Inside Tom's Head

I Moved

2010-07-30T12:16:00.002-05:00

I have my own website now; it's http://tmiesen.com. You can also still catch me on Twitter and Tumblr.

Cheers,

Tom

Why You Should Watch "Mad Men"

2010-07-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

Don Draper and his rag-tag team of advertising misfits at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce come back to the small screen today, and that’s a good enough reason to write about it. You should give the show a try. Unless you’ve been living under a culture-proof rock for the last 4 or so years, “Mad Men” is an award-winning show on AMC about advertisers in the 60’s. That’s the abbreviated version. If you watch the show religiously, you know it’s really about the existential crisis of a man who never is quite sure of who he is or who he wants to be, set in a 1960’s Ad Agency. It’s a time machine to an era full of drinking, smoking, and philandering, but also an era full of change and empowerment. I could continue the pretentious drivel for a while, but I figured it’d probably be easier to persuade you to watch the show through quotes and videos, and a little commentary in between.

“What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one.”- Don Draper

Enter the show’s antihero, Don Draper (played by John Hamm). Formerly a “whore-child” in his own words, he grew up as Dick Whitman. He rebranded himself during the Korean War, and ended up a suave, brilliant marketer. He’s also a hard-drinking, heavy-smoking badass of a character who cheats on his wife as he pleases and is basically living a lie. You really want to hate him, but then he’s an amazing advertiser and a pretty good father. He’s one of the most interesting characters on television ever. John Hamm’s performance is almost worth watching the show alone. If you’ve seen the episode “The Gypsy and the Hobo,” you know what I’m talking about.

Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.-Draper again

The show’s about advertising, which really makes it interesting to me. It is set in a time when advertising was THE business to be in. The ad men on Madison Avenue (Mad Men, get it?) ruled NYC with pencils, art, and ideas.

“You don't know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation, we drink because it's good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it's what men do.”-Roger Sterling

There’s a lot of casual drinking on the show. There’s also a lot of misogyny and racism, too. The show is full of quotes, scenes, and character interactions that are considered barbaric by today’s standards (blackface? Completely cool in the 60’s, apparently). Though I would love to find a job where a three-martini lunch is not only suggested but preferred (probably wouldn’t need the racism or sexism), that era is pretty much gone and I can’t. The best I can do is turn on “Mad Men.” It’s nice to live vicariously through characters from another time period, especially on a normally-boring Sunday night.

"I have been watching my life. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't."-Don Draper
“The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are all alone.” –Anna Draper

But back to the show’s main theme: identity. It’s about Don Draper trying to figure out if he can actually jump into a life, rather than run away and rebrand at the first sign of trouble. Draper isn’t sure who he is supposed to be, who he wants to be, or even what he used to be. He’s a character trying to figure out if he can merge his two lives into one real person. He’s also a person who came from nothing (both literally as Dick Whitman and figuratively as Don Draper). His entire personality is a fabrication, and he has no family left.

Then there are scenes like the one I’ve embedded below. This scene came at the end of the first season and is enough to forgive the character of all of his past transgressions. It showcases Don’s ability to find inspiration to sell a product, something we see over and over again in the series. When he’s actually at his job, he’s very good at it (He’s a Creative Director, for those not in the know).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus]

My barely-coherent ramblings about one of the best TV shows ever (other than The Simpsons and The Wire and LOST, which I’ll have to tackle next) don’t do the show enough service; its quality really speaks for itself. This post probably won’t get you to watch the entire series. It takes a lot of commitment to wade through the slower episodes. This isn’t some crappy drama that you can watch with half a brain; you’ll need to be fully engaged in it to really understand the genius of the show. However, I DARE you to watch the pilot episode and not be intrigued. I guarantee you’ll be on Amazon scoping out deals for Season One in no time.

If you already do watch the show, then I’m sure you know the fourth season starts TONIGHT. So pour yourself an Old Fashioned (or three), but on your best suit, slick back that hair and jump back in time to start the fourth season of one of the greatest television shows of all time.

Go Forth, Get to Work, and Be A Pioneer

2010-07-21T10:25:00.000-05:00

| Why Levi's "Go Forth" Campaign Resonates With My Generation |

About a year ago, I was watching TV commercials, and one came on that piqued my interest. It was mostly dark, the copy was some sort of poem, and I instantly LOVED it. That ad was the first part of Levi’s “Go Forth” campaign. The ads use Walt Whitman poems very well (on one ad, apparently it is his own voice). The copy of the poem “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” is supposed to evoke an emotional response from my generation, and I think it does. Here’s a snippet:

For we cannot tarry here,

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

Pioneers! O pioneers

(Rest of poem here. Highly Recommended)

The first few ads (one embedded above, the other you can just watch on YouTube) show young people running around interspersed with grim visions of Wall Street and America. “America” is literally half-underwater in one ad, which I think is supposed to symbolize the grim, hopeless recession-era we were in (and still are, to a degree). Some people loved it. Some thought it was too arty. Others mocked it (which usually means people are at least paying attention). Either way, it really struck a chord with me, and I assume other millenials were at least intrigued.

Fast-forward a year, and Wieden & Kennedy comes back with new ads for Levi’s. W&K, out in Portland, is this year’s hot ad agency. Remember the Nike “Write the Future” ad right before the World Cup? Ever heard of the Old Spice Guy? We know that campaign resonates with the millennial generation. W&K is behind both.

Anyways, they come out with this new part of the campaign based on a dingy old town called Braddock, Pennsylvania. This town is desecrated. Dead. Like Detroit and countless other cities on the Rust Belt, this town used to be a powerful industrial city, a steel-creating powerhouse, but then jobs faded away and so did the city. Braddock is a stand-in for our broken country, and Levi’s is here to rebuild it. Levi’s is even sponsoring workshops, teaching valuable skills, so we can work.Watch the ad:

“A long time ago, things got broken here. People got sad and left. Maybe the world breaks on purpose, so we can have work to do. People think there aren’t frontiers anymore. They can’t see how frontiers are all around us.”

The ad is all about rebuilding. We know about rebuilding and repairing. Fixing New Orleans. Fixing the Gulf. Fixing the banks, and fixing health care. We’ve been left with a country in ruins. We’re here to build, to work, to find new frontiers. It’d be easy to think the only frontiers are in new tech, but we have a lot more than that to create. The new ad shows people getting ready to work. The older generations think we don’t want to work, but we do. We’re an entrepreneurial generation, ready to find these new frontiers. We’re trying to work, but for ages 20-24, the unemployment rate is somewhere around 18%. My friends and I graduated from a great university (On Wisconsin!), yet most of us are still unemployed and looking. It’s time for us to get to work.

This whole campaign is, in my mind, pretty brilliant. A year ago, when the country was even more financially broken than today, Levi’s showed us that America was broken, but we still had our youth and we could still be pioneers. Today, it’s giving us a call to action. The ad is saying that the future is in our hands, and we can rebuild. We need to rebuild. It’s up to us to fix the country.

Look, I know these ads are just here to sell jeans. They’re ads, so the main goal is to increase sales, so the effectiveness of the campaign is based around how many jeans they can sell (I’m not exactly racing to the stores). But I think good ads can resonate with the zeitgeist and create culture. Great ads become art. I think W&;K did a great job finding a basic truth about our current situation, finding a message that would resonate with our generation (the target), and boiling it down into great copy and art direction to convey that message. That's all you need: a great insight, a message from that insight, and a way to communicate that message to the right people.

What does everyone else think about the campaign? Do older generations “get it?” Am I missing anything? Let me know.

Five Ways You Can Use Social Media to Get Hired

2010-07-19T11:42:00.000-05:00

As one of my loyal readers (all fourteen of you, and that’s being optimistic), you probably know that I like Twitter. Quite a bit. I’ve written about it before. Twitter is a portal to the collective thoughts of the world. I recently commented about it on a post about why I love Twitter:

I think Twitter can fundamentally change the way those with little industry experience look for work. Connecting with the right people, posting high-quality information, and making insightful observations on Twitter could potentially catch the eye of employers. It’s an interesting new way to think about job hunting for my generation.

Twitter can change how you find a job. See, I spent a good chunk of my senior year in college sending in resumes, writing cover letter after cover letter, attending job fairs, and occasionally landing an interview because of it. This method I’m going to call the “push” method of job hunting. This is how those with little-to-no experience have been doing it for quite some time. In my case, this was (and continues to be) like shoving a boulder up a hill or getting Zooey Deschanel to marry me.

