I'm currently working towards a career in advertising. Some of the things I hope to demonstrate through this blog include: my social media abilities, my ability to write, the ability to think strategically, the ability to think creativity and my knowledge of the advertising industry.
A rare occurance
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If you know me it’s no suprise that Nas is my favourite Hip-Hop artist.
I’ve mentioned in the past to Matt and Afran about how Nas is one of those
kind of ...
Attractive Struggling Artist + Internets = Magic
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Coca-Cola's recent partnership with YouTube and Facebook brings us a kick
ass advertising/entertainment/social media collaboration for Sprite called,
"Gre...
While my blog has been fairly stagnant for the last little while, it's not because of a lack of effort. Okay, I probably could put in a bit more effort, but I've been busy with a number of personal and professional projects, such as the book I'm putting together for myself, working on career stuff and...being a rock star? I have mentioned in the past that I dabbled in music. In my free time over these last few weeks, I've decided to learn the bass guitar. I'm having a lot of fun with it and even performed live at my local street party. Anybody looking for a drummer or bassist for next year's Battle of the Ad Bands in New York?
My other big "excuse" for not updating as frequently as I used to is, I've been busy getting career stuff together. In fact, I got a new job and am officially starting Monday! I'm really excited for a chance to live the dream of aspiring ad people everywhere.
If you still follow my blog, thank you for your support! I'll do my best in the coming weeks to make it up to you!
This video brought back a lot of old memories for me. Back when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were at their commercial peak, they put down the weapons, picked up some instruments, and hit the road. At the time, I thought that the Coming Out of Their Shells tour was the coolest thing ever. I had bitten on the Ninja Turtle cultural movement, and HARD. As part of my conquest to have everything Ninja Turtle-related, I made my parents take me to Pizza Hut to pick up the poster and album.
Until watching these videos on YouTube now, I actually never saw the concert. It's a really weird feeling of my life feeling one puzzle piece closer to completion, yet the piece doesn't fit quite like it should have back then.
Click on the READ MORE button to see how hardcore I actually was/am for the Coming Out of Their Shells tour. This is me, at age 6 or 7. Not only did I have the official Coming Out of Their Shells tour poster on my wall, but if you look really carefully, there are Ninja Turtle drawings on there too. One of those pictures in particular was a picture I drew of the first Ninja Turtles game on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
I don't have any of those pictures or that poster anymore, but I still have this:
That's right, the original album on cassette. I still remember listening to this all the time when I first got it. I remembered each song word-for-word. Then for a long time, this tape was just lost to me and I forgot about it. But at some point years after we had moved, I found the tape in our new house. Of course I threw it in the tape deck to relish in nostalgia only to find that, the music now wasn't nearly as awesome as I remembered it.
Oh well, strictly as a nostalgia piece, it's one of the best things ever to me. Now I'm gonna go back to watching the rest of this concert. I'm on part 6 and the Shredder has taken over the show. Will the Turtles overcome the Shredder one more time?
One more thing: no talk about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and music is complete without the following.
Leaders of the New is an ongoing series at jettlandicho.com that will focus on the future talents of advertising. Click here to check the archives.
Name: Jett Landicho
Career Path: Creative Strategy for Interactive and Mass Media
Education: Radio Broadcasting at Humber College and Creative Advertising at Seneca
Advertising Experience: On-Air Talent, Promotions Staff and Copywriter for KICX 106, Promotions Staff and Corporate Blogger for Z103.5 and Senior Marketing Associate at Pure Fun Confections
One Thing About You: Before pursuing a career in advertising, I worked almost four years in the radio industry. I did a lot of different types of work in that time, from corporate blogging, to street team work, to being a country radio announcer. If you would like to listen to my old KICX 106 country demo made from live air checks click here.
Read the full interview after the jump! When did you know that advertising was for you?
I took a class in high school called English Media. The final project was to create a product and an advertising campaign around it. My group wanted to come up with the dumbest product to sell, in order to highlight how great our advertising would be. In hindsight, it was pretty bold of us to assume that our advertising was so awesome that we could sell just about anything, but hey, we were young and maybe a bit cocky. We decided to create "Bling", a brand of coloured water.
