Tuesday, July 13, 2010
"Spice"-ing Up Advertising
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?
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Jaded Gen-Y Guide to Business Buzzwords
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.
Friday, July 9, 2010
A Millenial Dilemma: Trying to Find a (Work/Life) Balance
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.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Life 2.0
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.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
What I Learned (and Still Learn) From My Dad
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Damage Control
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Making the Idiot Box Smarter
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