Already Married? Rats.

But here we are in the digital age, where mere mortals like me can have real conversations with C-Level employees and thought leaders in the industry using Twitter. This is enough to make me think that perhaps there is a better way to find a job. I’m going to call it the “pull” method.

The pull method is simple in theory and difficult in execution. Basically, you get other people to want you. It’s easy if you’re LeBron James, not so easy if you’re Applicant #4000. This is where our pal social media comes in to save the day. Social media won’t get you “pulled” through to a new career on its own, but it will definitely make pushing that boulder a little easier. Using social media isn’t a direct means to employment, but it can definitely help. Here are five ways you can use social media to (help) get hired:

Talk About Your Industry: If you don’t have Twitter, get an account. You know why (don’t make me link to my own work again). If you do have an account, learn to use it to your advantage. Start talking about interesting things in your industry. Show your followers that you’re knowledgeable about things that are relevant. I want to be somewhere in Marketing, PR, Advertising, or Media. This is why a lot of the content on my Twitter page is about those industries. I certainly didn’t stop tweeting about random things, though (as you can probably see from my love of Psychic Octopi). I’m not saying you have to be a robot, but make sure you’re spending time talking about things of interest to your industry. Share cool articles, talk about relevant people/news in the industry, and get your opinion out there.
Start a Blog: Get a blog going. All you have to do is sign up. Center your blog around anything you’re passionate about that is tangentially related to your industry. My friend Chris just started a blog about new music because he’s very knowledgeable and passionate about music and has aspirations of being involved in entertainment marketing. Again, it’s all about showing that you know what you’re talking about, even if you have little formal experience.
Connect With the Right People: Like I said, part of the power of Twitter is that you’re able to connect with the important movers and shakers of your industry without having to go through the formal chain of command. Find important people within your prospective industry and follow them on Twitter. You’ll learn a lot of great things from them and you might even be able to talk with them. You can also try to look them up on LinkedIn (which you should probably have, too). If you’re looking for a job with a certain company, it’s smart to follow them on the Big Three (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). You can learn a lot about the company and show interest at the same time.
Never Stop Learning: I’ve learned a LOT in the months since graduation just by using the internet and social media. You can never stop learning about your industry; things change too fast and if you ever think you know enough, you’re wrong. Read books about your industry. Learn its history. Find websites and blogs to visit daily. Open the articles you find on Twitter. There’s simply too much useful information out there to ever stop learning. Your education gives you a lot of important concepts and buzzwords, but getting your feet wet in the “real world” requires much more learning. (Rant: that is one of the most condescending phrases I’ve ever had to deal with. It's all the "Real World," except of course the TV show “The Real World.” That’s not real)
Comment on Other Blogs: I think this idea is underused and underestimated. If you really want to get yourself noticed, go to the source. Find the relevant blogs in the industry and start commenting. Find stories you have an actual opinion (and some knowledge about), and get your ideas heard. Writers love to hear feedback and engage with people who read their work (HINT), so start commenting and making your opinion known. You have just as much of a right to comment on a blog as the top expert in your industry. That’s the power of the democratized internet. Don’t forget it.

Bonus Tip: Keep your online presence as clean as you think is necessary. I’m not your mother, so that’s all I’m going to say.

With the post-grad job market looking like a post-apocalyptic nightmare and some of us walking around like zombies looking for jobs, we might as well use all the tools we have at our disposal to get noticed. Using social media to help you get hired isn’t guaranteed to work, but I think the benefits go beyond that. Think about how much you’re learning about your industry in the process. That knowledge is important, whether or not recruiters think your online presence is. It will also make you much more passionate about the industry once you become a part of the community. Get on board and join the social media circus. Besides, the cool trend these days is being environmentally-friendly, right? Save a tree, let social media be your resume.

"Spice"-ing Up Advertising

2010-07-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

Why the "I'm On a Horse" guy is a cultural phenomenon

By this point, you’d have to be under a very large rock for a very long time to have missed the Old Spice ads. The campaign went viral when it began and continues to garner a lot of attention with each new ad. The campaign managed to get star Isaiah Mustafa a deal with NBC. It also won the Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, which is sort of like the Best Picture Oscar. Additionally, the ad was recently nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial, and will most likely win (with their momentum, none of the others can really compare). So, what makes this ad campaign so special? Why does it connect with us, and why did it go viral?

Awe-Inspiring: The New York Times ran an article that says we share articles that inspire awe. It states that in order for something to inspire awe, “Its scale is large, and it requires ‘mental accommodation’ by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way.” Now let’s look at the Old Spice ads. They definitely have that “how did they do it?” quality that many viral ads have. Curiosity piques interest. However, the ads aren't doctored. They are well-known to be authentic and shot in one sequence. It was all done without CGI or any digital funny-business. This is certainly awe inspiring, because it makes us view the world of commercials (in today’s digital age) in a different way; we’re so used to over-the-top CGI effects (thanks, Michael Bay and James Cameron) that a spectacle like these commercials (without the help of CGI) is certainly interesting. The scale of the commercials is definitely large enough: TV ads reach a huge chunk of the population.

They’re Actually Funny: I don’t know a single person who doesn’t smile every time they see the commercials. I’ve seen most of them many, many times and I still laugh. The commercials are so over-the-top ridiculous that they’re incredibly funny. They take every Fabio-esque stereotype of male masculinity (including an un-ironic love of mustaches and riding on a white horse topless) and throw it in your face. It would be annoying, but Old Spice is aware of the stereotypes and understands the ridiculous nature of them, so it is able to make fun of itself. This sort of humor connects directly with our generation; we love satire, and we love to see big corporations not take themselves so seriously.

Sharable: These ads are inherently sharable. Just from personal experience, it had a TON of morning-after watercooler buzz in real life, and it went viral on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the internet. They’re short enough that anyone (even those of you at the office) can view it without getting into any real trouble. The Old Spice phenomenon got so big that if you didn’t know about it, you felt left out.

They Listen and Respond: Old Spice has a Twitter account (@OldSpice, naturally), and they LISTEN to us. We know this because the account tweets back at individual users. The brand has even started to respond via personalized YouTube videos. The takeaway here is that if you want to get and KEEP our attention, you have to listen to us and respond within a reasonable time. If you do, your brand will seem more personal and authentic. We like that. It also helps that the replies are pretty hilarious.

Of course, as with any cultural phenomenon, the ads have their detractors who say the campaign is good for quick laughs but may hurt the brand in the long-term. Others cite that all the awards and buzz doesn’t always translate into sales. Even if it hasn’t exactly rose sales yet, ask anyone which brand of deodorant first pops into his or her head and I would bet Old Spice is it. Many companies would kill for that top-of-mind brand recall and awareness. Whatever the case, these ads have bored a vuvuzela-sized hole in the zeitgeist and have made advertising a little more fun. Well done, Old Spice.

The Jaded Gen-Y Guide to Business Buzzwords

2010-07-12T10:46:00.001-05:00

Every profession has jargon that is used as shorthand, and that’s great. Using jargon is necessary so a carpenter doesn’t have to say “that big metal doo-hickey” and so scientists don’t have to use long, boring explanations to explain what a uberthermodynamic enthropic reaction is (disclaimer: I don’t think that is real). These words and phrases are around to make their lives easier and less confusing. Buzzwords in business, however, seem to be around solely to make everyone a little more confused. I think they’re around so that you can convey meaning where none actually exists and so you can sound more important than you actually are. It’s the same reason some writers use the term “antediluvian” just to say “before the flood” or “really old.”

I’m not very fond of buzzwords. For the reasons I previously listed, they’re made fun of by a lot of people (present company included). This scene from 30 Rock is a great parody of using buzzwords. I went to B-School (Go Badgers) so I have a pretty good idea of what they actually mean (most of the time). I’ve seen more acronyms than I could ever remember, have heard of more “blue oceans”, and have explained the “hedgehog concept” (all it means is “do what you’re good at.” HOW IS “HEDGEHOG CONCEPT” EASIER?). Naturally, I’m a little jaded.

I’m currently in the middle of creating a fake press release using “The Most Overused Buzzwords in PR” as a satire of the industry for The Black Sheep Agency. Somewhere in the middle of using 75+ of the buzziest buzzwords in the industry, I started to realize that there are very few people who know what any of these words actually mean. Therefore, here’s a layman’s dictionary of buzzwords you’ll hear in business, PR, and marketing from someone who is a little cynical about them. If this blog was a tabloid, I’d call this post “The Definitions THEY Don’t Want You to Know!!!” Check it out after the jump, and leave some more of your favorites in the comments.

