The six-year-old charter school, with 880 students in grades 9-12, bills itself as the largest film, TV and acting high school in the nation. Palillo, who has coached actors over the years, said he became enamored with G-STAR and its students after recently performing in the school’s latest feature film, It’s a Dog Gone Tale: Destiny’s Stand.

Read the Sun-Sentinel article here.

Right now you can’t turn the corner without being smacked in the face with more depressing news about the economy. It seems that a company’s first reaction is to layoff employees to keep the business afloat. However, the first reaction the company really had was indifference.

Let me explain. The economy has been heading downhill for quite some time. It did not become this way overnight. When the economy first started its tumble, comapnies could have altered their business strategy or model. They could have made some changes. But, for the most part, companies stayed with the same plan they’ve had for years.

Look at the newspaper business. The newspaper is quickly fading away, going down the path of Morse code and the pigeon carrier for how news is spread. A few years ago, they could have jumped online and changed their business model. But most papers kept true to their history and shunned the online community. Where they have failed, blogs have thrived.

Now, newspapers are moving online and are posting high readership. For some newspapers though, it may be too late.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and it seems obvious that newspapers should have made the move online a long time ago. But I guarantee there are many things at your business, at your dealership even in your personal life that you wish you would have done.

So why don’t we do it? Well, one reason is the fear of failure. People are crippled by this. No one wants to go out on a limb, take a chance and then fail. But if we never failed, how would we learn? The Japanese consider every failure a gift. They view every failure as a learning experinece. By learning from your failures, from your mistakes, you can better ensure that you won’t fall off that limb again.

Another reason (and there are many more than these two) is sacrifice. Anyone can put up a website, anyone can offer a sale, but it takes sacrifice do it the right way. Most people just go through the motions. They put up the Facebook account, but they don’t update it. They offer the sale in their advertising but don’t explain it to their salespeople. Why? Because they have to sacrifice their time to do it.

In fact, everything takes sacrifice. That’s why diets are a multi-billion dollar industry. People don’t want to sacrifice their time, TV or food to be in shape. They want the do-it-all pill.They want to set it and forget it. They want the gimmick.

Anything that is worth having in life does not come easy. It takes hard work. It takes change. It takes sacrifice. But until you’re ready, you will never move to where you want to be. No one just wakes up and works off their God given talent. Athletes train. Students study. These are all forms of sacrifice.

The ball is now in your court. You can continue to do what you are doing. You can stay on the same path. Or you can make some sacrifices. Start working a little more. Start reading a little more. Start giving up some things you cling to and gain much, much more.

Sorry for the rambling. I didn’t draft out this post. I just wanted to speak from the top of my head. Let me know what you think. And in no way shape or form do I think our current economic crisis could have been avoided if people would have sacrificed. But I do think people and companies would have been better prepared.

Check out this ad for Holden that aired in Australia, here.

Of course I could have a bias toward National ads because I see both the good and bad ones, but for the International ads I only the best ones.

You can check out some other cool international ads here, here, here and here.

Here’s one ad (not the best of quality, hopefully someone will post a better one soon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update** You can see the above video here.  And you can watch the bank robber ad here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Courtesy of AdFreak.

Is a Mini mini? Yes. And no? According to this eye-grabbing ad, size not only matters but the Mini Cooper is mystifyingly able to offer its drivers both ends of the scope: mini and, apparently, massive. It’s a good thing perception is relative, otherwise our jobs would be much harder.

Anyway, speaking of perception, optical illusions make for powerful ads. The good ones make you stare; the best ones make you believe.

I’m speechless. From Ads of the World and Adfreak.

Update: Seems VW of America has taken down the spot. Sorry.

Update #2: It’s back up! Yee-haw!

The all new Accord is “Honda’s largest launch ever,” according to Tom Peyton, senior manager, national advertising at Honda.

Oh and by the way, the new Accord will start at $23,360.  No wonder it’s having the “largest launch ever.”

But Honda has a strategy, aim for Gen X’ers. So how do you appeal to such a group of cynical people, you advertise with NBC promising a trip to Hollywood and tickets to Universal.

You can view Honda Accord’s new ad and cross promotion with NBC here.

Esserman pioneered the very innovative YES customer satisfaction program, You are Empowered to Satisfy. He explains…

“Every employee must find a way to say yes to all our customers. We have extensive training of all our employees… We want to help (our employees) get where they want to go, so that we can get where we want to go.”

It’s very interesting how the successful dealers all concentrate on the relationships they have with people. I’ll post the article when it comes live on the net.