Video Games and Violence

The touchy subject of video games causing violent acts in teens and children has again come forward. The recent shootings of Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik have caused many fundamentalists to raise the issue again. Anders killed 69 people, mostly teenagers and young people. His criminal trial is still underway.

Anders admitted to playing games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to desensitize himself and practice for real life shootings. Modern Warfare is a First Person Shooter (FPS) that puts the player in a first-person perspective to shoot weapons and drive vehicles in a war simulation. It is currently one of the highest grossing video game series of all time, with a second installment of the spin-off series Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 recently announced.

The popularity of these games among young gamers is troubling to some parents who believe that constant exposure to rampageous scenarios desensitizes them to real life violence. Anders provides a platform for these individuals, as he specifically utilized their graphic and realistic qualities to execute one of the most horrific massacres in recent history. The 1999 Columbine Massacre also provides similar grounds against violent music such as rap and heavy metal, as well as violent video games.

However, the responsibility must always fall to the parent to supervise their children and their interests, whether it’s violent video games or aggressive music. Since 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has strict regulations regarding the content of video games and has instituted a rating system similar to movie ratings. Video games granted ratings of M (Mature) are not allowed to be purchased by minors without parental consent, and the same goes for T (Teen) ratings. This regulation of content mitigates the amount of violent games end up in the hands of impressionable youths.

Just as with violent films and broadcast programs, parents have the control to limit and moderate what content their children consume. Rather than parent their children better, thousands of angry Americans want to see video games banned and censored, which would deny millions of gamers entertainment, as well as cripple one of the healthiest and most prolific industries in the United States.

As always I invite you to read and observe for yourselves to make an informed decision. Below are links to news reports on the Norwegian shootings as well as video game statistics

Wikipedia Entry: Anders Behring Breivik

Entertainment Software Rating Board

Sequels: Love and Hate

Summer is just around the corner, and that means summer blockbusters are soon to explode onto screens across the country. Schools will empty their students into the summer scene, and they in turn will start emptying their wallets into movie theaters around the country to see the newest hits. Here is a small list of anticipated movies, just to name a few:
The Dark Knight Rises
Men In Black III
The Avengers
Prometheus
The Amazing Spiderman
GI Joe: Retaliation
The Bourne Legacy
Total Recall
The Expendables 2

Each of these movies has several things in common. They are action packed adventures, they have big name stars, and most importantly, they are all sequels or continuations of a series that have already been made. You might say that Hollywood is incredibly environmental, because how easily ideas are recycled and remade.

The Hunger Games recently made headlines because it became the 3rd highest opening weekend box office in history. However, consider the movies that populate that list. Of the top 10 it is the only one that was not a sequel to an existing movie series. Granted, the Hunger Games is spinning off its own trilogy (or quadrilogy if it follows the Harry Potter and Twilight trend of splitting the final installment).

What’s more, movie studios will spend on average up to three times as much to market sequels more than original content, and the results don’t lie. Studios make millions of dollars each year to bring you content that has already built an audience and fan base.

Now I picked that list specifically because they were all sequels of one type or another. There are of course many different movies coming out all year that are original and not part of a series. However, I invite you to look at the numbers of how much sequels make versus original content. Even simpler, just look at the list of movies coming out for the rest of the year, and see how many are sequels.

If this sort of thing interests you, check out Box Office Mojo for dozens of charts and statistics about all your favorite movies and releases.

Web Forums

At the heart of the internet and social media are web forums. Wikipedia defines a forum as “An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.[1] They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a “thread”.”

What better way to sell your product or service then through an on-line community of targeted customers. Yes, it will require time and follow up to maintain your creditability within the deep threads but the rewards are great. Some businesses receive as much as 80% of their total business from on-line forums.

Look into the forum that might best help your business.

A Service Trip to Lima

On a recent service trip to Lima, Peru, I witnessed poverty in its most server form. The organization that I was with, provided a dignified death for the men left for dead on the streets of Lima. The men who we took care of, all have mental illnesses and most also have a physical disability. These men were homeless, left for dead or deserted by their families. We cared for, fed, and loved all who were in front of us.

The crime is terrible and it is in the form of stealing, more then other types. Parents steal to survive. They keep their children home from school and teach them how to steal, so they can help support the family. In the instance when children are complaining about their hunger pains, the parents give them glue to sniff. The glue puts the child to sleep so they forget about their pains. Now, when a child grows up, he or she is an accomplished thief with an addition to glue, who is uneducated.

The poor population is so large in Lima that it is impossible to get ahead of the problem. We can just all do what we can to help, Lima or elsewhere.

Car Dealers & The Internet

A car dealer in Springfield, MO has shifted more then half of his newspaper advertising budget to digital media. This is from Jamie LaReau, Automotive News. Over 1/3 of his customers came throughout the internet. Over the past 20 years, dealers have been been seeing fewer and fewer of their customers coming from traditional means. It is a very different world from when your father ran the dealership.

In today’s world, more and more customers complete their research over the internet and an overwhelming amount of people utilize the internet to listen to what their peers have to say about both dealers and specific cars. According to Dominion Dealer Solutions, over 90% of car buyers start their research on the internet.