Innovation: New product or technology. Pretty simple idea, but when you think about how many times something is called “the most innovative thing ever,” it gets a little annoying. Artificial light was an innovation; that new flavor of Mountain Dew is not.

Usage: “Announcing a new innovation in the way you drive to work!”

Real-time: Just like it sounds. Instant feedback. Twitter is real-time feedback from the world. Morse-code on a telegraph was real-time feedback, too. Remember that.

Usage: “Delivering real-time answers to all of your innovation needs!”

Dynamic: Quick-changing. It’s a term used in most industries, but it irks me in business. Today’s world is a lot more dynamic than it used to be.

Usage: “New, dynamic innovation that provides real-time answers to life’s problems!”

Groundbreaking: A really awesome innovation (see above). Changes the industry, sometimes the world. Not always great (right, Hydrogen Bomb?)

Incorrect Usage: “This super-awesome Kool-Aid is groundbreaking because it changes color when you add water!”
Correct Usage: “Controlling fire was a groundbreaking technology for cavemen”

Best Practice: This one I’m a little foggy about. I’m pretty sure it just means an agreed-upon strategy that provides value in an industry (Wikipedia says I’m pretty much right)

Usage: “A best practice in the fishing industry is to use bait”

Cutting Edge: New, groundbreaking (see above)

Usage: “Pre-slicing bread was cutting-edge technology when this best practice of the bread industry was unveiled in 1952” (disclaimer: that’s probably the wrong date)

Product Integration: Paying for your product to be in a television show, movie, radio, etc. See: “Product Placement.” Example: ET and Reese’s Pieces. See also: every other television show and movie for the past 30 years

Usage: “But sir, putting Marlboro in “Toy Story 3” sounds like poor product integration!

Seamless Integration: One thing and another thing go well together without any problems. Probably used most in mergers and acquisitions. I imagine this comes from the garment-making industry.

Usage: “No, Marlboro is seamlessly integrated in “Toy Story 3” because one of the toys is a cowboy!”

Think outside the box: Novel and creative thinking. Term coined by someone who probably never thought outside the box

Usage: “They must have really thought outside the box when they put cigarettes in a children’s movie, because now I really want a Marlboro!”

Synergy: Oh, synergy. Poor, poor synergy. Whipping boy of the buzzwords. The scapegoat. It’s a medical term adopted by business that basically means “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” It’s not always a great thing in medicine, but businesses LOVE synergy.

Usage: “By combining our businesses (chocolate and peanut butter), we can achieve synergy by making an incredibly delicious snack! This peanut butter and chocolate candy is better than if you just added peanut butter and chocolate together!”- Whoever made Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Low-Hanging Fruit: This one really annoys me. It’s some sort of fruit-picking metaphor adopted for business. In reality, it just means to reach the easiest goal without too much effort. If you were a lion, getting the low-hanging fruit would mean attacking the fattest and slowest antelope.

Usage: “We can capture the low-hanging fruit of the fast-food industry by targeting fat kids who already like our cheeseburgers!”

Secret Sauce: Seriously, I had never heard of this one before the list came out. Apparently people use it. Presumably, it’s derived from the fast food industry and means “Thousand Island Dressing,” but I think it actually just means “your strategy or product that gives you an advantage over everyone else, but they can’t figure out what it is”

Usage: “We need more secret sauce! Put that mayonnaise out in the sun!” (Disclaimer: That quote is from The Simpsons)
Business Usage: The secret sauce of McDonalds’ success is its consistency between each store; a Big Mac in New York is the exact same as a Big Mac in Tucson. And the secret sauce of McDonalds’ Big Mac is actually the secret sauce.

Paradigm Shift: I assume this means “using your secret sauce and thinking outside the box with a groundbreaking and innovative cutting edge technology that provides synergy and allows you to capture the low-hanging fruit with more ease to get real-time, dynamic results.” Otherwise, I think it just means something new and different is happening that revolutionizes the way people see your industry, business, or environment.

Usage: “Social Media is paradigm shift in Public Relations”

There are hundreds and hundreds more, but I’ll let you find them. Really, there’s a time and place for everything, even these buzzwords. I’ve used them a lot in resumes and applications and other business documents without remorse. They make me sound credible (which is exactly why everyone else uses them), and when used appropriately some actual do mean something (I’m talking to you, synergy).

I think writing with buzzwords is like going out for a night of drinking (maybe that’s why they’re called “buzz”words?). Think about it: if you have a few buzzwords or have a few drinks, you feel smarter and more confident. After a few more, you start to feel dizzy and unbalanced. After too many, you feel like vomiting, nobody understands what you’re saying and you’ll wake up in the morning feeling terrible about yourself. Remember, the content you create and the strategy you come up with is more important than the words you use to describe it. You need to use these words in a way that provides actual value and understanding. Buzz Responsibly.

A Millenial Dilemma: Trying to Find a (Work/Life) Balance

2010-07-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

My generation is a lot of things. We have a lot of great traits: we’re tech-savvy, we’re mobile, we’re driven (albeit in a different way than the other generations), and we’re always trying to be better. We’re also viewed very negatively by “them.” They say we have a high sense of entitlement without having earned it and have no attention span, but that’s for a different post. We tackle work differently too.

The 9 to 5 work schedule is crumbling because of technology. Smartphones are keeping us connected and able to answer emails all day and night, but they’re also allowing us to access our Facebook and Twitter accounts while we’re “working” (a lot of companies are very worried about this). We can stay connected to both worlds all day very easily. More than any previous generation, we’re seeing a merger of professional and personal life.

In the past, it was easier to keep work at work. If you were someone like Don Draper (Mad Men is back on July 25th!), you didn’t bring work home and definitely didn’t have the wife and kids on your mind at work. You’d go to work, flip on the “work mode” switch in your brain, and get working (admittedly, “work mode” in Mad Men sounds pretty great). Then, you’d come home (or the home of a mistress, or a bar, in Draper's case) and flip that switch off. Now, we’re never completely “off” and never completely “on,” which is restructuring how we spend our time. So the real question is this: How do we separate work and our personal lives? Here are a few ideas.

• Set Clear Boundaries: Because of the speed at which information is passed these days, it’s hard not to be connected. We get emails, notifications from Facebook, text messages, and Twitter updates all day, and it is frustrating when we can’t answer them in real-time. We’re hooked on technology because it literally affects our brain like love and cocaine. But in reality, is it really life or death to answer email while you’re out at a baseball game or a bar? Most of the time, everything will still be OK in the morning. Give yourself some time off.

• Separate Social Media Accounts: Some people have a personal and a professional twitter account. By keeping your personal contacts and friends on one Twitter account and then an occupation-specific account, you can make sure your lives don’t bleed into each other. This is something I don’t personally believe in. A lot of people think that you should keep separate ones, but I don’t see the point. I’m not about to whitewash myself just so employers think I’m someone else; I see it as inauthentic. Our generation is pretty into authenticity.

You know, the more and more I try to think of ways to separate life and work, the more I stop believing it’s possible. It’s not really an “on” or “off” life anymore, it’s more of a dimmer switch. This means that we’re going to need to adapt. Employers are going to have to learn how to deal with workers who are making plans and communicating with their friends over various channels while at work. Families will have to learn to cope with other family members who are always checking their email, never completely disconnected from their job. Some people going to learn how to balance these things, but I fear a lot won’t be up for the change. That’s too bad. We’ll move forward without them.

Life 2.0

2010-06-28T22:59:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, I remember how awesome renting a video game was (yes, I’m old enough to remember video stores. When I was a kid, we didn’t have Netflix). I’d play as long as my parents would allow it, then wake up SUPER early the next morning so I could beat my brothers to the SNES. I’d play and play and play, only stopping to eat and sleep. Because we only had the video game for a few days, it was important to play as much as I could to get as far in the game as possible. It was a good childhood.

Even though I no longer really play, I still like the idea of video games, how you can jump into an entirely different world for a few hours and do strange, impossible things. Luckily enough, we’re entering an age where life itself is turning into a video game. This is facilitated by mobile services and new technology, each seeming more like science fiction. Here are just a few of the relatively new services that make life just a little bit more fun. These technologies are probably going to become (or already are?) the next big things.
UPDATE: I forgot a few really interesting advances in technology, so I put them at the top.

