advergirl

Join Ologie in Supporting Operation Feed

I came into my office after a marathon of meetings yesterday to find this simple reminder:

So, I cannot help but post:

Every year, the staff here run an internal campaign to raise money for MidOhio Foodbank's Operation Feed campaign. Sure, it's a little more low key in this tough year (last year featured teams racing to build mountains of canned goods). But, we're still committed to taking care of the people in our community who have been brave enough to speak up and ask for help.

I hope you'll join us.

Here's what we're asking:

• Act personally: Pledge $25. MidOhio Foodbank can turn that into 50 meals. Literally. They do amazing stuff.


• Challenge your co-workers: 226 companies like Ologie have already joined the campaign and are asking their teams to do anything from bringing in a can of soup to making a financial pledge. It's easy to setup - you can get started here. If you do run a workplace campaign, let me know - I'm happy to feature it here.

Over the years, Ologie has worked on the MidOhio Foodbank brand (along with other great agencies, like Resource Interactive); so, we have something of a front row view to the impact they have on families in our community. If you're not as familiar, I can tell you this:

• MidOhio Foodbank delivers food to over 500 soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and other programs helping those in need
• For every $1 donation they receive, MOFB is able to distribute $8 of groceries
• In 2007, they fed over 200,000 people
• And were supported by 5000 volunteers

This is our community safety net. It's the one thing we can all do to personally affect change for our neighbors. We can literally feed the hungry with a couple of extra bucks. Let's do it.

Work inspired by a certain world view

I was recently chatting with a friend about the impact our media consumption can have on our worldview. How it can change how we approach shared culture; whether we're fundamentally hopeful or cynical, etc. In the simplest form - consider the difference in perspective (not opinion) between someone who consumes (exclusively) Rush Limbaugh and the National Review vs. the Daily Show and Headline News vs. the New York Times and NPR. From those extreme vantages, the world is a vastly different place.

I mention it here because I found myself preaching the gospel of Alan Wolk's NASCAR Blindness today and started to think about how many of my professional blind spots and unusual assumptions are directly related to the media I consume - to the selective culture that builds my worldview.

The big question: For people in our industry, is it responsible to let our personal choice drive our media choice? Or do we owe it to our clients to intentionally, daily go broader.

Top 10 Media / Cultural Connections that shape my personal view:

1. NPR news
2. New York Times - particulary the magazine
3. Contemporary fiction - particularly Irving, Cunningham, DFW and Palahniuk
4. Local art - particulary CCAD, Comfest and Available Light Theater
5. This American Life
6. Ted
7. The Moth
8. Blogs - particicularly Element 22, Quipsologies, News from the Herd and The Social Path
9. Bravo
10. The Daily Show

How that list would change if I wanted my work to reflect a more diverse experience:

1. Network news
2. Chicago Tribune
3. Womens magazines - particularly Oprah, Rachael Ray and Redbook
4. Pop culture - particularly American Idol, contemporary music and the WB
5. Sports Center
6. 20/20
7. Popular fiction - Picoult, Gilbert and Lamb
8. Blogs - particularly especially the Huffington Post, Boing Boing, Perez Hilton
9. Bravo
   
10. The Daily Show
    

Hmmm. Where to go from here?

Hard times, new sentiments: Notecards for a broken economy

None of us has gone untouched by this recession. The tension at work. The precipitous drop in our 401ks. The sad phone calls (by us or) from friends who have lost a client, a job, a house. 

It's brutal out there.

There's plenty to keep us up nights.

And lots of awkward new interactions that seem to call for more grace than most of us can muster under this kind of stress.

Perhaps it's time for a new greeting card series. Hell, we haven't really had one of those since Sweethearts Day sap and pet sympathy cards hit the scene.

What about it? A glib line of sentiments for a broken economy? My nominations:

 

 

Hard times, new segments: Divorce advertising?

The whole world loves a bride. She's showered with magazines, catalogs, glossy mailers. Invited to websites, trunk shows, entire conventions of other betrotheds. Asked to register for every lovely thing a household could need - from a pour-for-the-Cure pink Brita to no fewer than a dozen monogrammed bath sheets.

Let the marketing dollars flow.

But what about all those brides who are wives no more? The husband hunting for a re-bachelor pad? Those once-couples for whom happily-ever-after has run amok?

With over half of American marriages ending in divorce, perhaps there's a niche of household spending that we - America's Ad-mad Advertisers - have missed.

Afterall, if all this money is spent convincing a young bride to feather her nest with only the best, what is she to do when half of it is boxed up and trucked out by her now ex? Ug.

Imagine it - hundreds of thousands of people faced with replacing their cookware, comforters and tea cozies. And needing to do it in a hurry. To get back to normal FAST.

