I decided I really didn’t like this piece anymore, but I’ll leave it up since I wrote it and tweeted about it. Chris said a couple things on 610 Sports with Nick Wright that made some of what I wrote incorrect, especially the last part about the KU/MU thing so I’ve crossed that out.

About a month ago, Grantland.com launched as the brainchild of my favorite sportswriter, Bill Simmons. There’s a lot of back story to its genesis, but I’ll skip that – the point of the site, to me, is to cover sports and pop culture in a long-form manner that doesn’t get done very often in this era of TMZ, Twitter and instant analysis. So far, I’ve enjoyed the site a lot – it’s got a ton of talented writers covering all sorts of different topics.

Last week, the biggest Royals fan I can think of (Rany Jayzayerli of Rany on the Royals) wrote a Grantland column about the historical ineptitude of KC’s hometown team. Though a bit depressing for Royals fans, it was all true and can’t really be disputed.

Today, another column about Kansas City appeared on the site, written by Chris Suellentrop and titled “Hard Times in the Paris of the Plains.” Its intent was to discuss the failed attempts to bring a NBA team to Kansas City’s Sprint Center and how that feeds into the Midwestern inferiority complex that we (supposedly) have. Though Chris had some good points, I really took issue with a few things he said and want to offer my counter-opinion here.

“Currently the Sprint Center is home to an arena football team and not much else.”

While it’s true that there is no anchor tenant at the Sprint Center (other than the Kansas City Command, formerly the Brigade), the lack of a NBA/NHL team has probably helped the arena overall, as it was ranked by Pollstar Magazine (the concert industry’s leading trade publication), as the 5th busiest arena in the United States and 12th busiest in the world. From the Kansas City Star: “In 2010, Sprint Center hosted 17 of the top 20 North American tours, including Bon Jovi, Roger Waters, Michael Buble, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Billy Joel, Justin Bieber, the Black Eyed Peas, and James Taylor and Carole King.” Those rankings are for concerts only, so undoubtedly, Kansas City would not be ranked as high if sports events were included. However, the Sprint Center is home to the Big XII Men’s Basketball Tournament and has hosted event like WWE, PBR and others. The point is; the place is not sitting there unused like Suellentrop makes it sound.

“I didn’t know yet that if you want to do something reasonably creative for a living and get paid for it, pretty much the only way to do it in Kansas City anymore was to write for Hallmark cards.”

This is, without a doubt, the most untrue line in the entire piece and the only one that was truly offensive to me. Since you’ve been gone since the late 90′s, Chris, let me catch you up on the creativity of town you grew up in:

• The Crossroads area fills up every month in a celebration of this town’s artists and other creative people called “First Fridays” – http://www.kccrossroads.org/
• The American Advertising Federation – Kansas City (AAF-KC) is one of the biggest AAF chapters in the country. Just last month, its members won more National ADDY Awards than any market outside Chicago or Los Angeles. KC’s large marketing/advertising community is home to clients like McDonald’s, On the Border, Krispy Kreme, Gatorade, Ford (Canada), Kellogg’s, and many, many more.
• Incredibly gifted photographers like rw/2, Ron Berg, Austin Walsh, Alistair Tutton, Nick Vedros and David Morris all call KC home.
• The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art added on the architecturally-renowned Bloch edition a couple years ago and it, along with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, are both world-class art museums.
• Oh yeah, Hallmark is still the industry leader too.

“Though as a Kansan, I am trying to be mean to Missouri, even though I went to journalism school there. In Kansas City, collegiate rooting affiliations are bound by blood and soil, not matriculation. I root for the Tigers in journalism and for the Jayhawks in everything else.”

Where to start with this one? It doesn’t matter where you grew up; it matters where you went to school. A lot of Kansans used to do this split loyalty thing and say they rooted for Kansas State football and Kansas basketball. But splitting loyalties between KU/MU is far worse than that – sorry, Chris, but you forsake your right to cheer for the Jayhawks when you went to Mizzou. In case you didn’t realize, KU has a fabulous journalism school too, so the argument of going there for that program doesn’t really hold up. You’re a Tiger now, for better or worse, so please donate any Crimson & Blue you have to Goodwill and embrace your Tiger-ness.

I know you wrote some of this lightheartedly but it’d sure be nice if Kansas City wasn’t stereotyped and bashed nationally by a guy who thinks of himself “as a resident out-of-towner in New York.” Maybe it’s time you came back and saw some of what’s happening in this town – you might be surprised.