I had so much fun with that assignment, from building the website to the print ad to producing television and radio commercials that I heavily considered taking advertising in college. But I also hosted a morning radio show at my high school, and when push came to shove, at the time radio won. I was drawn into the whole "celebrity" aspect of it and I'm still just a big music fan in general.
However, what goes around comes around I guess. Through my experience in the radio industry, I've written scripts that went to air, helped out a lot on the promotions side and even worked in corporate blogging. It brought back all the memories of that one high school assignment and how much fun I had doing it that I decided to pursue advertising for real.
How has your previous experience in the radio broadcasting industry helped you?
My experience in the radio industry has helped me grow, both as a professional and as a person. As a professional, the radio industry has taught me a number of things, including the power of opportunity. In an industry that's so small and insular, you need to work so hard for those opportunities. Even when it seems like opportunities fall into your lap because you know someone that knows someone, you helped make that opportunity by knowing that someone in the first place.
As a person, working in the radio industry has been a huge factor in my maturing process. Not to neglect my Z103.5 experience, but in particular, my time at the country radio station was a real coming of age moment for me. I was very hesitant at first to accept the internship at KICX 106 in Waterloo, because country music wasn't my scene and the station was in a city over 100km away from home. But I took the chance because I knew it would be a great career experience.
What I didn't know was that it would also be an amazing personal experience too. Coming out of college, I sort of felt like I had learned everything I needed to know. However, being so far away from home, meeting new people and trying new things made me realize that I still had a lot to learn and it opened my mind up to the bigger picture of the world. During that time, I had to learn about country music, the Kitchener-Waterloo area, and everything about the people that listen to our station. I had a lot of fun doing it, and wouldn't trade that experience in for the world.
Ever since then, I've tried to keep myself open to new knowledge and experiences. If I could learn to appreciate country music and the country lifestyle, what other awesome things am I missing out on that I just don't know about yet? Even though it's been years since I worked there, I still have a little bit of country on my iPod that I like cause I think it's good music.
My KICX 106 t-shirt autographed by the best country artist of all-time, GM Paterson;)
What interests you most about interactive and social media?
I admit, I'm a bit of a geek. So I already have a bit of a technology slant to me. However, I love interactive and social media, and would be working with them whether I was in advertising or not.
I was one of those kids that made websites on Geocities that grew up into a teenager who wrote in a blog into a young adult that made a podcast when I decided to take my announcing career into my own hands. It's a shame that the podcast had to end the way it did, because we were at 1,000 subscribers! And that was achieved by promoting the show through Facebook, iTunes, YouTube and a blog. I had just as much fun plotting out the strategy to advertise the show as I did recording and editing the show. When we find the time and the right concept, for sure we'll get back into podcasting again. In the world of online, I love the fact that the average person can have a very large impact on the world.
As advertising vehicles, I love the engagement factor that interactive and social media offers. There are so many different ways that advertisers can reach consumers in a way where they feel like you're giving them a valuable experience in return. And the ways to engage consumers grows every day with new technology and techniques.
When I realized that there were opportunities for me to combine my love of advertising with my love of online and social media, it was almost like an epiphany for me. I hope that I can make both aspects connect to make a fun and exciting career path for myself.
How does this blog fit into your career plan?
My initial goal for this blog was to be a place where I could bring my best foot forward to anyone wanting to learn about me, from teachers, to friends, to potential employers. Sort of like a portfolio, but showing a different and wider scope of who I am. But through the "Leaders of the New" initiative, this could prove far bigger than just me. By showcasing a lot of my peers starting out in this business, this blog also becomes a way for them to sell themselves.
I want every person featured on "Leaders of the New" to be proud enough to show their interviews to potential employers as another resource in their arsenal. Even better, I want potential employers to find these interviews and go, "Hey, this person is really good! I think I need to talk to them!" With the power of Google and the power of blog tags, that second scenario doesn't seem too out of reach to me.