Visual Search: This is a very new idea that is recently becoming more popular thanks to the app "Google Goggles." Still in relative infancy, this tech allows you to shoot a picture with your camera and "google it" based solely upon the picture. Right now it works best for logos and contacts, but I think that once it becomes more optimized, it will begin to recognize a lot of different objects and places (imagine it being integrated with Google Street View). In addition to this, there are other apps that can read barcodes (Goggles does this as well), so if you're looking for product information you can just use your phone to scan the barcode and Google will show you information. In addition to this, QR codes are the newest form of barcodes (they're 2D). Shoot a QR code with your camera and you'll be brought the company's website.

Facial Recognition: This technology already exists, but soon it is possible that it will be integrated into social media. Facebook has the just acquired a company that is able to tag pictures for you using facial recognition software. Google has said that it also has the technology, but is not using it yet. If these companies start to use this technology in its search engines (and I do see that happening, as an opt-in service), it could totally revolutionize search. Combining visual search, social media, and facial recognition technology would be like a new phone-book; add yourself to a directory with your social media information, and someone can use visual search or an Augmented Reality (more below) app to determine who you are, read some of your tweets, and learn a little about you. It sounds incredibly creepy, but I don't think it has to be. As long as the technology is opt-in, you'd have control over whether or not you want to be a part of it.

FourSquare: This is something I have just recently discovered in the last month or so, and man do I love it. Basically, it’s a mobile app turns your life into a video game; you get points for “checking in” to different places, and “badges” for accomplishing different tasks (check into enough different places, and you’re an explorer). FourSquare gets you to leave the house, if only to pick up on a few different points or to get that extra badge. Here’s where it starts to get interesting, and possibly worthwhile from a financial perspective. If you check-in to the same place more than any other person, you become the “Mayor,” which is awesome in its own right. However, the “hip” companies are starting to incentivize coming into their establishments by giving the Mayor a special. Starbucks was one of the first places to do it, but with a 40% month-over-month growth in users, it’s reasonable to assume lots of other places are gonna drink the FourSquare Kool-Aid (or was it Flavor Aid?) pretty quickly. And I’ll be there, ready to soak up some points and serve a second, third, or fourth term as Mayor.

Augmented Reality: Now here’s a cool idea . In one application, Augmented Reality (AR) basically turns your phone’s camera into a portal to a virtual world. Want to find a review for a restaurant? Just turn on an app like Layar and hold your camera up to that restaurant and get the review. The possibilities for technology like this is almost endless; Stella Artois has an app where you hold your camera up to find any bar that serves their beer. Other applications use your computer’s webcam to advertise products. If Wikipedia is to be trusted (and, let’s be honest, it is), we’ll see screens much like Minority Report (back when Tom Cruise wasn’t so nuts. Sorry, Knight and Day). Which brings us to another innovation….

Kinect: Nintendo launched the Wii a few years ago and changed the perception of video games and the people who played. The Wii made you get up and actually (god-forbid) EXERCISE a little (emphasis on little) bit while you were playing. It also was cheaper and easier to use than its competitors, so Nintendo was able to tap into a previously stagnant market for video games: families. It was definitely a revolution when it was released. But, the Wii still had a controller. Now, with Microsoft’s new XBOX360 add-on Kinect, you don’t even need that. Now your whole body is the controller, which opens up video gaming to a new world of interactivity. This is Microsoft saying “Put down the pork rinds and Mountain Dew, fatties, video games are ACTIVE.”

Geolocated Ads: We’re now mobile. Location-based mobile advertising is going to become one of the newest arenas in marketing. Targeting consumers based on their physical location would make advertising even more effective. If you were by a Starbucks, for example, you could get coupons for that Starbucks sent straight to your phone. It’s a much more individualized approach that would hit the right consumer at the right time, bumping up impulse purchases and making consumers more likely to buy products. Geolocated advertising is something that is going to explode with the proliferation of SmartPhones, as more and more consumers walk around with tiny computers in their pockets.

If these trends point to anything, it’s this: we no longer need to be tethered to any set geographic location to connect with the rest of the world. Call it Cordless-Existence. Life 2.0. Reality is becoming more and more virtual, which is pretty cool. The possibilities are endless in this new, video-game inspired world. I may not play videogames anymore and I certainly don’t wake up as early, but the wonder of interacting with the virtual world is still very much alive.

What I Learned (and Still Learn) From My Dad

2010-06-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

Father’s Day. One day a year. As a teenager, I always wondered why dads got a day, and moms got a day, but kids didn’t. Seemed unfair. The answer I got back was always, “every other day is kid’s day,” and I believe it now. Every other day of the year is devoted to children. So we have father’s day, one day a year, to honor everything our dads have done for us. Since the average cost of raising a kid these days is somewhere in the ballpark of $220,000 (if THAT isn’t effective birth control, I don’t know what is), we owe quite a bit. However, this debt goes so far beyond the physical things our fathers have provided for us. Everything I know, everything I’m currently learning, and everything I will learn has somehow been shaped by the lessons I was (and continue to be) taught by my mom and dad. I wish I had thought about doing something like this on Mother’s Day in May, because there are so many lessons from Mom too, but this post is about what I learned from my Dad.

DIY Isn’t Dead: Kids these days may be better using technology, but if there’s one thing we are lacking in, it’s a general knowledge of handyman skills. Plumbing. Landscaping. Auto Repair. Home remodeling. These are just a few things that I’m willing to bet all of our dads are at least somewhat proficient in. Maybe they aren’t good enough to be certified for any of these jobs, but they have a general idea of what to do. My generation would probably just use Google and pay someone to do it. We barely know how to change our own oil, or change a tire. Hell, we don't even know how to use a map anymore. I was lucky enough to have a father that knew how to do all of these things and was also able to pass some of it along to me. Do-It-Yourself shouldn’t be dead. We should all put down the laptops and smartphones once in a while and try harder to learn these skills.

It’s All About Sacrifice: I’ll probably get married. It sounds like a decent idea. Who knows, maybe my wife will even pop out a youngster, and I’ll be a Dad myself (as scary as that seems to anyone who currently knows me). If that happens, I hope to have half the ability to sacrifice my own desires and needs as my Dad does. That selflessness is something our generation really doesn’t do all that well (we got trophies for everything, so everything is about us). It’s all about giving up your own time, money, and effort for others, especially your family. It's acting like a chauffeur and driving kids to every imaginable ball game, appointment, or friend’s house when you just want to relax after work. Not getting sleep because your kids are having a loud sleepover. Spending your hard-earned money on a kid’s allowance, even when they do a crappy job. Taking the red-eye home just to be able to spend time with your family. It's sacrifice, and it’s something I hope to do better at in the future.

Cherish the Outdoors: When I was a kid, I absolutely loved hunting and fishing. Once I became a teenager, the thought of waking up at 4 am to go sit somewhere in the cold dark stopped being incredibly appealing, but I think I get it now; it’s all about being in the outdoors. One of the best things about growing up in Minnesota is the proximity to lakes and woods, and I spent a lot of time hanging out in cabins and sitting around bonfire pits. It’s so incredibly peaceful and serene, and I doubt I'll ever see anything as beautiful as a late-September day in Northern Minnesota (see picture). I still love outdoors, and my one and only plan for my future is to get a cabin up there. I doubt I would have such affection for being outside without taking these trips with my Dad, spending time launching boats at 5am or walking to a Marsh under the early-morning sky.

This is Google's, but it's fairly accurate. Heaven.

Get a dog: No further explanation needed.

Listen Up: Teenagers are assholes. That is a universal truth. They think they know everything, and won’t listen to any piece of advice. I was no exception. The sad part about adolescence is it’s probably the best time to learn how to be an adult, to soak up all you can about being a successful person, but teens don’t simply don’t want to learn. My advice: LISTEN, assholes. I’m not saying you have to respect your elders; many don’t deserve all that much respect. But you might as well listen to what they have to say. They’ve been through a lot and have had experiences you never will get to (or have to) have, and are at least deserving of being heard out. I have the advantage of being able to both listen to and respect my Dad and his teachings. Just lucky, I guess. And, on that note…

Teach the Right Lessons: The beauty of life is that it’s fairly cyclical. You’re born, you grow up, have kids of your own, and hopefully you’re able to pass on some information to them. You’ll probably even have to deal with asshole teenagers of your own someday (karma for your adolescence, if you want to see it that way). Eventually, they’re going to want to listen to the things you have to say, so you might as well teach them the right things. Kids deify their parents, and mimic their every word and action. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, if you want to venture into clichés-ville. That’s a lot of responsibility to bear. Set a good example. Make sure you are (when you’re around your kids, at least) acting like you want your kids to act, and you’re saying things you would be OK with them saying. I STILL don’t usually swear in front of my parents, and that is a result of how my parents spoke when they were around their kids.

