Guys' Point of View

Yesterday, I posted a story about a 24-carat gold plated outdoor barbecue made by the Australian company BeefEater. If you read the post, then you may remember that the fully functional outdoor unit is souped up for the Guy in mind and commands a retail price of just over $50k. Now this post (which is dedicated to the ladies unless your a Guy that loves to wear diamonds while barbecuing in style) trumps yesterday's story by $1.4 million!

Emirates Business News featured the GoldVish Le Million cell phone, which costs $1.45 million and is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive phone in the world! Designed by Emmanuel Gueit, production was limited to three units. Called “LeMillion”, it is handcrafted from 18-carat gold and is available in rose, yellow or white gold, with 120-carat diamonds encrusted all over it. The units are handmade in Switzerland where they are equipped with 2GB memory, quad-band for worldwide reception, an 8x digital zoom camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth and FM radio.

To read more about the latest in "icy communication" click here. Now it's time to go broke in America - but at least you'll be in style while doing it!

Since the beginning of television, the bread and butter for any broadcast station is the revenue that comes from advertising. If you have seen nostalgic TV commercials from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, (check out You Tube for a good sampler of vintage commercials) then you know that television advertising and design has come a long way since the first commercial aired in 1941. Today, the commercials that interrupt our viewing pleasure run the gamut of being funny, glossy, provocative, entertaining, and just downright annoying (think "Head On" rub on aspirin that looks more like the paste we used to bind construction paper pieces together in kindergarten - Head On commercials are annoying but very effective).

If you noticed recently, the commercials for LG's new line of Scarlet TV sets are made to be more of a high-end Hollywood movie premiere and its hard to tell that they are trying to sell you a product - very clever and sexy marketing!

On this day in 1941, for-profit commercial television is first broadcast legally in the United States, as the licenses issued by the Federal Communications Commission becomes effective. Ten stations have received licenses a few months earlier on May 2. License number one was issued to W2XBS, NBC, which telecast from the Empire State Building over Channel 1.

In the midst of high food and oil prices, who hasn't heard about the latest food scare to hit the United States? This time, the recall was for a very popular food - the tomato. We are not amateurs at food scares since we have had this problem before with beef, poultry, and even spinach. And remember the pet food scare only a couple of years back? Check out this short but very interesting article that I read on Advertising Age regarding what marketers can learn from this recent scare. One perspective of the tomato crisis (and future food scares) is to use something as simple as Internet search tools to address consumer concerns.