How did you go from being a student to working at Pure Fun Confections?
It's a crazy story in hindsight. At the time, I was working really hard to get an agency internship. I'd been in talks with a few agencies and even did a few interviews. During school though, I was working on a group assignment where we were asked to put together a pitch to present to a small company. We were never actually assigned to present it to a company for real.
Our group had chosen Pure Fun after finding an article about the company on the Toronto Star's website. We really liked the company's vision and the idea of working on organic candy, something new and different in the marketplace. While in the process of working on that assignment, Stephanie and I found the President of the company on Facebook. Thinking nothing of it, we decided to contact her, let her know what we were doing and sent her a rough brief we had put together so that she could check the validity of our information. She was really impressed with what we had done, and told us she was willing to meet with us when we were ready.
From there, it really got us thinking that this could be a lot more than just an assignment. We kept in regular contact with the President of Pure Fun, asked for a lot of advice from our teachers and industry contacts on how to approach this pitch, and tweaked our plan to make it just right for the presentation. On the big day, the President of the company came down to the school and we had booked a school boardroom to present to her. Chris De Corneille, one of our teachers, was on hand for support. I was unbelievably nervous throughout the whole thing, but Stephanie and I both proved our worth and were brought in to intern for the company. After two months of interning, I was offered a job.
That was another eye-opening experience in my life. While advertising students tend to focus on working for just advertising agencies, there are a lot of other opportunities out there to do similar work for other types of companies. Despite the tough economic times, Stephanie and I were able to create opportunities for ourselves within a company that didn't have opportunities before. I'm sure that others can find success with an advertising education in a variety of places if they're willing to look outside the box and work hard to make those opportunities happen.
If you want to think bigger, Stephanie and I have already in a way won a client pitch before even graduating and have done the work to prove our worth. Who says we couldn't do it again? Who says we couldn't go as far as starting our own agency should we so choose? Who says you couldn't do the same or better?
What has the transition been like from advertising to marketing?
All of the skills I've learned from Seneca's Creative Advertising have proven relevant to me here. I've had to dabble in account services work, media consulting, public relations, direct marketing, online and even some copywriting and art direction where necessary. I feel like thanks to the education I got at Seneca, I have the tools to get to where I need to go.
What I've learned sort of the hard way is the differences in advertising and marketing. Advertising is primarily marketing communications, but on this side of the fence that's just one aspect of a bigger picture I need to look at. I need to look at everything happening above that, from the distribution channel to product development to retailer relations and more.
One of the aspects of Pure Fun's business I'm going to have to learn more about is the entire organic scene. Just as an example: do you know why high fructose corn syrup is an issue? As an advertiser, I would just think of a way to tell that to generally one target audience. But what I have to do on the marketing side, is communicate that to everybody that makes the company work, from the people in product development, to retailers to consumers and more. It's daunting have to tackle the entire marketing mix and make every element of that mix work together, but I'm up for the challenge.
For those who have an advertising background and are considering making the jump, I'd say go for it. It opens up your scope of potential work opportunities and if you're willing to learn some additional stuff on top of your advertising background you'll do fine.
If you could offer one piece of advice to future advertisers, what would it be?
My one piece of advice isn't so much an advertising-specific piece of advice as it is life advice: always continue to learn. Back to my story about how much of an impact my country radio stint had on my life for a second. It made me realize that I was living life in a small bubble and the world was just so much more than my little slice of reality had grasped up to that point. My personal quest for knowledge from that point on wasn't even driven by a desire to be "smarter". My motivation for learning more about everything was just to be more aware of the world around me.
It's not hard to be more aware, either. You can learn a lot from just reading the headlines in the newspaper or taking off your headphones while you're out in public and paying closer attention to the world around you. Try out new kinds of food. Read any random message board on the Internet and see what people are talking about. You never know when a nugget of knowledge can prove valuable to you in the future.