I could go on and on with these lessons, but for the sake of the four people who read anything I write, I won’t. I like to (half)-joke that The Simpsons is responsible for the type of person I am today, but in reality it is all due to my upbringing and my parents’ desire to raise someone like me. They’ve did pretty well, if I do say so myself. I hope, for the sake of society, I’m not a father anytime soon (I’m reserving the right to act irresponsibly until I am 30), but when I am I hope I can be one-tenth the man my dad is.These lessons, and so many more, will hopefully get me there.

Happy Father's Day

Damage Control

2010-06-13T00:34:00.000-05:00

BP is in hot (oily) water. With pictures like these (only look if you want your weekend/month/year ruined) almost beating out those Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials for saddest-animals-ever all because of your company, there’s a lot of hatred being thrown at the Charles Montgomery Burns of oil companies (oil companies are also the Mr. Burnses of life). Rightly so. This BP disaster caused 11 deaths on an oil rig and is an environmental catastrophe. “PR nightmare” doesn’t even begin to explain the mess BP is in. “We will get it done. We will make this right” is the headline on the nine full-page ads it has been releasing in the New York Times. How do you make something like this right? Time for damage control, but how? Here are some ideas I have about getting back into the good graces of the public after something goes wrong.

Be Proactive: Tackle the issue right away. Get it taken care of before it hits the media, though in this modern Twitter-verse that’s near impossible. Get on it without waiting having to be told to start. Don’t let the public’s anger or disappointment fester for too long (right, FEMA?). Find out the issue, the easiest and most effective way to fix the problem, and get it done quickly. This will show that you care, are aware of the issue, and are attempting to do the right thing. Get on Twitter, send out some press releases, use a bullhorn if you have to; let the public know that you've made a mistake and are doing all you can to remedy the situation.This is something BP is attempting to do, but it has been over 50 days since the disaster, and none of their ideas have been working (though “Top Kill” would make for a really kickass movie title).

Own Up: Something bad happened. We know it, and you know it too. The world’s too quick and connected these days to just think it will blow over. You have to own up to your mistake, right away, if you want to have any credibility and get any sympathy from the masses. Apologize, but don’t go overboard and pretend that you’ve done irreparable damage to the environment and tens of thousands of animals unless you have in fact done that. Acknowledge that you and your company have made a mistake, that you’re going to fix it, and that everything will soon be back to normal. Don't go overboard.You should be genuinely sorry, but don’t beg for forgiveness. Earn it.

Be Patient: For a while, your company/brand is going to hurt financially and from a PR perspective. It’s going to be criticized by the media, lampooned by popular culture, and hated by the public. Eventually, if you try hard enough to get it done and make it right, and you are genuinely sorry, they’ll forgive you. People still buy Toyotas, even if for a while it looked like the company was trying to recreate the movie Speed. However, this oil spill seems different, and BP might not be so lucky. This disaster is like the Exxon Valdez if it was directed by Michael Bay.There really isn’t a way to make things right, especially after you’re responsible for thousands of oily animals and s hutting down the World’s Oldest Oyster Company…shuck you, BP.

Switcheroo: Sometimes, your brand is so connected to a terrible event that there is nothing you can do to get away from it. Sometimes, your brand is perceived by the public as evil (Monsanto comes to mind, if you’ve seen Food, Inc.), and no amount of baby-kissing or “I’m sorrys” can change that. The only answer here is to pull a Dick Whitman and switch your identity. Change your name, become a different brand entirely, and a lot of people will be duped. This strategy was best employed by the banana industry, surprisingly enough. There once was a company called the United Fruit Company, and it had a large part in the development of many countries in Latin America. It was accused of neocolonialism. Just read this quote from its Wikipedia page: “The United Fruit Company was frequently accused of bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting its workers, contributing little by way of taxes to the countries in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies.” This is a company that was selling delicious fruit, not oil, yet it was taking part in some truly sketchy things. Noticing that it had a bad reputation, the company rebranded, and is now known as Chiquita. Feel a little guilty now? The point is, BP could take a page out of the United Fruit playbook and rename itself. The name BP will forever be linked to what may become known as “The Year the Ocean Died,” but that doesn’t mean the company needs to be.

Disasters like this fortunately don’t happen that often. BP is at the center of a global disaster that threatens myriad industries: commercial fishing, food, wildlife preservation, and many others are getting screwed over because of a greedy company’s complete and utter screw-up. I don’t see BP coming out of this smelling of roses for a very, very long time (if ever). It will take years and years to forget about April 2010 in the Gulf Coast, and it will take even longer for the Gulf to recover (if it ever does). Unless jamming the pipeline with golf-balls or using donated panty-hose from Hooters girls to soak up the oil works, we’re in for a big sludgy mess. These tips are good for a Toyota-sized snafu, not an epic, environment-changing catastrophe.

Making the Idiot Box Smarter

2010-06-10T16:17:00.013-05:00

A few months ago, I had an interview for a company in Madison. I had to give a 10-minute presentation on anything I wanted. I chose to do a presentation on The Simpsons, but in a way that connected it to the ethos of the 90's, and how the show was an important critique of modern culture. After I started preparing for the presentation, it dawned on me how similar this show and what is generally considered the best TV show ever, The Wire, are. The Wire was a show on HBO that centered on the drug trade in Baltimore, but it was also a show about how the institutions that drive the world are corrupt and let us down. The local government, police force, public school system, and media are institutions that are supposed to aid the people, yet because of funding, red tape, and sensationalism they let us down. In its own way, The Simpsons does exactly that. What follows is a rough outline of what I said during the presentation. I may not have gotten the job, but it did allow me to think deeper about two of my favorite TV shows.

Like many people my age, I grew up on the Simpsons. Every day after school, I would come home and watch it in syndication, and every Sunday Night was devoted to new episodes. I loved the humor of it. Just like every other kid, I wanted to BE Bart Simpson. I had all sorts of merchandise; the t-shits, the spiky hair, the action figures. Some of the first books I read were simple episode guides: they were just full of plotlines, synopses, and quotes from each episode that had been aired. I devoured the Simpsons, and I still do.

I still watch the Simpsons religiously. I speak Simpson-ese as a second language. I can’t even recall how many times I quote the characters, often on accident. It isn’t often that a TV show resonates with popular culture the way the Simpsons did. It broke all of the rules of television: a cartoon prime-time sitcom? Unheard of, at the time. Without the Simpsons, there would be no South Park, no Family Guy, no Adult Swim. But it goes far beyond that; it’s not a stretch to think there would be no Arrested Development, no 30 Rock, without the residents of Springfield. Read on (if you dare) to think much, much deeper about "Our Favorite Family."

I think the Simpsons is a cultural institution for a number of reasons, but mostly because it connects with different people on different levels. As a kid, I liked it simply because it was funny; on the surface, it’s a show about a bumbling nuclear family, an inept father, and a bratty, rebellious spiky-haired boy. But, now that I’m older, I appreciate the show for what it really is: a complete critique of organizations, institutions, American Culture, television, and comedy itself. It even has ties to post-modernism, blending the “low culture” of television with “high culture” through a huge number of literary and cultural references and allusions. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’m going to try to get you to think about the Simpsons in a much deeper way.

If there’s one over-arching theme of the Simpsons over its 21-year run, it’s that institutions are not to be trusted. You should question authority. The 90’s disillusionment with organizations can be seen throughout each episode of the show. Religion, energy, local government, sports, and the media itself are all targets. The show urges the viewer to ask questions, to not blindly follow authority. Each head of these institutions, from Reverend Lovejoy to Nuclear Power Tycoon Mr. Burns to the Mayor are corrupt and fallible in some way. The Simpsons is a very powerful tool of critique of the people behind these institutions, and their failure to stabilize the lives of the citizens.

