Westminster Dog Show report
Our Scottish Terrier, Ch. Blueberry’s Attitude Dancing (Carly) won the breed and then took third place in the Terrier Group. You can see pictures and video from the show at the Westminster Kennel Club website. Breed results. Terrier Group results.
Thank you all for your good wishes and e-mails.
The Gates and Jane Pauley
While we were in NYC, we did a bit of sightseeing, and before I get back into our regularly scheduled marketing program, I wanted to share a couple of things.
First, The Gates. This has been covered all over the media, and I am sure, in many many blogs as well. I just want to add that if you have a chance to visit Central Park before they are dismantled at the end of February, it is well worth it.
Now, I am sure you have been wondering, what does Jane Pauley have to do with this? Well, on our last day in NYC, we took the guided NBC tour at Rockefeller Center. As the tour was wrapping up, a woman from the Jane Pauley Show came up to our group and said she had three spots left to watch the afternoon’s taping of the show, was anyone interested. I thought it would be neat to experience a talk show taping, so I said yes, and before my husband could really register what was happening, we were off to watch the taping of an upcoming Jane Pauley Show featuring Stacy London from the TLC show What Not To Wear.
If you are not familiar with What Not To Wear, it is a US-copy of a UK show of the same name. It is basically a snarky makeover show. The fashion experts tear into some poor victim who has been "turned in" as a fashion faux-pas by friends or family members. I’ve never seen the show, so can’t tell you much more about it.
Anyway, on the Pauley show, Ms. London dispensed her brand of fashion advice to members of the audience, did a makeover and showed us how to fit a bra. There was more, but you’ll just have to watch 🙂
All in all, it was pretty entertaining, and the entire audience got some lovely parting gifts (but alas, not a brand new car). We were there for about two hours, which I gather is a bit long, but they had a lot of things going on in the show, resulting in a few delays. It gets edited down to a one-hour show.
So what’s the point and why am I writing about this on a blog devoted to marketing topics? Here’s the takeaway, which I think can be applied to many of the situations we find ourselves in every day:
- Preparation is key. They have a warm-up guy that does a comedy routine before the show starts, and in each of the breaks between segments. Gets the audience charged up, and keeps it that way. A quiet studio audience would be a real downer, no matter how good the show is.
- You can’t plan for everything. Gotta be willing to go with the flow, and adjust if need be.
- Be genuine. Jane Pauley is a consummate professional with, it truly seems, relatively little artifice or ego. I already liked her before watching the taping, and she rose in my estimation as I watched the way she interacted with the audience, her guests and her staff.
- Humour helps every situation. Period.
- Give good gifts!
So, that was our trip to New York. Tomorrow we will return to our regular programming.
Congrats! to you and to Carly.