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My name is Andrew. I’m a Tiger-holic.

Over the past several weeks I have been caught in a strange vortex of slogging through the budget process for my clients’ 2010 marketing plans and keeping an eye on the saga of Tiger Woods. This has proven to be quite a mess. On the one hand, I’m attempting to help a few clients thrive in a world where they no longer have a rather tight grip on the message through their advertising and media relations efforts. On the other hand, well, there’s Tiger.

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This morning I drove up to Tofte, MN, 10 miles from our place on Lake Superior to pick up the morning papers and a bag of donuts for the family. I met a guy in full fatigues at the checkout counter whose salutation on the way out was ”Let’s go shoot something!”

This reminds me that we’re in the middle of two seasons: deer hunting and marketing budgeting.

Read the full article on Minnesota Business.

This is a fascinating AdAge interview with DDB Chairman Emeritus Keith Reinhard where he skewers creative professionals for being “too conservative” and “insecure,” indicating this is why they are perhaps the “slowest” to lead new media efforts.

View the video here.

We are currently involved in several mind-bending marketing ROI modeling projects that are, frankly, brutally complex. For example, how do you monetize non-monetary conversions? Or what happens when you find out that 93% of your web visitors AREN’T looking for the single conversion you thought they wanted or, more important, YOU wanted? There’s an entire recalibration of company-wide expectations that needs to take place.

Point is: marketing has become really hard, and if it’s not, then you’re probably oversimplifying things. Why has marketing become so complex? Because consumers are entirely fragmented in their use of media, and the brand experience now needs to not only be consistent across all media, but each media serves a unique purpose on the brand experience.

ClickZ had a great article today on the Fundamental of Integrating Marketing that digs a little deeper into our modern marketing complexities.

Jeff and I are spending the day in Chicago with our friends at Google to get a glimpse into what we can look forward to in the very near future. We just saw a view of the new Android operating system for the Google Phone. Very interesting stuff. Stay tuned. I’ll post more here later.

After my second Sony Vaio was stolen from our offices in six months, I decided to go back to the Bright Side: I bought a Mac.

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Someone told me the other day that, for a guy who seems to have an opinion on everything (and whether I have any business doing so be damned), why haven’t I said anything about Google buying YouTube? Frankly, I was more interested in the non-stop Internet punditry that would commence than actually think about the viability or reasons — good or bad — of this acquisition.

But I have an opinion!

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Today’s article from MediaPost called Natural Born Search Killers is right on the money. There’s no better way to shut down your lead flow than redesigning a web site that already had deep natural search indexes. Those indexes were most likely driving half of all traffic and most of all online leads. According to the article, more money will be spent next year on site redesigns than search marketing. Man oh man, will some businesses be in for a big surprise if they don’t have a great search transition strategy. Be careful out there.

I’m becoming increasingly confident that the market is moving towards an untethered, on-demand marketplace. It just makes sense. The PC/Mac desktop, while maintaining its place as the place for a better user experience, will not be able to compete with the nomadic nature of the new consumer.

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Ad:Tech is coming to a close and clearly there is much excitement about the future. Lots of new cash is flowing into the internet channel which obviously will shake out the marketing field in interesting ways. First, for those companies that thought internet marketing was only about web sites, banner ads, email, and search or even unique silos unto themselves are going to have a tough time surviving. With real dollars comes real expectations of performance. No longer can brands afford to invest “a little here, a little there” and scratch the tactics off the list. Internet marketing is a dynamic, living, breathing marketing organism that needs constant attention and care. As one speaker said, “That’s why we were given two eyes and one mouth.” You’ve got to look more than talk.

Read on for coverage of the remaining sessions…

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TWINS WIN! TWINS WIN!

Ok, so this morning came a little early after a great night in South Chicago.

Today’s morning keynote was presented by Hunter Hastings, CEO, EMM Group. They’ve designed a methodology and process for organizations to quantify customer engagement. It’s based upon a point system. Email touch might be one point, a web visit another point, an in-person sales sall 10 points, and so on. Their research has shown a correlation between a higher engagement level to actual marketshare.

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The remainder of the day was typical agency land — waiting for the happy hour to begin. Now mind you, I’m sitting in my hotel room, awaiting an event tonight sponsored by HitWise at the Whiskey Bar at the W Hotel. This blog post is clean and sober. Safe to read.

I did spend the morning with our good friend Stepheny Lauer, VP of Marketing for Coldwell Banker Chicago. Steph’s been a client for over five years, and she also has some great dot com war stories to tell from a previous career.