For Animal Haven, the Virtual Agency was tasked with creating a unique TV campaign to set Animal Haven apart from the other animal shelters in town, and draw in potential customers who might be shopping at PetSmart, PetCo, etc. After a fun brainstorming process, we arrived at the idea of “Another Match Made in Haven”, playing off the Animal Haven name and letting people know the selection of animals is broad and a perfect match is easy to find.

With the generous help of the talented crew at Liquid 9‘s help, here’s the three-spot campaign we created:

This was my first time working on a TV campaign and it was a lot of fun. The client seemed to love where we landed and, hopefully, it’s helped bring in some new customers. Thanks to the guys at Liquid 9 (especially Dan Gedman, Cody Smith and Patrick Meagher), Corey Cassaw, Aaron Cathey and the rest of the ad2 Virtual Agency for their help in creating this project.

I bought myself a new Bluetooth headset about a month ago, after losing my previous one. I probably use it for a total of 1 hour a week, at the most, and I don’t walk around the mall with it on my ear as a fashion statement. So I went to Best Buy and found a low-end Jabra (BT2070) for $29.99, I think. After getting it home and trying it for a while, I just couldn’t get it the speaker part to stay in my ear. It kept falling out so I had to hold it in with one hand to hear people, which kind of defeats the point of a Bluetooth headset.

Not feeling like driving up to Best Buy, I posted a message @Jabra_US asking if I was doing something wrong or if they had any tips. Within an hour or two, I was trading messages with Wayne (part of the @Jabra_US team). Wayne did some research, asked me a couple questions, and finally sent me this DM.

Effective, friendly, personal communication - perfect.

So I sent him my address, not sure what I’d be getting. We traded a couple more messages, including one after 11 PM (Wayne, you work too hard!). And then a package arrived with a brand new, Jabra BT2080 arrived at my door – a much nicer headset that costs almost twice as much at Best Buy. Wow. They sure didn’t need to do that. They could have apologized and recommended I take it back to Best Buy, and I would have thought that perfectly reasonable and been fine with it. But instead, they went above & beyond with fast, friendly service, they took care of my problem, and they’ve now got a customer who will recommend them to others and probably not buy another brand in their category ever.

To the @Jabra_US team (especially Wayne), I say, as a consumer, thank you! And as a marketer myself, I say, thank you for another example of a company that truly “gets it.”

Jabra did not ask me to write this post or do anything in exchange for the replacement headset; I’m posting this because I’m suitably impressed.

Five years ago, I had just finished my 90-day full-time “trial” at ER. I interned throughout second semester, graduated in late May and started on the trial then. My first day was July 17, 2005 and I already realized that I’d just graduated from a highly-rated school of journalism and I knew…next to nothing. But thanks to Rachel Hack, my former boss during my internship for AAF-Kansas City (it was the Ad Club then), I’d landed at a perfect spot to start my career, with two bosses that gave me the opportunity to learn, succeed and grow…as well as failing when necessary.

I failed big time in May of 2006, enough that I met with my two bosses on that Monday morning and told them I couldn’t meet the higher expectations they’d set, and I left the company. For the next eight weeks, I searched for jobs, sat around being lazy far more than I should have (short-term vision and a generous severance will do that to a foolish 23 year old) and, eventually, started thinking about what I really wanted to do next. About that time, desperation began to sit in as the new opportunity I thought was just around the corner didn’t happen. I stayed in touch with my former bosses at ER throughout those eight weeks, and when they asked me to return to the company, I was relieved and optimistic that things would be different this time around.

For the past four years, they have been different. And as my sixth year at ER Marketing begins, I’m excited for what comes next and I know that, when/if I ever leave ER, telling Renae Gonner and Elton Mayfield I’m leaving will be harder than anything I’ve done so far. The respect & admiration I have for them is tremendous, and continues to grow. Thanks Elton & Renae.

With that, I’d like to share ten things about this business I wish I knew five years ago:

1. You know nothing…and that’s ok.
2. Be curious, every day.
3. It’s ok to raise your hand and say, “I can’t do this” or “I don’t understand this.”
4. Yes, we have the Internet, iPhones and social media, but the business hasn’t changed that much since David Ogilvy penned this classic guide to advertising – the core truths still hold true.
5. Find a way to measure it, whatever it is, whenever possible.
6. Ask somebody to grab a beer and learn something new – your peers are always ready to help.
7. Big clients & big agencies aren’t the only way to have fun in this business.
8. B2B can be as fun as B2C.
9. An internal campaign that unites a company can be more valuable then the greatest Super Bowl ad you’ve ever seen.
10. Manage Expectations of your peers, your bosses and your clients…every day.

Here’s to the next five years – cheers.