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Only Heels Can Be Heroes

By Chris Carosa on March 25, 2010

[This Commentary originally appeared in the March 23, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

This flows in the same vein as “No Guts, No Glory.”

Essentially, Heels and Heroes come from the same stuff. Only the outcome of their deeds differs (or at least we view them differently). Ultimately, the critical factor leading to labeling a man (or a woman) may result from nothing more than mere luck.

Today’s essay, however, does not concern what distinguishes Heels from Heroes. Rather, it will focus on the fundamental traits shared by, indeed vital to, the soul of both. You see, only Heroes can be Heels and only Heels can be Heroes.

Within us lies a drive from the moment of our very birth. Each of us has an innate desire Continue Reading “Only Heels Can Be Heroes”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Honeoye Falls, Lima, Mendon, philosophy

Interested in Discovering My Time Machine?

By Chris Carosa on March 23, 2010

The years 1989 through 1991 proved significant. The world saw the end of communism and the beginning of the first Gulf War. Like any other person in his late twenties/early thirties, I led a life of wonder and excitement. Busy creating a new division at work, I found time to earn an MBA, successfully woo the woman of my dreams, begin a successful political campaign and help start a weekly community newspaper.

This is about the latter.

By the time I reached my twenty-eighth birthday, I had decided I liked to write. More significantly, after several popular Continue Reading “Interested in Discovering My Time Machine?”

Posted in The Compleat Carosa Commentaries

Sex Doesn’t Sell! (But it Does!) – Book Review of David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising

By Chris Carosa on February 15, 2010

Ever since Bewitched I always fancied myself an adman. The glamour. The excitement. The rush of adrenaline as the client smiles and accepts your big idea that just oozes with creativity. The beautiful wife who summons up your every delight with an alluring twinkle of her nose. Ah, what a life…

I never did end up in the field, but I’ve spent the better part of my life marketing one thing or another. You have to do that whether you’re an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, whether you’re working in a non-profit or for-profit organization and, most especially, if you volunteer for a community organization. So when the man hailed by Time Magazine as “the most sought-after wizard in the advertising business” published a virtual how-to book on the subject (indeed, six of the first ten chapter titles contain the phrase “how to”), you just know I’m buying it and absorbing every single word.

Continue Reading “Sex Doesn’t Sell! (But it Does!) – Book Review of David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising”

Posted in Book Reviews Tagged Advertising, Bewitched, Chris Anderson, eye patch, Hathaway Shirt, How to Write a Good Advertisement, Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, The Long Tail, Victor Schwab

Cupid’s Apricot

By Chris Carosa on February 11, 2010

A man receives a package with no return address. It contains a pirate-style eye patch and a note. It also possesses a faint aroma of scented perfume.

“Apricot?” sniffs the homely man to himself. He smiles, examining the eye patch. For a moment, he floats back to a past he never knew. With inspired angst, he wraps the eye patch around his imperfect head carefully covering his right eye.

“Rats! Where’s my Hathaway shirt?” the man wonders while staring at the bleak mirror. He never liked the mirror, its darkened wood frame speckled with irregular dents. He despises it all the more now as his macabre reflection reminds him he no longer owns a Hathaway shirt. With a heavy sigh, he reluctantly accepts the sole benefit of the mirror lay only in its ability to give the appearance his dreary one room hovel actually contains a mysterious second chamber.

In forlorn despair, he rips the eye patch – and several well-attached hairs – off his head and throws it at the waste basket. He misses badly. “No matter,” and he returns to the sweet fragrance of the package. He lazily paws at the note several times before it sticks to his stubby hands. Flopping backwards onto his bed, he reads the note in mid-flight.

Continue Reading “Cupid’s Apricot”

Posted in Slush Pile

The Who Dat?

By Chris Carosa on February 8, 2010

Jim Croce once crooned a melody that began “If I could save time in a bottle.” Ironically, through his participation in a fatal plane crash, he did, at least in terms of his own career. Unlike Bob Dylan, Jim Croce remains forever young. Of course, in the case of Bob Dylan, a seemingly senile – as in unintelligible – folk singer from the beginning, age simply doesn’t matter.

The same, unfortunately, does not apply to the band performing under the name “The Who.” CBS did the surviving members a disservice by airing commercials with clips from their heyday. I certainly didn’t expect to see a reprise of their guitar-smashing gyrations of an earlier generation. Still, the oh so apparent erosion of time stunned me. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend appeared less a classic rock act and more a Simpsons parody of a has-been group doing one more reunion tour. They couldn’t cover up the wooden movements of their atrophied muscles, but I held out hope they’d at least lip sync to their younger voices.

Continue Reading “The Who Dat?”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings Tagged Abbey Road, Beatles, Bob Dylan, CBS, Dick Shawn, Don't Get Fooled Again, Forever Young, Jim Croce, Keith Moon, Let It Be, Life Magazine, NASCAR, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Simpsons, Superbowl, The Who, Time in Bottle

The Moment That at Once Created and Destroyed Johnny Unitas – a Book Review of The Best Game Ever by Mark Bowden

By Chris Carosa on February 3, 2010

In an America long ago, boys, after faithfully completing their homework and their chores, once gathered in sandlots across the countryside. As leaves gently fell in the damp autumn air, they’d pick teams – always as even as possible to make it fair – and stake off a field with imaginary (or sometimes natural) markers. They’d then huddle around a spare spot of dusty dirt a few yards behind a well weathered football, draw up a play, break, snap, run, jump and laugh. This repeated endlessly, or at least someone’s mother called “Dinnertime!”

