Southern California isn’t the only place that’s burning. A big chunk of Hollywood box office is in ashes, too. Sunday’s New York Times examines the cause of several of this fall’s big-name box office disasters.

“Gone Baby Gone” tanked, despite star Ben Affleck appearing on virtually every talk show except “Wall Street Week.” The heavily-promoted “Rendition” also went into the crapper, despite its cheerful theme of torture. “Things We Lost in the Fire” starring Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry also sank with barely a bubble.

The culprit in all these big name failures: lack of focus. They’re not targeted at any particular audience. As the Times put it:

“That doesn’t mean they’re bad pictures. It means they have no obvious appeal to any of the four big demographic groups at which Hollywood has typically aimed its wares: males 17 to 24 years old, males 25 to 49, females 17 to 24 and females 25 to 49.

What has this Hollywood stuff got to do with small business marketing and attracting more customers? Everything. Your small business needs to do exactly what these movies didn’t do. You need to focus on entertaining — uh, I mean serving – a narrow niche audience.

The headline of the Times piece says it all. It’s “How to Find an Audience? Try a Zoom Lens.” link

The quickest way to failure is to try to be all things to all people. If you stand for everything, you’re remembered for nothing. If you don’t create your marketing message for a tightly-designed market, you’re doomed to fail — whether you’re a CPA or a Hollywood producer.

“… if the movie business is to keep making these smart little dramas in which ambitious actors and prize-hungry filmmakers take their annual shot at the (Oscars), it will have to start doing what car makers and packaged-goods companies have always done: sharpen the message and narrow the targets.

Give something away! Something big, something that appeals to your target market. Something that vividly shows prospects (that’s what they are, right?) how great your service or products are.

That’s the time-honored marketing strategy, and it’s exactly what IKEA is doing to promote its new website aimed at small businesses (rather than home furnishings). An online video contest, “Small Business, Big Dreams,” will award a design makeover to not one but a group of small businesses from the same neighborhood (a nice touch). To enter, entrepreneurs submit a short video showcasing unique aspects of their business and its role within the community.

Not surprisingly, the Ikea business site also includes a forum to share tips and techniques for creating the ideal business space, including visitor-submitted photos and videos of their workspaces.

The only gripe I have is the use of Flash animation to open every section. Even with my (fairly peppy) broadband connection, I find animations slow-loading and annoying. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

Have you ever given away a sample of your work (website design, for example) as a way of attracting a new set of prospects? Thinking about it for the future? Post a comment and let’s talk about it.

Imus in the Morning used to promote itself as “This ain’t your mother’s morning show.” Actually, it turns out, it is. And your grandmother’s too.

The comments I’ve received suggest that Imus fans are not predominantly male, as one might have expected. There are lots of females, too, as young as college age and extending well into their 80s. A lot more older women than I would have expected.

Other comments reveal:

• They don’ t mind being called I-Hos. (Even the guys.) One told me, “Being an I-ho sure beats being a media ho!”
• Petitions are now being circulated to pressure MSNBC and CBS to bring him back.
• A rally will be held in NYC on June 29, when the petitions will be presented to the three media outlets. Imus supporters are coming from as far away as Washington State — now that’s a dedicated fan!
• Somebody has started a “fake” Imus blog. A commenter tipped me off to it, and I must say, it’s pretty funny. The guy writes like Imus talks, so if your ears are offended by vulgarity, don’t go there.Wait a minute, what am I saying? These are Imus fans!

With apologies to Steven Stills:

“If you can’t watch the Imus you love,
now you can read the Imus you’ve got.”

Don Imus and his abrupt (and unfair) ouster from the airwaves continues to stir passionate comments. 100% of the comments I got support the I-Dude, mostly in passionate terms. (Where are the others? The witch hunters and haters? Maybe they’re busy hounding other public figures.)

While the sample was tiny — OK, infinitesimal — the demographic range of the commenters astounds me. Who knew the I-Man had millions of fans in every age bracket, from a 76 year-old female in NJ (actually, just one of several in their 70s) to today’s most recent comment from a 21 year-old college senior named Michelle.

I found Michelle’s comments to be especially eloquent and insightful. They certainly reflect well on her and her so-called “slacker” generation. Take a look:

“Believe it or not, a lot of kids my age enjoyed the I-Man… If you go on Facebook or other social networking sites, you’ll see a lot of kids who are in Imus in the Morning fan groups. I fell in love with (the show) because I love politics, news, and comedy. While I enjoy The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I think the Imus show was superior, simply because it had longer interviews, more discussion, and a great deal of humorous conversation.”

Like me (and you, no doubt) Michelle loved the variety Imus delivered.

“Sometimes it was a comedy show; sometimes it was news and politics; sometimes it was an activism/progressive show; sometimes it was a music program. It was really a marvelous thing… One thing I also loved… was that it was not a partisan hack program. Most news shows only offer the “left” opinion or the “right” opinion. Even though Imus and his cast mostly leaned Republican, they called BS when they saw it on *any* topic. I really appreciated that.

Watching Imus made her feel like she was pulling a fast one on advertisers while thumbing her nose at popular culture.