And if you keep your mind open to new opportunities, who knows what success you could have? I never could have predicted that I would have worked for both a country radio station and an organic candy company, but I was open enough to give it a chance and it worked. I still have a ways to go on my quest for success, but I'll always be on the lookout for the next big thing for me, wherever it may come from.
What do you do for fun?
I love spending time with friends and family. It's been tough trying to make time for the people I love due to school, career ambitions and multiple jobs, but it's important to make time for them too.
Speaking of podcasts, I'm a huge fan of the medium. It's not for everybody, but a lot of my day revolves around podcast consuming. Currently, I subscribe to 35 different podcasts, ranging from a variety of subjects from video games, to the How Stuff Works series of podcasts, to news. I don't have time for all of them every week, but I have content that interests me to consume basically anytime, anywhere.
I love to play and watch basketball. Also, I love making music. I've produced over 150 hip-hop instrumentals since I started that in 2003, and have been playing the drums now for 8 months now. I'm not formally trained in either discipline. I was self-taught on the hip-hop side, just struggling to play the instruments, handle the technology and develop the "ear" till I got to a point where I was happy with the music I was making. As for drumming, I learned how to play real drums by playing the video game Rock Band. Sounds crazy, but it's true. You can listen to one of my beats by clicking here, or watch me play the drums below.
E-Elevator Pitch: Sell yourself in 140 characters or less.
I still can't top the original.
If you're an advertising student or are just starting out in the business and would like to be featured on Leaders of the New, send me an email atjettlandicho@gmail.com
Back when I first started blogging, I was naive enough to believe that literally nobody on the Internet would ever read my blog, let alone find it. Maybe if I had access to analytics back then and was able to see that people actually did read what I had to say, I would have been a lot more conscious about the things I wrote.
A few nights ago, while trying to find a new design, I found a guide on how to configure Google Analytics to my Blogger blog. If you're on a Wordpress account, it's even easier. I just got in my first round of numbers, and the level of information I can get kind of freaks me out. I'm used to not having any real reference of how people use any site I've ever made. I just put it out there, make some content and people do what they do. The thoroughness of Google Analytics is almost too much information to me.
Now there's so much more to scrutinize. I get mad if my unique visitor count drops from one day to the next, or a less than desired number of people read a specific post. I sit here and wonder how could anybody find my site when they searched "Cundari Toronto" when I don't think I've ever mentioned them on my blog. I can see how much time people spend on my site to the second how long people spend reading my page. I can even tell how effective my tweets are in driving traffic to my blog.
The most heartbreaking thing I've discovered about my blog to date: I started this blog so that when someone Google searches my name, this blog shows up. When I looked at my numbers, then tried searching for my name on Google, I realized that my blog didn't appear anywhere. My profile did, but nothing I wrote showed up. Since then, I've played with some of my tags to try and shake things up. We'll see how that goes.
It's nothing new if you've played with analytics before. I did for the first time a few weeks ago using Compete for my internship. But when it's your blog, you might take all the numbers a bit personally, for better or for worse.
I almost feel like I've opened Pandora's box. All I wanted to know was roughly how many people look at my blog, but now I could tell you all sorts of weird facts and figures about it. And based on those weird facts, trying to come up with strategies to boost my "stickiness" or drive users to a specific part of my blog. Knowing the type of person that I am, I might even just sit here analyzing numbers more than writing content, which is what I started this blog for in the first place.
For most people, tracking your blog this intricately is probably not on your radar. However, if you've ever wondered how your site or blog is performing, there are free tools out there to do so. You never know what you might find, or know how deeply you'll get into it.
In the meantime, I'll be hitting "refresh" on my browser until the next set of numbers rolls in.
The last few days have been abuzz about swine flu. What is the swine flu? Is this the next coming of SARS? Can I get it from eating pork? I'm watching CNN right now and the station is doing a full hour of coverage on swine flu, as well as following Twitter. CNN is talking about how 8 or 9 students at a New York school show signs of having it, two people in Kansas have been confirmed to have it and according to Breaking News on Twitter, 200 high school students in Queens, New York have it. Can't confirm that last one, but it's spreading across Twitter like wildfire.
