"The What to Wear Report"

My 4.5 year old daughter every morning jumps into bed with us as we have our morning coffee and watch the news. Typically we watch the headlines at the beginning of the newscast then fast forward to TechBytes, the business news, and of course the weather. So this morning she asked, "why do we need to watch the weather?". My wife responded that we watch the weather report so we know what clothes to wear.  Like only a sassy four year old girl could pull off she says, "why isn't it called the what to wear report?". 

Aahh to see the world through a kid's eyes. What a joy they are...

There's probably lesson in marketing here....it's a great reminder to focus the message on the consumers' benefit and not on a product's features.

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Watch this video

TV and videos are a slippery slope when it comes to allowing kids to watch them. We resisted turning our TV into a babysitter for several years and now somehow we find our daughter watching Diego and Dora nearly everyday. The good news is my son can't sit still for 5 minutes (Did I just say that???) - today instead of having 'quiet time' jumping around I put him on my lap and we decided to watch a few YouTube videos. There are some classic Sesame Street clips (C is for cookie, Subway, etc) but he wouldn't sit still....until......

Solid Rocket separation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8azRu2stO4

Awe. Silence. Then "more".

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Are they skating while playing golf?"

said Thea McDonald while watching her dad fast forward the Tivo past the sports news  (age "4 and 1/2 and next I'll be almost 4 and 3/4s")

Thankfully I didn't have to explain why they were punching each other.

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two of my favs

Santa brought my kids Doodle-Track Cars this year. The motorized car (think hot wheels) follows a track that you (or your kids) draw on a piece of paper. It's like having a train-set with infinite pieces of track.  I may like this more than my kids although we did spend at least 30 mins playing with this together before they lost interest. My wife says I 'hogged' it. For 10$ (included batteries and track marker) I'm thinking about getting a few more and having my friends over for race nite.

On a different note, today I opened 6 e-cards that rolled in over the past few days. One of the cards was of my friends having been 'elf'd', 4 were pretty standard greetings with holiday music and the last displayed the following:

It looks like some IT guy somewhere is working today.

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Minivans, Baby Gear & Ballet Classes

A few years ago I was amazed at how many minivans there were on the roads. Around the same time I was stunned to find out that there was a retail store that specializes in baby gear in downtown Menlo Park where I lived at the time.  I must have driven past the store a thousand times never realizing it was there. It wasn't until my wife and I were pregnant that these 'things' became part of my existence. They were irrelevant and really didn't exist in my world until then. While I must have seen these 'things' they never registered and certainly never registered as anything important or even note worthy. Now with a '4 1/2 and this many days' year old (said while holding up 6 fingers) I come to learn that there is a ballet dance studio right next door to the baby gear purveyor. Never existed for me although it's been there something like 40 years.

There is something very powerful about life events be it graduation, getting a new job, buying a house, getting married or having kids. Brands that are marketed into these 'events' in a respectful, educational, emotionally comforting way aren't ignored but embraced. 

Branding has been top of mind for us at Circos as we define our promise, personality, position etc. etc. Becoming relevant that's the magical part... 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A 4 Year Old's Perspective

My daughter climbed into our bed this morning as we were Tivo'n to the latest weather report. Once the segment was completed she asked, "Mommy, how do the clouds know to listen to the weather-lady?"

Priceless

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A 4 Year Old's Perspective

My daughter climbed into our bed this morning as we were Tivo'n to the latest weather report. Once the segment was completed she asked, "Mommy, how do the clouds know to listen to the weather-lady?"

Priceless

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...you have an email account.

My wife being a high school teacher and all keeps me pretty well updated on what kids of that age group find cool and are embracing from a technology perspective.  Check out this story told to me by a peer of hers:

Teacher - "Johnny I asked you yesterday to email me a soft copy of your term paper. Why didn't you send it to me. Final grades are due today and I need the soft copy to complete my assessment of your work."

Johnny - "Email? I don't have an email address."

Teacher - "What? How can you not have an email address?"

Johnny (not answering the question) - "Email his how my parents communicate."

email is broken 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why take a beater when you could sell a new car?