“As a young female, advertisers expect me to be obsessed with Gilmore Girls or Laguna Beach or whatever. Yet here I was… tuning into a crazy old man in a cowboy hat… The news reports (gave) the impression that Imus fans were nothing but a bunch of old ignorant racist Klansmen. To paraphrase one of the previous commenters, I am young, female, and educated - and proud to be an I-Ho.”

What about you? Are you also proud to be an I-Ho?

BTW, guys — does that term apply to us, too?

Want a sure-fire strategy for building a successful Web business? Line up customers first, then create a business to serve them.

It’s an approach that’s working for the UK’s David Carter, says Business 2.0. Carter identifies a business niche or a hot growth area like commercial real estate. Then he buys domain names around the topic. He saves money by shunning pricey domains for URLs with hyphens, such as commercial-property.co.uk/.

He builds the sites, adds content, and waits for customers. When inquiries come in, Carter steers them to an acquaintance or a local business he’s partnering with. In many cases, Carter simply becomes the middleman, using the Web to attract willing buyers that he hands off to others for a fee.

To satisfy a flood of eager customers, Carter turned his original AsbestosSurveys.com site into an actual business, called AsbestosServices.com. He took a half-week course, got certified, and teamed up with a friend. Today, once or twice a week — essentially whenever he feels like getting out of the house — Carter surveys a property, armed with a digital camera and notepad. He claims the effort will net the pair about $350,000 this year.

Not too shabby for a guy who knew absolutely nothing about asbestos when he started.

Carter’s way, in brief:

1. Identify an overlooked need for services kicked up by, for instance, relatively obscure regulatory changes.
2. Construct a first-rate website with a generic domain name that will draw in prospective customers.
3. With clients in hand, create the business, providing the service yourself or subcontracting to established players.

Lots of reaction to Saturday’s post about Don Imus. It attracted more comments than any other post. Thank you all for participating.

Like all of you who left comments, I am (was?) also a huge Imus fan, and have been for over 20 years. So let me start by pointing out that the quote about Imus going “off the deep end” was said by an Emory University business professor, not me. Unfortunately, I neglected to include the link, so I’ll add it here.

I saw the “nappy headed ho” comment live as it happened, and it didn’t even register a blip in my Outrage Meter. It was obviously just an offhand comment, a spontaneous ad lib, not meant maliciously. It was just part of the Imus in the Morning routine. Regular (and even irregular) viewers knew he didn’t mean it.

However, it was probably a mistake to direct a comment like that toward young college athletes like that. So-called “public figures” (like Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Al Roker) are fair game, but not young kids.

Another point: When you look at Imus’s words in print, they look hateful, racist and indefensible. But seen/heard in the context of his show, they were actually pretty tame. But Sharpton, Roker et al pounced on it and made them seem far more hateful and incendiary.

Imus’s ranting — about autism, Thimerosal, Greening the Cleaning, Auto Body Express, even Whittaker Chambers — has long been an integral part of his act. But I don’t think it’s an “act” at all — just part of his personality. He routinely rails against the foibles of many ethnic and demographic groups, religions, stereotypes of all sorts.

I certainly do not believe Imus is a racist. If anything, he’s a curmudgeon, a cranky old grouch. I’ve never met him, but people who know him personally have told me that that’s who he is, that’s his authentic self. He isn’t afraid to be unlikable. He’s real — no wonder he was such an effective communicator. Name one other person in the blow-dried media who reveals their authentic self…

Of course, Imus is also a performer who put on a great show. He brought in terrific guests, asked good questions, then actually gave them the time to answer, instead of constantly interrupting and badgering them like most Talking TV Heads. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Bill O’Reilly.) His in-depth interviews and live musical performances by often-ignored talents were a delight and a rarity in today’s ratings-obsessed media.

He was also rich enough that he didn’t care if anyone listened/watched or not. Imus did what HE wanted to do, and screw anyone who didn’t like it. That authenticity attracted millions of listeners and viewers, which in turn attracted sponsors and big bucks. Both have now left MSNBC and CBS radio once they booted Imus.

With his telethons and other campaigns, he did a lot of good. Like NPR pledge breaks, I personally couldn’t listen to them, but I applaud his efforts to use his fame to do good. I admire him for that.

And like many of you commenters, I haven’t watched MSNBC since. It’s part protest, but mostly because there is virtually nothing worth watching on that channel or any other. I’m on a media fast of sorts. Clears the mind. It’s good for you.

BTW, many commenters mentioned they’re boycotting Procter & Gamble. Good for you. Personally, my family hasn’t bought their products in years. Not because of Imus, but because they test their products on live animals, often blinding and maiming them in the process. An inexcusable and barbaric practice.

Finally, it’s interesting that all this reaction came just as The Sopranos was ending its long run on HBO. Like Imus, Tony Soprano is one misunderstood guy. Like Imus, the Sopranos is seen as profane, casting negative stereotypes, etc.

Most of all, what Sopranos executive producer Terence Winter said about networks applies equally to Imus:

“They live in fear of offending anybody. If one guy writes in and says, ‘I’m never going to buy Ivory soap again because you had a joke in your show about albinos and I’m an albino,’ you will get a memo the next day: ‘No more albino jokes.’ They don’t have the courage of their convictions.”

And so it goes…