Jake Ludens

I am blogging from Wyoming. Was without the internet for a few days here so I posted on twitter to let everyone know that I was trying to blog for the 30 day blog challenge. I fly back to Vegas in the morning and promise to get back to blogging each day.

Well, I didn’t get my normal amount of spam today, email accounts excluded. However, I did find something very interesting and I wanted to share it with you today.

With the new house, Diane and I decided to get a subscription to Consumer Reports. This is a great publication full of info on things you never knew you needed. This month’s issue is entitled “Save Energy, Save Money”. Who doesn’t like to save money, right have to read this issue.

Then it happened, in the issue that is supposed to have great ideas on how to save energy and money, why don’t they take their own advice and save some money by not giving their subscribers 9 cards advertising a subscription that we obviously already have?

Suggestion: Consumer Reports, start a trend by knowing your consumers and remind them when their subscription is almost up, don’t waste money on paying people to stuff your magazine full of cards that go straight into the garbage. I mean now I have a stack of subscription cards from Consumer Reports right next to my A-One Satellite envelope.

Today’s victor of the spam assault of my mail box Direct TV. However, it is not Direct TV that is sending all of this stuff to me, it is their affiliates. I do love affiliate marketing, Click Here, Work from Home, Need Cash, Male Enhancement, Female Enhancement, Goat Enhancement, Feeling lonely tonight, V1aGr-a, Hot teen cheerleaders doing long division in space suits…..OK you get the picture.  One affiliate of Direct TV landed a great one in my mail box today.

Today’s winner: A-One Satellite Network

It costs 42 cents here in the United States to send a standard envelope, combine that with the cost of a self adhesive labels and top it off with a self adhesive envelope you are looking at what I can guess as close to a 50 cent per piece mailing and that is without what is inside. Lets take a look…. Wow it is a great pre-printed brochure displaying all of the channels Direct TV offers. Direct TV spent a lot producing millions of these for all of their affiliates nationwide.  All of these channels this looks like a great deal, where do I sign up?  Where is the number I call or the website I go to? And what is this large blank white area taking up the back of the brochure?

Ok, time to let the cat out of the bag, A-One Satellite Network, I applaud your innovation to save money by using your label on the front of the envelop you sent me, however after digging it out of my garbage can I realized that your entire cost of mailing this to me went straight to the trash.  Why are you wasting your advertising budget paying people to throw away an envelope?

Suggestion: When you become an affiliate of anyone’s selling any product, make sure you can get paid for your efforts. Companies with affiliate programs make it as easy as possible for you to make money from them, use the designated area on the already supplied creative to allow customers to call you and give you money.

We are on to day two and lets see what the “spam” fairy has brought us today. Lets see, bill, bill, oh wait hey look a 2 for 1 coupon for SuperMex that is a keeper. And if you don’t know the wonderfulness that is the SuperMex, just ask Jessi - ” Hail the EL BOMBA!”

Ohhhh I think we have a winner - Addison Landscaping Inc.

Now this isn’t a bad postcard and the photos of the landscaping are very clear. The printing is done in a glossy finish on one side and a matte finish on the other. I need landscaping and am definitely going to put their ad into my files.

Yet, there a few major problems with this design, one is that the use of one font isn’t always a bad thing, especially in an ad the size of a post card, but please don’t make the font a standard arial font, with all CAPS. It looks just like this blog post and also stop using MS Word to design advertising. But above all there is one serious over site when this ad went to print - Why would you print white letters on a white back ground? Does that cost extra?

Small, independent businesses don’t have the ad budgets to throw around like some of the Casino’s here in Las Vegas, I know that. However that doesn’t mean you can’t go to friends or family members and say, “Hey does look good? Can you read it?”

Well, it is 10:30 pm on the first night of the make a blog post a day for 30 days challenge that I am doing with Jason and John. First lesson I have learned so far during this challenge is that I forgot to let these guys know I was participating. Opps.

So lets see if I can pull this off. I have a lot of content since the last two months I have been very busy. Let see, there has been the losing my job, getting a new job, closing on my first house, moving into my first house, and 12 hour road trip to Idaho. This month doesn’t slow down either. I fly to Wyoming on Friday, my college roommate Toby is in town the following weekend for his bachelor party, the weekend following that I am off to Utah to see the University of Wyoming play BYU in Provo, Diane’s birthday is the following Monday and she will be at Monday Night Football in San Diego, the weekend following that Diane and I fly to San Jose for my cousin’s wedding. Hmmm looks like a full month, again.

Yes the following weekends are going to be busy with work filling in the week, but I had an idea that I wanted to bring out during this 30 day blog challenge. I am an Advertising geek and one thing that I can’t stand is advertising efforts that are not thought out and done simply because a company thinks they need to be “seen”. Also, being a new home owner I am receiving solicitations that are everything from funny to down right rude. For the next 30 days I am going to post a blog a day about an advertisement that I receive through any form of media. I want to post what I feel is good and bad.