Sell F&I on Facebook? Dealers make it work

Jamie LaReau
Follow Jamie on
Automotive News | January 11, 2012 – 12:01 am EST

Using Twitter or Facebook to sell vehicles is daunting enough. But using them to boost F&I may seem like a herculean chore. Nevertheless, some dealerships are doing just that. The key is to post finance deals and aftermarket products right alongside vehicle photos and, most important, customer testimonials on social media sites, say dealers and social media experts.

Mike Milian says he can sell just about anything through social media, including F&I. He owns Corvette Mike New England in Plymouth, Mass. Milian says he sells 400 used sports cars, mostly Corvettes, a year. On Nov. 29, he bought a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette convertible at auction. He immediately snapped a picture of it, then posted the photo, a description and some special finance rates for the car on his Facebook and Twitter pages. Within 48 hours of posting the 2007 Corvette and the finance deal on Facebook, a customer called and financed it through a lender Milian found. Then, the customer bought chrome wheels and a service contract when he took delivery. “I made money on the front end and the back end,” Milian says. “The guy never would have seen that car if he wasn’t Facebooking.”

Leverage the testimonial:

At Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix, building a rapport with customers often equates to an ability to pitch anything, including F&I, says Jason Church, Courtesy’s Internet and business development director. Courtesy sells about 2,800 new and used vehicles annually. Church promotes some finance deals through social media, and he eventually hopes to pitch aftermarket goods that way as well through customer’s testimonials. “There is a huge opportunity there. We do it a little bit, but there’s more to be had,” Church says. “The way to do it is with testimonials and video testimonials about aftermarket accessories.” For example, if a person buys a Chevrolet Camaro and orders a custom paint job, then tweets a photo and talks about how good the Camaro looks, Church says that sort of testimonial will get other potential customers enthused. “If someone goes onto a public site and writes about their experience, I can leverage that experience,” Church says. “I can cut and paste it on my Facebook page and post: ‘Here’s so and so raving about their experience and this product.’” Church has done some of that using free tools such as Google Alerts that indicates each time his store is mentioned online. He tracks those postings. “In the old world, the customer would leave the dealership and I’d never see them again,” Church says. “Now we can manage feedback.”

Pulling conversations:

Getting a glowing customer testimonial is more than just a case of good luck, says Walter Osterman, owner of social media marketing agency Social Mavens in New York. “You have to pull the conversations out of people by posting on your Facebook or Twitter: ‘If you have a good experience, please talk about it.’ Or Post: ‘Have you bought chrome wheels recently? What did you think?’” Osterman says. He even recommends asking: “What don’t you like about your car?” The answers could prompt a social media dialogue where the dealership can suggest aftermarket products to improve whatever the customer does not like about their vehicle. Osterman also has his client, Courtesy Chevrolet, videotape all customers after they buy a vehicle and post the positive customer reviews on YouTube, Osterman says. If a dealer tapes 100 video testimonials, a few are bound to be good enough to post on YouTube. Then the dealer can Facebook post the video testimonials, tweet about them, build a page on the dealership Web site for them and tag it so if someone searches the dealership or other key words, the videos come up. “And that’s small money spent to help the F&I manager,” Osterman says. “That’s just one more tool to try.”

Google to change how websites market themselves!

This was such an interesting article about how Google will be changing the search engine parameters, in 2012, I wanted to reprint it. I found it on LinkedIn

Chevrolet’s Early Dealers

In the early 1900′s, most Chevrolet dealers did not just sell cars. In addition to cars, these dealers were also shopkeepers who sold hardware, harnesses, wagons, bicycles and tires. Other dealers blacksmiths, electricians and locksmiths. Cars were delivered by train, six to a car. The cars were shipped in pieces so when the cars were taken off the train, they were towed to the shop where the dealers had to install the windshields, steering wheels, tops and bumpers.

Today, Chevrolet cars are sold in over 100 countries via thousands of dedicated dealers. Expected 2012 global sales could top 14 million vehicles. Chevrolet is currently celebrating it’s 100 year anniversary!

Our Wounded Veterans also need Jobs

In our current economy jobs are very difficult to find and there are so many Americans looking. My heart goes out to them. Now imagine being more than 30 percent disabled from an injury suffered in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Defense Department is trying to help. It’s calling on federal employers and those in the private sector to find jobs for the veterans who have been wounded during military service. In addition to the federal government, we should all try to remember our disabled veterans. There are many resources for the veterans to chose from and we as business owners can keep them in mind. After all, there will be some brilliant, hard working, dedicated, respectful men and women applying.

If you are not in a position to hire, then we can donate our time. As you can imagine, there is an amazing amount of adaptive athletes on the rise. Organizations like Disabled Sports USA dedicates themselves to hosting and running events. Of course, there are so many more.

Networking Success

In my opinion, the real goal of networking is to help the other person. A long time ago, I read a book by Harvey Mackay titled “Dig Your Well Before You Are Thirsty.” Harvey reiterates this message over and over. If you just kept doing favors and remembering your colleagues, then when it is time to ask for a favor, they will be more then happy to help you. Another good tip is “not to expect anything from anybody.” It is actually a good feeling to help another person. Why not think that way in business? If you help others that you meet, not expecting anything in return… you will be pleasantly surprised. Finally, meet as many people as you can. Breakfasts, lunches, cups of coffee or just walking to a meeting with them, talk to as many people as you can.