What Career Chose You?

It is clear to many of you as clear as it is to me; you did not choose your career, your career chose you. If we in fact chose our own careers, we would’ve known from the very start of our existence what we would end up becoming and what we would end up doing. In fact it is not a result of our choices that we end up in certain fields, but rather the powers that be that push us in certain directions.

What has influenced you to work in your field?

Bridging the Gap

Kind of cheating here, but whatever.

As I prepare to graduate, I understand this about the world ahead of me: I am entitled to absolutely nothing. As hard as I have worked in school over the past 20 years, it does not earn me the right to anything, and if I want to “do something meaningful with my life” I will have to work for it–hard. I’m sorry that this guy’s view of young graduates today is so jaded.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577389750993890854.html?mod=wsj_share_goog

Soda Markups So Dumb

Fountain soda is undoubtedly the most delicious way to enjoy a soft drink, but it’s also no doubt that restaurants and fast food chains alike are robbing you blind every time you fill up a cup. While at restaurants with table service you will most likely get a few refills throughout your stay, you still won’t consume enough soda to equal the cost for the restaurant, especially with all of that ice! These markups can exceed 400% and are even more of a waste when you get a drink at the drive-thru–no refill! In most cases it will cost a restaurant a few nickels depending on the brand/size of the cup, but they can charge you anywhere from $1.00-$2.75, depending on location and genre of eatery. There could also be a new tax on soda in the future due to its unhealthy features (sugar). Maybe next time just get water?

Scent Marketing – Why it Makes Scents

Thankfully Meghan Green told me about this wonderful method of marketing, Scent Marketing.  Meghan told me about this billboard that emits the aroma of warm, freshly baked cookies in order to make your senses beg for milk. Normally you’d think, who could complain, but apparently, people complained. Then, only a few days later, a current event brought up in my class was the buses in Korea that play a Dunkin Donuts ad and then, a few seconds later, emit the scent of freshly brewed coffee. Who could resist, right? I know I would immediately want some coffee after that experience.

Apparently, there are agencies that specialize in this so-called “scent marketing” and cater to all sorts of clients–including banks. Take Air Aroma for example: they provide specifically catered aromas for Carnival cruises, Aston Martin, and several different banks. You may think, “banks?? what kind of smell can you use to advertise a bank??” Well, according to Air Aroma, providing comforting smells within the actual banks make customers feel more at home while they are potentially waiting in long, frustrating lines.

Even though scent marketing in banks may seem far-fetched, it gets even weirder. Apparently, there are elevators in London that offer lickable–yes, you read that right–lickable walls with various desserts on them. I mean, you have to taste before you buy, right? My first question was, aren’t people grossed out by that, but apparently if you do lick one of the samples on the elevator wall, the bellhop removes it from circulation (if he notices).

Where else should we implement scents into our marketing efforts?

Levels of Description and Degrees of Experience

So, last semester, I took a class called Technology and Human Agency. We read books and articles, we did research, and we were given small amounts of freedom to choose project topics from a list. Education was one of the topics listed, so I chose that and made an argument that more visual/experiential classrooms=easier learning. How do you make a classroom more visual/experiential? With the implementation of technology.

Now, you gotta understand, I really didn’t like my teacher…(man, I hated her!) but I nonetheless trusted that she was a more educated individual than myself and, therefore I could learn something from her(?) So I did research, and I made this powerpoint, and I had some solid facts to back up my argument. But I wanted something that would really drive the point home, so I made up this slide:

Now, it works better when you’re seeing the actual presentation, because where there were the blue lines were originally gaps that got filled with the method of description. But blue is bad, because it doesn’t represent the ideal grasp of anything. But I digress. Anyway, this teacher, she gives me feedback on this presentation and says “did an excellent job of describing difficult to understand concepts (i.e., levels of description).” So I read that again…”difficult to understand concepts”…I made it up! It’s not like I simplified some kind of complex scientific theory. I mean I never claimed that I didn’t make it up, it’s not like that slide was cited. Jeez.

Anyway, reminds me of yesterday in class, this guy is great worked for BBDO but sometimes…last semester:

Teach: Facebook is basically just like e-mail.

Classroom of stifled laughter and pfffs

Teach: What?

Student: I wouldn’t say Facebook is like e-mail.

Teach: Why not?

Student: …how often do you send e-mails to over 1,500 people?

—Yesterday

Same teach: So…where did you see this?

Me: On Facebook.

Teach: So, you went to Chick-fil-A’s facebook page, ,and you saw this?

Me: …well, no. I liked Chick-fil-A’s facebook page, and this update showed up on my newsfeed.

Teach: Oh it made the news!?

…

Oh, How Ads Have Changed

I only brought one of my National Geographic’s with me when I went out of town this weekend and, of course, I read the whole thing cover to cover and had nothing left to read. So, when I was browsing through a used book store I saw their collection of old National Geographics and decided it would be fun to read an old one. I chose the May 1993 issue because a few of the topics piqued my interest. Firstly, beekeeping, but also the various problems in Europe.

It was actually really scary to read at some points, because the magazine described how the population of Europe was getting out of control, and then showed a map of populations in various European countries. This was twenty years ago that they were talking about this population crisis, and yet here we are, 20 years later, just taking it in stride and waiting for the zombie apocolypse or the rapture.

Anyway, as I was flipping through the magazine I was struck by how peculiar some of the ads were. For one thing, the fashion sense reminded me of saved by the bell. The most striking were the car ads because I perceive these cars as being old and it was odd to see them being advertised as new or “the latest thing.”

More than anything, one of the biggest changes I noticed was how many words were on these print ads, and how little we refuse to read nowadays.

I know that for many of these ads I would not even have the patience let alone the attention span to read all of that. Especially if I didn’t care about the product. Perhaps this generation is much less intelligent, or maybe we’re more intelligent because we don’t need as many details to gather information and make decisions. You decide.

I Quit this Blog

APRIL FOOLS!! No end in sight…yet. Speaking of April Fools’ Day and the various pranks involved, I was very excited to see what all of the various websites had in store for me as they usually provide me with excellent humor on April 1st.

While at it’s core, Google’s idea for a prank was funny and interesting, it was too complex and, quite frankly, too believable.

YouTube took a page out of Google’s history book, and claimed that you could request copies of your favorite YouTube videos on DVD. Too similar to when Google shared with their customers that they could order paper copies of their e-mails to be delivered to them at home, and, not really all that entertaining.

I did enjoy the prank that came to me through Google Maps, which suddenly gave me the option to not only look in satellite view, but also in 8-bit retro “quest”  view.

My favorite prank, however, was from the post on Chick-fil-A’s Facebook page, proclaiming their brand new product, the Steak Filet sandwich.

Perhaps even funnier than the concept itself was the planted reaction of the Chick-fil-A cows in the subsequent photos posted, taunting beef eaters everywhere and posting the above picture as “Exhibit A” of course misspelled by the careless cows. They even grew desperate enough to write with their paintbrushes “Say it aint so!”

Despite how funny and clever I found all of this to be, other people did not find it so funny. Not because they believed it, there were only a select few who thought that this was real, but those who were angry that this post was posted on a…Sunday. Most of the comments were customers exclaiming that “If Chick-fil-A is not open on sunday then they should not be allowed to post on Facebook on Sunday.” Some customers even exclaimed how it was not fair that Chick-fil-a was posting on a sunday because it makes the Facebook community hungry for Chick-fil-a and now they can’t have it until the next day.

What was your favorite prank from April Fools’ Day this year?