I won’t lie. I am still upset in my stomach. I might have thrown up in the back of my mouth just a tiny bit (as the original PingWi-Fi PingWare shirt on this site proudly states … LOL).
I so-oooo dodged a bullet on July the Fourth. Walking down the street in sunny Delray Beach, Fla., my cool, ventilated mesh backpack unzipped on my back, by itself. Ever half a zipper malfunction? I could feel my equipment flopping against my back … somehow, differently. So I looked over at my reflection in the window of some seafood restaurant. OMG … the backpack was gaping like a widemouth bass, and my laptop was leaning toward the opening. I grabbed with one hand and starting taking the backpack strap from my shoulder with the other hand.
The seafood restaurant patrons had no idea that day’s lunch would be served with a side order of moron slapstick comedy.
THUD!
I was afraid to look down at the sidewalk. It was my somewhat expensive Nikon D7000 digital camera! Instinctively I fell to my knees to cradle my Lil Nikey in my hands, protectively as if it were a child.
THUD!
As I bent down, the MacBook Pro in my pretty much worthless backpack made its leap toward freedom too.
OMG … worth repeating! I saw the life of this blog pass before my eyes.
Yes, I am thanking God that I had both pieces of equipment in padded, black wraps, zipped up tightly and that lessened the blows.
(Hmmm …. “Lessen The Blows” … not a bad bogus band name for the Bogus Band Name page on this site … note to self … I digress.)
Are There Any Bands Named “Bogus?”
I couldn’t open the equipment cases to look … mortified to think what I would find. I gathered up the stuff and examined the zipper, loaded up and went to Subway for lunch. I better start eating cheap now, I thought, ” … may have some equipment to replace.”
It wasn’t until after lunch that I fired up my equipment. Having done the inexpensive and healthy Subway thing for lunch, I headed to a sweet little place called Cupcake Couture for discovery.
“Thank God!” … always worth repeating!
The laptop seems to be working marvelously and the camera is still creating decent photos in spite of the decision maker with his shaky hand on the trigger. The only casualty during both of these nosedives to the sidewalk was the protective lens cover, added to the Nikon lens for protection. Remember when “protection” meant lens covers? … I digress …
When I opened her up — the camera case — there was broken glass and I feared the worse. I also was afraid I was going to sprinkle this cupcake joint with tiny shards of my lens cover. I swept it up, diligently, by the way.
I can still hear the words of the Nikon salesman, etched into my memory. “Better to buy a $30 cover, than to replace a lens. ” How true!
Yes … my pulse rate was still #TTU — too turned up. (HOW in the world did Texas Tech University miss out on that obvious hashtag on Twitter, I ask you? And yes, I know … I know … moving on …)
‘Bout this time, I be needin me some chill pill, but I saw no kava bar in sight to calm me down, so as I alluded, I “settled” for a cupcake joint in which to test my bruised equipment.
Not a bad place for the computer, camera inspection. At Cupcake Couture there is free Wi-Fi and I treated my nerves to ice cream, a cupcake and some free Facebook updating and tweets to celebrate.
Oh check out the clever names of the cupcake flavors — “Oscar de la Raspberry,” “Coconut Klein,” “Berry Wang,” “Cocoa Channel,” “Dolce & Banana” and the like. Pretty tasteful.
It turned out to be quite a happy Fourth of July.
This place … this cupcake joint as it were, is about as cute and colorful as a Hello Kitty franchise store. Ha …. actually there are Hello Kitty candy suckers. There are also pastel candies and cakes painted all over the walls, with gum balls, candy corn and various nostalgic candies in between. My favorite touch in the decor is a set of pink and green oven doors mounted on the wall. However, instead of a view into an oven, the glass oven door offers one of several Disney shows or a viewing of Willie Wonka on a screen inside the oven. Pretty clever idea. And the people were so friendly. Salute!
Cupcake Couture in Delray Beach … “A sweet boutique” as their sign says, and plenty of Wi-Fi to satisfy my sweet tooth – 6 pings.
What a rollercoaster! I hit the depth of frustration and then had a happy ending with a sugar high. I headed back down the retail-laden sidewalk of DRay Beach … probably skipping with newfound synthetic energy and joy.
That’s when I found a nice little place to suck the good karma right out of a bloke — the cleverly named My Yogurt Cafe … wonder if they were influenced by MySpace … you remember MySpace? … Don’t you?