Take religion, for example. The writers don’t have a problem with the concept of religion or God, but are unhappy with the people that run the churches. The church in Springfield is run by a narcissist whose wife is the town gossip. In one episode, he sold advertising space on every piece of the church, monetizing church to the point of causing Lisa Simpson to become a Buddhist. This plotline ties in with the increasing monetization churches have actually gone through; religion is no longer holy, but an opportunity to sell. Yet, the Simpsons family still attends church each Sunday, as does most of the town. Religion may be corrupt, but the residents of Springfield still see value in taking part in it.

The Public School System, and its complete lack of passion or effectiveness, is another American institution that keeps the Simpsons’ writers flowing with material. The teachers are bored, alcoholic, lonely people who would rather show an out-dated film reel. The principal still lives with his mom and is completely out of touch with the needs of his students, and only exists to please the Superintendent and his mother. If there is one character who completely embodies for failure of Public Schools, it is fan-favorite Ralph Wiggum. The borderline-retarded son of borderline-retarded Police Chief Wiggum (himself an example of the incompetency of Law Enforcement), Ralph is someone who can’t go in the deep-end of his sandbox, who doesn’t get to use pointy-scissors, and who utters such memorable phrases as “Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”

Capitalism and the American Corporation is lampooned in the show through a character described by Conan O’Brien as “infinitely old and infinitely evil,” Mr Burns. Personally, he is my favorite character. Mr. Burns is evil enough to literally steal candy from a baby. This is a man who blocked out the sun in order to increase demand for nuclear power. He follows this simple idea: “Family, friends, religion; these are the three demons you must slay in order to succeed at business.” Mr. Burns really is a stand-in for the cold, profit-driven, hate-filled stereotype we have been given about the CEOs of major companies (something that is continually reinforced by real-life events; thanks Enron, BP, Goldman Sachs, and Bernie Madoff). He praises the almighty dollar and will stop at nothing to be richer. Blocked off from the rest of his minions by Yes-Men like his right-hand-man (and secret admirer) Smithers, he doesn’t even remember most of his employees’ names. He represents the greedy, money-obsessed, impersonal American Corporation because he IS an evil billionaire tycoon.

Media and popular culture is a huge target of much of the early Simpsons comedy, which is a pretty bold thing for a show actually on television to make fun of. The main cartoon all of the kids watch, “The Itchy and Scratchy Show,” is a vehicle to show what is wrong with television: there is no plot, only sensationalistic, violent imagery. Yet, the kids are entranced by it. The show’s other favorite television target is Krusty the Clown, the host of the show that airs the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. In “real life,” Krusty is an alcoholic, tax evading, violent and unhappy person, yet the kids idolize him. He puts his name on any product, no matter how unsafe (Gum with spider eggs, cereal with a jagged toy in the box, Krusty Brand Pregnancy tests that “may cause birth defects,” to name a few). The takeaway is that you can‘t trust your idols on television any more than your idols at church. The people behind the masks and makeup are just as fallible as the rest of us. Then there's Troy McClure, who “you may remember from such self-help films as ‘Smoke Yourself Thin!’ and ‘Get Confident, Stupid!’” Troy is a washed-up actor still riding on the coattails of a past success, always trying to get his name out there to reclaim his former fame. This is an early pre-cursor to the celebrity-laden Internet, TMZ, and our inability to look away from the train-wreck lives of Lindsay Lohan and Brittany Spears.

This being the Simpsons, it leaves plenty of critique for itself. This style of meta-comedy is something that EXPLODED since the Simpsons first began to invade the airwaves, and is a favorite of my generation. It constantly makes fun of itself, its legacy, and its merchandising. As early as the third season, episodes were making fun of all of the shameless products with the Simpsons brand on it; t-shirts, toys from Burger King, Butterfinger Bars, multiple CD’s, and countless bootleg items. There’s an episode of the show where “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” is slipping in ratings and brings in a hip, badass younger character named Poochie to save the show, and in the same episode the Simpsons brings in a hip, badass younger character named Roy. It makes fun of all of the “wacky adventures” their characters go on, and how if they just ride it out and say a few wacky catchphrases, everything will return to normal.

Because I’ve already spent more than 1,000 words writing about the Simpsons, I’ll stop there. It goes without saying that a show like the Simpsons will forever be linked to late-20th-century culture, and will likely go down in history as one of the greatest and most important television series of all time. But if you take the time to really analyze the satire, you'll end up getting the message: don't trust authority.

How to Sell to Millenials

2010-05-24T13:24:00.010-05:00

A little less than a year ago, Miracle Whip came out with new ads, targeted at people my age (somewhere around 18-24, I would guess). The ad campaign proclaimed “Don’t be so Mayo,” that Miracle Whip was as rebellious as we were, that it somehow could tap into our generation and provide us with kickass mayo-substitute that wasn’t so bland, so mayo. It got lampooned on the Colbert Report, which gave it a great amount of earned media, and even ran advertisements calling Stephen Colbert out (during his ad-space). While they’ve since gone on to place their new product in a Lady Gaga video, “Telephone” (which I think is a much better way to reach our generation), I think they missed the message.

Our generation doesn’t want to be communicated to like that anymore. Our generation is one that grew up being bombarded with advertising everywhere. We know that we’re often being lied to, and we’re getting a little pissed off about it. We’re jaded and cynical about advertising, and irony is a second-language to us (if there aren’t enough ironic moustaches and three-wolf-moon shirts in your neighborhood, they soon will be). Kotex has a campaign that I think is more effective at reaching us than Miracle Whip was, all because it understands the way our generation acts.

I’m not a Kotex user (and, barring some massive operations, never will be). I have no idea what girls expect out of ads for “feminine hygiene products,” and I don’t know whether its sales are going to increase or decrease. I could care less about what product Kotex is selling, but their UbyKotex campaign is, in my opinion, done very well and tailored to our generation well. The ads (here and here)basically make fun of every tampon commercial. The imagery, the dancing girls, the white pants….they’re all lampooned here. Instead of reinforcing these old clichés, these ads decide to make fun of them, Kotex admits to its own previous BS. This sort of straight-talk is something our disillusioned generation respects, and I suspect this is exactly why Kotex went with this strategy.

Companies that want to sell something to us are going to have to begin talking like us. This doesn’t necessarily mean using our slang (that changes far too fast), but at least using our tone. We’re a generation that grew up on the Simpsons, Conan, and Seinfeld. We’re used to sardonic humor, satire, and meta-comedy. We know how to make fun of ourselves, and we expect that a brand should be able to make fun of itself too. So, the takeaway for brands here is that if you want to sell something to us, don’t dumb the message down, and don’t forget who you’re communicating to. We’ll listen, but only if you get our tone right. Either give us the straight facts or make it funny, but do not assume we're dumb one-way recipients of your message.

RIP Privacy, Hello Transparency

2010-05-20T10:50:00.005-05:00

Mark Zuckerberg is watching you. Facebook has been getting a lot of negative buzz lately because of its privacy settings and how intrusive they seem. Facebook also added the ability to “Like” things all over the internet, meaning it can see and aggregate all of your likes together and hopefully derive some meaningful insights from them (like the Black Keys? Here’s an Ad!). If this seems a little Orwellian, you’re probably right. Zuckerberg thinks that privacy is dead, that it’s something we no longer really desire. I think there’s a little bit of truth to that.

Think about your life online. You probably have a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account if you’re my age (or at least one of them). You’ve probably shared most of your public contact information (email, phone number, Skype/AIM name) with something on the internet, and you probably also skipped over the legal mumbo jumbo that tells you how they are able to use it. Anytime you send an email, researchers can scour them for keywords and use that data. Here we are, in the age of rabid transparency.

In this strange new world of transparency, how you interact on the internet will be remembered forever. The pages you view, the comments you make on youtube, the tweets you send out. It just makes me happy that I barely missed the age of putting your baby doing stupid stuff on Youtube (I’ll take 5 sets of eyeballs over 13 Million, thank you very much). These things are all being archived (if they aren’t, somebody is missing an opportunity). Eventually, this archive will be a time capsule, a small look into our lives in the new millennium (BEFORE everyone had hover cars and jetpacks and sentient housemaid robots). But now, it can be used for research and meaningful insights, delivering you targeted advertising based upon your internet habits. What we’re seeing now is a rise in accountability. Your 15 minutes of fame have been extended indefinitely (Andy Warhol would have loved the internet). You can’t burn your online diary, shred your emails, or hide the video tapes Watergate-style. Once it’s on the internet, it’s there for good.

