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In the case of older garages, one of the best ways to freshen things up is by fixing up the garage floors. Whether the floor is cracked or covered with oil stains, you can find options to make it look good as new at carguygarage.com, where they have tiles, coatings and various types of coverings. It’s even worth taking a look at it you have a new bare concrete floor so you can protect it from damage.

The other day I mentioned a really thought-provoking article I had come across, but I couldn’t find the link at the time. Never fear, I found it. Check out: Stop Perfuming the Pig: Why “real” marketing is done before the product is created.

The overall theme is that marketers tend to overlook the Product part of the 4 P’s, focusing too often instead on Promotion. Consider this excerpt:

Peter Drucker makes it clear that marketing isn’t a product promotion strategy; it’s a product definition strategy, that “marketing” is creating a product that sells itself, creating a product that people want to buy; creating an environment that encourages people to buy.

Over the years however, industries and agencies and marketing experts have worn away the original meaning of marketing and cheapened it. Marketing now means many things to many people but apparently not what Drucker meant. For most people nowadays, marketing means t-shirts, coffee mugs, trinkets, trade show trash, and tchotchkes.

I attend many marketing conferences and invariably find that I’m the only one in attendance who seems to be talking about products; everyone else is talking about promotion. At one such marketing conference, an attendee in the front row asked every single speaker, “How does what you’ve talked about generate awareness and leads?” He didn’t know what to ask me because I hadn’t once used any of the marketing keywords: awareness, leads, campaigns, programs, spin, or buzz. Apparently to him I was a product guy and not a marketing guy. But promotion isn’t marketing.

Read the article, makes you think.

Just last night I was watching Nightmare Before Christmas on cable, which is an awfully fun movie by Tim Burton. Burton is a master of goth punk macabre dark humor type movies. Edward Scissorhands is another of his flicks. One constant in most all of his movies is Johnny Depp. Well, Burton’s newest movie coming own soon is his take on Sweeney Todd, which is the perfect movie for his dark oevre.

Sweeney Todd is a ‘revenge’ movie about a guy who is unjustly sent to prison– he vows to exact revenge for the wrongs done to him as well as his wife and child. He becomes the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, giving his victims a bit more of a haircut than they bargained for. You can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site here.

There is a long tradition of films with a revenge theme. One of the best recently was Tarantino’s Kill Bill, where Uma Thurman’s character spends not one but 2 full-length movies mowing down a cast of villains who have done her wrong. One of the best scenes ever filmed is a ridiculously macabre sword fight where she takes on a whole room full of Japanese gangsters; it’s the sort of fight scene which only Tarantino could pull off.

So soon you can see what Burton does with a revenge film. To learn more now, visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.

Here’s a good post I found through Digg: Why Giving Away Your Services For Free Will Get You Business. Perhaps you’ve wondered what possible justification there can be for ‘giving it away’, since we all need to eat, and the food ain’t free.

 Consider:

Something you hear as common advice for new freelancers is “Don’t work for free.”

That’s true, for the most part, but there’s an exception. And it’s a big one. Give away your advice for free, and you can grow your business and make much more money in the long run.

Follow the link for a service provider’s opinion on why free has helped him build his core business (with bona fide paying customers)…

If you are moving to or from the fine state of New Jersey, check out Movers NJ, which is a large compendium of moving companies operating in that state. This can be a big help in finding people to help you execute your move. Plus, you’ll find some helpful information and tips on what to look for when you’re selecting a mover.

Perhaps you’re familiar with zefrank. He is a… well, I’m not sure how to describe, but kind of an entertainer/comedian/prankster, educator, but in a manic 2.0-style. In any case, I just watched one of his short video clips ruminating on the creep who confessed to killing Jon Benet, even though it was proven he hadn’t done it. Ze goes off on a tangent about the meaning of ‘Brand’, which is really insightful. Check this out, it’s fun and you might learn something to boot:

Note this if you’re planning to open a restaurant– the odds of success aren’t good, with the vast majority of restaurants failing within 5 years. While I’m sure that some don’t work out because of poor operations or locations, the primary cause of failure is inadequate financing. You need enough cash to carry you until the operation turns cash flow positive. Advance Restaurant Finance offers business loans to both large and small restaurants. Interest you pay on the loan is tax deductible, reducing its effective cost to you. Check them out to learn more.

A post from NY Mag covers the situation in the music biz, which is looking about as attractive as the subprime lending business these days. Check out Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought. It’s hard to feel any pity for Universal and their ilk, as they’ve been shafting musicians for decades. And it should be pretty clear that their role will, if not totally obsolete, at least be drastically changed in years ahead. The labels really have 2 roles in the music biz value stream:

• promotion and development of artists
• distribution of music 

 The internet places distribution within the reach of pretty much anyone with a computer. And the big stars (cash cows) the labels depend on obviously don’t need much help with promotion and development. So that leaves labels with a business where they get to invest in the careers of artists who will dump them just as soon as they get powerful enough to stand on their own.

And that’s assuming anyone is still paying for music. If one thing seems certain, it’s that lots of changes are ahead in the business of music. Personally, I think the most likely path is that recorded music becomes a loss leader to promote sales of merchandise and sell concert tickets. This is already happening in many places. No one can ‘pirate’ a live performance.

Here’s an interesting idea… a way to promote your blog offline, with a special business card just for your blog. This is through ooprint.com. The card can contain your site as well as a customized ‘tag cloud’ to reflect what your blog is about. Best of all, you can get 100 FREE business cards, and of course can also order in larger quantities. So now you can promote your blog wherever you go.

An item popping up in the news over the past few days… early episodes of Sesame Street have been released on DVD, complete with a warning that they are for adults only, and not for children. (See story on NPR). I think that pretty spells the inevitable end of American world dominance. Kids with bike helmets watching sanitized bits of inanity sandwiched between fast food commercials. But hey, at least no Oscar the Grouch.

Forget about the lead paint and the toxins in the food, keep ‘em away from the educational programming please.