Tretakoff Musings

As someone who works with the newspaper industry to help explore new forms of monetization, I was impressed with this recent CVS promotion with the San Francisco Chronicle. Yes, it appears our solution to curing Hepatitis C lies with CVS. Even better, a $5 savings! A true triumph of editorial matched with advertising...and the best promotion CVS could have asked for.

I recently visited the Walt Disney Family Museum here in San Francisco. Those words alone are probably making most of the folks who know me scratch their head and wonder if my blog was hacked. Fear not, readers: it's true. Yes, the man who truly loathes gathering places for children went of his own free will to this Presidio unassuming venue, accompanied by the most Disney-crazed individual on this planet. I cringed, expecting an assault of screaming toddlers and the music I expect to hear if there is a Hell. And you know what? Nothing could be further than the truth: it was fascinating, wonderful and I recommend it to all. First, what is it? To put it simply, this is not Disney(TM). This is a celebration of Walt Disney himself, and he's truly a fascinating man. I openly wondered why it was here in SF (answer: this is where one of his daughters lives, and it's the items from her father that she inherited), but after seeing the museum, it's perfect: Walt was clearly t

Ok, see that card? It was sent as part of a direct marketing campaign from Sirius/XM. See, I bought a car a while ago, and considered activating the Sirius receiver built in. However, I am so rarely in my car, and usually listen to my iPhone, it didn't seem worth it. However, this was a nice gimmick: reactivate the receiver for 2 weeks with the selected channels, and try to get me hooked. Like what the premium channels do on cable and satellite. Kudos on the creative marketing idea. Just one problem. See that picture of the card? See where it says the free preview starts May 24th? Ah yes. Guess when I got this in the mail. Today. June 1st.  Yep, my two week free preview is now reduced to 5 days. This is a significant error. Sirius took on some costs to give away their premium product. They targeted this to let potential subscribers who already had the hardware know. And now more than 60% of the potential to get me to try Sirius is gone. Squandered. Poof. And why? Well, it