I'm no expert on the matter, and news of this is breaking as I'm typing this. But I thought I'd offer you a few resources to brush up on the issue at hand. Pretty much any news outlet would be a good start, but here's a few other places to look.
Mashable has put together a pretty solid guide on tracking the latest news about the virus. Not sure that the people that read my blog are going to configure their Google News Alerts or follow HealthMap, but I'm putting it out there for everyone that wants that level of information.
Maybe not the most accurate resource. But people will be quick to point out anything interesting that comes up. And you can never get enough of fun insights like:
chicshockeyNBC interrupts game for a swineflu alert in US and Mexico. Way to down hot dog slaes! This means that I will only eat Canadian bacon.
Also, here are a few jot notes I know that I can pass along to you:
- Swine flu primarily passes from pig-to-person, but it's also spreading from person-to-person - Scientists are not sure if it will blow up into a pandemic or die down on its own - The virus only needs 1-3 days after exposure to incubate - Every identified case of Swine Flu in the US have been minor cases - The current strain of swine flu spreading now is actually four different viruses put together
Keep your eyes open on this subject, as it could be a real big issue in our world in the coming days and weeks!
UPDATE (5:50PM): The girl in the video has apparently ordered the videos removed from YouTube. However, they are still available through the goodasyou.org.
This morning while surfing Adage.com, I found a news article surrounding this video. As if that Dominos dessert pizza wasn't gross enough, Two Dominos employees thought it would be hilarious to record themselves doing gross things to food while on duty.
First off: "Ewww!" Second of all, we would like to think that people by now understand what not to do with the Internet, especially when it comes to your job. However, these things unfortunately will happen. And it will probably happen again. Hopefully not to Dominos. In the age of social media, the expression, "With great power comes great responsibility," couldn't be more true. As a society, I think we're still wrestling with what we can and can't post on the Internet. While these acts of grossness seem to be obvious things not to do, it happened.
In a response to Dominos, Kristy (the girl in the video) had this to say:
"It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!!"
Regardless of the thought behind these videos, they're clearly a lapse in good judgement.
On Dominos side, what do you do?
Here's another quote from the Ad Age article:
He (Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre) said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino's would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.
The problem is, more consumers are finding it on their own. The original videos have been deleted, but others have since reposted them all. The video I posted at the top has been seen over 700,000 times in 2 days. Even if those users delete it, who knows who else has a copy of it to repost? Back to the idea of the online footprint; odds are, those videos are a part of Internet history forever. At what point do you step out and act on it? Or do you at all?
Anthony Kalamut discussed a somewhat similar situation involving kids smoking Rockets (or Smarties, as they call them in America). At the end of his piece were a few rules of thumb with dealing with those who mess with your brand.
It's a messy situation all-around and I hope Dominos can recover from this. We'll see how they handle this situation going forward.
Thank you Steff for sending this video along to me.
I'm not sure if this girl is familiar with the Samsung Instinct campaign or YouTube Street Fighter, but YouTube user Nayders07 has created a very cool interactive Easter egg hunt. With the power of YouTube in-video annotations and painstakingly connecting all the appropriate videos together, she was able to create this experience.
Damn, I wish I thought of this. I'm sure Cadbury or any other company that has a stake in Easter has (or will) be kicking themselves for not coming up with this before she did.
Yesterday, Apple began a countdown towards 1 billion downloaded iPhone and iPod Touch applications. As an iPod Touch owner, the applications turned my unnecessarily expensive iPod into the Swiss Army Knife of gadgets I couldn't live without.
It's been an extremely popular platform for games, social networking and...fart noises. But when used properly, it also makes a great advertising platform. There are a number of ways to advertise through the iPhone, even within the more specific framework of an application. Do you run banners on another application? Do you make your own application? Or is there some other form of solution you can think of? The rabbit hole is pretty deep, and we're still just scratching the surface.