So, what do you do to hide from Big Brother Facebook? You could just avoid the internet completely (Brother Jebediah), but that doesn’t seem realistic these days. The key to surviving this new world is to manage your online presence. Make sure that nothing too inflammatory comes out of your keyboard, keep the dirty pictures out, and watch where you visit. Make sure everything you do online is really just an extension of who you are. If everyone’s watching, at least wave your flag.

All this being said, I think this transparency is a good thing; it makes us look more human when some of our failures are up on the internet. It’s also nice to know that most of the time when you’re giving out information, you’re not really your name. You’re just an 18-34 year old male from Wisconsin. None of the personal information is collected; your likes, dislikes, and visits are aggregated to form a larger data set. This data is then used to figure out what advertisements to send you, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just an internet experience catered to you. So, the key to surviving the brave new world of internet transparency is the same advice your mother has been telling you all of your life: be yourself.

The Case For Twitter

2010-05-16T20:32:00.007-05:00

We’ve all heard the complaints about Twitter. Why do we need to know what Kim Kardashian had for lunch? Why join a network where Ashton Kutcher is the most popular? Who the hell is Justin Bieber and why is he ALWAYS “trending?” Ok, I’ll admit it, these are all very valid questions and very valid reasons to be apprehensive about Twitter. However, once you get past these inane ramblings of celebrities, you’ll learn that Twitter does matter, especially for your company. Here’s why.

This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Media Landscape We’re in an age of clutter. Advertisements are everywhere; TV, the internet, radio, billboards, before movies, during sporting events…even on people (Forehead Advertising is real). We’re overwhelmed. It’s inescapable, and we as consumers are getting annoyed. We’re so mad, in fact, that we ignore most ads; DVRs allow us to skip ads on TV and iPods let us bypass the radio. We’re sick and tired of being told what to buy, what services to use, where to eat, and how to live. How does a brand cut through the clutter? Enter Twitter, which turns a brand into your friend.

Target Practice Let’s pretend you’re at an archery range in the traditional media landscape. The brand is an archer, and the brand’s message is the arrow. Guess what, Sucker, you’re the target! The brand shoots its message at you, and you just have to sit and take it. Not so fun, huh? Well, social media gives you a bow and allows you to shoot right back. Now we’re talking.

One of the biggest benefits of Twitter and social media in general is that it allows a brand to have a conversation with its customers. Instead of broadcasting a message, a brand can actually engage consumers in real-time. Think of it as an always on-call customer service department. If someone has an issue with your product, you can respond swiftly before it gets negative publicity. Compliments about your brand? You can Retweet it to your followers and spread the good news. Customers learn to trust your brand, and good friends are always listened to.

Listen Up Twitter also empowers consumers to have conversations with each other about your brand, increasing Word-of-Mouth advertising for your brand. Twitter lets a brand listen to its consumers in real-time, and provides a constant stream of insights about products, services, and how to improve overall customer service. Twitter becomes the World’s Biggest and Best Focus Group, and your brand becomes the World’s Least-Creepy Eavesdropper.

Convinced? Twitter matters. In an age where consumers are constantly bombarded with communications they don’t want to receive and can ignore, Twitter cuts through the clutter. Twitter facilitates communication between your brand and its customers, and also internet chatter into meaningful insights. Drink the Twitter kool-aid. Connect to consumers, collect information, and correct mistakes. Join the conversation.

Rebranding Isn't Just For Brands

2010-05-13T21:00:00.006-05:00

“Where you come from is gone, where you’re going to was never there, and where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”
-Flannery O’Connor

As I sit here on Graduation-Eve Eve, desperately trying to study but ultimately failing (I’m listening to music and my test is about music, so….win?), I find myself thinking about the future. Monday, May 16th is LITERALLY the first day of the rest of my life. Everything’s changing. The only world I know is going to be gone (though I’ve still got plenty of debt to remind myself of college). It’s a little terrifying, but it’s also new, which is incredibly exciting. So, instead of mourning four years of my life that will rank as the most enjoyable, wild, and exciting ever, I might as well see the positive sides of graduating.

Congrats, class of 2010! We each get a graduation present: the opportunity for reinvention. The best brands, products, and services adapt based on changes in culture, trends, and technology. Unless you’re Coca-Cola, you don’t stay relevant for so long by being the same. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to rebrand ourselves.

Rebranding. Don Draper did it (yes, he’s a TV character. I watch TV. Get over it). Dick Whitman didn’t like who he was and where he was from, so he changed into Don Draper. He took the hidden parts of his personality and projected them. Robert Zimmerman did it, too. Here’s a kid from northern Minnesota who decided there was something better out there, picked up his guitar and moved to New York to become Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is the best example of personal rebranding I can think of. Musically, he went from folk and blues to protest music to surrealist electric rock to country. And that's only the first decade of his career.Hell, if the Rolling Stones can make a disco album, you can change too. Become someone new. Reinvent. The world is dynamic. Not even your personality should stand still.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t whitewashing the past. It’s not even really about looking more appealing to recruiters and higher-ups at your job. It’s about the opportunity to let others see you in a different way. We’re in for a lifetime of first impressions, but in these next few months and years we’re going to be experiencing a TON of them. Make them count. Play around with different sides of your personality, see which one fits. Nobody said you had to figure out who you were yet, so use that to your advantage.

I’m not talking about some extreme, Britney-Spears-shaving-her-head change. This isn’t Urkel making a machine that turns him into a suave, debonair Stephan Urquell (not all the TV I watch is high quality). This is about is taking existing parts of your personality and messing around with the percentages a little bit to let other aspects of your personality shine. Become more outgoing by forcing yourself to speak up at group events, even if it’s a little stressful. Tell more jokes. Argue with people. You’re no longer bounded by everyone already knowing who you are, so there are very few preconceptions about you. Use that. It’s a wonderful gift.

Recruitment Rebellion

2010-04-27T12:54:00.008-05:00

Some people aren't good at job interviews. I'm one of those people. I see job interviews as first dates: putting on a mask and looking for a long-term relationship by saying what the other person wants to hear for an hour. Playing the game.

Ever since high school, I've been told to play the game, to get involved. The end goal of this, they said, was to have something to put on your college application and your resume. I never liked the idea of doing something or joining anything for the sole purpose of padding my resume. I didn't play the game, but I worked hard and did what I wanted, and I still got into UW-Madison. I'll still get the job I want. Eventually.

Here's what I propose. Call it "Free Freelancing." Give me work to do, for free, and see what I'm capable of. If I'm going to be writing copy, give me a product and a target market and let me work something out. Give me a problem and I'll solve it, or at least try. If you like my work, give me more work. If that work is what you're looking for, we can talk long-term. It's cost-effective, it's risk-free, and I imagine it's a better predictor of future success than an interview. No games, no embellishing, no masks. If formal interviews are first dates, this is having coffee with someone you kinda might be into.

If it sounds like I'm condemning people for playing the game, I'm not. I'm just looking for a job on terms that are more attractive for me.

Talkin Bout My Generation: Who We Are

2010-04-10T17:17:00.006-05:00

Millenials.

That's us. It's who we've been branded as by whoever decides what generations are titled. The text generation. The twittering masses. Whatever we are, people want to define us, and sell to us. Those Miracle Whip ads (mayonnaise is HARDCORE) were made to get us to buy it. Everyone seems to have their opinion on us, so let's at least try to bust up some misconceptions.

Entitled. The word we all use for people who get something that they don't deserve. Apparently we're entitled because we believe in big salaries, big job titles, big lives. And you know what, they're right. We DO feel like we deserve all of that. But who can blame us? We're the ones who are paying an incredible amount of money for the same knowledge our parents got at a fraction of the price. We need a big salary because their generation made student loans a HUGE hurdle in our twenty-something lives. We'll be paying our school loans off at the same time as our mortgages. So maybe we do deserve that salary. Why else do we feel so entitled? We're the "good job for trying!" generation that got a trophy for being in last place, just because we participated. If you congratulate every kid for just being a part of something, we're going to want to be rewarded just for being there. Blame's on you, old fogies. And Big Lives? I blame celebrity culture, but maybe that's an argument for another time.

Nine to Five. Does anyone work those hours anymore? They don't make sense anymore, and maybe we're just the first people to pick up on this fact. In a globalized world, there is no nine-to-five. There is only working and not working. The last thing any of us wants to do is be stuck in rush hour, listening to some crappy morning or night DJ, to go into a meeting to accomplish something that could be done just as easily through Skype or AIM.

