And Then The Phone Booth Arrived

So what do you do when you want to make a personal call at Amelie? You can walk around outside in the snow. You can lock yourself in a conference room and hope no one barges in. Or, now, you can use the new addition to our entrance…the English Phone Booth. Just lock yourself inside with your cell phone and talk about whatever you want.Nice.

The Lounge Is Almost Done

One of the first tasks I put on my to-do list when I arrived at Amelie was to assemble a place to get some thinking done. A chilled space with some personality, where we could kick back, swap ideas and get some killer creative on the boards. It’s coming together well, and yes, that is a liquor globe. Just out of shot it the Steve Austin board game, which is complete crap but who didn’t love the Bionic Man? All we need now are the curtains and the starburst clock, which are waiting to be put up as I write this. Next stop, the front lobby. English phone booth is on order, it will be a private place to make calls on your cell phone. And it also happens to look great.

When Good Stuff Happens Unexpectedly

It’s all about image. Just remember to act like you’d planned it all along. Not like the dingbat here. 10 for the shot. 0 for the reaction.

Newsday.com – A Classic Meatball Sundae

What would you pay to get 35 paid subscribers to your website? A few hundred bucks at most right? Well investor James Dolan paid $650 million for the failing newspaper, and after 3 months that’s all he had. 35 lousy subscribers. Serious FAIL.

This is a classic example of Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae.” You can’t just take something old and boring and throw it online, hoping everyone will hop on board. A fundamental shift in thinking was required before the relaunch. We so many sites offering much better content for zero dollars, we’re all amazed that 35 people even bothered to pay for the service. What did Newsday.com do differently? What was the reason to fork over your hard-earned moolah? Exactly.