The Geeky Side of the Moon

Hey gang this is Andy Jorde, or AJ as I’ve become know around the agency. I’ve been trying to figure out some sort of way to express how big of a geek I am. Rather than doing something lengthy and boring I figured I’d do something that pretty much everyone can benefit from. Most people nowadays have an iPod, and if you don’t, you’re probably envious of your buddy sporting the “mug me white “ headphones that come with every pod. And you probably saw that person watching The Sopranos or The Office on their iPod, and you were like,” Wow! How can they watch that on their iPod?” Chances are they probably bought it off the iTunes Music store for a couple of dollars. Now I know what you’re going to say, “But I don’t want to spend money, I already have The Office on DVD, and I want to put that on my iPod. How can I do it?” The answer is simple. Handbrake. Handbrake is a free application, that’s right FREE and it rips videos off of DVD’s and compresses them to many formats. After you download, install, and open the application, select the iPod option for compression and you should be good to go. After it is done making the movie, drag and drop the video file into iTunes. Sync you iPod to you computer and you’re done. This is a great Application because it is free, available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and it converts video unbelievably fast. Hooray! Now you can workout, take a plane ride, or go on a business trip with the DVDs of you choice on you iPod.

market share vs. the economy

"Growing market share in a declining or stagnant industry"


We are all aware of the economic situation around us. Regardless the strength of your industry, whether it's the increase in gas or raising supply prices, chances are your business has been affected by the economy. Many times when a business chooses to "go lean" and combat rising costs, the first cut is marketing and advertising expenditures.

While this is a fairly common trend and does make in immediate impact on the bottom line, the extended effect does more harm than good. This is an opportunity for you and your business to be proactive and grow your market share.

Cutting back on your spending is only a temporary solution with long term consequences. It's simple: The less you are in front of your current and potential customers, the less they think of you, and eventually...the less they visit you. While your competition backs off on the gas, this is the perfect time for you to ramp up your advertising and gain more precious "mental mind space" of consumers.

Downturns in the economy tend to be cyclical. By the time things return to normal, you will have grown your market share more than any sale or event could have returned.