There's probably some truth to the idea that we're just not as smart as our generational predecessors, without using that darned "web thing." They probably know every state capital, who was Secretary of State in 1956, and how to quickly and painlessly do any long division we throw at them, but maybe that's irrelevant. We have technology, suckas. I bet we can find any of that information out just as quickly using google, wikipedia, or a calculator. So, unless we've crashed our plane onto a remote island and need to figure out who was the Chief of Staff under Hoover, I think we'll be alright.

So, that's part of who we are. I'm sure there's more. We're different, but we'll survive.

Exile on State Street: On Graduation and What's Next

2010-04-06T08:38:00.006-05:00

In less than 45 days, I will no longer be a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I will have graduated from the School of Business with a double major in Marketing and MHR-Management. At this point, I'll have graduated without finding a permanent "real-person" job. Let's just all let life sink in for a second.

People keep asking me if I'm ready to graduate, if I'm excited for whatever comes next, etc etc. I never have any idea how to answer them because there are so many emotions associated with it: fear, anticipation, exhiliration, fun, sadness...pretty much all of the above. Most of all, an overwhelming sense of confusion is the way I guess I could describe it, because after graduation life is just one big uncertainty at this point.

I've had my fair share of fun (and your share, too) in the last four years and I'd like to think I've learned a few things in class. But, more than academics, I think the learning has been going on outside of the classroom. Things you learn when you aren't attempting to learn seem more relevant to me: time management, budgeting, social skills, stress management. These aren't usually things I would associate with school, though most of them are applicable to the classroom as well.

The point is, while I'm not discounting what I've learned from school, I've learned a whole lot more about myself and my abilties on my down-time.

What's Next. I have no idea, and most of the people I've talked to have no idea either. I would venture to say 75% of the people I know who are looking for post-grad "real-person" work are stilll searching, still applying, still interviewing. With less than 45 days left, we're scrambling. We're scared, confused, and uncertain. Still, we've survived 4 years at UW and lived to tell about it, so we shouldn't be. We're intelligent, we're talented, and we're adaptable. That should be about enough for anyone to want us.

This all being said, here are a few things I've learned.

Interviewing is like bad speed-dating. You go in, talk to a person you've never met about yourself for a half-hour, and then hope they ask you for a second date. There's a fair share of awkward pauses, forced laughter, and plenty of fake smiles. All of this is done hoping you'll somehow make a connection and will begin a long-term relationship.
Applying for jobs is a crapshoot. Half of the jobs you want, you'll never hear from. There are scam jobs out there, preying on people like us. It's a minefield, people, and we're all on our own.
There's got to be a better way to get a job. Interviews and resumes just encourage us to lie, embellish, and generally act fake. This is all fine and well for speed-dating, but just will lead to disappointment when they learn you aren't who you say you are. With all of the blogs, social media sites, etc available we should be able to be ourselves. People could learn more about me from my facebook, twitter, and writing than through "tell me about a time when..." questions.

I think I like the idea of writing again, so maybe next entry will be something about our generation, the so-called "millenials." There's a lot to be said.

Celebrity Deathtember!

2009-09-14T20:26:00.006-05:00

In lieu of what happened in late June this year, and Patrick Swayze kicking the bucket today (September 14th, 2009), it's time to see which celeb deaths will happen next (since they always come in threes)

...drumroll please

It'll be Madonna and Vince the Shamwow Guy!

Why? Well, first there had to be a relatively expected death. That honor goes to Farrah Fawcett/Ed McMahon (cancer and old age). This spot is where our buddy from such classics as "Roadhouse," "Ghost," and "Dirty Dancing" belongs (pancreatic cancer). RIP Patrick

Next in June came the real bombshell: king of pop/mutant/friend-of-children-everywhere Michael Jackson died. This actually came out of the blue. Madonna fits in here, as she is another world-wide pop icon of the 80's whose death would be a shock, and she's right around the same age. No worries, Kaballah will save her if she's lucky

As sort of an anti-climax, Billy Mays, the coked-out OxyClean/OrangeGlo/whatever the hell else he was selling at the time TV pitchman, went up to that Made-for-TV Store in the sky. It only follows that his mortal enemy (in my mind) is up next. Vince is the Shamwow/Slapchop pitchman-extraordinaire who can sell shitty rags to the masses and yet STILL finds time to beat up hookers. Naturally, the gonorrhea he probably has will take him out, or maybe a deranged pimp/ho is gonna finally finish him off.

There you have it, folks, my celebrity death predictions for September 09

Tangled Up In the Blues

2009-02-23T00:27:00.003-06:00

The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding
~Willie Dixon

In between procrastinating for my Consumer Behavior test tomorrow and watching the Oscars, I was looking through my iTunes and saw that I had no less than six artists whose names started with the word "Blind," a la Blind Willie McTell. Not sure why everyone wanted to identify themselves as lacking the ability to see, but that's irrelevant. But, this revelation got me to thinking about the blues.

I love blues music. Absolutely dig it. I think it's safe to say that most of the music I listen to would not exist if it wasn't for these old bluesmen. In that music you can hear pain, suffering, loneliness, heartbreak, breakups, loss, and a million other emotions we have come to acknowledge as "emo." Well, these guys did it first, and they did it better. It's cathartic to listen to people sing about being broke and lonely, with only their guitars to keep them company. I don't sing along to songs or hum very often, but blues music always get my foot tappin and my best hummin voice out. And i really, really want to learn the harmonica and pick the guitar back up when I hear something like "my baby left me, ain't got a dollar to my name" come outta the speakers.

Listening to Robert Johnson is like being reborn in the prohibition era. After selling his soul to the devil for the ability to play the blues, this guy belted out only two albums worth of music, and only two actual pictures of the guy have ever surfaced, died at 27 (the founder of the 27 club), yet his influence is as legendary as his life. Eric Clapton wouldn't even be a household name without Johnson, and Bob Dylan has said that Robert Johnson was one of the most influential artists on him. Listen to "Ramblin on My Mind" or "32-20 blues," or stick with "crossroads blues," his story about selling his soul to the devil.

One of my favorite songs right now is one called "Tupelo Blues" by John Lee Hooker. I know a whole lot less about him, but the songs of his I've heard are incredible. Try it here, thank me later.

You become unstuck in time when you listen to blues music. I'm not sure what kinda music we would have nowadays without it. Hip hop/R & B/rap all owe a great deal to these old singers, as does most of the popular music today. Rock and roll is a weird, awkward child of the blues, old jazz (the strange cousin of blues that took a lot of amphetamines and left the words out), and country. we owe a lot to those singers

So, validate my getting a lesser grade in class tomorrow and get yourself some education in the blues

On "On the Road"

2009-02-16T00:29:00.003-06:00

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

One of my favorite books of the last coupla years is Jack Kerouac's masterpiece "On The Road". There's more excitement, adventure and lunacy in that book than most people feel in a lifetime. It's a kick-in-the-nads to lifelessness, a restless travelling book that ushered in the 60's and created an entire subculture that was the Beat Generation, which had nothing to do with bongos and black turtlenecks. Sal and Dean (Kerouac and Neal Cassady) wanted raw experience, and rambled around the US trying to meet everyone, do everything, learn and know every bit of info there was to know. The book definitely makes me want to load up a car and head out, with no direction or plan, have crazy parties and dig some seedy bars.

Kerouac may have been a lonesome alcoholic that lived with his mom and died before he was 50, but he wrote some damn good books. Read it, then move onto Dharma Bums and eventually hit Big Sur, though that one's a little hard to stomach (DT's and loneliness don't sound as fun as jazz, speed and road trips). Kerouac had his issues, but I think I can relate to his drive to kill boredom while at the same time fighting the urge to seclude himself in a cabin in the woods, or on a mountain (Big Sur and Desolation Angels, respectively).

If my life is half as interesting and filled with wild, mad characters like Dean Moriarty, I can die happy.

So It Comes to This

2009-02-15T23:40:00.004-06:00

I finally gave into boredom and thought I'd give the world what it wants: my perception of the world. If you don't think there's enough demand for it, you're already wrong.

Might as well start off with an introduction of sorts

I'm Tom. I go to school at UW Madison and I'll probably be outta here with a degree in marketing within the next year or two.

I'm a huge fan of Bob Dylan and the Simpsons, and that'll probably be the brunt of what i talk about on here, because that's the kinda crap i have stuck in my head most of the time.

Anywho, the inspiration well is running a little dry at the moment and I have nothing of value to say.