Having a little one that is attends a private school and a wife that works for one we are no stranger to annual giving campaigns. What has bothered me as of late is the 'donate your car' programs many not for profits run.  I would much rather buy my car from the not for profit.

Here's the half baked idea:

Non-profits that have endowments get into the Automobile Leasing business. Use the endowment to acquire the asset (e.g. cars), lease to your constituents, collect above market interest rates, and let your constituents take the 'interest' as a charitable donation. There could even be some opportunity in the 'buy off the lease' option.  Of course I don't know one not for profit that could manage this type of process but there lies the for profit business opportunity.

Maybe the CPAs out there in the blogo-sphere can round out why this wouldn't work as a win-win. 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Time To Get It Back In Gear?

The other day my daughter and wife were reading a Richard Scarry book called What People Do All Day. When my wife asked, "What do I do for work?" My daughter correctly said, "Teach Latin". When asked, "What does Daddy do?" An immediate, "Exercises" was blurted out.

It may be time for me to get back in gear and found or join a start-up.

At least she didn't say "Drink wine" or blogging.

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Crocs are hotter than Tickle me Elmo

If you have young kids chances are you have heard of Crocs. 

My daughter loves them (probably because all the girls at preschool wear them). We go to the shoe store today. They don't have her size and they don't have pink. My wife asks the salesperson, "When do you expect more of Crocs to arrive?”

Salesperson, "Next week."

My wife, "Oh can we buy them now and pick them up when they arrive?"

Salesperson, "No."

My wife, "Did you reorder pink in kids' size 7?"

Salesperson, "Oh yes, that color and size is very popular but we have only been guaranteed an allocation that is 75% of what we ordered and we don't know which colors and sizes will arrive."

My wife, "Would you call me when they arrive?"

Salesperson, “No. Do you know how many people we would be calling?"

Ticker is CROX. I'm doing the research now. Since I am not often on the leading edge of fashion my initial research was looking to short this stock. After a brief review of their performance, WOW. This company is on fire.

Since stock price is all about beating expectations be that with results or guidance I'll need to dig deeper before figuring out which side of this trade to take. One this is certain this is a rapidly growing profitable company. But is it priced to perfection at 8x sales?

Stay tuned. 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had a feeling it wasn't good... 

"Thirty years ago it was estimated that roughly one in 2500 children had autism while today it is estimated that approximately one in 166 is diagnosed with the condition – more than a ten-fold increase."

Very interesting read- 67 pages but lots of pictures (smiles). The conclusion may be all you are interested in..... 

DOES TELEVISION CAUSE AUTISM?
Michael Waldman
Johnson Graduate School of Management
Cornell University

"As a final point, although as discussed our results do not definitively prove that early childhood television watching is an important trigger for autism, we believe our results provide sufficient support for the possibility that until further research can be conducted it might be prudent to act as if it were. In other words, maybe there should be additional emphasis placed on the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatricians that early childhood television watching should be eliminated or at the very least quite limited (as discussed in footnote 3, the current recommendation is that there should be no television watching before the age of two and no more than one to two hours per day for older children). We see little downside in taking this step and a very large upside if it turns out that television indeed causes autism." 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Self-publishing with Blurb

Today I published a children’s' book for a friend of mine. She wrote and illustrated The Fart Book some thirty years ago and was passing the original artwork and handwritten text to her kids and their kids. She was telling my daughter a story the other day about a boy with magical farting powers that enabled him to fly when I immediately took interest (*smiles).

Look story short - I scanned the originals into my printer, transferred them to my PC, downloaded Blurb's Booksmart, and published the 50 page book this morning. Ok, not cheap it cost about 40$ to get a 10x8in hardcover book with dust-jacket BUT it looks great in the preview and draft copy I printed at home. I a week I'll post again after receiving the actual book.

The process was quite simple and really pretty error free. I am not certain why Blurb is still in Beta as this is a solid piece of software. While I wish it had some 'apply to all pages' features what is there is sound. After adding the scanned images to a Blurb template, adjusting the background color, and entering the title, about the author, dedication page etc, I had a book ready for printing. A few clicks later the book was uploaded to their site and sent off to production and should ship to my home in a week.  Very pleasant experience.