At first, MYC seemed great. Some young summer-job girl gave me a cheery “Hello” outside on the street and asked me if I would like to sample some yogurt. “Hmmm … just had cupcakes and ice cream … should i do yogurt too?” (Bet your arse I did.)
This yogurt place is one of those self serve places where you can walk right up to a wall full of nozzles and “milk” a little yogurty goodness for your own self, right out of the nozzle. (Quite reminiscent for this farmboy, if you know what I sayin …)
However, the congenial gal never left my side and recommended her favorite and served up several samples for me — great service on her part.
Then things went south. I decided to get a yogurt fix, but first I would take a few photos with my iPhone because I had decided to write about My Yogurt Cafe.
“HEY! What are you doing? What are you taking pictures of?,” came the customer service-oriented greeting from a woman who looked to be the owner or manager, from behind the counter.
“Uh, all of this,” I said vaguely, gesturing with arms spread to include pretty much everything.
“Well you can’t take photos. This is all copyrighted and protected,” she continued.
“It’s okay. I am a travel writer …” She stopped me mid-sentence.
“No pictures.”
Can I just take a second to step up on the soapbox, based on my 25 years in media relations, marketing, PR, publishing, blogging, advertising and yogurt eating? IF … IF any journalist ever wants to give you free publicity, let them. Media coverage, even viral media or new media, has more credibility than any advertisement for which you will pay thousands of dollars. End of media training 101 … well not quite. Lesson two: since you cannot control what the media write, you can try to make a positive difference by being even slightly hospitable.
As for the photos inside issue and the concerns … What did she think I was going to do, rush back to the other side of town and open a yogurt place exactly like this one, which pretty much looks exactly like a thousand other yogurt places we have already seen? Woo-oo! You can serve the yogurt sample yo-ooourself, into a little cup … and eat yogurt for free-eeee … and then choo-oooose a flava and put it in a bigger cup to be weighed. Woo-ooo. Pretty loaded with marketing strategy and intellectual property gems, wouldn’t you say? I jest …
“Well played!,” I joked as I sat my yogurt down and walked out. “I will throw that one photo away,” the one that would have revealed total marketing revelation to the anticipation of an idea-starved world.
So, I walked outside, stood in the street and took a photo, quite legally, of the street side in Delray Beach and quite coincidentally, there was a shop in my frame called My Yogurt Cafe. What a coincidence.
Here’s more media relations learnin:
- Media can and will legally print or play opinions, no matter what you do.
- Media will get the last word, I guarantee you.
- Media make much better friends than agitated bloggers.
- Media opinions — especially now with the Internet — good or bad, last … like, until eternity!
- Media ARE an audience — the most important audience — in spite of what some bland PR firms errantly preach.
- Media are opinion leaders.
- Media have followers … and although PingWi-Fi only has a core of 20 readers on a good day, those fabulous, intellectual 20 readers are also opinion leaders … smart … well connected … brilliant … vocal … early adopters … I tell you … and just you wait until I share how I was treated. LOL.
(Lady … I am such a creampuff when it comes to writing reviews of nice places … but I can also be somewhat of a cynical smart ass …)
Did the braintrust of original marketing that concocted this fairly generic yogurt shop also add the marketing hoodoo voodoo that is everywhere … this Wi-Fi thang?
Well … remember the nice girl. The one who made the great first impression … the impression that was “bludgeoned to death with a frozen brick of raspberry yogurt sorbe?” That girl … that great ambassador for the shop told me there was Wi-Fi, and that is why — the one thing that made this shop appealing and perhaps significant among all the other thousands of yogurt shops — I stopped in the first place.
Yet, I never got to serve myself a sweet, lo-cal hit of Wi-Fi … not a single tweet.
What was their name? … Oh yes, the catchy My Yogurt Cafe — marketing genius (not), customer-oriented (not) and among the most media savvy in the land (not) … In the immortal words of Sean Connery in “The Hunt For Red October,” “One ping, one ping only.” (NOTE: being a nice guy, I usually give a pass to places that don’t measure up, if they are at least trying. I am pro business. But when someone is rude, yes there is a reckoning and bias built into this rating system … can you tell? One ping is pretty rare on this blog … not a good thing.)
Well tha-aaaank you for ruining my sugary high!
Gotta run … I have some new marketing ideas … brilliant … to reveal underhandedly to the guys in Japan who are just clamoring, so they can replicate this American originality.
Know what I saying?