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I’m writing this piece from my car dealership. Last week I received a notice that my car has been recalled due to a faulty fuel pump. No big deal. Just that I’m driving in a potentially EXPLOSIVE DEATH MACHINE!

While waiting for my car to be rendered safe again, I’m sitting here in the showroom along pit row for the sales team. I’m listening to each of their phone calls. (nosy damn market research guy that I am.) In half the calls, I hear some reference to the Internet. In fact the new guy — a recent Chicago transplant — just said, “So did the Internet tell you about our new financing options” as though Ms. Internet just sat down next to Ms. Prospect, poured her a nice cup of Starbucks, and negotiated her new sale.

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On Tuesday, February 28th, please join us at the Frank Seminar, a confab that will help put all this jabber about social media in a real world business perspective. We have great speakers lined up and attendance is growing! Visit the Frank Seminar site for details.

Barring any lack of Internet access, I plan to blog today’s MiMA Summit, if you’re interested in a play by play. If I don’t have access, I’ll post a digest version of everything tomorrow. Think more USA Today than New York Times.

As I write, I’m aboard NWA flight 310 from Los Angeles having spent the week with my family in Palm Desert, an oasis of pleasure along a potently violent convergence of tectonic plates — the San Andreas Fault. In fact the day before we arrived a nice little 4.4 temblor had hit the resort. Only rattled tourists sustained damaged senses of security.

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I’m sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton New York waiting to present at the E-Tourism Summit on Blogs, Online Communities and Consumer Generated Media. Can you think of a market that’s been more transformed by the web than the travel business? I just heard from a representative from Jupiter Research that almost 60% of all airline travel is now done online. That’s a quick 10 years of transformation, yes?

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We just learned this morning that a dear friend of the Minnesota interactive community was killed yesterday in a car accident. Jarrid Grams, a member of the Whoop Design team and MiMA board member, was a passenger in the vehicle. So far there’s been no news on the newspaper web sites, and there are little details. Our deepest condolences to Jarrid’s family and close friends. This is horrible news.

When I was a young lad growing up in Northfield, MN — the city of cows, colleges, and contentment — I remember attending some horrible movie at the Grand Theater where we were given 3-D glasses. The marketers of this obviously forgettable picture promised us a “whole new experience” in film viewing.

I seem to vaguely remember something about a dinosaur or an elephant – hell, it could have been a milk-truck for all I can muster – eerily hovering a “few inches” above the background scenery like a poorly executed drop shadow in Photoshop.

The point was that the “whole new experience” wasn’t all that memorable. And that’s how I often feel about web sites I visit.

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Last week was my annual pilgrimage to the same warm climate and sandy beach. Being Lutheran and a Minnesotan, the Weather God made me pay penance by siccing upon me a 36 hour layover in Atlanta on my way home. Over that excruciating period I read three items: the StarTribune’s Monday Business article on the state of affairs for local advertising agencies, the New York Times article on “The Future of the 30-Second Spot“, and Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book “The Tipping Point.”

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How appropriate that on the day Hunter S. Thompson passes away secretly recorded phone conversations between our then-future president and a friend about drug use are leaked. In these conversations, the governor of Texas essentially says “what’s the point of telling kids I smoked pot just so they can follow in my footsteps?”

Having spent my “youthful indiscretion” (Bush’s words) years under the watchful eye of Nancy Reagan, for me personally it was reading Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” that squarely kept advanced narcotics out of my regimen.

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Last night, PBS’ “Frontline” covered the perils of traditional marketing and advertising. Accountability — or the lack thereof — was a recurring theme. On Friday, November 12th, the full broadcast will be available at the Frontline web site. Should be required viewing for all progressive marketers!

(Thanks to Michelle for the heads up!)

In the Summer of 1995, I was having dinner with some early Internet “pioneers” in San Francisco at Lulu’s Bistro just off of the Moscone Center. These “pioneers” were snotty little twenty- and thirty-somethings, like me at the time (at least the snotty part), hell bent on changing the world through Web connections, Mountain Dew, iguanas running the office corridors, “just say no to senior management,” and countless fanny packs full of stock options.

“The Market be damned!” they’d say. “This is the Internet economy!”

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Congratulations, all you Internet marketing people you. You now command a whopping 3% of total advertising and marketing budget. Hey, it’s better than, well…2%. And the number is trending higher. That’s good too.

But what if I told you that people spend nearly as much time on the web as they do in front of the television?

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