Now for what didn't work. The success with the first book leads me to create another one. I wanted to take some text I had written for an unpublished book about SAP and self-publish it. Having negotiated royalty contracts with my publisher in the past I know first hand how little authors receive in terms of payment when compared to the time invested in writing. So back to Blurb. I went to paste about 50 pages of pure text into a Blurb template only to find my laptop frozen. I rebooted and tried 15 pages. Same issue. Rebooted. After getting about 5 pages pasted the formatting was inconsistent across the pages and there was no way to alter all the pages at once. This became too tedious and I abandon that project.

Net Net- Blurb is really cool and I highly recommend it for content that is more pictures than words where high-end professional looking book is the end goal.

Now I'll find out how to get an ISBN for The Fart Book. 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (3)

For some reason in our house I am responsible for the installation of the child car seats. Having two kids, two cars, and a nanny we have a quite a few car seats and still we move then around weekly. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a car seat that easily latched to the car then automatically adjusted itself? It would not only need to tighten the straps automatically but test for levelness, seat position etc.  First time parents (us included) are zealous about child safety to an almost irrational degree ($). We even took our car and seat to the local police station to get a lesson on installation safety. 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype for 5 year olds?

While at a park today with my three year old daughter a five year old boy starting chatting us up like only 5 year olds can. Usualy my daughter will find away to change the topic, move to an other part of the play ground or find some other diversion to escape to rapid fire chatter of a 'strange' five year old. Today she was fasinated with what this boy was saying. He was pretending he was at home on his "Microsoft Windows PC" turning it on, launching Skype, fixing a connection issue by going to the help button in the corner, and then finaly putting on his headset and talking to his Aunt Beth whom he earlier that morning added to his contact list.  We were amazed. He asked me if I "Skyped" but then was distracted by my phone and said, "Is that a Blackberry?" I handed it to him figuring if my 10 month old hasn't yet destroyed it that it was safe in a 5 years old kid's hands.  He asked how to unlock it and then said never mind I'll figure it out. He did and quickly went to start a game of brick breaker.

I have for some reason thought the big break through age for technology adoption by kids was 8 years old.  Firefly may need to rethink their target market..... 

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

How my daughter got me out of a speeding ticket

Let me start out by saying this is a true story that happened about a month ago while driving south on 280 returning home from the San Francisco Airport.  My three year old daughter and my brother in-law were in the car with me. I was kinda trapped in the right hand lane and everybody was driving below the speed limit. This went on for about a mile or two. I was getting a bit anoyed and saw a hole jumped on the accelerator and sent each of our heads into the headrest (car seat for the little one).  Once out in the open ahead of the pack of cars that had me pinned in I decided to open it up and kept on the accelerater.  The MB S500 is a joy to drive and especaily on 280 with its 4 lanes and lack of traffic. I look down at the speedometer and see I'm crossing 100 mph and decide to lighten up. I glance in the review to see offericer friendly quickly approaching. I slow down and pull over to the right lane as he flips on his lights.

As the officer approaches the car my daughter starts whinning, "Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom.  I really need to go." By the time he gets to the car window she is nearly in tears because she 'has to go'.  The officer gives me the, where's the fire line of questioning as my daughter continues to bark out the fact that she is going to wet herself.  He takes one look at her in the backseat and I don't even need to tell him that we just started potty training and that we were hurrying to find a toillet. 

He lets me go with a verbal warning. My daughter forgot all about he need for the potty and the rest of the way home told me "mommy going to be mad".

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is my maiden blog.

Wife and 3 year old daugther are off to the barn and I'm here with my 8 month old son. He's trying to crawl across the kitchen floor as I sit here at the bar and type this.

Needless to say this entry is short and lame due to my Father of the Year duties.

 I'm still trying to figure out this blog editor and I haven't found anything that resembles a spell checker.  This could be painful for any readers.....

Posted by Kevin McDonald at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)