From The Inside Out

You've given me the gift of music...so I will play for You.

So happy to call Matthew Klug my Valentine!

I worked on re-composing "Wanted" (one of my favorite songs) for you. I hope you enjoy it! Wish I could be spending the day with you...but because I can't I will send some love in the form of my music to you!

Random Cookies of Kindness: Building a Personal Brand

Random Cookies of Kindness: Building a Personal Brand

            The idea of personal branding consists of leaving a consumer with a uniquely distinguishable, and ideally memorable, impression about yourself or your business. Establishing a personal brand is a vital part of any kind of business. It’s not rocket science but it seems like many business are forgetting this step of the selling process. Between the ups and downs in the economy and the rising costs of living businesses are doing everything possible to keep people coming through their doors.

 Many places are throwing coupons at consumers in desperation to lure business into their store, giving away merchandise in hopes it will bring in new customers, and purchasing flashy signs to place in front of their stores. While these advertising tactics have a place in the scheme of things it seems as though a piece of the puzzle is missing. Loyal customers are worth their weight in gold to businesses yet they seem to be forgotten in the rush of bringing in new customers. FL!P SiDE Café, located in Gadsden AL, is trying a new approach to keep the customers loyal to their brand. 

On Tuesday Feb. 12^th FL!P SiDE café rolled out the Random Cookies of Kindness campaign. We visited 22 local businesses and surprised them with a hand written thank you card for their loyalty to our products and a box of cookies to brighten up their afternoon. All of the businesses that were visited have either used FL!P SiDE for catering services or have employees that visit the café frequently for their morning coffee or lunch breaks. They are the definition of loyal customers and we thought it was time to reward them for supporting us.

The key to this campaign is not only to reward those who support FL!P SiDE but to also build our brand image in a positive light. The reactions from office to office were incredible resulting in many smiling faces, a woman who actually danced upon receiving a FL!P SiDE goodie box, and a phone call from one of the businesses letting us know that we have made their day with an afternoon pick-me-up. I challenge to you find a coupon that has ever generated that kind of response.

There’s something to be said about showing your customers that you care about them, not just their money. FL!P SiDE Café plans to continue going out into the community to reward our loyal customers and put smiles on people’s faces. People are the most important part of our business and it’s time we showed them how much we appreciate their business.

Ambushed By Social Media

      We are living in a world where more kids are sitting at home on their computers instead of outside playing with friends. Computers are a continually growing trend and so are the social media sites that go along with it. Right now I am working with CH&B on making social media a prominent part of their company. Over the past 2 weeks I have “tweeted” countless messages, posted various facebook statuses, and uploaded a large amount of their portfolio on Flickr and Picasa, online photo sharing websites. I do believe social media is important as it is part of the future of advertising, although I believe if we shift all of our focus onto computer generated interactions we will lose a large part of what advertising really is.

How many times do you sit around the dinner table and discuss how awesome somebody’s tweet was about something? Although it’s possible to be crafty and creative with the copy of a tweet you’ve got 140 characters to get your message across. Not a lot of space for a meaningful message.

Now on the other hand, how often do you sit around the dinner table and discuss how funny a TV commercial was or how creative a magazine ad is? That’s more like it. We even have a full evening every year dedicated to TV commercials; some people refer to it as the Super Bowl.

        What is always on the “must see” list while visiting NYC? Times square of course. Thousands of billboards and flashy signs creatively designed to catch our attention.

        I think I’m making my point clear. Social media definitely has its place in the industry. It’s cheap, quick and easy to use. It’s great for making connections and posting events and news. There have also been some amazing uses of social media such as Jell-O Pudding monitoring sad faces ( L ) in Twitter messages and sending the person with the sad face a coupon for their product. But how often is an ad on the computer, or an event posted on facebook, or a message tweeted on Twitter so appealing that you remember it and bring it up as a conversation piece?

        The thought behind a social media site like Twitter is that a business can tweet about their latest product, investment, achievement or clients. Unfortunately, according to MarketingSherpa Research “nearly two-thirds of marketers aren’t monitoring or responding to comments (both positive and negative) about their company.” It’s something that a accompany gets excited about but forgets about in the long run.

        Once again I would like to reinstate that I am totally for social media marketing, but my passion for advertising definitely doesn’t lie in the form of social media. That’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful for this internship. It’s given me the opportunity to realize that sitting at a desk by myself tweeting and posting isn’t really for me.

        While working on an NSAC campaign for JC Penny I discovered the joy I get from being creative and working together in teams to come up with creative ideas. All three of my commercial ideas were chosen for the plans book as well as a print Ad and 2 billboard ideas. I’m hoping one day you’ll be sitting around your dinner table reminiscing about one of my TV commercials that you’ve seen on TV.

        We also get so wrapped up in the online world we forget how big of a statement something such as outdoor advertising can make. Just like I mentioned above the advertising that takes place in NYC makes Times Square a destination. Now just think of how effective advertising would be for your company if you could provide an ad for each client that was a destination, some place where everybody would want to go to see it. Obviously I live in the real world and know that it would be impossible to do that for every ad produced but it also reels my brain to think how powerful a medium like that for advertising could be. That right there is the kind of work I want to be involved in. Check out this page of billboards created for various companies. I know for sure I would take a second to stop and look at the message that was being given by these billboards:

        http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/01/05/clever-and-creative-billboard-advertising/

        It’s ok that we begin to take a step into the virtual world of social media, as long as we keep one foot planted in the real world. I believe successful advertising is a compatible mix between traditional advertising and the online world of social media. Luckily for me I am getting an inside look at both mediums and learning from professionals how they work together to complement each other. It’s time to get excited about the future, but also to remember where the roots of advertising have been planted for many years.

