Read an article with this headline today, “Pizza Hut Campaign Sees 2,000 Opt-Ins in Two Weeks.” Doesn’t seem to impressive to me – 2,000 people?

It’s a piece about how Pizza Hut used mobile to generate buzz about its new Hershey’s Dunkers offering and built a mobile database of consumers to remarket to.

Yes, I totally get that The Hut can remarket to these people and that they double opted in to receive messages from the restaurant. No, I don’t actually know what the campaigns goals and objectives were.

But, 2,000 people? I understand that they are more engaged. I understand that they’re likely to bring someone along to enjoy their Pizza Hut and Dunkers.

Maybe this is only in certain market/markets. 2,000 people across the nation would certainly be deemed a failure. Even so 2,000 people out of one small market, even if it was focused on Teens or some other demo, doesn’t equate to many people in my mind.

I applaud the use of some way, in this instance mobile marketing, to connect with consumers and use their “traditional” advertising to pull people into a closer relationship with the brand.

The article says, “in just two weeks the campaign has received more than 2,000 opt-ins and 54 percent moved on to double-opt-in.” So only 1,000 are really, really engaged. The other 1,000 are only partially engaged?

The first opt-in was for a contest. Then they were sent another text to sign up for offers. Smart move I think.  Pizza Hut, according to the article, has been utilizing a few different mobile marketing tactics including an ordering app and other promotions.

I don’t know the pre/post awareness of the new product/s or other metrics used to prove ROI of the campaign. All I have to go on is 2,000/1,000 opt-ins – sorry, it still doesn’t seem impressive to me….

Last year (April 2008), I wrote a bit about “extreme” and/or “action” sports athletes and health insurance. Many of these athletes don’t have health insurance. They jump and fly and crash and sometimes burn.

Most of the athletes you see competing on TV are not making tons of money. Sure, they have sponsors but most of them are in their chosen sport. Everyone wants sponsorship so only the best of the best get paid. On top of that, there’s not a lot of marketing money around these days.

For these athletes, a trip to the hospital – even with insurance – can be devastating financially.

Now there is some help from ARF – Athlete Recovery Fund. Transworld and BallPark Franks are also doing what they can to help out.

Watch the video below for the full time, and Ball Park will donate a buck for every view – up to $100,000. Take two minutes of your time. You watch these folks on TV and at the X-Games, maybe you wanna hit up ARF with a straight out donation.

Stoked Mentoring had all the new mentors participate in a training session before we could become mentors and we, again, had some terrific conversations.  Bret led us on some interesting explorations and I was impressed with the other mentors.

One of my fellow mentors-in-training talked about how she had recently realized the importance of her family and neighborhood. When she was college age, she felt that there was nothing for her in her hometown and she couldn’t wait to get out. It was interesting to hear, as I felt the same way when I was that age. I couldn’t wait to move on and had big plans to move out West.

That’s not what happened for me, I ended up staying in my home town.  To my delight what I have found here though is a strong sense of “home” in my home town. My grandparents and parents grew up here. I drive past my grandmothers childhood home and her one room school house. The church I was married in, my parents were married in and I was baptized there. The sand pit we played in as kids was the apple orchard my mother, aunts and uncles played in as kids. I could go on…

Point is, after wanting so badly to leave my home town, I came to connect with my family and its history in town as I couldn’t imagine when I was younger. When “new comers” to the town make annoying comments about it I feel defensive. Odd how things change, I used to be the one doing the bad mouthing…

Bret led us in some more role playing exercises such as, “if your mentee did/said this, you would do/say that.” As we dug deeper into the Stoked training we discussed the difference between “delicate situations” such as sex, peer pressure, behavior, school performance, “issues of concern” like fighting, gangs, delinquency, drug and alcohol use and “crisis requiring intervention” such as abuse and neglect, chemical dependency, severe violence, depression and arrest.

Obviously, Stoked Mentoring and the young people we’d be working with, needed us mentors to know how to handle these situations and these things could come up during our time as mentors. In some way it was a bit of a wake up call as to what we might need to address with our mentees. Frankly, it was a little un-nerving.

Growing up in my home town I had never had to deal with abuse, gangs, arrest, delinquency or serious violence. The possibility for conversations about any of these serious topics seemed daunting and scary but doable. Especially considering that Bret and the Stoked team would always be there to support me.

Again, I was being pushing to think and to stretch in new ways. I’m starting to believe that, like my understanding of my hometown, this Stoked Mentoring experience will be much more than I originally imagined.