Perhaps this is the segment for hard times. In an economy where spending is stalled. Where relationships are rocky. Let's make it easy for those who have to spend. Let's keep them off futons and bean bags. Offer them deals on thread count and leather. No take out and chopsticks. No, wounded one, we will bring you steamers and stainless steel forks.

The possibilities are endless. Just consider these two entirely fictional mood boards for some of our favorite go-to domestic destinations:

 

7 things about me

Here it is. Advergirl does a meme.

This one was hard to resist. Ad Broad, the self-proclaimed oldest working writer in advertising, made me do it: she was asked to reveal 7 things about herself and challenge 7 people – including me, it turns out - to do the same.

After 5 years of typing and talking, there’s not much you don’t know (well, not much you don’t know that I’m willing to tell you), but here’s a shot at seven new things:

1. The Reverend Jimmy Baker’s ex-cell mate – Roger Nelson - taught me how to skydive. He was something of a lightning rod for legend and innuendo before he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for drug smuggling. But, he came out a reformed man. Preaching Jesus and skydiving at a Skydive Chicago, a dropzone he ran with his kids (his first DZ, incidentally, was called Skydive Sandwich – a name that I find delightful).


2. I was co-chair of the College Republicans, a collector of Nixon memorabilia and such a big fan of William F. Buckley, Jr. that the only password I’d use for years was WFBJR. Now, of course, I am a socialist.


3. My first cat was an outdoor beast named Mama Cat. She would come from anywhere in the neighborhood when I whistled Duke Ellington (It don’t mean a thing) for her.


4. I have a trunk of saved love letters. From as far back as summer camp. Silly and earnest notes from back when people used pen and paper. (So, watch out ex-es, I’ve got dirt.)


5. Most of the time that I’m in my house, I’m wearing jammies. I claim this is a strategy to protect my clothes from the shedding cadre of pets I share the place with, but, really, I just like jammies.


6. My first job was at a family restaurant called Christies. I waitressed at the coffee counter near the short-order grill (for $20/night) and smelled so awful (from the grease and smoke) at the end of the day that my mother made me change my clothes in the garage. I once stepped in the soup (sitting in a big vat in the walk-in fridge) and we served it anyway. Ew.


7. Somehow I got halfway through college without ever learning how to cook. So, I turned to TV for the answers. Starting with scrambled eggs, I learned everything I know about cooking from a year of watching FoodTV. Now, I make the best enchiladas and mac and cheese you’ll ever eat. (Incidentally, I also never learned how to apply eyeliner or use a lawnmower. The former I picked up by trial and ERROR; the latter – eh, I mulched my yard).

OK, now it's my turn to tag people, asking them to share 7 things about themselves. Many of my usual suspects have already answered, but here are other bloggers I'd love to know better:

Kyle Lacy
Erin Joan
Carrie Krebbecks
Shannin Brooks
Dirk Singer
Daniel Pink
David Taylor

Blog Action Day: Do this one thing with me

Really different topic today.

Poverty.

Today is Blog Action Day. An annual one-day movement to change the conversation. To focus the power of all our little blogging podiums on one topic that means more than any of the things I post about day-to-day.

This year the topic is poverty. And the big and little things you and I can do to lift people up.

Sometimes these questions seems too big. It can be easier to just say they’re unsolvable, inevitable. But, as the sermon said a few Sundays ago, there is enough for everyone, we’re just not willing to share it.

Here is a big and small way people just like us are creating change:

Big Way: Many of you have heard me talk about my father. A better man than most. He recently returned from a trip to India where - among other things - he cut the big celebratory ribbon on the Vadaketh Development Center - a place he helped raise the money to build. Vadaketh is set to help people - from babies to job seekers - who have developmental disabilities live more fulfilled lives.

While there, Dad met Rev. Timothy.

As a boy, Timothy lived in the Red Light District. His mother was a prostitute. A missionary family walked them out of that hard life and helped them start over.

As an adult, Timothy returned to the Red Light District. There, he has a rudimentary workshop where he teaches sex workers to sew and offers day care for their children. All with the goal of helping them walk out and start over.

His daughter is going to medical school. She’s able to because another caring family is housing her and helping her with expenses so that Timothy can continue to do good work for other families without holding back his own.

(You pick which is the big thing in that story. There are a lot.)

You can see my dad’s notes about Timothy here. If you want to help him out, email me.

Small Way: Our good friend David Griner is a new dad. He and wife Karen have invested a lot of thought in ways to pass on their values to Allison. One of the first things they did was create a Kiva account in her name.

Today, they make loans on her behalf. As she gets older, she’ll take over the account, giving her a very real look into the challenges of poverty and need. And, showing her that one person can absolutely help.

I’m funding my Kiva account today. I hope you’ll open one, too.

Please pass this on.