Living The Dream

  Life is a funny thing you know. Always twisting and turning and just when you think you have some direction you realize your Garmin navigation system of life is yelling at you to make a U-turn in an area in which you know it’s illegal. Then you’re stuck. Stuck in that panicked, lost, horrible situation in which people are honking at you to make a move but you have no idea where you are, what you’re doing, or where you can go from that point. On the other hand life is also funny in the sense that it always works itself out. Sometimes not exactly as you planned it. But it works itself out. I suppose that’s reassuring in this crazy mess of a world we live in. I choose to look at it as an adventure. And trust me that’s exactly what my life has been for the past twenty-two years and I don’t see that changing any time in the near future.

  I was born in Hartford Connecticut and have lived the life as a gypsy ever since. Before you start picturing me playing a cimbalon in big hoop hearing while gazing into a crystal ball let me clarify that I’m not actually a gypsy. My family just thought it would be fun to move every few years; you know just to mix things up a bit. In reality my parents made the moving decisions in order to take better job opportunities so that my sister, brother, and I would have a better future. Or so that’s what we’ve been told. I do have this theory though that they are really secret spies, which is why we are constantly on the move. Regardless, I truly appreciate the sacrifices they have made for us and as far as I can see I haven’t been psychologically damaged in the process. You’ll have to check in with me a few years from now to see how that past statement is holding up.
 

  Currently I live at home with my parents, have two pet guppies named Carl and Lenny, and drive a big black mini-van named Shaniqua. You know, just living the dream. And yes, I do come from a family that names inanimate objects. Let me take this time to remind you I said my life was an adventure…not “normal” in any sense.  I always pictured that at this point in my life I would have my own apartment and a job that doesn’t pay a measly $7.50 an hour. Instead I have two completely pointless online classes standing in the way between me and my degree. World fairy tales and Business 499, aka “learning how to work in a factory”, are the two things that hold me back from landing a professional career. The most frustrating thing is that those classes have absolutely nothing to do with my major.  If I wanted to work in a factory I would have skipped the whole working my butt off for four years studying and working minimum wage jobs to pay for books and ramen noodles to eat so I could survive while living at school. And yet I continue to shell out over $1,000 per class to learn Chinese fairy tales about magicians who train ants to do magic tricks in order to avoid being eaten by their enemies.   One day I’ll look back at this and laugh and once again be reminded of how funny life thinks it is at times.

  The good news is that I was hired to do some freelance advertising/marketing for a local café in town.  I suppose it’s a good stepping stone on the path to becoming an official adult. Looking back at my past I can rest assured that this phase is going to be nothing less than an adventure. That’s ok. I think I’m ready. Bring it life. 

Stay tuned for updates on how this whole southern living thing is going! 

Puzzles

Life is a puzzle. Four corner foundation pieces give us a start in the messy jumble of pieces that we live in. They are an anchor, a reassurance. We must learn which pieces we need to connect to for our own stability and which pieces to avoid that don’t fit comfortably into our lives. Just because we don’t connect with certain pieces in our life doesn’t mean we discard them. We use them down the road to build our life story, to learn, to love, accept, and grow. Without them our story would be incomplete.  We learn to love each piece as an individual as we are all cut in different shapes, sizes, and colors. We learn that our puzzle would be so much more challenging if every piece was the same. Puzzles take time, patience, and hard work much like everything we do in our own lives. Life can be challenging but if you keep at it the ending results can be rewarding. As humans we are constantly searching for our place in life much like every individual puzzle piece is. It’s important to remember we all have a special place in which we belong. Some people find it right away. Some people don’t. Just because you can’t figure it out right away doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there waiting for you when the time is right. Throughout a puzzles life its pieces get lost, edges get worn, and colors begin to fade. To me this shows a life well lived and well loved, for a puzzle in perfect condition it typically rarely used and never loved. In my life I hope I can connect with those I need to connect to, bring new colors into the world of others, and be building block in creating this masterpiece we all call life. And if sixty years down the road I am a little torn around the edges, a few pieces of me are missing, and my colors have begun to fade I can rest in the fact that I have lived a life worth living. 

Carl & Lenny....the adventure begins!

Well I am finally back home and have an accessible internet connection. It's nice to be settled in and I am ready for this new adventure in Alabama.  Although I am happy with where I am at I have quickly come to realize that something very important is missing from my life. My awesome roommates Caitlyn and Lydia that I have spent the past 2 years living with.  I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to fill this void. Then I got creative and found a solution:

Meet Carl (named after Caitlyn) and Lenny (named after Lydia).

Ok. So I know that they are fish.  And there are a lot of differences between my new pets and my roommates. The list is as follows:

1)     Fish are quiet…my roommates are not.

2)    If I kept my roommates in a tank of water they would die.

3)    I only have to feed these guys once a day… my roommates and I ate A LOT.

4)    Fish do not like being hugged.

5)   My roommates are white…and my fish are orange, yellow, purple, pink, and blue.

Obviously the list could go on and on.

Never-the-less I am excited to have my new aquatic friends as roommates and they are a reminder to me every day of the human people I miss so very much!

So starts the journey of Carl and Lenny.

I really hope they make it past a week of living!!!