. Mark Sanford, her political ally, and would champion economic development more fully than he has.

Haley arranged the meetings – including one here Tuesday and a similar one in Columbia today – at a time when some business leaders, long disappointed with Sanford, are considering whether to take a cue from the state Chamber of Commerce and rally behind Haley’s Democratic opponent, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen.

The first question for Haley at Tuesday’s meeting at The Loft at Soby’s was whether she would govern as Sanford has, said Lewis Gossett, president of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance.

Haley “basically made the point that she would be her own person,” said Gossett, who lives and works in Columbia but stopped by the meeting while in Greenville for a personal appointment.

Gossett said members of the manufacturers’ alliance have been “frustrated” with Sanford and “want to know are we going to see a spirit of cooperation in Columbia?” He said some of the alliance’s members support Haley and some Sheheen.

Trav Robertson, spokesman for the Sheheen campaign, said Haley would indeed govern like Sanford, who Robertson said tried to derail plans for Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research when he first took office in 2003.

“Who carried Sanford’s water in the Legislature? It was Nikki Haley,” Robertson said. “Who was the first person Nikki Haley thanked when she won the nomination? Mark Sanford. So make no mistake. It’s one and the same.”

Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said business people in the Upstate were interested in meeting Haley and it was natural for her to meet with them.

On the one hand, I’m almost inclined to excuse these secret meetings on the grounds that a lot of business people won’t show and say what they really think in a public forum.

But then I think, NAAAHHHH. No way should Ms. Transparency get away with this, and here’s why: According to this story, she’s telling these business people how normal and cooperative and constructive she’ll be in working with lawmakers, unlike her mentor Mark Sanford. She’s saying things sufficiently reassuring that some are coming away deciding to back her.

For her to say things that would be persuasive to sensible, pragmatic business people (who are fed up with that ideological firebrand Gov. Sangfroid), it seems to me that she would have to say things that are pretty different from what she says in front of her Tea Party fans. With them, she definitely doesn’t say, “No way I’ll be like Mark Sanford.”

But doing it in private allows her to get away with that.

Did anybody go to Nikki’s meeting?

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Since I got uninvited from the meeting at which Nikki Haley was to woo business support today, I’m wondering… Did it even happen, or did it get canceled or postponed? Who showed up? What was said? Did she make any progress against Vincent Sheheen’s Chamber support?

I drove past the Wilbur Smith building a little after noon, and about all I can report is that they certainly weren’t spilling out onto the sidewalk. But then, I wouldn’t really expect them to. It’s a big building.

Anyway, if you were one of the Elect who attended, drop me a line at [email protected]. I’d love to hear how it went.