Call for submissions: Online fundraising / community building questions and cover letters for makeovers

A couple of opportunities to share this morning:

1. Tomorrow is a big day at Ologie (my home agency). We’re hosting a day of events with Richard McPherson, the author of Digital Giving - a book about how technology is changing charity. Fundraisers and marketing heads at leading greater good organizations will be here to talk with Dick about the social Web, online fundraising and community building.
   
   At the end of the day, Dick is going to spend a few hours with our team, talking about how these trends impact our agency and our clients. Do you have questions about online fundraising? Send them my way. I’ll share the answers here later this week.


2. Months and months ago, April Hayes asked for a followup to the Advergirl Resume Makeover series. She wanted: cover letters.
   
   Good news for April: I’m finally ready to get back into the makeover business. So, if you want some advice, send in your stuff.
   
   Submissions should include:

• A sample of a recent / current cover letter you’ve submitted to a potential employer
• Your resume
• Details on at least two jobs you’ve applied for - minimum: company name and job title

I’ll pick 2 – 3 candidates to makeover later this month. Please send your submissions to lhouseholder at gmail by September 19.

Call for an Agency School

Or: Five things you will learn on the fly that you would have been better at if someone just taught you.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

Maybe it's Agency Speed. That pace required to fill the gap between goals and resources. That clip that leaves teams bootstrapping relatively crazy solutions at ungodly hours of the morning. That speed that rewards the people who "get it" and bedevils those that would actually like to follow a "process."

Or maybe it's the Immigration to the Industry. Agency types are from all over. Journalists. Corporate Marketers. Work-in-their-jammies Freelancers. Artists. Photographers. Fundraisers. Developers. Economists. Cat Herders. A messy hodgepodge of talent, experience and know-how.

Whatever the reason, most of us end up learning a lot of the basic skills of the business on our own. Traveling down the same road of self education ... only to very different ends.

So this is my call to any industry vets or educators who might be reading. We need an agency school or a creative industry bootcamp that teaches these five core skills of the business:

1. Managing People. The natural path of success is from doer to manager. But the skills required for each are completely different. Hence the fumbling weeks / months / years of grabbing work back to redo ourselves, of delegating just the grunt work, of being unable to inspire a team.
   
   Teach us how to teach, mentor and manage. How to give meaningful feedback and pass on our best skills.


2. Taking Notes. We're natural stenographers. Writing down every word we can capture. Brains racing just ahead of our scribbles. Our notes are the transcript of a meeting. Until one day - far too late in our careers - when we meet someone who has actually learned the art of notetaking and we realize we've being doing it all wrong.
   
   Teach us about synthesis. And creating frameworks from the dump of data. About hierarchy and selectivity and gathering those salient quotes that bring not just the content but the tenor of the feedback. Teach us to think conceptually and write briefly even in the real-time conversation of the meeting.


3. Giving presentations. Or, even, hell, creating them. PowerPoint has shouldered us with clunky, fragmented thoughts. It's taken away our natural interaction with the room. Our ability to stir passion and set up the big idea. Click, click, click goes the noose.
   
   Teach us what it means to present an idea. Give us the power to run a room. Go all the way back to the setup. Where it should be, who should be there, what should be in the room. And through the meeting itself - how we build the right foundation for an idea, unveil creative, inspire the client. Teach us how to get the room back with stodgy-mc-stodgerson declares the work crap, when the Big Boss nods off in the corner, when our creative partner embarks on a startling  monologue about  the sensuality of the font.


4. Tracking time. We bill by the hour. Well, some of the hours anyway. Maybe the right ones. As well as we can remember. In an office of 100 people, how many bill for the time it takes to get to the meeting? How many cross off a .5 for the what-did-you-do-this-weekend tangent at the end of the kickoff? How many really log the weekend hours we donated? What aboutthe time to get a new staff member up to speed? No?
   
   We're not number crunchers by nature. Not suits with rulebooks. Give us some guidelines, some help with the details. Teach us what that "we bill by the hour" phrase really means.


5. Managing our own schedules. Oh, the lucky few with a traffic coordinator. Someone to prioritize, negotiate and balance. The rest of us are either racing to catch up or boldly scratching off one meeting to slide in another. Listening to a conference call while typing up a new strategy. Stacking commitments three deep in hopes that nothing is lost in the balance.
   
   Teach us how to mange it all. When to say when. How to see the big disasters coming. And plan time not just for the deliverable, but for its iterations.

AgencyU? Ad Camp? I'm in.

David Griner and The Social Path

If you totally trust the advice of Advergirl, no need to read on. Just click through this subscribe link and get a feed you're sure to love and thank me for. If you're tougher to convince, keep reading, I'll talk you into it.

It's been over a year and a half now since I hung up my blogging hat. No fanfare, no goodbye. I just wandered off after a decidedly questionable post on bug advertising.