From my time downloading applications and going out of my way to check out the advertising related ones, I've found that if an advertiser is going to release their own application, it better provide a compelling experience for it to achieve any sort of effectiveness.
One of the better advertising applications that I think achieves that is Spin the Coke Bottle by Sapient. It's a really basic application that is as frivolous as it gets and I don't think is tied to any concept or promotion (other than its release near Valentines Day), but the experience it provided was just compelling enough to be effective.
I can't say that I've gotten any action thanks to Spin the Coke since I got this application, but it hasn't stopped me from bringing it out when I have friends around. We have a few laughs for a couple of seconds and put it away. But as the owner of the iPod, that experience was compelling enough for me to use multiple times and keep on my iPod to mess with in the future. Even when I'm not using it, that Coke button on my menu is like having a Coke billboard in my pocket that I see multiple times a day.
On the other end of the spectrum, something like FedEx Mobile seems ultra useful while still providing a engaging experience. I don't ship out packages much, so I haven't downloaded this application. However, during the few times I have shipped out parcels (R.I.P. XBOX 360), being able to check where they are at all times in the palm of my hand is a feature I would highly value. A feature like this would definitely alter my buying decision.
For both Coke and FedEx, those experiences are more than just another means of traditional brand advertising. You can still achieve that awareness through your application, but it's also a great opportunity to give the consumer a valuable experience in return. When you give them that valuable experience, you build a healthy relationship with your consumers who in return will be more likely to invest or reinvest in your product or service.
You can pass on this one.
On the other side of the coin, without that compelling experience, all of the branding and reach in the world will not save your application. I can point to a numberof badautomaker advergamesto prove this point. Give the consumer a poor experience, and you've offended them worse than you would have with an ad on any form of traditional medium that they just didn't like.
They went out of their way to download your application. When that experience is not to their standards, they're almost offended in a way. To them, your bad application means you wasted their time, their iPod memory and maybe even their money if it was a paid application. One of those automaker advergames almost broke my iPod when instead of loading the game, all it did was display an all-white screen I couldn't get out of. They'll quickly delete it, give it a poor rating on iTunes to tell others not to download your application and maybe sour the relationship you once had with a customer that went out of the way to receive your advertising message.
I've been reading this book called "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" for school and for future career purposes. Within my internship, this book will be a critical asset to me in putting together a solution that works. A lot of the book centres around the idea that social media success isn't about using every social media platform available. It's about using the right tools based on the audience you want to talk to.
The book is full of Social Technographics profiles (like the one pictured above), and I kind of hoped there would be a free solution to getting a hold of some profiles myself.
Well, there is. And I'd love to share it with you. With the tool, you can make Social Technographic profiles based on age, country and gender. While the tool doesn't dig too deep, it's a great free starting point to putting together a plan that makes sense.
For anybody interested in working with social media, the book is well worth a read. Thankfully for me, I got mine for free after attending their Ad Week presentation in New York last year. However, knowing what I do know now about the book, I would buy the book if I didn't already own it.
"The revolution will not be televised." - Gil Scott Heron
The revolution is here, on jettlandicho.com. Not just me, but I'm bringing some friends along with me. Together, we'll begin (and hopefully) maintain a section of my blog called "Leaders of the New", where I'll be interacting with the next generation of advertisers. For the past two years (and in some cases, longer) I've been in the company of some of the brightest young minds entering the advertising industry. Some of them have just gotten their foot in the door while others are trying to find their way in. What they all have in common though, is that they're the future of this industry. While Ad Week or Marketing Magazine won't talk about these guys and gals (yet), their stories are just as compelling as anyone else's. They're hungry to establish themselves, and maybe their fresh ideas, skills and work-ethic will revolutionize the game.
Through "Leaders of the New", here's their chance to get a bit of spotlight before they hit the big time. To start, I'll be doing interviews with them, but we could take this a lot farther depending on how far we want to go. At the very least, it's a chance for them to put their best foot forward when potential employers Google search them. At most, who knows?