Electronics had yet to invade our youthful agenda. Except for an occasional coonskin cap, the only media (and this one was on paper) that universally influenced young boys dealt with the witty way Tom Sawyer got his friends to whitewash that fence. Even popular shows like “Howdy Doody” pointed children to outdoor activities.

That was then. Now, you sit on the edge of your seat, anxious and excited at the same time. It’s a ritual being played out all throughout the land. In living rooms, bars and just about any place capable of holding a large screen TV and a tableful of crunchy snacks, we share this national experience – the Superbowl – fanatics and neophytes alike.

Why? What fascinates us about this game? Why have television networks, advertisers and promotional campaigns paid so much to affiliate themselves with this singular event?

Continue Reading “The Moment That at Once Created and Destroyed Johnny Unitas – a Book Review of The Best Game Ever by Mark Bowden”

Posted in Book Reviews Tagged 1958 Championship, Colts, football, Giants, Johnny Unitas, Mark Bowden, NFL, Sudden Death, Superbowl, The Best Game Ever, Unitas

D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers

By Chris Carosa on January 31, 2010

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. — Teddy Roosevelt

A few weeks ago, a columnist from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wrote a piece titled “Winter as Metaphor for Community’s Woes.” If you’ve read the column and you’re a true-blue Western New Yorker, you’ll immediately see the column itself as a metaphor for our community’s woes.

The writer, while acknowledging the obvious diminution in our region’s stature, meekly states “The decline we’ve seen is not a character flaw; it’s the result of economic forces beyond our control.”

Actually, the statement reflects the major character flaw many die-hard residents of the western frontier of New York State see in our neighborhood – too many people, especially those floating merrily in the ether of high profile, fail by wallowing in self-pity rather than seizing the reins of self-improvement.

Continue Reading “D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo, Buffalo Bills, circle the wagons, D&C, Democrat & Chronicle, Democrat and Chronicle, ESPN, Kobayashi Maru, MacGyver, Mark Hare, Rochester, Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Western New York, Winter

The Best Social Media Manual… Ever! A Book Review of David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR

By Chris Carosa on January 25, 2010

“What’s the best book I should read to get started with this whole ‘social media’ thing?” When I asked my good friend @mikefixs this question last year, he strongly suggested I read David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR, originally published in 2007 with an updated paperback published in 2009. This may represent one of the best pieces of advice on the subject I’ve ever received.

Why?

To begin, just take a look at the author’s subtitle: “How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly.” What else can I say except, “It works.”

Here’s how.

Continue Reading “The Best Social Media Manual… Ever! A Book Review of David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR”

Posted in Book Reviews Tagged astronomytop100, blog, buyer persona, content delivery, David Meerman Scott, e-book, e-mail, facebook, fiduciarynews, forum, LinkedIn, News Release, news site, Online Media, podcast, Podcasting, Press Release, report, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, social networking, The Long Tail, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Twitter, videocast, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0, Web-Based Communication, webinar, white paper, Wiki

Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?

By Chris Carosa on January 18, 2010

A decade ago, before the financial crisis that opened the first decade of the new millennium, Adelphia Communications, in addition to a cable channel called the Empire Sports Network, owned a radio station with the call letters WNSA. The two worked in tandem and, at least until the falling stock market exposed the Regis family, this modest media juggernaut gained a respectful audience.

On the cusp of a content driven era, the small cable company had, together with the Buffalo Bills, successfully begun to build connections within a broader Western New York Region. This bigger footprint would include not only Buffalo and Niagara Falls, but also Rochester, Jamestown and several other cities within the roughly seventeen western-most counties of New York State. With a growing national market, Adelphia offered the allure of becoming the new century’s CNN (or at least ESPN). And with its intention to build an impressive headquarters in the state’s Queen City, Buffalo finally had a new hope – one that might bring it to rival Atlanta in cable communications.

But, as it seems to have happened to our region ever since Canada left us no choice but to build the Saint Lawrence Seaway, fate once again dealt a bad hand. Continue Reading “Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?”

Posted in Western New York State of Mind Tagged 107.7, Adelphia, Bills, Buffalo, Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, Channel 2, CNN, D&C, Democrat & Chronicle, Democrat and Chronicle, Empire Sports Network, Enron, Entercom, ESPN, Jamestown, New York, New York State, Niagara Falls, Queen City, Regis, Rochester, Sabres, Saint Lawrence Seaway, Southern Tier, The Lake, Western New York, Western NY, Wethersfield, WGRZ, WGRZ-AM, WGRZ-TV, WLKK, WNSA, WNSA-FM, WROC-AM, Wyoming County

The Snow Monster Returns: Buffalo Bills, Undefeated for the Decade!

By Chris Carosa on January 4, 2010

Should I stay home or should I go?

With red letter snow warnings, ominous travel advisories and a plethora of church service cancellations, the question wavered annoyingly in my own mind and unspoken on my worried wife’s barely wakened lips.

Should I stay or should I go?

The last game of the season. A meaningless game. Against a team that expects to bench most of its starting players. The beleaguered Buffalo Bills, banished for the past decade to the Siberia of no-playoffs, have done little to earn back the loyalty of staunch fans since the heresy of hiring Tom Donahoe. Why should any humble fan place their body in harm’s way, especially when the kind Gods of Time-Warner decided to sell-out the game (the only way they could then broadcast it to local viewers).