Until, May of 07, when David Griner, a snarky AdFreak blogger, called me out on the disappearance. His "Where is Advergirl" post ended up flooding my inbox with "yeah, what the heck happened" notes and trackbacks from other bloggers echoing the sentiment. I was compelled to return to posting. Since then, David has been something of a big brother of blogging - peer pressuring me to try new social media (damn twitter) and calling bullshit when I head out too far into the land of ranting.

So, I'm very excited to tell you about his new blog: The Social Path.

TSP is a social media blog that tears down the jargon of our cliquey chat and replaces it with great examples, advice and ideas. More about it in David's own words:

Advergirl: Your latest brainchild - The Social Path - launched this week. What's the big idea behind it?

David: I love social media. I love talking about social media. But I've never really liked reading about social media. For every good blog on the topic, there are hundreds packed with vague rhetoric and self-promotion. We wanted to start an agency blog that was conversational, practical and digestible for the masses.

But to be honest, I just wanted a place to rant on the company's dime.

Advergirl: You write for advertising's leading publisher, plus have a growing family, a full-time ad job and a blog of your own, what made you decide to take on this new venture?

David: I seriously felt like my life was missing something. I love writing about cool and strange stuff for AdFreak, but I also wanted a place to talk at length about trends and technology. Yeah, it spreads me  little thinner, but I've gotten a lot of support from all three bosses: my creative director, the AdFreak editor and my wife. I forgot to check with the dog.

Advergirl: (Karen: If you want to contest the boss order there, we welcome your comment!) Anyway, David, who are you writing for this time around?

David: I'm trying to keep the luddites in mind. I want to demystify social media, make it seem less scary for businesses and ordinary people. But I still want it to be interesting for the people who already read tons of sites about networking, conversation, etc. I figure clients and potential clients probably fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Advergirl: The Social Path is pretty prominently sponsored by your home agency, Luckie & Co. Last I checked, your gig was copywriting there, not chief blogger. Is this launch the start of a new role for you?

David: Time will tell, I guess. For now, still contently plugging away as a copywriter.

Advergirl: I know we have a lot of readers who are interested in introducing their bosses, co-workers and clients to social media. What advice to you have for promoting and teaching social media?

David: You can talk all you want, but the easiest way is to actually help them set up a few accounts on sites like Facebook, Blogger or Twitter. Then walk them through the process of getting started. That's the toughest hurdle to get over. For that reason, I prefer one-on-one training instead of trying to convert the masses all at once.

Advergirl: Do you think every brand should embrace social media?

David: Embrace it? Probably not. But every brand should be experimenting with the possibilities and keeping an eye on trends. Last I checked, half of the Top 10 Web sites in the U.S. were social. That's a hell of a boat to miss.

Advergirl: Is social media marketing, customer service, product development, or something new entirely?   

David: Social media is just a way to communicate. But when companies use it, I think it should be seen as a mix of PR and customer service — except good.

Advergirl: What tool do you hope comes next?

David: I love the idea behind FriendFeed, but I hate the interface and I never end up using it. It would be great to have a site that easily combines all these other things I use: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Lots of folks trying to do it, no one succeeding (yet).

Advergirl: What's the most un-social thing going on in social media today?

David: I still think about that MySpace suicide from time to time. It's becoming so easy for bullies to torment other kids online. Makes it more important than ever for parents and teachers to understand how all this technology works.

Advergirl: Now that you've spent some time with Lance, how would you weigh in on the Big Debate: Should he embrace the moniker Adverboyfriend? Or continue to seek his own identity?

David: I think he just needs to make Adverboyfriend his own, really feel out the potential. It worked for Dr. Girlfriend.

 

Ok, ready now? Visit the site. Or subscribe to the feed.

Strategic Twitter Challenge

Advergirl readers may remember the name David Griner. Either from his much-more-successful blog or - I can hope - from our fabled battle over the rightness of Wendy's Red Wig. (Speaking of - I noticed they didn't get bought out until after they dumped my favorite wig for that squeaky Girl Wendy rehab. Moving on...)

Today Griner spotted a great class project for readers and writers of the social web. I'd love it if we could all get involved:

Background: This week, a fair-trade coffee roaster is promoting his new bakery on Twitter by offering to give out free coffee after reaching 100 (Twitter) followers. (Griner was Follower No. 2.)

A rather un-authentic approach, but, hey, at least he's trying to use the medium.

So, here's the strategic challenge: Begin by logging on to Twitter. (If you're not signed up yet, this is a great opportunity to try it out and be part of a productive little case study at the same time.)

Then, tweet how you would use Twitter to promote a bakery you've just opened.

Griner's already collected some responses that are pretty interesting, but we think this can go much farther in showing the possibilities of social media.

One rule: Remember to put #bakery at the end of each Twitter post, so that Griner can track the answers here: http://twemes.com/bakery

Follow Griner @griner