The wheels for this are already in motion. As I'm typing this, at least a dozen people have committed to partake in this endeavour. Some people already have their questions. And depending on where we go with this, there's potential to do so much more.
While I can't commit to a regular time-frame for these just yet, I'm thinking maybe once a week or so for each "Leaders of the New" feature.
Want to be a "Leader of the New"? Send me an e-mail and we'll see what we can do!
Until we get our act together and start this feature off for real, check out this classic LARPing video:
When I first went to college for radio, I came in with a mindset similar to the one I brought with me from high school. Getting good grades was my top priority. And I got those good grades, as I always have. But did they help me get my first job in the radio industry? In a way, yes. But with years of hindsight to draw from, I got my internship and job for the following reasons: 1) I had a good relationship with my professor. 2) My professor was close friends with a program director. 3) I was willing to drive an hour every day to work in this piece of junk 1991 Ford Tempo. 4) My demo tape wasn't complete crap.
R.I.P. Jakemobile. Still miss you, buddy.
The letter grades on my report card didn't decide my fate. It was ultimately that opportunity to prove my worth to my teacher and that program director that got me in. As I've learned through my successes and failures in my radio career, regardless of my talent or competency, making things happen revolves around opportunities and positioning yourself in a way that you're ready to make or capitalize on them.
So when I went back to school for advertising, the mindset was much more opportunity-driven. Instead of approaching homework as a way to get my marks up, it was an opportunity to learn, improve my skill-set and in some cases, network. It was an opportunity to prove to my professors that I deserved to be in their classes. And most importantly to me, an opportunity to prove to them that I'm worth referring to potential employers. When I networked, I used it as an opportunity to show my potential worth to them.
Has that mentality worked for me? I think it has. While it took longer than I had hoped to land an internship, it wasn't for a lack of opportunity and definitely wasn't because of a lack of trying on my part. My journey to land an internship included me sending out resumes and portfolios to multiple agencies, making phone calls, attending job interviews and even pitching a client.
It's a bit too early to say what the next big move is for me, and this may not be the venue to announce it, should I announce it at all in any public forum. But it's a really big jump from the classroom. If the standard advertising agency internship was the equivalent of learning how to crawl, then the position I'm in now is the equivalent of me being picked out of the cradle, placed on the ground and expected to dance like a member of the Jabbawockeez. As daunting as it may sound, a lot of great things could happen if I could in fact, dance like a Jabbawockee.
image from Kabillion
Even this blog is an attempt at making opportunities. I have the know-how to create one; why make something of it? I seem to be making some noise with it so far. Let's take this as far as it can go.
To wrap this whole ramble about opportunity up, three assorted pointers from yours truly that may or may not be helpful to you someday, as well as a bonus expression I learned from Anthony Kalamut that's as powerful as any :
1) Opportunities don't fall out of the sky. You make them. 2) Opportunities don't always follow your watch. 3) Whenever there's a good opportunity in front of you, make the most of it.
Today on Joystiq, they posted an article about Wendy's "0.99 Cent Bid For Value" promotion and micro site. While it's ultimate goal is to promote the value options on the Wendy's menu (I must admit though that Baconator is worth every penny), it's also running a great reverse auction promotion to drive people to the site and register. What users do is, they answer trivia questions to knock down the bid until its $0.99. The first person to answer enough questions to get the bid down to $0.99 then gets to purchase the prize for ...$0.99.
They've picked out some great prizes, from autographed sports memorabilia, to spy camera glasses, to an ultimate game room that includes an XBOX 360, a big screen plasma TV and an Ultimate Game Chair. I've always scoffed at owning such a ridiculous piece of furniture, but I can't help but say, "I'd buy that for a dollar!"
Nothing to knock about this campaign. I love how it fully integrates its target market insights, product insights, campaign concept and application of online tools into one tight package. They even allow users to get updates on the next auction through Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, as well as the ability to share the page with their friends.