Tonight’s critique: Kinetico Home Water Systems

I have seen the add for Kinetico in a small direct mail catalog that is sent out called “Getting to know you Savings Guide” and I had a person put a post card in my door. The first thing is that, I can’t stand having things slide into the door jams of my front door. It is a waste of time for me and as a consumer I think any company that does that is sub par. However, I also know that it works and makes companies a lot of money.

But back to the advertising piece at hand. The first thing that I noticed on both pieces of print material is a very poor photo of a little girl drinking what should be a glass of water, however it looks exactly like a glass of Scotch! I am not kidding, why would give the little girl a “rocks” glass to drink out of for your main advertising image, much less allow the class to have a shadow so that it doesn’t look at all like water she is drinking?

Next, there are at least 8 different fonts on just one side of their post card. I don’t need to explain to you why this is annoying. What I need to explain is the bonus font that was put on the post card by the door to door sales person who wrote their name and phone number on the post card in a nice felt pen. Urgh, it is like they aren’t even trying. What I think this company is doing is hoping that through some luck they can convince some poor individual that they need treated water and some way it will save them money. What is even more amazing is that Kinetico is paying people to go door to door. I have first hand experience doing this type of selling and there is no way this can pay enough money to the people going door to door to make it worth their time.

Suggestions - Please spend the money for a great design for your advertising, rather than sending someone to my door to sell a product that is far from an impulse buy and read your own advertising, it says ” no pressure “.

I was looking at my calander this morning and I can’t believe how fast this summer has gone by.  This past month has been very crazy but now I am starting to get back in to a groove.  Here is a small recap of the month of August.

The month started out in a rush, I have a new job that promises to be a lot of fun and work, but I am ready. Diane and I got the keys to the new house on the 7th of this month and after having the keys for only about 20 minutes, we jumped in to John’s car and raced off to Idaho.

John wrote a great recap of that adventure here

My parents have been going to the Sturgis Motorcycle Classic for as long as I have been around and I always knew it was a good time there, I think the Braun Brother’s Reunion could easily become the same type of yearly ritual for us.

Also Diane has posted more photos up on Flickr - Check ‘em out.
First Set
Second Set

Once we got home from the Idaho trip, Diane and I were in full moving mode and were able to move most of our belongings into the house using just our cars. We hired movers to get all the large stuff.

That was the week of August 11th, so now we are finally settled, all the waiting for utility companies and deliveries is over

Apart from that we have been moving forward with expanding Black Diamond Digital Imaging. I am excited to see how great this company is going to be. Check out the website and I will be blogging over there as well.

Finally, now that the house is built and we are moved in, what in the world am I going to blog about?

Maybe one of my other passions - Advertising, Hockey, Football, Books - nah already blog about that, I will think of something.

I know most everyone is bored with photos of the house, but need not worry my faithful readers, I will have a new subject in just a few days.

But for now, check out the newest photos

A few last minute touch ups and it is all ours!

We are going to be out on the road with John and Chris for a few days but wait for the final house building post coming soon!

This was posted today on Yahoo,

Beer Pong is a virtual rendition of the popular college drinking game that requires players to toss Ping-Pong balls across a table and into a cup of beer (if your cup is hit, you drink). The game was designed for the popular Nintendo Wii platform, and its maker had planned to release it as the first game in its new Frat Party Games series. But concerned parents began sending angry letters to JV Games and Nintendo - Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal even got in on the action, sending his own missives to the companies - until JV Games agreed to change the title of the game to Pong Toss and fill its pixelated cups with water.

“We never anticipated such a severe reaction to the word ‘beer,’” says Jag Jaegar, co-owner of JV Games, which released Pong Toss on July 28 with a kid-friendly rating of “T” for teen.

The co-founder of JV Games needs to lose the “e” in his last name

Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t posted new photos of the house project for a few weeks. The new job and all the changes in my life have been good but time consuming.

The house is looking great and they have really made some great progress.

The new flooring went in this last week, it was still covered but I was able to get a few shots.

There isn’t much left for the builders to do, the next thing Diane and I will need to do is finish the back yard, that will be fun.

It looks almost finished from the street.

Wow, I didn’t know so many people would find my blog. Thanks everyone for the comments and support the last few weeks.

I have been in contact with a number of great people form the Marketing and Advertising world and look for great things from me in the near future.

I have not really posted much here at JakeLudens.com about anything but the new house that Diane and I are building. Look for that to change starting in the next week. I have been busy finishing up a number of things and getting ready to move in to the new house.

I will also have a full announcement of what is next for me in my career soon.

Please keep the comments coming and I will have plenty for all you advertising buffs to talk about.