A video is part of most of our presentations to universities when bidding on the athletic multimedia rights. I’ve never been at one of the presentations but I’ve seen the videos. Lots of snap, crackle and pop. In a recent presentation, our guys loaded up some video iPods (the sexy black ones) with the pitch video and threw in some highlights (TV and radio); a bunch of still images and anything else they could get their hands on. Very high cool factor. The university folks can’t keep such goodies but they can auction them off for a charitable cause or something. The point is, something magical happens when people get these things in their hands. The ear buds go in and they are in…the…zone.

Speaking of iPods… I was in a meeting with some department heads recently where blogging and podcasting came up as marketing tools. I opined that you really need to have and use an iPod to understand the podcasting phenomenon. The head of the division was running the meeting and told each of the department heads to purchase an iPod and learn how to use it. Smart move.