With "only" 7.9 million users as of February 2009, I've noticed that most of my peers in the Creative Advertising program have yet to sign up for Twitter. Many of them hear about the service constantly and still don't know what it is. Others think that having a separate service for what is at its core the equivalent of a Facebook status tool is dumb. Before I signed up, I was in the latter group.
However, people are finding a lot of creative ways of changing the world 140 characters at a time. According to this article in Ad Age, Twitter is now Organic's main job-posting strategy. The article goes in depth on why this works so well for them on the company side. I don't know if this will ever become the go-to strategy for all job postings, but if you're on the fence about signing up, maybe Twitter's ability to help you get a job could be a reason to sign up. It's another way of finding a job. It's a more direct way of finding a job posting the moment it hits the web on a service you'll probably use for everything else. You may have less competition (for now) through a Twitter posting. It also shows employers (particularly those with vested interest in people with online skills) that you know how to operate the tech. Heck, we might not be too far away from the "e-elevator pitch" where you're asked to sell yourself in 140 characters or less.
While this is my first post under this name, I'm far from a newbie when it comes to blogging or creating content for the Internet. I've been blogging personally since 2003, with hundreds of entries under another alias, along with some experience corporate blogging. Check out of one of my entries I did for the radio station Z103.5 here.
So why am I here starting yet another blog? Well, I have a few reasons:
1) I have to for a school assignment. 2) I want to help my professor and fellow blogger Anthony Kalamut properly format his blog and I couldn't recommend any solutions without using the Blogger interface myself. 3) I want to build a more professional web presence for myself.
Back when I started blogging, my mindset towards the medium was different. I treated it as a personal diary that just so happened to be on the Internet. I never thought anybody else would ever find it.
Then I found out that some of my friends were regularly checking it out to see what I would write about next. Then I started getting comments from people around the world. Then I found my blog on Technorati, and saw that my blog was ranked within the top 1 million in the world.
Normally, it's not that impressive to know that there are close to a million people more popular than you. However, in a blogosphere that has well over 100 million bloggers, it was a cause for pause.
"Wait a minute," I said to myself. "People are actually reading what I have to say?"
For better or worse, there were people that did care about the musings of a high-school-turned-college student venting about his day-to-day drama. It got me really conscious as to the contents of my "online footprint", to the point where I almost went cold turkey. I didn't want to jeopardize myself by posting something on the Internet that I shouldn't. So, I just stopped posting.
The problem with that mindset is, I'm striving for a career in advertising, with aspirations of someday specializing in online, interactive and social media. I'll gladly work with traditional media; I've spent the last 4 years of my life working in the radio business and got into advertising in the first place to further explore roles I could do within the traditional media realm. But my knowledge and passion for online, interactive and social media are arguably the biggest assets I can provide to a company and the assets that set me apart from the rest.
So lets bring it back a bit. How then, do I then sell myself as someone in touch with the online world without anything online to show for it? The answer I came up with: start fresh.
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Yes, it's corny that I pulled out the Spiderman quote, but it's very fitting in this case. A blog is an extremely powerful tool of communication that can change the world. I want to continue using it, but more wisely. No more "hacker aliases". No more muttering under my breath online when I really want to shout out loud. No more trying to hide from accountability. There's nothing wrong with shouting out loud. It's just a matter of making sure I can stand behind everything I shout.
This is my blog, in my name, for the world to see. My goal for this blog is that I want this to be valuable to everyone; from my friends, to my family, to teachers, to future employers. I want this to be the culmination of my writing ability, my creativity, my thought process and my skills working with online tools. I want to be in a situation where anybody that searches my name on Google will find this blog and see the best I have to offer.
Is my answer the right answer? I don't know. But I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Over the course of time, I'll be posting about a variety of different subject matter using different media to help me express myself, such as video and possibly a podcast. Hope you stick along for the ride.
I have mentioned in the past that I dabbled in music. In my free time over these last few weeks, I've decided to learn the bass guitar. I'm having a lot of fun with it and even performed live at my local street party. Anybody looking for a drummer or bassist for next year's Battle of the Ad Bands in New York?
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