Last year I joined an Internet Marketing Group called AM 2.0 headed my Armand Morin. Realizing the potential of the Internet, I have been trying to learn all I can to utilize it in the promotion of Fantasy of Flight and the products I am creating.
With the help of my IT department I have been working diligently to check off a 114-point list of items relating to our first promotional effort – my new illustrated children’s book “All of Life is a School”. Once accomplished, we will be eligible to join a Platinum Group of Internet Marketers that are on the cutting edge of the business.
Well, while our athletes have been winning Gold at the Olympics in China this summer, we just got the annoucement this morning that we have completed our requirements and have now gone Platinum! We have been invited to our first meeting in in Raleigh, NC early September. As part of the two-day meetings, we will be given the opportunity to bring to the best minds in the business our ideas about what we would like to get input about. And since we have a plan in place for the Gee Bee Book, I hope to bring to the group the concept we have for the song I wrote called “Daddy’s Little Girl!”
The instrumental tune was written by a friend of mine, Mark Johnson about three years ago and it’s on his second album called Acoustic Rising. He is a renowned banjo player with a unique style and named the tune “Katie Weeks” after my little girl. The album went up for the International Bluegrass Music Awards “Instrumental Album of the Year”. And while it didn’t win, it is one of the most requested songs off that album on Bluegrass XM Radio.
After we heard him play it at a music festival several years ago and got the CD, words and visuals began to come to me. I realized I was supposed to write words to his music! I have completed a rough recording but will be back in the studio for the final version. Every father with a daughter I have played it to has been teary eyed by the end of the song. It has great potential to be put to a short music video and we hope to find a way to bypass the “difficult to deal with music industry” and promote in via the Internet.
Stay tuned as we head towards a June of 2009 release!
Kermit
It’s Thursday, July 31st and we’ve passed the halfway mark of AirVenture 2008. In just three and a half days I completely sold out of the 420 books shipped up and of those, I personally signed over 300!
My last flyable airplane on display in Miami was a Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. Over the years, the Hurricane damage was repaired with the intention of flying it to Fantasy of Flight. Well, last week was the big date to test fly the aircraft and hopefully bring it up. I had last flown the TBM since just before the Hurricane over 15 years ago and needed to get recurrent at the same time I was test flying the airplane as the FAA requires a re-currency check on any airplanes over 12,500 lbs. The first flight went great and my only concern was I had recently been flying my little Grumman Wildcat fighter and when I got the TBM off the ground I thought the control stick had somehow been set in concrete! I couldn’t believe how heavy the controls were compared to the Wildcat. It all slowly came back to me and I became comfortable very quickly.
